Flavor Objects Bug

[metalbrew]

I think I've found a bug where flavor object disappear from maps. In addition to disappearing, vehicles and units still try and avoid the objects as if they were still there. The map this happened on was Village of Trouble 101b, I am playing the US forces.

Here's a shot from my setup phase, no orders issued and everything is in it's default location. This battle does not allow blue to setup troops, you have to get out of an ambush. Notice there's only 2 bus stops in the picture.

Here's the same location on the map shown from within the Scenario editor. Notice there's 4 bus stops. For what ever reason, 2 of the bus stops disappeared during my setup phase.

Here's the beginning of my turn, before anything had moved. During setup, I had rotated the Stryker to a better orientation to accelerated away from village. I had no idea there were missing bus stops in my way so this was the obvious best direction to run away from the ambush.

The Stryker did not drive straight ahead as shown in the previous picture, it had to maneuvere to it's left to avoid the non-existent bus stop that had disappeared. It died very quickly while executing it's comedy of errors in plain view of an RPG team. It took 2 RPG hits, 7 members of the squad died along with the entire vehicle crew, both of the surviving members of the squad died while trying to evacuate the dead Stryker.

This is an obvious bug. The first bug is the disappearing flavor objects. The second bug is units are compelled to avoid objects that aren't on the map any longer.

[thewood]

A long time ago, there was a discussion about objects being deleted, but still on the map and invisible. It was a discussion about pathfinding. This may be related to that. IIRC, Steve confirmed that it was an issue.

[metalbrew]

I too remember something about objects being removed but units still maneuvered around the non-existent object. I don't know if it was regarding flavor objects or buildings. It seems that fixing this behavior for a particular object doesn't carry over to other objects. This is the first bug.

Just to be clear, no one deleted these objects from the map. These objects disappeared without any intervention. They are in the scenario when viewed with the editor and they disappeared when firing up a game with the same scenario file. This is the second bug.

[metalbrew]

Here's the end of the second turn. One of the bus stops has reappeared. The telephone pole and fourth bus stop is still missing.

[dumrox]

Those are uncon bus stops, mixing in nicely with the conventional bus stops.

[RobH]

Hmmmm. That's an interesting observation metalbrew because it definitely did not happen that way for me. I just played this scenario over the weekend and really enjoyed it. The 4 bus stops and the telegraph pole were clearly visible at start-up and all through the game for me. Never noticed any disappearing objects throughout the scenario. I simply reversed that Stryker back up the road from the start without a problem since I had no room for a turn.

Rob

[Pinetree]

It could be related to video card memory. What are your card specs metalbrew?

[metalbrew]

Originally posted by Pinetree:

It could be related to video card memory. What are your card specs metalbrew?

A fair question, I'm running an nVidia 8800 GTS and the latest non-beta drivers.

AMD X2 4600+

2GB memory

15k rpm SATA2 drive

USB keyboard and mouse

MSI nVidia 8800 GTS w/ 640mb

Fully patched WinXP Pro, no AMD multicpu optimizer, single CPU affinity settings, latest non-beta nVidia drivers

[Zatoichi]

I've seen something similar with one of the campaign battles - where you start with a knocked out Bradley and the crew are by a bus shelter. I saved the game before the first turn and a majority of the flavour objects were gone - the shelter, the phone poles etc.

I'm got an ATI X1950XT, Core Duo 6700, 2GB memory.

[RobH]

My specs are certainly below yours with

AMD 64 3700+

2GB RAM

ATI X1900GT w/256MB

WinXT Pro SP2 fully patched

ATI v7.9 beta drivers

Rob

[Battlefront.com]

Metalbrew,

That looks to be a PBEM bug, which is why Rob H didn't have the problem. I'll contact you offline to get a save of this. Probably too late for v1.04 though.

Steve