Brig Suggestion

[ts2do]

The brig bedside cabinets should really be given their own SpawnItemGroup. It would basically be the books' SpawnItemGroup in ship_spawnable_items.ctx except with 11 weapon_shank lines (To give the shank the same probability as the books)

this makes it so when you remove a book from a bedside cabinet, a shank is not guarenteed to spawn in it (which it currently is) and will give the shank an equal opportunity to a book of spawning in a cabinet

[Jamin2]

I never knew that was how you got a shank, that you removed a book and it appeared, I always thought it was random luck. If this is the case, then what you are suggesting is far better. You should put it in troubleshooting or bug reports maybe so Outerlight will fix it.

[[OL]ReNo]

I guess what could be happening is that, in some maps, the shank spawner might be higher up the list of spawners, and so take priority in spawning its item to a space. So if all the bedside cabinets were full, and there was a shank waiting to spawn (i.e. there are less than 2 in the map and none have spawned for the last 60 seconds, IIRC), then as soon as a space in a bedside cabinet becomes free the shank spawner nabs the space before the book spawner gets its opportunity to try and spawn an item. Whether this is the case would really depend on whether the spawners are synchronised to update on the same frame or not, which isn't a question I know the answer to personally. I guess the evidence suggests that they are.

Your suggested fix would work, but it would make it impossible to ensure there aren't a ridiculous number of shanks floating around. Our intention was to force people to hunt around the brig frantically in some sort of race to the shank(/s), and spawning them freely would detract from that somewhat. Might be worth trying it out with a spawngroup that has significantly more books in it than shanks though - wouldn't allow us to have a max shanks limit, but would still make them more difficult to find.

Anyway, while I agree that the system for the shanks isn't perfect just now, I'm not convinced it is really broken or abused either. What do others think about it?

[ts2do]

personally I think this remove a book get a shank issue is way too obvious of a way to get a shank...

people want something out of a container that is already full, so they remove items in hope that new items will respawn in them and recheck, and lo-and-behold, a shank appears!

you could have some more customized code so spawners are more synchronized with each other so each spawner has a certain probability of spawning on that interval...I don't know how you might implent this though as each spawner has a different frequency, could make a master spawner that handles many spawners and assigns them probabilities or something to that extend...by now I'm just babbling and if you're still reading this, then you really have no clue as a game developing company then, do you XD

[Gutan Tag Hop-Clop]

I have noticed that on the maps that I did it on, after I took a book a shank spawned immediately after. I don't remember which maps this happened on, but it was on more than one.

[weil]

I don't think it's really a problem to be honest. The shank doesn't always spawn after you've removed a book because I've been imprisoned before and gone and emptied all the containers and still not managed to get a shank :( If one does spawn straight away then you're just lucky but that's a part of weapon searching.

[ts2do]

It's not the luck of the draw...it's based on which map you're playing on; it shouldn't be though... it should be based on a set probability rather than ordered spawning (which greatly raises the probability of shank spawning)