(Singleplayer) Workaround for caves not spawning dinos?

[Vynlann]

I know there are fixes for this which I will list I do not want to do (because what's the point...). I'm having the good ol classic issue where dinos aren't respawning in certain caves. After 2 wild dino wipes it's an issue with these specific caves. This is on Island for reference.

- Lower South
- Swamp
- Carno Island

I've tp'ed to every other cave and inspected, not a single dino. The problem is these 3 caves have megalanias in them which I need for megapithecus. Now I'm well aware I could easily go to center or rag and get it, it's incredibly easy there. My plan was not to leave island until I completed tek cave, and then move onto aberration, and then if I had time before extinction was out, go to ragnarok.


So moving to another map is out of the question. I had a similar issue with resource spawns, where I had to basically upload all my dinos, wipe the island map and spawn back in and download my dinos. This is also out of the question since I have built up a fairly large base that if I have to rebuild again, I will likely just quit SP altogether.

This issue has been "fixed" and still has plagued ark for almost 2 years now. Is there some work around I'm not aware of that doesn't involve me moving it to dedicated or going to another map? Again if thats the case, I just quit altogether.

**This next part you can scroll past, but if you plan to poke singleplayer, read it first.** Before you poke the fact I play singleplayer "why not play dedicated," well I do. But singleplayer offers a different experience that you can't experience anywhere for key reasons. I can pause the game, which I can't do for any other situation. It's important when I have a family and may need to get up a random moments. There is no timer on bosses, this includes tek cave which is also important, less so, but it removes that piece of stress. It's mine, I can control it however I want, and although I'm pretty sure my PC can't handle playing ark and hosting dedicated. There's also 0 latency. Small things like eating, dropping items, heck even dropping an egg has a different effect in SP which all of these makup a better experience to me.

[Elgar]

Did you try to turn off hibernation ?

Right click the game in your library, select Properties, and on the first tab, in the launch options, enter -preventhibernation

After that, do another destroywilddinos

FYI, hibernation is the spawning system specific to singleplayer and non-dedicated. If you turn it off, you get the normal stasis system used in dedicated servers, and that should solve your spawning issues. Memory usage will be increased though : that's why they created the hibernation system in the first place, to allow users to play on weak rigs.

If you want to check spawns in caves without having to go there, use Larkator. It's not a mod, it's a little open source tool which reads your savegame file and shows dinos locations (both wild and tamed), in a nice graphical UI. Link on the official Ark website : https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/296791-tool-larkator-standalone-dino-locator/

[Vynlann]

Originally posted by Elgar:

Did you try to turn off hibernation ?

Right click the game in your library, select Properties, and on the first tab, in the launch options, enter -preventhibernation

After that, do another destroywilddinos

FYI, hibernation is the spawning system specific to singleplayer and non-dedicated. If you turn it off, you get the normal stasis system used in dedicated servers, and that should solve your spawning issues. Memory usage will be increased though : that's why they created the hibernation system in the first place, to allow users to play on weak rigs.

If you want to check spawns in caves without having to go there, use Larkator. It's not a mod, it's a little open source tool which reads your savegame file and shows dinos locations (both wild and tamed), in a nice graphical UI. Link on the official Ark website : https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/forums/topic/296791-tool-larkator-standalone-dino-locator/

I should've mentioned hibernation is always off when I play SP because I use S+ and when I get the dino scanning feature I need hbiernation to be off for it to work. So simple answer, it's already off and has been since day 1.

[SLI_Fallen]

I 100% agree with your assesment but I have opted to play SP on my own dedicated server (hosted on another PC on my LAN) because of the respawn issues you describe. There is a "SetGlobalPause" you can use to pause the game on a dedicated...but only for a few moments at most, else the game will crash. (at least it does for me when I use it). But it's enough for a phone call or quick question from others in the house. Pro's and cons to be sure, but I got so fed up with the dino/resourse spawning issue that has been in SP since day one and never has been completely addressed, I felt I had no choice. We all know SP is the bastage stepchild in any game these days. MP is where 99% of the developer focus is, but I digress...

