Is Chippy right about statue spawn bunnies blocking monsters?

ZeroGravitas

ZeroGravitas

The Destroyer
OK, first of all, sorry for just diving right in out of the blue...:naughty:

I wondered if you could help me out with this, seeing as I'm largely out of the loop still and rusty with my game mechanics knowledge... Chippy says in his video that the statue spawned bunnies and goldfish will reduce monster spawn rates, by taking up spawn slots (at about 6:24 onwards):



But I'm confident that didn't used to be the case, as statue mobs were always considered separately by the game. With a maximum of 200, then a separate 100 cap from monsters, town NPCs, etc (I think it was?). So is the video bunk, am I forgetting something, or have things changed? (E.g. bunnies acting like calming potions?)

We've had a little exchange here in his comments, where he references a post on Reddit about this (link anyone?). Thanks.;)
 
Last edited:
From what I can tell by looking at the codes, the 200 npc limit is fixed and any created NPC can fill any slot of that array, no exceptions.

What consistutes a valid NPC towards the per-player on-screen NPC limit varies per NPC, as some weight more or less than others (bats only weight half so a full slot is filled by 2 bats, but a single boss tends to fill almost the entire pool). On that note, while critters do have their own weight, it seems like statue-spawned ones always have none and therefore should not interfere with other NPCs spawning. Also it looks like critters being placed on the ground by players do still have a weight but are purposedly left out of the calculation, which should give them effectively no weight either.

Of course, this only applies to the limit of naturally spawning NPCs on screen at once, as far as the hardcoded 200 NPCs limit goes, that can never be broken and 200 bunnies can potentially prevent anything from spawning whatsoever.
 
It probably does work but maybe only since very recent updates or in multiplayer only. If it does stop enemies from spawning around you though, it won't stop enemies from spawning close enough to you to spawn and far enough away from the statue critters. The enemies will still get to you eventually. Also, i'm not saying chippy is wrong or anything but, why would you use this life hack? Why not kill the enemies yourself or set up dart traps and lava pits seeing as you will have access to those things if you have access to wiring. Because of those reasons i'm just gonna say: don't worry if the life hack works or not, there's not much point in using it anyways.
 
Well, I ran my own test and spawned a ton of critters.
Capture 2018-06-25 09_58_14.png

I waited all night until morning and not a single zombie or demon eye appeared.
 
W1K said:
the 200 npc limit is fixed and any created NPC can fill any slot of that array, no exceptions.
Click to expand...
Thanks @W1K. Just like the old days, heh. Oh right, yeah, it is just a single 200 NPC index for all monsters, critters and townsfolk. Separate arrays for up to 100 dummy ghosts and up to 1000 projectiles. Right.

I'd looked at this (with your help) back here (3 and a half years ago!:eek:). Snails weighted at 0.5 of a wild spawn, for example (so up to about 30 of them, naturally occurring). What are bunnies weighted? A full 1?

Anyway, no way to totally spawn block with 200 of just bunnies and goldfish unless it's a bloodmoon (and you get a nightmare inducing tidal wave of them), because statue spawns are caped a 10 per mob type. Or, they were, back when I made this demonstration of the statue spawn limits, and wrote the wiki's section on the limits. But it looks like more of some critter types here:
SovereignVis said:
ell, I ran my own test and spawned a ton of critters.
index.php

I waited all night until morning and not a single zombie or demon eye appeared.
Click to expand...

Are the newer statues (or their mobs) differently limited to the old ones? I'm seeing a lot of ducks there (of each of the two variants). Or a universal change?

Good job with the experimentation there, @SovereignVis. What if you try using only bunny and fish statues (as in Chippy's vid)? I'd assume you can't get enough critters, then, to block monsters altogether? Can you see any reduction in enemy spawns, though, with some statistical certainty?
 
Last edited:
I guess I could try all of one type and see what happens. I think some might have a limit. I'm just glad you can spawn so many ducks, otherwise my Duck Hunt mini game wouldn't have worked out as well as it did.
 
Based on source there seems to be 4 different entries for ducks. I assume the standing and the flying state are two independent NPCs, which means there's 2 duck variants with 2 states each totaling 4? Maybe these extra ids confuse the statues and let you spawn more than intended?

As for bunnies, maybe you could hit the NPC limit by placing down 200 captured critters straight from your inventory. I'm not sure whether there are any limits on that. Of course, even if it does work, it would still be different from what Chippy did, nor it does involve "enemy spawn slots" as he calls them.

Also yes, bunnies don't have a defined weight so they default to 1. Goldfishes do too. The critters with weight lower than 1 are birds (0.4), mice (0.25), fireflies (0.2), butterflies (0.25), worms (0.1), lightning bugs (0.2), snails and glowing snails (0.25), truffle worms (0.15), grasshoppers (0.1), grubs (0.1). This should explain why so many of them spawn under certain conditions (for instance, butterflies, fireflies and lightning bugs around town npcs).
 
Okay, after more testing.

Fish only.
Capture 2018-06-25 13_08_24.png

Bunnies only.
Capture 2018-06-25 13_13_03.png

Fireflies only.
Capture 2018-06-25 13_16_41.png

Birds only.
Capture 2018-06-25 13_20_45.png

Ducks only.
Capture 2018-06-25 13_27_15.png

So as you can see there is a limit for some of the critters that makes it so you can't spawn enough to stop other mobs from spawning. But the ducks you can spawn enough to prevent other mob spawns.
So for fish, bunnies, fireflies, and birds it's busted. For ducks it's confirmed.
If there had to be 1 type of critter that you can spawn too many of, I'm glad it's the duck. `:happy:
 
So I have a theory about ducks.

