Physics engine causing lag

[November Terra]

I've noticed that every time humans get killed in a boat, chopper, or anything else that moves, the server lags. I'm pretty sure that has to do with the physics engine calculating the physics for every single weapon that's been dropped by the dead humans (the weapons collide with each other AND the thing they are sitting on, and when the thing they are on is moving, it has to do more and more work just to keep everything where they should be).

So is there any way to get those guns to ignore collision or just have them get deleted entirely when a player dies/turns into a zombie?

[SOLANUM]

I've noticed this to, mostly on ATIX Heli when the humans in the chopper are killed by the zombies and their weapons fall onto the chopper floor.


Sol

[Pink Pancakes]

Go yell at zombiemod.com they have not fixed any bugs and lag problems with the mod for 5+months now

[Shadowex3]

If I recall correctly it should be possible for the server to set it so that dropped weapons are removed from the map. If there isn't a built in command I'm betting there's a plugin that 's designed to prevent FY maps from messing with gungame or stop deathmatch servers from crashing.

[November Terra]

Well, when you drop a gun in css, you're not actually dropping it. The weapon is removed from your inventory and a new "world" version of the gun is spawned and thrown away from the player. If nothing else there would be a debug function that would prevent the weapon from spawning. If I find anything, I'll post it here.

[Captain Colon]

I'm pretty sure there's a command that keeps em from spawning...but then you wouldn't be able to give guns to people. Or buy a gun that you plan on using but buy a para to build a cade with.

[Zero001]

Short of recoding the game physics, there really is nothing we can do server side to fix it. Zombie Mod and Escape maps in general are harder to run than regular CS:S and regular maps.

I've noticed that every time humans get killed in a boat, chopper, or anything else that moves, the server lags.

New map makers and even experienced ones, will find out that if something wasn't created properly it will lag. We've had a couple of map makers come up with interesting maps, only to have the map crash the server. Vehicles are even harder to get right and having several players bunched up on them makes it more stressful on the server. We find that our server is one of the best (if not the best) at handling these processes. How many other Zombie Mod Escape servers are out there? I know some have tried, but many just have trouble running zombie mod alone.

I'm pretty sure that has to do with the physics engine calculating the physics for every single weapon that's been dropped by the dead humans (the weapons collide with each other AND the thing they are sitting on, and when the thing they are on is moving, it has to do more and more work just to keep everything where they should be).

You pretty much answered the question. You are 100% correct, but once again short of recoding the mod and/or the maps there isn't much we can do server side. We've pretty much tweaked the server to achieve the best possible performance. Going back down to a lower player count would help, but players already have a hard enough time trying to get into the server at peak hours. I appreciate the input, and if you do find something feel free to post it.

[Shadowex3]

Well digging around in the console I've found mp_weaponstay which may help, there's also the option of finding a kind hearted coder or some kind of plugin that stops them from appearing. If it exists probably FPSbanana would be the best place to find it.

[November Terra]

The guns that are dropped are considered props and there are ways to make brushes that block players, block bullets, block props, or any combination of the three. If nothing else, I bet you can change the collision of the choppers/boats/moving stuff to block players and bullets, but not props.

And you probably can put a thing in that deletes the guns after they're spawned from dying players. In Zombie Survival for Garry's Mod, the weapons that zombies use are deleted after they are spawned so that humans can't pick them up.

Unless someone knows how to edit the zm .dll that the gamemode loads everything from, all changes to the handling of the weapons will have to be from inside the maps or from server plugins.

As for the maps that crash the server, that probably has to do with optimization - puttin a big box around the maps and then turning all the brushes inside it from "world" brushes to "entity" brushes is the easiest way to optimize a map - if you don't want people goin under the map, make a thing that teleports them back to the spawn or kills them. Also, texturing all faces players can't see with the nodraw texture helps a lot with the optimization. CS:S does a lot of optimizing work when the maps are compiled, but it's always better to take as much work away from the engine as possible. I'm really good at optimizing maps, if anyone wants help with that.

[November Terra]

Something I forgot to mention is that on the maps that lag the server, it's also because the moving stuff are prefabs (aka brushes grouped up into one unit). Spacestation lags at the escape pod because it is a prefab, the helicopter in boatescape lags because it's a prefab, the boats lag because they are prefabs.

Someone needs to find a way to turn those prefabs into actual models (and then give them to the map makers) so that the engine doesn't have to do as much work. Models are massively more efficient then brushes and so take up less processing power even though models take a little longer to download. In my opinion, a one-time long download that reduces the lag in a map is worth it.