A Variety of Questions ! Loot Spawning

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    Hey guys.
    I'm experimenting with console servers as i recently found that dayz in bed is quite a good lockdown passtime XD. however the lack of mod support is rather irritating, but i get it. in the mean time i had a few questions about modifying what i can to try and bypass some of these restrictions..

    So starting simply just to make sure i understand what i'm doing step by step - been a while

    Step 1 - Increasing loot spawns

    I want to create a server with approximately 3x the standard loot spawn.
    I understand that this is also done in cfgrandompresets.xml.... (and cfgspawnabletypes.xml?

    an example being:


    -----randompresets-----

    <cargo chance="0.15" name="foodHermit">

    <item name="TunaCan" chance="0.11" />

    <item name="SardinesCan" chance="0.11" />

    <item name="Apple" chance="0.07" />

    </cargo>


    -----spawnabletypes-----

    <type name="ZmbM_priestPopSkinny">

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    </type>

    <type name="MountainBag_Green">

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    </type>



    So my understanding of how this works is that randompresets defines lists of items, and names them, and sets the chance of these items spawning.

    And then spawnabletypes defines which of these "presets" are tied to which containers in the game, whether is a peice of clothing, a bag, a barrel, or a zombie. In the example above i changed the cargo preset for the mountain bag to also be foodhermit, for the sake of simplicity.


    i also understand that types.xml is a list of all the items in the game ? but not sure if its relevant here, so


    My Questions about step 1

    If i wanted to increase the chance of priest zombies dropping loot to approximately 3x what it was before in my example then then i think i would want to change it too look something like this


    -----randompresets-----

    <cargo chance="0.45" name="foodHermit">

    <item name="TunaCan" chance="0.33" />

    <item name="SardinesCan" chance="0.33" />

    <item name="Apple" chance="0.21" />

    </cargo>


    What i think i have done here is made it so that now any time a priest zombie spawns it has a 45% chance to get the cargo preset "foodHermit", and then i have respectively raised the chance of getting each item 3x as well.

    WHAT IM NOT SURE ABOUT HERE is do i have a seperate chance of getting each item so 33% chance of getting a tunacan, then a 33% chance of getting a sardine can as well, and finally a 21% of getting an apple. so could one priest zombie potentially drop me 3 items

    from


    <type name="ZmbM_priestPopSkinny">

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    </type>


    or to make it have a chance of dropping 3 items would i want to make it look like this


    <type name="ZmbM_priestPopSkinny">

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    <cargo preset="foodHermit" />

    </type>


    Then the second question that this raises for me is if its one item per cargo chance, do the the secondary chances have to make sure they do not exceed a total of 1 . so for example


    <cargo chance="0.45" name="foodHermit">

    <item name="TunaCan" chance="0.40" />

    <item name="SardinesCan" chance="0.40" />

    <item name="Apple" chance="0.40" />

    </cargo>


    would break the system as 3 lots of 0.40 is 1.20 ? or is that alright?


    another question is can i create my own randompresets like this?

    <cargo chance="0.7" name="Fishing_Kit">

    <item name="Hook" chance="0.15" />

    <item name="Hook" chance="0.15" />

    <item name="Hook" chance="0.15" />

    <item name="FishingRod" chance="0.55" />

    </cargo>


    and then just add

    <cargo preset="Fishing_Kit" />

    under the relevant bag and zombie names, barrels etc in spawnabetypes...


    If i increase spawn rates of certain items do i need to decrease teh spawn rates of other items? and im no talking about "play eperiance" im talking about teh way the game handles spawning. or can i just increase spawn rate of things without reducing over things, how does the economy file come into all this?

    would you need init.c access to make an instance of a barrel appear in a certain location in the map?


    Thanks for any help :)







    It goes deeper than you think. You can change the amount, occurrence and location in each individual building (mapgroupptoto.xml) but beware as any mistakes will def crash your server. Also yo need to keep the loot economy in the back of your head if you wish to keep a smooth running server. Too much loot and the server can and will lag really bad or just crash. Consoles only have so much memory to use, unlike pc which have way more. Its a balancing act. Increase one item decrease another to keep balance. I remove items not used like some clothing, machete, ect..


    your questions are good ones.

    1 and 2 are as follows. There can be an occurrence of multiple items spawning on one zombie but this is rare. Typically it's a percent chance for 1 item to spawn per zombie. The percentage of the secondary items chance should not exceed 100% or that item will spawn 100% of the time. Make sense?

    Your last question is no. You only need to add an event to have an item spawn at a particular location.


    Check your pm for a link

    I don't know what the secondary chances are by default. There is no documentation on it.


    As for the settings we can change, yes if you change the % to something different that setting will take hold. So separate % for fishing hook or fishing rod would be as set, in theory. The developers don't seems to always follow their own set logic at all times. You will see this when you start modding..


    Have fun with it!