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  • RNG Initialization affecting harvest results

    Oliwhere

    By Oliwhere

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    Summary:

     

    When farm plots are harvested shortly after loading into an existing world (first action the game considers harvesting), the amount and order of seed drops are always the same.

    The RNG used to determine harvest results is not initialized randomly and generates the same sequence repeatedly every time the player loads into the world.

     

    Game Version: A20.4 b42

    Platform: Steam

    OS/Version: Windows

    CPU Model: AMD Ryzen 5

    System Memory: 16 GB

    GPU Model and VRAM: RTX 3060 6 GB

    Screen Resolution: 1920*1080

    Video Settings: Custom

    Game mode: SP

     

    Did you wipe old saves? yes

    Did you start a new game? yes

    Did you validate your files? yes

    Are you using any mods? no

    EAC on or off? off

     

    Status: NEW

     

    Bug Description:

     

    In my current playthrough I realized after a couple of harvests that I was getting the exact same amount of seed drops every time when harvesting directly at the beginning of a play session: From the 3*8 farm plots is was getting a total of 8 seeds (4 pumkin seeds, 1 hop seed, 3 corn seeds) repeatedly. The seed drops even occurred in the same order, e.g. the 7th hop plant was the one to drop the seed.

    This also means that if I stuck to my schedule of harvesting my farm I would only ever get 33% instead of the 50% seeds back - since there is no random variation to statistically even out. 

    The fixed starting value of the RNG seems to be based of the seed of the world, so for a different world players might get overly lucky or unlucky with their harvests , when they have a tendency to do the farming as one of the first actions in their play sessions. Given the growth time of 2 hours might correlate quite often with a typical time for a play session, this can happen 'by accident' to quite a few people.

     

    The random number generators seems to be seeded with the same starting value every time you load into your current world.

    I'm not sure if this RNG initialization is done by accident or intentionally (could be for debugging / testing purposes), but I think this should at least be changed to something that actually varies over the playtime within a world.

     

    Detailed steps to reproduce the bug:

     

    1) Plant a sufficient amount of crops in farm plots and let them grow

    2) When the crops have grown, exit the game to desktop and reload your game

    3) Perform the harvest and note the amount and order of seed drops

    4) Replant the farm and let the crops regrow

    5) Exit the game to desktop again and reload your save game

    6) Perform the harvest and note the amount and order of seed drops again

    7) Compare the two harvest results and find them to be identical

     

    Actual result:

     

    Harvesting a grown farm directly after loading a save game will produce the same amount of seed drops at every harvest within the same world. The long term average of seed drops will not be 50% in most cases.

     

    Expected result: (what you expect to occur)

     

    Harvesting a grown farm directly after loading a save game will produce a randomly distributed amount of seed drops at every harvest within the same world.

    The long term average of seed drops will be 50%.

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    Oliwhere

    One further observation:

     

    The RNG used to populate random loot containers suffers from the same problem.

    If I loot cars dirrectly after loading into the same world, the first car will always give me a Q6 pickaxe and a repair kit, the fifth car will always contain a Q6 chainsaw. This is for biomes where my loot gamestage is above the cap of 290 - so this can probably be repeated indefinetly.

     

    Interestingly the individual stats on the pickaxe / chainsaw will actually vary - which means there is yet another RNG instance, but initialized in a way I would expect the other two RNGs to be as well.

     

     

     

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    TSBX

    I have an internal ticket in on a similar issue, it's possible that the harvesting randomization is related to that. I'll take a look. Thank you! 

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    Oliwhere

    Are there any news on the comparison with the internal ticket?

     

    There is also a report from @White-Gandalf where he found essentially the same issue with the initial randomization after game startup - in his case related to the item restock of vending machines.

     

     

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    Oliwhere

    Still present in 20.6 b9 stable:

     

    Two consecutive harvest results at the beginning of a session:

     

    20220820120055_1.jpg.6398b4cbe28b88d48b4ced9c2a88e816.jpg

     

    First car loot at the beginning of one session:

     

    20220820104835_1.jpg.6e4d21c9017c0460f37a97acec519063.jpg

     

    First car loot at the following session:

     

    20220820105102_1.jpg.bc17b2be40694cec6e130f22cec54340.jpg

    20220820104835_1.jpg

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