The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

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TheIdiot
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The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by TheIdiot »

While working on RTJP, I came across some kind of odd bug. At first, I thought it was just something stupid I'd done rendering related, but it wouldn't go away no matter what I tried. What would happen is you'd be strolling along when suddenly POUF! you're gone. It appeared as if the player were stepping across a trigger line that caused her to become invisible, yet there was nothing of the sort. I was able to replicate it again and again (even standing at the edge of the area causing the glitch and sticking my arm out to go invisible) and it always happened. You could still pick things up and collide with objects, too, though anything you held in your hand would also become invisible, and you seemed more prone than usual to dropping things.

Fortunately, I figured out what it was - turns out it was related to a big, cylindrical CEntityAttached that I'd stuck to the player to make it appear to be raining. I have no idea why or how this happened, but it was somewhat interesting in its effect, and once I deleted the instance, the problem disappeared. Has anyone else seen this happen? And does anyone know exactly what might cause this glitch? You might even be able to do it yourself if you attach something to the player and walk around a level, and I have no idea if it's specific for the size of the mesh, shape, texture, etc. I managed to make it happen in East Dock as well using the same setup (I was trying to get a rain effect working for CE since it lacks ATX rain) - a big textured object surrounding the player with an animated texture as a CEntityAttached.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by tatu »

The only time I've seen it was on the build 96 Beach level. In the beginning, Anne becomes invisible for a short time. Not sure it happens on the build 96 engine, but did happen on the retail one.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by Draconisaurus »

Don't think I've seen that particular disappearing player bug, but I've seen others. My notion is that it has to do with objs that have "bool Visible = false", causing objs inside to disappear. Pretty sure I have seen it happen in b96, don't remember where though.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by machf »

Yup, just like Drac said, it's usually under those circumstances that it happens...
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:Don't think I've seen that particular disappearing player bug, but I've seen others. My notion is that it has to do with objs that have "bool Visible = false", causing objs inside to disappear. Pretty sure I have seen it happen in b96, don't remember where though.
Hmm, that makes sense to me now that I've figured out exactly what causes it and how to replicate the problem. Now comes trying to find a workaround for the bug. Perhaps making sure the bounding volume of the object isn't greater than that of the player would solve it? Or, alternately, you could just keep it visible and apply an invisible dummy texture like the TC~Isle flapping pteranodon.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by Bryankd2015 »

I have not seen the disappearing anne glitch, however if you collide with certain items off path you can see the in and out of annes arm and parts of anne. I also noticed some of the fences you can crawl through more or less will give out some graphics glitches as well.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by TheIdiot »

Bryankd2015 wrote:I have not seen the disappearing anne glitch, however if you collide with certain items off path you can see the in and out of annes arm and parts of anne. I also noticed some of the fences you can crawl through more or less will give out some graphics glitches as well.
Those would be the occlusion objects, which are essentially big, invisible gray squares that can be seen in TresEd. Essentially they act to reduce the amount that the engine has to draw by hiding anything behind them since the game will draw objects even if they are out of your line-of-sight. I don't think they work correctly sometimes, though, especially at a distance. It seems they only work if you are relatively close to them.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by tatu »

TheIdiot wrote:
Bryankd2015 wrote:I have not seen the disappearing anne glitch, however if you collide with certain items off path you can see the in and out of annes arm and parts of anne. I also noticed some of the fences you can crawl through more or less will give out some graphics glitches as well.
Those would be the occlusion objects, which are essentially big, invisible gray squares that can be seen in TresEd. Essentially they act to reduce the amount that the engine has to draw by hiding anything behind them since the game will draw objects even if they are out of your line-of-sight. I don't think they work correctly sometimes, though, especially at a distance. It seems they only work if you are relatively close to them.
Yeah, there are some problems with the occlusion objects. Someone did a test with them and I think it was something like small ones only work when you are close and such.
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by machf »

Yep, someone did...
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by Draconisaurus »

IIRC machf found a max number of occlusions which get processed at once... What was it, 15?
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:IIRC machf found a max number of occlusions which get processed at once... What was it, 15?
Now is that in number of separate occlusion entities, or the individual faces of said entities? And does the distance to an occlusion object make a difference, for example will the game process the 15 closest entities or the 15 oldest ones?
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Re: The Strange Case of the Disappearing Player

Post by tatu »

Here is the topic of his test:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8833
Active project: Trespasser: Isla Sorna
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PH2-IT: Pre-released
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"...there used to be more benches, but InGen's workers removed them during the evacuation in the name of framerate."
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