Car keys?

[Maltsi]

lets say i find a "taxi" key, does it work for ALL taxis in the map or only for the one that was nearest to that key? I was just wondering since all of the keys seems to be the same name, but i haven't been able to test if it is indeed universal "taxi" key or not

[Dozz]

nope, they key is for the 1 car sadly.

[Lera]

It only works for one car.
Would be a bit broken if a key works for all cars of the same type, don't you think?

[Maltsi]

yeah thats what i figured how it would be. How it is determined which key is for which car, is it like the closest one or for the first one you use it? Like if i find a key to broken car, can i save it later for working one?

[Greb]

Yeah each key in the game has an internal ID that matches a car (or building) even though they all have the same generic name for all of them, etc. You can't find a key for a van and then travel miles away and then use it to unlock a van you find there, for example. Often you'll find keys are colour coded a little bit, so a red van key will match the red van nearby.

I don't know how mapgen works, I know killing a zombie inside a house has a chance for them to spawn a house key for that entire building. In the world, I assume a car spawns and then rolls for a location its key can be found, if the game decides its key can be found. This can be in the car itself, in a nearby building loot container (usually for cars in the car park or driveway connected to the building itself) or on the ground nearby, or even on a zombie - I don't know if a unique zombie is spawned with the key, or if the game decides a dead zombie that died nearish a car can spawn a car key.

Basically I guess RNG world generation determines what car a car key is for, somewhat. I don't think you can dupe the game into making a key spawn like you can by luring zombies inside a building so there's a chance their corpse will contain the house key, but I guess I could be wrong.

I've just always viewed each car as a mini "setpiece" with the key probability included as part of that setpiece when the game generates it.