Increase the number of zombies. There must be a feeling of end of the world Z! !

Hey, I've been running a PavZ server down in Aus for the last couple of weeks "PavZ Zombie Survival (AUS)".

Generally everyone's been having a blast with it, though I do notice that with upward of a dozen players connected the server is hitting one of the processor cores at full tilt. Not sure yet if that's negatively impacting the experience in-game but might be a point to consider if you're wanting feedback on performance.

Memory load also gradually climbs from 500MB of memory in use up to 3GB over a few days though that's not a big deal as scheduling in a daily service restart obviously solves that problem.

Zombies occasionally seem to spaz out a bit (spinning rapidly on the spot, getting caught on some geometry), though that's the case for Pavlov's zombies on other custom maps as well so probably not anything wrong with PavZ specifically.

Overall, loving the map! Thanks so much for your work. My friends and I are very much looking forward to what you're planning to do with it in the future.

Thankyou Alopex, what you're describing is not unusual for us either. Currently the cpu does hit 100% and will essentially stay that way. We have not noticed it causing significant impact on players in game. The map does have some sort of memory leak that does require a restart that seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes server can last 24 hours, sometimes only 6hrs. I haven't been able to pinpoint whats causing it, but I suspect it may be out of my control as I don't think Pavlov was ever designed to run nonstop for days. I'll be continuing to look into ways to fix this if possible. Again, thankyou!

We really appreciate you hosting our map! It's very interesting to see it played in other regions. It's a relief to see cross-region latency isn't breaking things. All information from server hosters about crashes/hangups/instability is absolute top priority.

Oh and about your other question- We are manipulating zombies that are meant for the cooperative zombies gamemode, attempting to make them do things they weren't meant to. The cause of zombies spazzing out is typically because they lost the ability to pathfind to their intended target. There are a handful of reasons why this happens and we try to prevent it, but sometimes it's out of our control. This occasional problem is part of the reason why zombies only last so long before they "mysteriously die of natural causes". If you watch the console log as the map is played, some of the warnings and errors you see pertain to the debugging of systems like this.

No worries. Thanks for your replies il Primo & DSalimander! Appreciate the insight.

After playing for a while, I feel it would be interesting/fun to add some of the WW2 weapons in the low-mid tier loot tables, especially the bolt actions rifles that are balanced (imho) by their unability to get a scope atachment.
It would add a little bit of variety to the usual handguns vs shotguns low-tier city fights.

Also I've noticed that very often players will respawn near the place they were killed. Allowing for very easy revenge killing, often time I haven't had the time to check someone's loot before they come back and shoved a sawed-off in my face.
So maybe a way to ensure that the players can't respawn in the closest town would aleviate this issue.
Or maybe this is an intended feature in which case nevermind.

Originally posted by Saedriss:

After playing for a while, I feel it would be interesting/fun to add some of the WW2 weapons in the low-mid tier loot tables, especially the bolt actions rifles that are balanced (imho) by their unability to get a scope atachment.
It would add a little bit of variety to the usual handguns vs shotguns low-tier city fights.

Also I've noticed that very often players will respawn near the place they were killed. Allowing for very easy revenge killing, often time I haven't had the time to check someone's loot before they come back and shoved a sawed-off in my face.
So maybe a way to ensure that the players can't respawn in the closest town would aleviate this issue.
Or maybe this is an intended feature in which case nevermind.

To bank off this point a little, I feel like Sawed-Offs make it far too easy to exploit getting close respawns, while also gimping people from doing anything if they get a series of bad loot from the crates to defend against the oncoming zombies.

Perhaps replacing it with an M1911 and a mag or 2 might reduce this problem a wee bit.

I think pistol spawns should be higher. But I tell you what. this game mode is so funny.

The gamemode is amazing, thanks for all the work you put into it!
One small thing I think could be better, is that there are way too few zombies, they're not really a threat at all, but some times they spawn right in our face which can be frustrating. If spawn distance and spawn frequency could be increased it would make for a better experience in my opinion.
Also due to the large distances in this map, it's really fun to snipe zombies from really far away, this is the only map so far I've seen make use of such long distances. Looking out the window and seeing a bunch of zombies makes their way towards your building from far away also adds to the dramatic effect and makes for a great atmosphere, so that's another reason I'd suggest increasing the spawn distance.

Get away from the spawn towns if you have good loot. This is intentional to prevent spawn camping.

The sawed off shotguns were specifically picked because they are close range, have ammo that does not stack (not farmable), and has just two shots. Giving players anything else would make the spawn towns a deathtrap with no reason to leave.

Zombie spawn count and distance are two variables that we do carefully control and tweak on an ongoing basis. While you're right that more and further away would be a more fun experience, we have to limit that to ensure performance stays acceptable.

Hi again. Tried out the new air drop feature just earlier on the Aussie server. Heard the air-raid siren go off though that seemed to be all that happened.

Went for a quick drive around the map to see if there was anything new or if a package had dropped somewhere though I wasn't able to find anything. Guessing that I might've missed something?

Thanks again!

When you hear the siren, make sure to look up in the sky. You'll be able to see the airdrop fall from the sky, it takes about a minute and a half for it to land. If you are not at the location where it landed, someone likely looted it before you could find it.

Thanks for that il Primo, called in a couple today, nice loot drops!

Figure I'll mention also, I spent a few hours playing on my server earlier with a handful of other players going around. After about 2 hours zombies had seemingly stopped spawning altogether.

I had a quick look in Pavlov.log to see if there was anything glaringly obvious but all I could locate was this repeating every 7 seconds or so:


Hope that's handy to have, otherwise no big deal as it's nothing that a quick map reload can't solve though figured it would be worth a mention as I'll assume that's not intended behaviour.

Thanks!

All is perfect, however maybe adding more boxes outside of towns car force player to leave the towns and stop spawn killing

Absolutely love the ATV's in the game! Perfect addition to a almost fully open landscape and getting the loot around! Me & my friends wish there were a bit more rare crates around as we could only find 3 in the map if that is all what was added. We would love to have WWII weapons be added with the modern guns as that would make this map even more enjoyable! Overall we love the map and would hope to see it updated with more locations and guns!