DayZ Console modding V2.2

In the previous article I guided you through the basic process of adjusting your servers loot economy, so it can then spawn as many of the things you would like to see, in the types of places you would like to seem them be spawned. Now in this article, I shall guide you through the fairly simple process of adjusting the number of Heli crashes, Police wrecks, zombies, animals and vehicles that can be found around the map at any given time.

The file you'll be working on throughout this guide is events.xml so go ahead and open it up. You will then be presented with code that looks very similar to what you would have seen whilst working on types.xml, but with some quite obvious differences. So before getting any further here's a quick definition of the different parameters used to make the various events work:

<nominal> - This is the total amount of potential locations that can have a spawn of the event.

<min> - This is the lower bound. When there is only this many instances of an event left on the map, the server will begin to spawn more up to nominal value.

<max> - This is the upper bound. When this many instances of the event have spawned the server will stop spawning more.

<lifetime> - Assuming no player interaction (meaning that no player has come within the saferadius) this is the amount of time each spawn of an event will stay on the map before despawning.

<restock> - This is the amount of time between individual spawns of an event up until nominal or max value has been spawned across the map.

<saferadius> - This value determines how close/far away from a player, other events and base objects an instance of an event can spawn. Each time a player comes within this distance of an event it will reset to the value it is set to here. If it is set to 0 it could in theory spawn on top of a player and also can't be effected by player proximity unless they literally sit on top of the precise co-ordinates.

<distanceradius> - This is the minimum distance that instances of an event can spawn from each other.

<cleanupradius> - How far away a player must get before the events despawn timer (lifetime) kicks in.

<flags deletable="0" init_random="0" remove_damaged="1" /> all three of these "flags" accept one of two values: 1=on and 0=off.

deletable - This decides if individual spawns of event can be despawned when the event lifetime reaches zero.

init_random - unknown, is set to 0 on all events.

remove_damaged - This value decides if ruined truck/car or killed (animal/zombie) spawns are removed. (effects not well understood)

<position> - This value determines if spawn is relative to a "fixed" position or to "player" proximity.

<limit> - If this option is set as "child" the event will spawn one of the objects from the "<child" lines at each usable location, up until nominal value is on the map. If this is set to "mixed" then a combination of the child min/max values and the parent min/max values above are used to detrmine the spawn ratios. "custom" is another valid value but it's direct effects are not yet known or fully understood..

<active> Determines if the event is activly spawning on the map or not. 1=on 0=off.

<children> </children> - the opening and closing tags for the "child" lines that then go between them.

<child lootmax="0" lootmin="0" max="50" min="30" type="PileOfWoodenPlanks"/>

Each "<child" line tells the server what game object/s and how many of them the event handles.

lootmax and lootmin (when applicable) determine the minimum and maximum amount of loot objects that can spawn around an instance of an event.

min and max determine the amount of the designated game object the event can spawn.

type is the file name for the game object you wish the event to spawn on the map.

Okay, so now you have a better idea of what each part of the code for events does, lets look at how to raise the total amount of different things that they can each spawn. We will start with the animal events as they are first in the file.

To increase or decrease the amount of herds or packs of an animal that can be spawned on the map at any one time, you will need to adjust the nominal, min and max values marked with a blue line in the picture above. To increase or decrease the size of each herd or pack, change the min and max values on the lines marked with a red squiggle. Keep in mind max value must be higher than min to function correctly.

Next in the file will come the zombie events, which are a little more complex then the animals to edit. You can use the min, max and nominal values at the top of each to determine how many instances of each event can be on the map at once. You can also set how many individual models are available to the event overall. But due to how they are coded into the game engine, the amount that will spawn at any given location is taken from the Zombie_territories.xml file not here.

Once passed the zombie events I recomend skipping down to the heli crash and the police wreck events as the "loot", "woodenplanks" "fridgetest" and "christmastree" ones are best left at default settings. For both Heli crash and Police wreck events, the nominal, min and max at the top decide how many can spawn in total. the min/max on the child lines then determine how many of each model can be used by the events overall.

Finally we get to the car and truck events. Just like the police wreck and heli crash events, the nominal, min and max values at the top control the total amount of spawns for each vehicle model and the child min/max decide how many of each colour the events can use to spread across the total amount you would like to have on the map.

I realise that much of this is not always so easy to follow and that often just a little support is needed from somewhere. So if you do feel that you could do with some further help and guidance, feel free to join my DayZ console modding community : https://discord.gg/pp5JJDu

Next up: How to spawn your own custom events so you can begin to get creative with your server/s.