Zombie corpses decay and disappear

[Crackerjack]

I've gotten into multiplayer recently, and while I absolutely adore Muldraugh being picked clean and generally being filled with blood and corpses, having over 500,000 corpses on the server (with more added all the time) is making servers much more lagtastic and choppy than when they first started up. 
The server I play on frequently is working on a mod that allows players to bury, burn, or chop up corpses. A mod that attempts to delete zombie corpses after a period of time was too difficult to create.

I think that it would be a boon to multiplayer if corpses disappeared after a period of time, maybe an in-game week, to cut down on the hundreds of thousands of 'containers' that the game has to keep track of as well as the items inside them. This could be 'optional', with a varying amount of time it takes for a corpse to decay fully and disappear.

I notice a similarity to the problem in dwarf fortress, with rotted items and corpses piling up and piling up until your FPS just gives up and starts to cry. Deleting all the rotten garbage en-masse shows remarkable boosts to the FPS once again; the same with resetting servers on PZ when the entire population of Kentucky is rotting in the streets.

tl;dr makes corpses go away after awhile to save us all from another source of lag

[jass0]

What about the items left on zombies?

1. They disappear with the body and are gone forever
2. They disappear with the body and are "recycled" (they spawn on other zombies or in unexamined containers)
3. The items are left on the ground where the zombie body was

[wsensor]

I think that the items should just dissapear with the zombies.

 

Each corpse could be given a random timer between 3 days and 1 week?

• As each corpse dissapears maybe make the zombie come back randomly somewhere within a radius of the body (not to close to players) or have it come back to the map later on when migration is added.

Player corpses should have a much higher timer than a regular zombie corpse.

• When time for the player corpse to dissapear maybe make the items it has randomly go to containers near the body.
• If no containers nearby send the items randomly into the world.

[Crackerjack]

 

What about the items left on zombies?

1. They disappear with the body and are gone forever
2. They disappear with the body and are "recycled" (they spawn on other zombies or in unexamined containers)
3. The items are left on the ground where the zombie body was

 

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

[EnigmaGrey]

 

 

What about the items left on zombies?

1. They disappear with the body and are gone forever
2. They disappear with the body and are "recycled" (they spawn on other zombies or in unexamined containers)
3. The items are left on the ground where the zombie body was

 

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

 

And the occasional axe, handgun, bullets . . . and delicious apples.

[jass0]

 

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

And the occasional axe, handgun, bullets . . . and delicious apples.

Exactly, when you have a pile of a hundred zombies it gets somewhat difficult to loot all the goodies It would only be unrealistic and annoying to have those precious items (that are greatly limited in numbers) disappear.

[wsensor]

For all we know the lag might not just be from the corpses themselves as it might also have to do with all the corpses having items on them just sitting there.

Each corpse counts as a container and each has/had at least clothing on them.

 

There is not much point in all the extra clothing.

If our clothing started falling apart and such it would be a good thing to loot clothing from zombies.

 

Plus if the corpses lasted from 3 days to 7 days and started to dissapear in that time frame and new zombies popped up to replace them most likely you would have already looted the corpses anyways.

[Crackerjack]

 

 

 

What about the items left on zombies?

1. They disappear with the body and are gone forever
2. They disappear with the body and are "recycled" (they spawn on other zombies or in unexamined containers)
3. The items are left on the ground where the zombie body was

 

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

 

And the occasional axe, handgun, bullets . . . and delicious apples.

 

I've never been overloaded by looting zombie corpses, nor have I known anyone who has. Perhaps like the post above, we can compromise and have all the clothing become xXtrousersXx and any actual useful item is just dropped on the ground?

[Realmkeeper]

 

 

 

 

[...]

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

 

And the occasional axe, handgun, bullets . . . and delicious apples.

 

I've never been overloaded by looting zombie corpses, nor have I known anyone who has. Perhaps like the post above, we can compromise and have all the clothing become xXtrousersXx and any actual useful item is just dropped on the ground?

 

Is there any evidence this would solve the 'lag', you're trying to overcome?

 

Dropping the item(s) on the ground effectively turns the ground into the container for the items, so a (non-empty) container still exists. And those items on the ground still need to be rendered, so instead of a zombie corpse an item is being rendered instead.

From a programmers point of view, rendering an assorted variety of objects on the ground is going to have a far larger negative impact on performance than rendering a collection of near-identical zombie corpses.

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to do some profiling, and be certain of the current cause of the lag you're experiencing before coming up with some possible solutions which may, or may not, just intensify the problem?

 

Edit: abbreviated that initial quotation - it made for a long-looking post

[Crackerjack]

 

 

 

 

 

[...]

Oh no, what ever shall we do without all the shirts, skirts, pants, and jackets on zombies?

 

And the occasional axe, handgun, bullets . . . and delicious apples.

 

I've never been overloaded by looting zombie corpses, nor have I known anyone who has. Perhaps like the post above, we can compromise and have all the clothing become xXtrousersXx and any actual useful item is just dropped on the ground?

 

Is there any evidence this would solve the 'lag', you're trying to overcome?

 

Dropping the item(s) on the ground effectively turns the ground into the container for the items, so a (non-empty) container still exists. And those items on the ground still need to be rendered, so instead of a zombie corpse an item is being rendered instead.

From a programmers point of view, rendering an assorted variety of objects on the ground is going to have a far larger negative impact on performance than rendering a collection of near-identical zombie corpses.

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to do some profiling, and be certain of the current cause of the lag you're experiencing before coming up with some possible solutions which may, or may not, just intensify the problem?

 

Edit: abbreviated that initial quotation - it made for a long-looking post

 

When all the zombies are removed from the map, the lag decreases significantly. If you want, you can hold an actual scientific study on this matter but from what I have seen the correlation can't be denied.

[bvhv]

Solution! Wait 1-2 more updates for corpse moving, then move all the corpses to the forest in one spot and laugh to any that stumble upon the "lag trap" ouo.

[Realmkeeper]

 

 

I've never been overloaded by looting zombie corpses, nor have I known anyone who has. Perhaps like the post above, we can compromise and have all the clothing become xXtrousersXx and any actual useful item is just dropped on the ground?

 

Is there any evidence this would solve the 'lag', you're trying to overcome?

 

Dropping the item(s) on the ground effectively turns the ground into the container for the items, so a (non-empty) container still exists. And those items on the ground still need to be rendered, so instead of a zombie corpse an item is being rendered instead.

From a programmers point of view, rendering an assorted variety of objects on the ground is going to have a far larger negative impact on performance than rendering a collection of near-identical zombie corpses.

 

Wouldn't it make more sense to do some profiling, and be certain of the current cause of the lag you're experiencing before coming up with some possible solutions which may, or may not, just intensify the problem?

 

Edit: abbreviated that initial quotation - it made for a long-looking post

 

When all the zombies are removed from the map, the lag decreases significantly. If you want, you can hold an actual scientific study on this matter but from what I have seen the correlation can't be denied.

 

Well, that depends if you've replaced all those zombie corpses with containers or items on the ground, in your testing.

If not, then your suggested solution doesn't solve the "more zombies/containers/items on the map creating lag" issue whatsoever.

 

There's an undeniable correlation between excessive zombie corpses and lag on the server, but that's not say the same lag (or worse) won't also be caused by excessive amounts of items, or 'non-container' containers filling the world either.