Bug: Possible start to "disappearing objects" problem?
Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 5:03 am
I used to be an alpha tester at 2K games so I decided to put my skills to use in an attempt to find the root of my most pressing concern with this engine, the "disappearing objects" bug, which I believe goes hand in hand with the sporadic crashes.
I have found that the Exult engine currently does NOT properly unload walls and foliage from a chunk/cell when the avatar moves away and/or teleports away from said chunk/cell. Upon returning the chunk/cell IS reloaded, causing a doppelganger effect where two of the same wall/foliage are stacked upon each other. As far as I can tell, only these two object types are affected, but I have only invested about an hour into this test and I am sure there are other types affected as well.
This can be reproduced quite easily. Create a new game or load an existing game. Enable cheats, and enable the hack mover. Find a tree or building to use as a landmark. Now either walk away from it for about a minute or teleport to a different part of the world using the F3 map. Return to the landmark object and use the hack move to move the tree/wall to a different location. As you can see, there are now two of these objects.
This does NOT occur in the original game as I have tested it. It only occurs in the Exult engine. I have continually teleported from Trinsic to Britain over and over and apparently there is no limit to the amount of duplicates it will create.
Loading a game, or restarting Exult, does properly reload the chunk/cell though, which leads me to believe that it is not the duplicate trees/walls piling up that are causing the crashes or objects from disappearing. This in turn leads me to think that there must be another type of object that I have not found yet, which DOES cause the bug to occur, if it happened to be duplicated via the above issue.
Ultimately instead of trying to find out which item this is, I'd like to ask the developers to fix the duplication problem first, which would hopefully create a chain reaction and fix other bugs in turn.
TLDR: Make sure the engine properly unloads and/or loads every object and item upon leaving and/or entering a chunk/cell. Thanks in advance and sorry for all the slashes, it is how I've been trained to type bug reports.
I have found that the Exult engine currently does NOT properly unload walls and foliage from a chunk/cell when the avatar moves away and/or teleports away from said chunk/cell. Upon returning the chunk/cell IS reloaded, causing a doppelganger effect where two of the same wall/foliage are stacked upon each other. As far as I can tell, only these two object types are affected, but I have only invested about an hour into this test and I am sure there are other types affected as well.
This can be reproduced quite easily. Create a new game or load an existing game. Enable cheats, and enable the hack mover. Find a tree or building to use as a landmark. Now either walk away from it for about a minute or teleport to a different part of the world using the F3 map. Return to the landmark object and use the hack move to move the tree/wall to a different location. As you can see, there are now two of these objects.
This does NOT occur in the original game as I have tested it. It only occurs in the Exult engine. I have continually teleported from Trinsic to Britain over and over and apparently there is no limit to the amount of duplicates it will create.
Loading a game, or restarting Exult, does properly reload the chunk/cell though, which leads me to believe that it is not the duplicate trees/walls piling up that are causing the crashes or objects from disappearing. This in turn leads me to think that there must be another type of object that I have not found yet, which DOES cause the bug to occur, if it happened to be duplicated via the above issue.
Ultimately instead of trying to find out which item this is, I'd like to ask the developers to fix the duplication problem first, which would hopefully create a chain reaction and fix other bugs in turn.
TLDR: Make sure the engine properly unloads and/or loads every object and item upon leaving and/or entering a chunk/cell. Thanks in advance and sorry for all the slashes, it is how I've been trained to type bug reports.