Thaumanova Fractal boss teleporting at 50%
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Took me 3 runs of the dungeon to get the bug.
Took me 3 runs of the dungeon to get the bug.
Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.
You know you want to tell us
Rev, Ele, Burnzerker
“Beware he who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
“Beware he who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.
You know you want to tell us
Yeah…
Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.
Try us. Im sure it will make for an entertaining Dev blog.
OK fine.
So I started by looking at the anomaly’s creature script. The fact that this was a consistent teleport at 50% made it seem like it would be an easy thing to track down, and the creature script was the likely culprit.
The anomaly had a script handler listening for it to hit 50% health. In this handler was a call to teleport it to the center of the map, presumably the designer who originally built the anomaly put it there as a safeguard, but it should not be needed. I figured, “maybe the teleport is failing and picking the wrong navmesh?” so I just deleted the whole handler.
The boss still teleported at 50%…
OK so it isn’t the creature script, so I looked at everything referencing the anomaly with regards to its 50% health threshold, and the only thing left was a map script. This map script did nothing but set a trigger, but there was a handler listening for this trigger that fired a skill at the feet of the anomaly “Unstable Matrix”, which is the skill that targets everyone and makes platforms fall.
This skill is not sourced from the boss, since the boss is doing his own thing at this time. Instead, the skill is sourced from an invisible, unattackable gadget that spawns right at the feet of the anomaly. These types of gadgets are called “skill launchers” and are used in places throughout the game, though we try to avoid them these days as they have a tendency to be buggy. For instance, until last year, some player skills such as the revenant sword 2 would randomly target these skill launchers, and players would see their projectiles flying at invisible objects.
All gadgets in our game have flags that define their behavior. Skill launchers were properly flagged to be unattackable and non targetable, but I discovered that they, hilariously enough, were not flagged as “No Collide”.
The skill launcher at the anomaly’s feet was colliding with him when it spawned. And when colliding gadgets collide with a creature when they initialize, they “Eject” said creatures, causing them to teleport to nearby navmesh. The reason the boss would teleport back to the center at 25% was because of those teleport safeguards on the creature script. But of course the next time Unstable Matrix fired it would teleport back out.
Flagging skill launchers as no collide solved this bug (and probably some elsewhere), and then Bill fixed some issues that could cause creatures to teleport too far away when ejecting, as the anomaly had.
(edited by zealex.9410)
———
Madara
Madara
So why did it started happening only recently? Also could skill launchers cause rev hammers to dissapear after colliding with them?
It started happening only recently due to some code changes to physics and navmesh. Before, when the skill launcher collided with the anomaly, a code bug coupled with a navmesh crack caused the ejection to fail. Now that that bug was fixed, the ejection succeeded.
Projectiles shouldn’t be able to collide with skill launchers, even before this change, because of the unattackable and non-targetable flags. Additionally, the collision radius is like 9 inches and they are on the ground so the projectiles would just pass over them anyways.
So the teleporting bug didn’t happen because of another bug? That’s hilarious!
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Proud Medic of the Splinter Warband. PM me to know more.
(edited by Benjamin Arnold.3457)
JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions
no new system upgrades coming
It was funny, but last time I ran Thaumanova it actually didn’t re-port back at 25%
o_O
So it was middle of the platform, then side location until the fractal ended
Actually I didn’t mind that too much, though it wasn’t possible to walk around the anomaly (it was in the corner of the platform)
Vesper Dawnshield | Guardian
(edited by anduriell.6280)
Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.
You know you want to tell us
Yeah…
Finally figured it out. The bug was hilarious but too technical to explain. Fix incoming.
Try us. Im sure it will make for an entertaining Dev blog.
OK fine.
So I started by looking at the anomaly’s creature script. The fact that this was a consistent teleport at 50% made it seem like it would be an easy thing to track down, and the creature script was the likely culprit.
The anomaly had a script handler listening for it to hit 50% health. In this handler was a call to teleport it to the center of the map, presumably the designer who originally built the anomaly put it there as a safeguard, but it should not be needed. I figured, “maybe the teleport is failing and picking the wrong navmesh?” so I just deleted the whole handler.
The boss still teleported at 50%…
OK so it isn’t the creature script, so I looked at everything referencing the anomaly with regards to its 50% health threshold, and the only thing left was a map script. This map script did nothing but set a trigger, but there was a handler listening for this trigger that fired a skill at the feet of the anomaly “Unstable Matrix”, which is the skill that targets everyone and makes platforms fall.
This skill is not sourced from the boss, since the boss is doing his own thing at this time. Instead, the skill is sourced from an invisible, unattackable gadget that spawns right at the feet of the anomaly. These types of gadgets are called “skill launchers” and are used in places throughout the game, though we try to avoid them these days as they have a tendency to be buggy. For instance, until last year, some player skills such as the revenant sword 2 would randomly target these skill launchers, and players would see their projectiles flying at invisible objects.
All gadgets in our game have flags that define their behavior. Skill launchers were properly flagged to be unattackable and non targetable, but I discovered that they, hilariously enough, were not flagged as “No Collide”.
The skill launcher at the anomaly’s feet was colliding with him when it spawned. And when colliding gadgets collide with a creature when they initialize, they “Eject” said creatures, causing them to teleport to nearby navmesh. The reason the boss would teleport back to the center at 25% was because of those teleport safeguards on the creature script. But of course the next time Unstable Matrix fired it would teleport back out.
Flagging skill launchers as no collide solved this bug (and probably some elsewhere), and then Bill fixed some issues that could cause creatures to teleport too far away when ejecting, as the anomaly had.
Ben, has anyone ever told you that you’re great and we love you? That is a hilarious bug, thanks for taking the time to explain to us! I hope that solving that issue helped fix some other things elsewhere since that lack of No Collide seems like it could have far-reaching impacts
Rev, Ele, Burnzerker
“Beware he who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
“Beware he who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
Love you guys too
(edited by voidvector.2780)
Proud Medic of the Splinter Warband. PM me to know more.