First of all, the limits for spawning NPCs from statues seem to entirely rely on NPC type. Different variants of the same critter (like different colored birds) have different types, therefore you can have more. A spawn from a statue is denied if there are more than 3 NPCs of the same type within 200 pixels of the statue, more than 6 within 600 pixels, or more than 10 anywhere in the world (so in a world with 3 naturally spawned rabbits, you can never spawn more than 7 rabbits from statues).
Back to the ducks topic, their type changes completelly when they begin flying, which means they will NEVER be considered an existing duck for the sake of whether a statue can spawn more ducks, so in theory as long as you can keep spawning ducks and forcing them into their flying state, you can potentially spawn infinite amounts of them.

Furthermore, it seems like they transform into completelly different NPCs from their standing to flying and back to standing state, which means each state has their own independent default values. When the NPC is created through a statue, its weight is set to 0 by the statue. When the NPC is transformed into a different NPC, many of the values are ported over (including whether the NPC is statue-spawned). However, I've noticed their spawn weight is not, so you should be able to completelly block natural spawnings by simply spawning a lotsa ducks.

This might not be strictly related to Chippy's case, but these might be very interesting (potentially amusing) finds of their own.

Ducks are overpowered I guess.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I waited until they all landed before taking a snapshot. But it would really suck if they were limited like some of the other critters were.
Overpowered? Nah, there is just the right amount for some Duck Hunt. `:happy:
 
The tip was in relation to a previous tip, so the goal of the bunnies/goldfish was to reduce the enemy spawn rate not completely remove it

the reason I kept saying 'around your base' is because a person's base is usually filled with NPC and sunflowers already and therefore the statues simply add to that

also @ZeroGravitas the reddit thread was in reference to the map exploration hoik :)
 
ChippyGaming said:
The tip was in relation to a previous tip, so the goal of the bunnies/goldfish was to reduce the enemy spawn rate not completely remove it

the reason I kept saying 'around your base' is because a person's base is usually filled with NPC and sunflowers already and therefore the statues simply add to that
Click to expand...
The problem with that assumption is, statue-spawned rabbits don't actually seem to increase the counter in charge of keeping track of how many active NPCs there are. Naturally spawning critters do, and 6 naturally spawning rabbits under certain conditions can potentially fill the entire NPC poll preventing anything else from spawning, but those spawned via statues will not count towards it.

I also tested this by having a constant debug text on screen showing the amount of filled NPC slots on screen, while spawning a rabbit through statues (to the left) and through tMod's cheat sheet (the ones stuck in the dirt to the right). As expected by looking at the code, the ones not being spawned by the statue are the only ones being counted.
nawKuWE.png

(and yes it spams the chat with the same number because it's the easiets way to show debug texts)

On a slightly different note, I did test the ducks theory out. And it turns out I was right. And it's as ridiculous as it sounds.
The number to the bottom left shows how many NPCs are currently being counted as being active. Despite the ducks being spawned through statues, the transictioning from their "standing" to "flying" state causes them to regain their spawn weight, which means they now fill up NPC slots as normal.
I kept going all the way until I hit the point I had to remove my mannequin and kill my town NPCs (they fill the NPC array but don't fill slots for the sake of natural spawns) to allow more ducks to spawn and eventually hit 200. In the video however, I kept some slots open, because I wanted to see what happens when you try to spawn Destroyer without many available slots. The result was kind of expected but I'm more than amused ducks can break the game to such extent.
 
W1K said:
Despite the ducks being spawned through statues, the transictioning from their "standing" to "flying" state causes them to regain their spawn weight, which means they now fill up NPC slots as normal.
Click to expand...
More great work and lovely demonstrations.:)

SovereignVis said:
ducks are awesome. They don't break the game, they make it more fun. `:happy:
Click to expand...
So, I'm not allowed to tag @Yoraiz0r or @Leinfors to tag this as a potential issue...?

W1K said:
I had to remove my mannequin
Click to expand...
I thought the dummy ghosts had a separate array? (Did I err again?)

ChippyGaming said:
also @ZeroGravitas the reddit thread was in reference to the map exploration hoik
Click to expand...
Whoops, excuse my misunderstanding. Also, hey!:) I was planning to tag you in when we'd figured things out, see if you appeared. But you jumped the gun!;)

I wasn't mostly aiming to bust your chops, with this - I just get a little sensitive to inaccurate technical info; it can be impossible to correct widespread misapprehensions that seem logical. (Much as this is still just a game and it's all pretty harmless.):)

So, it looks like there's (still) no spawn calming effect from statue bunnies (and goldfish), alone, from what we can see. Unlike the magical miracle duck legion... Did you do some tests yourself, or have you other sources on this?:)
 
Ooh, I need to test this on the current Mobile build! I believe mob cap is lower but spawn rates are mostly fine overall. (except for a few glitched mobs)
 
how are bosses weighted for spawning? i was able to cancel pirate invasion spawns and solar eclipse spawns using the ducks, but was still able to summon skeletron prime and slime king. and is it possible to lock specific spawns, as in using ducks to cancel out all other spawns and fight only ice queens or pumpkings? assuming they're treated as bosses
 
Lemon-Neko said:
how are bosses weighted for spawning? i was able to cancel pirate invasion spawns and solar eclipse spawns using the ducks, but was still able to summon skeletron prime and slime king. and is it possible to lock specific spawns, as in using ducks to cancel out all other spawns and fight only ice queens or pumpkings? assuming they're treated as bosses
Click to expand...

That sounds interesting, but I think the problem with events is that you need to kill X number of mobs in an event before the bosses like the Ice Queens or Pumpking will spawn. So I don't think the duck thing will work for events. Unless you spawn just enough ducks that you will fight each mob 1 at a time. But that would just take longer killing the mobs 1 at a time and waiting for the next to spawn.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom