I’ve got a NPCZoneManager assigned to an NPCSpawnVolume of size x=600,000 y=600,000 z=160,00 and whether I have min/max desired spawn set to 500/1000, 5,000/10,000 or upwards I always end up with about 100 NPC stasized and a handful active. How do you get more than a few NPC(dinos) to show up in the specified volume? Is there any limit to the effective spawn volume size? My hope was that I could make one large spawn volume for the map with the number of NPC’s/dinos evenly distributed for that volume, but things seem very empty no matter the numbers I put in for min/max desired spawn or experimenting with other parameters in the NPCZoneManager. This is based on following Brick Whut’s tutorial videos.
I would suggest using smaller zones so that you can better tweak each spawn as you see fit, you can see how i setup mine here http://imgur.com/a/phQdk
Thanks uzumi, that works for smaller levels but doesn’t management scale very well for larger levels when I’d rather manage one large box than lots of small ones doing the same thing. If small boxes are the way to go, what’s the documentation saying the optimal/maximum size and why? If the parameter settings worked as implied(a spawn volume should contain this desired minimum or maximum NPC) then I’d be set but they don’t or the NPC spawn workings and limitations are undefined or unclear(or I’m doing something wrong or missing a step).
I copied the content from small island then simply copy pasted to cover my entire map (note it was smaller then) then configured each single box… took me about 20 hours or so but its a 1 time deal, after that its just tweaking and thats easy. However what took the longest was troubleshooting, if you set it to spawn land dinos and only on land but the zone its connected too counts water dino’s the editor crashes upon play test, this took the longest for me
Thanks for the info uzumi, my landscape is probably around 2,000,000 by 2,000,000 size or larger(maybe 10 to 100 the scale of TheSmallIsland) and I can try the box duplication route if the spawn zones have some hidden limits, looking for further documentation/guidance from the devs as to what the spawn zone volume limits or max NPC spawns/density are to get a better idea on how to best implement. I’ll look some more at the spawns groups themselves if they have some built-in setting limits that I’m not seeing from the higher function call or other settings that would create limits.
3ndofin3, your not going to like this, but Uzumi is very much correct. There is an optimal size for a spawn zone, and going with the current “TheIsland” size is definitely the “golden number”. The Devs have put a lot of time and effort into tweaking their zones to make sure they are just right.
If it is too much work for you to create the appropriate sized zone throughout your map, then there are options still open.
You can “skip” areas and leave them barren of dino spawns
You can decrease the overall size of your map to make this a more manageable task (you will probably have to do this just to allow a server to run your map)
You can keep everything the way it is and create the spawn zones slightly larger than “optimal” so that you save time.
Thanks all for the feedback, I’ll see what I can do with the suggested spawn volume sizes on the dev maps. Still technically curious as to why things are done this micro-management way, when all I’m really trying to do at the moment is to have an average dino ‘density’ for the map or larger areas of the map. Thanks again for best advice while folks wait for more official documentation and dev team insights into design choices and better understanding the game/engines current technical limitations.
It is mostly because the dinosaur spawns wont be spread throughout the entire map if you only have 1 zone, they will all spawn in small area’s and as soon as the number is reached they wont spawn more leaving most of your map empty, See apoko map for reference as i believe she did that exact thing
My guess is that zones are designed to be player triggered and working at player scale. Guess maybe I could just define some massive zone spawn grids and copy past sublevels between maps.
Is it possible to have spawn zone spread out across different sub levels? asking in relation to the new map extensions.