Salem

I did some test myself but couldn't conclude anything.

Do animals spawn on the whole area visible on the minimap, or do they spawn just when they enter your line-of-sight range ?

Lansett wrote:I did some test myself but couldn't conclude anything.

Do animals spawn on the whole area visible on the minimap, or do they spawn just when they enter your line-of-sight range ?

Everything spawns in the tile when it loads... but how exactly the animals are handled when a tile is already loaded, I'm not certain. I think the ones that are there persist so long as the tile is loaded. And I think that once you kill the animals in a tile, no more animals will appear until the tile deloads and loads again.

Thanks much for those clarifications
However, what I don't really get and I didn't formulate it well enough, is what portion of the ground is loaded actually.
Here is a screenshot showing 3 different ranges. Let's say I'm alone on the server and I port to Providence, which one of these 3 areas is "loaded" and thus populated with animals and more?

Object can be spawned and rendered differently, the behavour when noones watching is also important (all listed as from my experience in some games):
1. (is there) the object, npc, animal is there, and the information is well know all the time, its rendered for you when in ur viewrange (doesnt dissapear, some object scripts stop on idle/unwatched) (vendors, scripted NPCs)
2. (is in area) the object position is not known until spawned, we only know that we got to put in on the map somewhere, when someone comes to watch, after spawn it becomes (1) after some idle/unwatched time it dissapears losing or not his (in area) status - depends on the mob/obj. The position is kept for some time even if noone watches. (single+scripted mobs like bears)
3. (is generated in viewrange) - some less important objects are generated randomly atm of entering ur viewrange and their position is kept very short when out of the wievrange (grass, herbs)

Any object may be rendered exclusively for the player and no other ppl see it (indian feathers)

That is a sum of my game developing experience, mmorpg online time, and Salem. I dont know exactly the rules but its probably more complicated that the answer u proposed.

Lansett wrote:Thanks much for those clarifications
However, what I don't really get and I didn't formulate it well enough, is what portion of the ground is loaded actually.
Here is a screenshot showing 3 different ranges. Let's say I'm alone on the server and I port to Providence, which one of these 3 areas is "loaded" and thus populated with animals and more?

Probably something between the purple and the green (most likely green - that's the minimap tile you are in and 8 surrounding ones) if we are talking about "loaded" tiles. I remember loftar was explaining it couple years ago for H&H but I CBA to look for it. But hey - what's the difference if you can't see it anyway?

Procne wrote:what's the difference if you can't see it anyway?

Mostly regarding crows actually

Lansett wrote:Thanks much for those clarifications
However, what I don't really get and I didn't formulate it well enough, is what portion of the ground is loaded actually.
Here is a screenshot showing 3 different ranges. Let's say I'm alone on the server and I port to Providence, which one of these 3 areas is "loaded" and thus populated with animals and more?

[url=http://i.imgur.com/KQN0kdC.jpg][/url

]

Actually... none of those. If you enlarge your minimap so that you can see the 'edges' of the map and then start walking, you'll notice that the map loads in large squares. Those are the tiles, and when they are first loaded, animals are loaded into them. The animals will actually stay there until the tile unloads (afaik), and I think they even keep running their AIs with no one there to see them until the tile unloads. That's why you might walk through an area and come back a little later to find dead animals from where they fought each other even though you weren't there to see the fight. Tiles unload when the server needs them to so sometimes they can stay loaded for hours with no one there, but I think it's more common for them to unload after about 15 minutes.

Ok thanks for the infos

TotalyMeow wrote:If you enlarge your minimap so that you can see the 'edges' of the map and then start walking, you'll notice that the map loads in large squares.

Actually that's exactly wait my third green area is.