What causes Poisson-disk object scatter leaving bald patches?

Bridson's algorithm fills space by trying k candidates around active points, and too small a k or too large a radius leaves regions where no candidate ever succeeds, producing visible bald patches.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Poisson-Disk Object Scatter Leaving Bald Patches

Quick answer: Raise the candidate attempt count k, lower the minimum radius to the spacing you actually need, and make sure the active list seeds from points across the whole area, not one corner.

Empty gaps in an otherwise even Poisson-disk scatter mean the sampler gives up too early. Tuning k and the radius restores full, even coverage.

How to fix it

1. Raise the candidate count k

Bridson retires an active point after k failed candidates. With k too low (e.g. 5), points retire before filling their surroundings, leaving holes. Raise k to around 30 so the annulus is properly explored before a point is abandoned.

2. Right-size the minimum radius

If the radius is larger than the spacing you want, the algorithm cannot pack points tightly enough to cover the area. Set the radius to the true minimum object spacing so coverage is dense and uniform.

3. Seed the active list broadly

Start from an initial point near the center and ensure the active list grows outward across the whole region. If sampling stalls with the area not full, restart the active growth from a random uncovered cell.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.