[KitsuneShiro]

SP sucks. Too many long standing bugs.

ASM makes it simple to run a LAN server either on same PC or another.

[Vynlann]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

SP sucks. Too many long standing bugs.

ASM makes it simple to run a LAN server either on same PC or another.

I applaud you for your reading skills. 10/10

[KitsuneShiro]

Originally posted by Vynlann:

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

SP sucks. Too many long standing bugs.

ASM makes it simple to run a LAN server either on same PC or another.

I applaud you for your reading skills. 10/10

Then enjoy those SP bugs.

[Vynlann]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Originally posted by Vynlann:

I applaud you for your reading skills. 10/10

Then enjoy those SP bugs.

/clapclap

Keep continuing to provide meaningful assistance, it's helping everyone it really is. Try running an ark server on an 8gb machine with ark as well and tell me how your machine runs?

[crimsondrac]

Originally posted by SLI_Fallen:

I 100% agree with your assesment but I have opted to play SP on my own dedicated server (hosted on another PC on my LAN) because of the respawn issues you describe. There is a "SetGlobalPause" you can use to pause the game on a dedicated...but only for a few moments at most, else the game will crash. (at least it does for me when I use it). But it's enough for a phone call or quick question from others in the house. Pro's and cons to be sure, but I got so fed up with the dino/resourse spawning issue that has been in SP since day one and never has been completely addressed, I felt I had no choice. We all know SP is the bastage stepchild in any game these days. MP is where 99% of the developer focus is, but I digress...

I think there is like a PlayersOnly command that freezes everything but players that may work better than globalpause.

[crimsondrac]

Originally posted by Vynlann:

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

Then enjoy those SP bugs.

/clapclap

Keep continuing to provide meaningful assistance, it's helping everyone it really is. Try running an ark server on an 8gb machine with ark as well and tell me how your machine runs?

With an attitude like that, don;t be surprised when people decide to stop helping you. That fact is, that all of your concerns with the features of single player versus double player can be compensated for and aside from your assertion that it is a different game, It Is NOT. They are exactly the same game minus the bugs of single player in dedicated mode. There is no different in dropping an egg, items or eating. That is all in your head. The game is exactly the same. You think they would come up with two sets of rules, essentially creating two different games?

And think about this, running a dedicated server on the same PC you are playing on? You are already doing that. The game engine has to run to create the world you are playing in. It will take the exact same amount of resources to run a dedicated server. Then when you connect via the game client, it does not have to run a new game world because you are connecting to one that is already running. It will not take much more resources if any at all. The added resources comes into play when more people join your world. If you do not allow more people to join your world, then you will not use more resources. And if you are getting any latency at all connecting to your own PC, you got bigger problems than running out of resources. Though, from your statements, it sounds like you really do not understand networking, PC resources or latency very well.

But hey, keep on with your crappy attitude and insulting people who are trying to help you.

[Chaser the Tiny Hippo]

I do not believe there is any way to avoid this issue in singleplayer, your only options, afaik, are to live with the bugs or change your world to dedicated.
To fix a couple of your issues with dedicated vs singleplayer, the command "playersonly" would effectively pause the game (you're the only player, and you just left to go do something, nothing is happening) until you're done and get back to your pc to turn the command off.
An extremely common mod called Structures Plus, which I'll assume you probably use, has a configuration setting to increase the timer on boss fights, just give it a 10x multiplier and the timers are practically not there.
The difference on your pc between running singleplayer and hosting a dedicated server for just yourself should be minimal too, I believe.

[KitsuneShiro]

It actually takes less system resources to run ASM server plus the client. And any client crashes don't effect the server.

Because the SP mode is so badly optimized as a server.

You could always run an autokey (or autoit) program with an button programmed for world save and pause time or players only or shutdown server. Or use Ark Commander if you can run the 3rd party program, make a similar hotkey.

