Problem in single-player: If you set long spoilage times, they only apply to the player inventory. Outside of render range: Everything in chests and buildings spoils faster. Spoiled meat spoils before it becomes compost. Even hatched eggs from rocknoses or other animals that you only get that way die in composters practically seconds after hatching. This bug is already very old and makes breeding rocknoses or sand lizards very difficult.
Really interesting (please excuse me).
This reminds me of the render auto craft. Exs.: Place a thrall in a wheel of pain after a long stretch of being away, press play and thrall auto breaks, or, set a bunch of ironstone into a furnace, press play and it auto crafts. I thought this was always a server related issue. But perhaps it is based on real-time?
I wish I could find the explanation as to why this happens to give more context.
I wonder if they’re related?
@DanQuixote what do you think?
Unfortunately, not an area I have much experience with as I’ve never bothered extending spoilage times (actually these days I play with them accelerated to Barbaric settings’ faster rate - easy come easy go ).
However, the render range autocraft issue does sound like a plausible culprit - certainly in singleplayer things ‘carry on crafting’ while we’re out of range and, in essence, all craft at once as we come back into range - with my old machine I had a few times where I’d left a thrall on a wheel somewhere and come back a few days later, saw the wheel render in from a distance with the thrall seemingly still pushing, then disappear as it caught up and realised they’d finished. Newer machine doesn’t seem to have done that so much, but it just might have been happening that much quicker that I didn’t spot it.
I do know that hatching eggs in compost heaps is a risky business (always figured that was true outside of singleplayer as well) - but that’s because the same accelerated timer that is used to hatch the egg applies to the hatchling as well so long as it remains in the compost heap. It’s a bit of a fiddly area on singleplayer, because it is impractical to leave eggs in the inventory (or a chest), since they take 24 hours to hatch, and in singleplayer that only counts time we’re playing, which is why we tend to use the compost heap trick to speed them up - but then you have to be ready to pull them out. I’ve never been aware of that being a bug, though - compost heap accelerates the spoil timers of everything that is in there, which speeds up the hatching, but also speeds up the death of the hatchling if they are left in there (except baby snakes, which don’t have spoil timers after hatching and can stay in the heap ‘forever’).
Certainly, on normal spoilage rates, I have no problems with eg. putrid meat disappearing before it can become compost. I know there was a bug that did that some years ago, but wasn’t aware it was still occuring. But, as I said, I’ve never tried running long spoilage times. The issue sounds like there’s a weird inversion happening - the longer it’s set, the quicker it spoils elsewhere.
@Michaelgll I presume you’re definitely experiencing longer spoilage times on the items in your inventory (CE settings can be counter-intuitive, so it’s worth checking this, but the way you stated things, I’m pretty sure that’s working as intended)? When you say items in chests etc spoil faster than they should ‘out of render range’ - I presume you’ve been able to check a timer before heading off, and then come back within that time to find it already spoiled? I’m just trying to think of ways I can effectively test it to confirm - I’ll see if I can get some time over the next couple of days to give it a try.
One final thing - I presume you are not running any mods?
Update - I had a bit more time this evening than anticipated, so did some testing.
Weird results.
I set spoil timer to 0.3 for longer spoilage times (confirmed that items indeed had longer spoil timers on them).
I spawned in several stacks of different meat. Left some in chests, carried a couple of pieces from each stack in my inventory. Left the base for an extended period while testing Dregs dungeon - which not only meant travelling out of render range, but also ‘teleporting’ on entry to the dungeon.
When I got back - all stacks of meat in chests still matched the timers on the meat I was carrying in inventory. None had spoiled.
However - a stack of 6 cooked savoury meat left in a campfire had all spoiled, as had half a stack of 12 cooked feral flesh left in the same campfire. But a stack of uncooked Exotic Flesh, left in the same campfire, had not spoiled at all. (All putrid meat was still present as well).
The only differences that I can think of was that the meat that spoiled all originally came from before I changed the spoil timer (and was all harvested normally rather than spawned in), while all of the meat that didn’t spoil came from after the timer was changed.
I’m going to need to do more testing (and I’m out of time for now), but there is definitely something wonky going on. (I’ll also try to find some time to test stuff involving compost heaps in due course.)
Definitely interesting and doesn’t make sense o.o