No more creepers? (Spoilers?)

[Sarudak]

In several hours of playing on the latest version I have yet to see a single creeper. Is this intended? Is it a bug or a feature I didn't see in the changelogs? Have I just been insanely lucky? (unlucky?)

[jackatthekilns]

I just got blown up by a creeper in the latest version, so the reports of their demise are greatly exaggerated.

[HighMongrel]

I've had something similar, though it changes with time. It almost seems like the spawn rates change every day or two as I've had days where the only thing outside when I go out is 7 spiders and maybe a zombie, and last time I went caving I ran into 10 creepers and one skeleton. I've also been noticing vastly decreased spawns during new moons. In one life I managed to survive half a night in the gloom after a surprise creeper blew my hobbit hole.

Just be glad you haven't had no spider spawns for a few days in a row. Long term shortage of spiders for string led me to taunting jungle spiders after a bit.

[Gunnerman21]

During the sunday multiplayer event, the first night all 6 of us only had trouble with a single zombie and nothing else. There was a forest so vision was hazy but I'm sure only that one zombie spawned near enough to our work area to see us. At least 3 of us were above ground the whole night.

Hypothesis, the game knows when or when not to spawn monsters. When a good moment is to spawn certain monsters and not others, this could be to limit the amount of webs found in the morning.

[FlowerChild]

I haven't changed anything with regards to mob spawning. No need for conspiracy theories... at least not on this one :)

[Gunnerman21]

So if it really is vanilla style mob spawning, maybe we are too adjusted to hardcore-foo and spawns aren't comparing to other difficult features? Maybe the fear of the entire mod makes us think creepers should be spawning around every turn, but they just don't and it's still completely random?

We expect death and are surprised when it does not come. Neat! :D

[FlowerChild]

So if it really is vanilla style mob spawning, maybe we are too adjusted to hardcore-foo and spawns aren't comparing to other difficult features? Maybe the fear of the entire mod makes us think creepers should be spawning around every turn, but they just don't and it's still completely random?

It's always possible I messed something up, but I think it likely you guys might just be seeing faces in the clouds.

I've been playing an awful lot these days and haven't noticed anything weird, although I know yesterday when I saw a cluster of spiders in one area I started wondering for a moment if something had gone haywire, I think largely due to the suggestion of this thread.

[Gilberreke]

During the sunday multiplayer event, the first night all 6 of us only had trouble with a single zombie and nothing else. There was a forest so vision was hazy but I'm sure only that one zombie spawned near enough to our work area to see us. At least 3 of us were above ground the whole night.

Hypothesis, the game knows when or when not to spawn monsters. When a good moment is to spawn certain monsters and not others, this could be to limit the amount of webs found in the morning.

You guys had a massive hole straight to bedrock. My guess is that you have swiss-cheese caves at spawn, making the overworld particularly safe.

[EpicAaron]

The complete lack of creepers in a given world is probably an installation bug. In regards to the Sunday Server no-creeper problem, we eventually realized that GreenKnight had a bad install that caused the server to crash and lag out and prevented him from logging in to other BTW servers. I believe we eventually fixed the problem by using a proper installation of MultiMc.

If anyone is still having this problem, I recommend reinstalling the mod in a bunch of different ways.

EDIT: GreenKnight might actually still have the problem. This mystery of the missing creeper requires more investigating. Standby.

[Sarudak]

I suppose it's possible. But since I don't use multiMC and just use the simple copy files into the jar installation method it seems unlikely. There's not really much to screw up there.

[Caevin]

I've had a similar, purely anecdotal experience. Ever since upgrading to the latest (I never played with AACK but went straight to AAHHHHHHhhhhhh) I have yet to see a single creeper in about 5 hours of game time. If it's purely statistical, it's a very strange anomaly.

My current method of installation is a direct copy to the jar and using the newest launcher, so nothing with multiMC or anything.

[FlowerChild]

Something that just occurred to me:

If you're convinced this is a real problem you have, and not just a bit of variance, you might want to try a clean install of the mod. As you guys have probably seen in the release notes, I've been doing a lot of refactoring as of late to clean up the mod code, and that's included eliminating a number of base class edits.

I believe I actually got rid of all edits to the vanilla creeper code file, which means it's no longer included in the mod. As a result, you could conceivably have an older version of that file from the mod that might be messing with how the creepers work.

Just a theory, and I'd still tend to think this is just variance, but worth a try if it's really bugging you.

[Kazuya Mishima]

I had this same issue and a basic reinstall of the mod fixed it.

[Sarudak]

Fresh reinstall and saw creepers the first night.

[FlowerChild]

Sigh... sorry about that guys. I'll need to remember to include fresh copies of the affected files for a few releases after I make changes like that in the future, to reduce the chance of this kind of thing happening.

If people could try to remember "reinstall the mod" as a potential solution for tech support problems, I'd be much obliged, as I've done this to so many files recently that I now doubt this is the last issue of this kind we'll see.

[Sarudak]

Yeah sorry man. I was under the impression that install over the previous version was always ok.

[Caevin]

And I foolishly did the same thing. It's been so long since I did a fresh install I stopped thinking about it. Apologies for helping to waste time.

[morsmaestro]

Fresh install fixed my problems earlier today. I had been using the drag-and-drop method before and after the update the server I play on just didn't like me anymore--crash and exit. After figuring out multi mc (and a fresh install, by necessity, but still), it's working again. I think moving permanently to Multi MC is a good move since I think it'd completely avoid any legacy code issues from files being left in, and is probably just a better practice anyway.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah sorry man. I was under the impression that install over the previous version was always ok.

My bad entirely. I think I used to have a process for this kind of thing, either providing a warning in the release notes, or just avoiding removing base class mods like that (at least not without turning the originals into dead code by completely replacing them).

With these recent changes I even remember thinking "Didn't I use to avoid doing this? Meh... what could possibly go wrong?" :)