Also you should be playing like a standard SP game. Save before you start the boss fight/cave run...So you could roll back if things beyond your control happen.

[Vynlann]

Originally posted by crimsondrac:

Originally posted by Vynlann:

/clapclap

Keep continuing to provide meaningful assistance, it's helping everyone it really is. Try running an ark server on an 8gb machine with ark as well and tell me how your machine runs?

With an attitude like that, don;t be surprised when people decide to stop helping you. That fact is, that all of your concerns with the features of single player versus double player can be compensated for and aside from your assertion that it is a different game, It Is NOT. They are exactly the same game minus the bugs of single player in dedicated mode. There is no different in dropping an egg, items or eating. That is all in your head. The game is exactly the same. You think they would come up with two sets of rules, essentially creating two different games?

And think about this, running a dedicated server on the same PC you are playing on? You are already doing that. The game engine has to run to create the world you are playing in. It will take the exact same amount of resources to run a dedicated server. Then when you connect via the game client, it does not have to run a new game world because you are connecting to one that is already running. It will not take much more resources if any at all. The added resources comes into play when more people join your world. If you do not allow more people to join your world, then you will not use more resources. And if you are getting any latency at all connecting to your own PC, you got bigger problems than running out of resources. Though, from your statements, it sounds like you really do not understand networking, PC resources or latency very well.

But hey, keep on with your crappy attitude and insulting people who are trying to help you.

It's like you haven't played single player.

Can you pause your game on a server by pressing escape? Nope. Have you ever actually thrown an egg in single player vs server? Obviously not, while minor, these minor things begin to stack up. How about timers for tek cave and bosses? Single player HAS NO TIMERS. They are two sets of rules, you're uneducated if you think otherwise and have no experience in single player if you believe this.

It takes two sets of resources to run the server. Ark on MP for me takes about 3-4gb, ark on SP takes about 3-4.5gb. In fact the multiplayer runs less mods. When I attempted to run dedicated server before posting this...post...last night, it had consumed already 2gb before even booting up the game. This is a problem and thus why I refuse to run a dedicated server on the machine already. There is ALWAYS latency. It's 100% unavoidable. I've run private wow servers on my own machine for personal use before, and even when it was on the same machine I played the game on, I still had latency. So please talk to me more about the networking education I lack?

You keep talking as if I don't know anything and don't understand anything, yet you've proven you speak you dont' know what you're talking about. Exit yourself from this thread. You've been the least helpful here.

[Vynlann]

Originally posted by KitsuneShiro:

It actually takes less system resources to run ASM server plus the client. And any client crashes don't effect the server.

Because the SP mode is so badly optimized as a server.

You could always run an autokey (or autoit) program with an button programmed for world save and pause time or players only or shutdown server. Or use Ark Commander if you can run the 3rd party program, make a similar hotkey.

Also you should be playing like a standard SP game. Save before you start the boss fight/cave run...So you could roll back if things beyond your control happen.

I thought about just doing a server shut down when needed, but that means rebooting into the server via client, and even with an ssd with a handful of mods (eco mods anyone?) it can take upwards of 4 minutes or so, those 4 minutes if your body is in a bad spot can spell death. In SP the server doesn't start until you're in.

[Vynlann]

I'd also like to point out no one has provided a work around even REMOTELY related to the OP outside of "host your own server." Great, you're helping even though I said that was not an option I'm willing to take...and you're not changing that. If that's your only solution, then please stop posting here. You're not helping anyone.

[Lordbufu]

A common solution to the cave spawning issues, is to "activate the cave" first, you do this by running into the area of the cave where you get the "loading lag". Then simply camp the entrance outside for about 30min RL time (you can speed up the game time, but im not entirely sure how much game time = 30min RL time).
This should in many cases fully spawn the cave in question, this does not always fully work but in a lot of cases it does.

If you do want to run a dedicated because you cant solve this issue to your liking, you can always launch ark in low memory mode, this should give you enough memory to launch a dedicated on the same machine.