[PatriotGames]

Hello,

My L4D2 versus server seems to have had the minimum spawn distance from survivors increased to a point that makes it very difficult to spawn even reasonably close to a survivor. We had a good versus match last night and the minimum spawn distance really affected the game, especially for Boomers, who had to spawn so far away from survivors that the Boomer was easily heard and killed. Infected players keep getting the "you are too close to the survivors" message when trying to spawn, although they are far away by typical versus standards. This is not the normal behavior for the server and its is really detracting from the game.

Question 1: Is it possible that an extension, plugin, or combination of plugins is inadvertently affecting minimum spawn distance?

Question 2: How would one go about debugging this sort of issue other than deactivating all the plugins into groups and reloading the groups one by one and estimating changes in spawn distance? I was hoping for a quantitative method that would output minimum spawn distance values in console or some other output during game play that could then be compared to default spawn distance values (where are these found?).

Thank you for any suggestions or solutions you can offer.

Regards,

Patriot

Here are the server's Sourcemod details:

SourceMod install:

PHP Code:

12:15:27  SourceMod Version Information:
             SourceMod Version: 1.4.2-dev
             SourcePawn Engine: SourcePawn 1.1, jit-x86 (build 1.4.2-dev)
             SourcePawn API: v1 = 4, v2 = 3
             Compiled on: Dec 15 2011 22:43:00
             Build ID: 3452:373e1313dcd8-dev
             http://www.sourcemod.net/ 


Active plugins:

PHP Code:

           01 "Admin File Reader" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           02 "Admin Help" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           03 "Admin Menu" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           04 "AdminSentinel" (1.2.100) by <eVa>StrontiumDog 
           05 "AdsQL Advertisements System" (1.7.8) by PharaohsPaw
           06 "AFK Manager" (3.4.3) by Rothgar
           07 "Anti-Flood" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           08 "Basic Chat" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           09 "Basic Comm Control" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           10 "Basic Commands" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           11 "Basic Info Triggers" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           12 "Basic Votes" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           13 "Client Preferences" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           14 "Fun Commands" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           15 "Fun Votes" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           16 "HLstatsX CE Ingame Plugin" (1.6.15) by psychonic
           17 "L4D2 Score/Team Manager" (1.2.9) by Downtown1 & AtomicStryker
           18 "L4D2 Bacteria Sounds" (1.0.6) by AtomicStryker
           19 "L4D2 Door Lock" (2.4c) by Glide Loading
           20 "[L4D2] Explosive Cars" (1.0.4) by honorcode23
           21 "[L4D2] Fireworks Party" (1.5) by SilverShot
           22 "L4D2 God Frames be gone" (1.0.5) by AtomicStryker
           23 "L4D2 Gun Control" (1.1.3) by AtomicStryker
           24 "L4D2 Karma Charge" (1.0.7) by  AtomicStryker
           25 "[L4D2] SG552 Reload Fix" (1.0) by McFlurry
           26 "L4D2 Survivor AI Trigger Fix" (1.0.9) by  AtomicStryker
           27 "L4D2 Versus Waterbrake" (1.1.1) by AtomicStryker
           28 "[L4D2] Weapon Unlock" (0.8.9) by Crimson_Fox & AtomicStryker
           29 "L4D_Cloud_Damage" (2.22) by  AtomicStryker
           30 "[L4D & L4D2] Gear Transfer" (1.5.7) by SilverShot
           31 "L4D_Ghostpounce" (1.0.4) by  AtomicStryker
           32 "l4d_inaudible_ghosts.smx"
           33 "L4D Survivor AI Pounced Fix" (1.0.4) by  AtomicStryker 
           34 "Thirdpersonshoulder Block" (1.3) by Don
           35 "Player Commands" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           36 "Reserved Slots" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           37 "Round Start Bot Stop" (1.8) by EHG
           38 "L4D Force Mission Changer" (1.4.0) by Dionys,visua77 & viragiste
           39 "REGEX word filter" (1.2) by Twilight Suzuka
           40 "Sound Commands" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC
           41 "SourceBans" (1.4.9) by SourceBans Development Team
           42 Disabled: "Nextmap" (1.4.2-dev) by AlliedModders LLC 


