Game AI/Physics/Quests get stuck at random.

[gamerpaddy]

Apparently, the game has a bug that causes certain areas to pause / get stuck.

 

When it happes, following things will happen in that particular area or the whole server:

• Trader only offer "Buried supplies" quests.
• dropped items dont fall, but when they do, they fall trough the map.
• blocks dont fall, they become a falling object but stay in mid-air.
• zombies dont spawn, but can be spawned via commands (usually via /gimme) or trough buried supply quests, but wont move.
• allready spawned zombies dont move, but can be killed.
• a ragdolled zombie will fall trough the map.
• vehicle momentum is preserved, when you bail a driving vehicle it freezes instantly.
• when you get back on, you are instantly at speed again.
• zombies that are in a "active" area behave properly, move, attack etc. but once they enter the "paused" / "stuck" area, they instantly freeze.

 

you can find the area border by placing wood frames until they collapse, in the frozen area they stay mid air, the active area will drop them as usual.

 

 

everything else works fine:

• you can dig
• you can join/leave/ teleport
• you can craft, drive vehicles, kill and get killed
• loot will spawn, buried supplies will spawn
• dropped (floating) items can be picked up etc.

 

we try to find the cause of the issue..

 

 

this effect sometimes happen on the whole server or some areas only.

usually a restart fixes this issue, but it sometimes also gets unstuck by itself. but we couldnt figure out why.

 

 

Someone reported that bug in the bug tracker at some point, he found that screamers spawned en mass for him.

we disabled screamers, this didnt fix the issue. we also never had screamers spawn this much in our case.

 

Also, Sometimes, when a players takes a quest, activates it  the marker just disappears and it says "head to rally point" top right this problem appears.

when he reconnects and activates the same quest again, it might unstuck the server.   but we couldnt reproduce this 100%..

when he cancells the quests in this case, it doesnt seem to unstuck the problem.

 

 

Another possibility could be the  AI Throttling feature of A21, that it might "pause" or slow down that area for some reason without unpausing it.

Quote

• AI can handle more zombies by throttling their activity based on distance to player

 

 

That the trader only shows buried supplies might indicate a stuck thread that scans towns for valid pois that can be quested.

 

 

it never appeared in experimental b313,  but in stable it happens multiple times per day.

player count independend (happened once at 2 players.. sometimes with 30+..), at random, out of nowhere.

 

 

Whats your take on that?

Have you encountered that problem?

What have you tried to fix it or have you found the solution?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[gamerpaddy]

Next case we had:

 

it got stuck as mentioned above.

i asked in chat who had a quest that didnt start,

the player in question did a relog and 30sec later it unfroze and everything behaved normally.