0006276: Frequent saving and reloading/"idle_animations_interval" manipulation po causing ai to path find into monster clip and get stuck - The Dark Mod Bugtracker

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0006276	The Dark Mod	Saving/Loading	public	21.03.2023 03:37	28.03.2025 18:43

Reporter	wellingtoncrab	Assigned To
Priority	high	Severity	major	Reproducibility	sometimes
Status	new	Resolution	open
Platform	PC	OS	Windows 11
Product Version	TDM 2.11
Target Version	TDM 2.14

Summary	0006276: Frequent saving and reloading/"idle_animations_interval" manipulation po causing ai to path find into monster clip and get stuck
Description	On two missions I have worked on Iris and Seeking Lady Leicester we have had ghost players report instances of ai getting stuck in some corner of the map just repeating a loop of their walking animation. I tired a lot back when I was working on Iris to reproduce this but always struggled to do so. I never saw it in the course of a normal play through and I would open the map and leave it running for hours at a high time scale and never reproduced anything reliably. The screenshots would show the ai usually in a position of the map that would place them inside of a monster clip brush and it would happen often in their playthroughs. We have been running into this problem again beta testing Seeking Lady Leicester. A tester on SLL pointed out to me that as result of their "ghost" play style they are constantly quick saving and reloading the game sometimes over and over again even if they get a minor alert. This reminded me that the player I was troubleshooting this issue with in Iris was also a ghost player. So I tried starting the map and just really regularly hitting the save and reload keys every few seconds while cruising around the map in noclip and within about five minutes I started to find AI getting stuck in this loop. I reloaded the mission repeating the process and found another one (but only one in this instance) that was stuck in about 10 minutes. If the stuck ai gets an even minor alert level they will revert to their normal patrol - so typical play styles are perhaps less likely to encounter this, but if a player is eagle eyeing the stealth stats and saving and reloading constantly it seems more likely to occur and potentially ruin the experience for them. I also think this issue may related or exacerbated by manipulating the "idle_animations_interval" spawnarg on ai. I tend to decrease this quite a bit from it's default value of 40 seconds as this makes the ai produce ambient sounds more regularly and provides more variety and character in their animations while they are moving about the map. I believe I had this set at about 18 and was able to produce stuck ai in a reasonably short play time - resetting this 40 and after about 20 minutes I had not encountered any. The kind of random nature of the bug and difficulty of checking all the ai in a given mission makes it hard to say with certainty unfortunately.
Steps To Reproduce	-Start a mission -Save and reload constantly
Tags	pathfinding, save
Attached Files	seeking (2023-03-20 19-15-25) (3335.99 -2.12 56.71).jpg (445,236 bytes)

Daft Mugi 08.12.2023 02:50 developer ~0016225 Last edited: 08.12.2023 03:27	Bumping this to high priority for 2.12 as it keeps showing up during YouTube/Twitch playthroughs. It's quite gamebreaking. Seeking Lady Leicester: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK9UVXG9Pw0&t=10873s * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK9UVXG9Pw0&t=11117s Iris: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtKqFnX84Z8&t=16258s * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtKqFnX84Z8&t=21648s * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtKqFnX84Z8&t=22781s

Daft Mugi 08.12.2023 02:55 developer ~0016226 Last edited: 08.12.2023 03:13	This doesn't just affect ghost players. This bug is also present in FenPhoenix's recent playthroughs.

nbohr1more 08.12.2023 16:15 developer ~0016231	Hmm. A quick brainstorm on a fix: On save, record the last path node the AI traversed On reload, take the saved AI position and move it away from pathfinding obstacles towards the last node until it is at the minimum safe distance from all obstacles Maybe elevate the AI a little so it drops to the ground on reload too.

Frost_Salamander 08.12.2023 22:07 reporter ~0016238	Yep, a few players complained about this happening in High Expectations as well.

nbohr1more 20.02.2024 02:40 developer ~0016536	The scope of the fix for this is too large and risky at this phase in the beta and we have yet to determine the best solution. Moving to 2.13 but it may be included in a 2.12 hotfix if something sensible can be designed.

nbohr1more 13.02.2025 02:57 developer ~0016971	Too big of a change for 2.13 beta. Moving to 2.14

nbohr1more 03.03.2025 04:21 developer ~0016980	Dhemw3 might have an answer: https://github.com/dhewm/dhewm3/commit/4bd46b3e28684c2fdb3f6a01924b04d43832a25d

nbohr1more 28.03.2025 18:43 developer ~0016997	Rev 10954

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
21.03.2023 03:37	wellingtoncrab	New Issue
21.03.2023 03:37	wellingtoncrab	File Added: seeking (2023-03-20 19-15-25) (3335.99 -2.12 56.71).jpg
08.12.2023 02:37	Daft Mugi	Priority	normal => high
08.12.2023 02:37	Daft Mugi	Severity	normal => major
08.12.2023 02:37	Daft Mugi	Target Version	=> TDM 2.12
08.12.2023 02:50	Daft Mugi	Note Added: 0016225
08.12.2023 02:55	Daft Mugi	Note Added: 0016226
08.12.2023 03:13	Daft Mugi	Note Edited: 0016226
08.12.2023 03:27	Daft Mugi	Note Edited: 0016225
08.12.2023 16:15	nbohr1more	Note Added: 0016231
08.12.2023 22:07	Frost_Salamander	Note Added: 0016238
11.02.2024 05:10	Fiver	Tag Attached: save
11.02.2024 05:10	Fiver	Tag Attached: pathfinding
20.02.2024 02:40	nbohr1more	Note Added: 0016536
20.02.2024 02:41	nbohr1more	Target Version	TDM 2.12 => TDM 2.13
13.02.2025 02:57	nbohr1more	Note Added: 0016971
13.02.2025 02:57	nbohr1more	Target Version	TDM 2.13 => TDM 2.14
03.03.2025 04:21	nbohr1more	Note Added: 0016980
28.03.2025 18:43	nbohr1more	Note Added: 0016997