Active Extensions:

PHP Code:

12:16:26 [SM] Displaying 11 extensions:
         [01] Automatic Updater (1.4.2-dev): Updates SourceMod gamedata files
         [02] Webternet (1.4.2-dev): Extension for interacting with URLs
         [03] Left 4 Downtown 2 Extension (0.5.3): Downtown1's extension to perform useful L4D1/L4D2 calls
         [04] BinTools (1.4.2-dev): Low-level C/C++ Calling API
         [05] Top Menus (1.4.2-dev): Creates sorted nested menus
         [06] SDK Tools (1.4.2-dev): Source SDK Tools
         [07] Client Preferences (1.4.2-dev): Saves client preference settings
         [08] SQLite (1.4.2-dev): SQLite Driver
         [09] SDK Hooks (2.1.0): Source SDK Hooks
         [10] Regex (1.4.2-dev): Provides regex natives for plugins
         [11] MySQL-DBI (1.4.2-dev): MySQL driver implementation for DBI 


[PatriotGames]

Anyone? No thoughts/ideas/suggestions?

[Visual77]

http://forums.alliedmods.net/showthread.php?t=117939
Is that what you need? it allows you to set the spawn range. I think valve's defualt spawn range is pretty high.

[PatriotGames]

Visual77,

Thank you for the thread pointer. My questions was really about how to debug an issue where the minimum spawn distance for infected players seemed to adjust upward, even higher than the game's already high default values.

I read through the entire thread you linked, and while those cvars allow changes to spawn distance in a finale, I was hoping to be able to change the spawn distance minimum value on all maps, not just finales.

SRS mod offers some spawn distance adjustment, but again only for finales. If possible, I would adjust the default spawn distance to a lower value for all maps in all campaigns, which would, in my opinion, further improve the game play dynamics.

Thanks again for your help,

PG

[Mr. Zero]

Isn't this an old bug? I believe I dealt with it before, where the finale spawn range (z_finale_spawn_safety_range) sticks after finale end and still affecting spawns on next intro map.

I can't remember if I ever fixed that for confogl. I think I just cheapened out and added z_finale_spawn_safety_range 250 to the config, so it retains the normal spawning distance all the time.

Try setting z_finale_spawn_safety_range to 250 and see if that fixes the problem, if so that is indeed the bug.
I don't know if a map restart fixes it. So long ago I played VS

[PatriotGames]

Mr. Zero,

Thank you for the debug tip. I did try resetting sm_cvar z_finale_spawn_safety_range 250 (default 300), restarting the server and confirming the new value in console, but no joy, it did not improve the minimum spawn distance.

However, changing z_spawn_safety_range to 250 (default 550) improves the minimum spawn distance noticeably, although I do not know what other effects changing this variable may have. The 550 value feels like the minimum distance SI are allowed to spawn when the server is misbehaving. As you can imagine, a 550 spawn distance is almost unplayable.

I am wondering if this behavior is caused by the [LD4] Force Mission Changer plugin when a finale is played and the plugin quickly switches to another campaign before the finale routine is fully complete.

My test servers (versus, coop, & vanilla) are mirrors of the production servers, and the test versus server has never experienced this spawn issue. I've not played out a finale on the versus test server and had the FMC launch a new mission, hence my suspicion that FMC is causing the spawn bug behavior.

The debug process continues...

Thanks again,

PG

[Mr. Zero]

Yeah by the sounds of it, it is the old bug that surface there.

As long the finale_win fires I have not experienced the bug again, so you might want to be sure that finale_win event gets to fire before map change.

Other than that the only way to "fix it" would to be use confogls finale spawn range fix and apply it at all times.

[s.m.a.c head]

ZCS causes a change to the spawn distance

[SieghartCL]

Originally Posted by s.m.a.c head ZCS causes a change to the spawn distance

How do you know that? o: I'm having this problem right now, but not sure if is a plugin, or something else... Have a fix for it already? Or have to remove the plugin? :c