While I was working on triggers for the swan in the park, I decided that one of the triggers should deal with what would happen if anything were to happen to the swan. I purged the swan, finished the trigger and decided to wait for swan to respawn by regular reset rather than forcing a reset. When my zone triggers cycled through (which takes about half an hour) and the zone hadn't reset, I checked my zedit and found that I had, for some strange reason that probably made sense at the time) set it to reset when the area was empty. When I changed it, I also decided to change the lifespan to 15 minutes instead of the default 30. I feel that newbie areas should reset a bit faster than normal anyway. When the zone still didn't reset while my triggers were cycling, I ran some tests.
Just to get a closer look at resets, I switched it to 5 minutes. To my astonishment, at 16:00 the age was 1, at 16:01 the age was 2, at 16:02 the age was 3, at 16:04 the age was 4, at 16:05 the age was 999 and at 16:06 the age was 0. This seems totally normal and the astonishment was because the earlier reset had been so much longer than 5 minutes. I kept my tests running and the next cycle was 16:06(0) to 16:11(999). It then stayed at 999 until 16:27 so the 5 minute reset was 22 minutes. The next resets were: 20, 8, 8, 22 and 40.
help lifespan
L) Lifespan : 30 minutes
The number of real-time minutes between zone resets for this zone. When the
age of the zone (measured in minutes since the last time that zone has been
reset) reaches the zones lifespan the zone is then reset when the conditions
of the Reset Mode are satisfied.
help reset mode
2) Normal reset (DEFAULT)
Reset the zone as soon as it reaches its Lifespan, regardless of who or
what is in it. This is the most commonly used Reset Mode.
Is there some other variable involved? The 5, 8, 8 seem quite acceptable. The 22, 20, 22, while 4 times longer than I was looking for, at least seem to be related to each other. That 40 minutes, though, that's really long for a 5 minute reset!
