Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

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Mechanist
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Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

Post by Mechanist »

While fooling around with Arokh's bite attack (which I totally forgot was even a thing, and is unrelated to what happened), I accidentally caused a silly glitch:

Arokh swimming glitch.JPG
Arokh swimming glitch.JPG (75.64 KiB) Viewed 3376 times

Normally Arokh doesn't like bodies of water - or so it would appear, at least; presumably due to being a red dragon?
Can't land on water, and he is highly reluctant to walk into it, due to invisible barriers at the water's edge.
But once already in the water, he can move around freely.

Despite never being intended by the developers, the game seems to handle this unusual situation relatively well:
- Arokh will walk on the bottom of the body of water, no problem there,
- it's possible to take off normally (even when fully submerged),
- the oxygen meter works fine - but the game only checks if Arokh's head is submerged (!); Rynn presumably grows some gills?
- mounting/dismounting works fine, at least if not entirely submerged.

However, there is also some weirdness involved:
- movement speed isn't affected,
- attacking works fine, even fully submerged (fireballs underwater are just silly...),
- it isn't possible to simply walk out of the water - the invisible barriers aren't one-way,
- dismounting while fully submerged has no animation, and just immediately dumps Rynn swimming underwater,
- when Rynn is swimming, submerged Arokh has no collision whatsoever.

I can replicate this reliably in a couple of seconds, no cheating of any sort is required.
There are a few ways of causing the glitch, but the most reliable method I found is to use a nice corner between water, shallow sloping land and steeply sloping land, and move+strafe in the direction of the water while turning around quickly, and toggling freelook on/off. Repeat until you get pushed through the invisible wall.

As an example of a good spot: at the beginning of Wartok Canyons, immediately after exiting the starting cave, there is a short bit of gently sloping shoreline on the right, on the opposite bank.
The 'corner' furthest from the cave entrance works well - ie. just where the shallow slope transitions into a rather steep one, when looking along the river bank.

And yes, I do know that OOTF has some crazy clipping glitches in general, the glitched speedruns make good use of them.
But this at least manages to look reasonably natural, and doesn't involve flying Arokh into the level geometry.

UCyborg
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Re: Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

Post by UCyborg »

I didn't have the hard time walking out. It blocked only at certain angles.

I remember being able to get Arokh from the upper pathway in the water below in the cave you enter with Arokh in Wartok Canyons after you get the key. Inside, after Rynn opens the first gate for Arokh to be able to proceed, you can fly up there, position yourself on the edge, facing the water below, then experiment with moving in that direction, turning, toggling mouse-look until you manage to end down there.

It's also possible to get Rynn to walk under water. Physics work as if she was on ground, but there's an under-water sound effect. I managed to do it once or twice in Ruined Village. If you head into the sea near the start area and go to the cave on the left, swimming across the first body of water then hopping into the next body of water and exit it at certain angle, Rynn may find herself under-water on the ground instead of up on the surface.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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Re: Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

Post by Mechanist »

Interesting.

The next obvious line of investigation was to check if Arokh is also fireproof (lava-proof?). Unsuprisingly, it appears that he is - and of course Rynn isn't, but well, we already knew that.

The floor is lava!.JPG
The floor is lava!.JPG (47.58 KiB) Viewed 3364 times

Curiously, some areas of the lava river in Volcano can be landed on normally, without any trickery - patches of shallow lava, perhaps?
It doesn't bother Arokh one bit... he can even walk on lava like on solid ground. 8) Intrinsic fire resistance?

Unfortunately, only a few of the patches are large enough to walk around on; with most of them you can only turn in place, but not move.
The patch at the coordinates above is a couple of meters long, thus walkable.

Despite the harrowing appearance (and real-world physics, but let's not go there), Rynn is perfectly safe, as long as she's riding Arokh.
But dismounting while doing that, while possible, is quite predictably a Very Bad Idea.

Sadly, no taking relaxing baths in lava for Arokh - the collision properties of the lava floor simply don't appear to permit that; and trust me, I've tried.
Also, even if it didn't hurt Arokh, Rynn would no doubt object to swimming in lava. While also catching fire at about the same time.

BTW, speaking of glitches/bugs - what's the deal with the fire breath attack? It seems to be pretty much an instakill, even on endgame enemies.
Is that something FPS-related, like applying X damage every frame?
Or does the game check each individual "puff of flame" for collision with an enemy (possibly every frame)? That would explain the extreme damage output, since there are many individual "flames" in the jet of fire.

UCyborg
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Re: Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

Post by UCyborg »

Alternate fire breath attack is practically insta kill all the time, hence not available in multiplayer for better balance. Well, the rest alternate attacks aren't either. Not sure about the regular, I'd have to try if FPS plays a role. I always cap my game to 59 FPS to avoid physics going nuts. Though you have to go with 20 FPS for true bloodbath...but I don't like sacrificing smoothness unless absolutely required (looking at you, Interstate '76). I can confirm high FPS can make regular arrows especially deadly when shooting enemies at certain spots. Going from my memory, they can gib Wartoks, Orcs and Scavengers when shot between legs or when targeting empty space between arms and the rest of the body.
"When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence." - Peter Wessel Zapffe

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Re: Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny

Post by Mechanist »

Huh.
So now, in an inversion of the usual trope, listen to me complain that a player attack is too OP:
A very powerful attack is a great thing to have, of course, but this is just insane. I want to see my enemies burn, suffer and scream in terror, not just fall over dead where they stand :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

I like to think of it in this way: Arokh is really far more powerful than he normally shows, and the fire breath's power is his subtle way of saying "Uhh, not this crap again. Begone!" :D
And the fire breath isn't really a fire attack - it's actually a black dragon's disintegration beam, just cleverly disguised with some relatively harmless fire. :mrgreen:

Also LOL @ the speedrun trick of clipping through the Rift World "door" with Arokh and instagibbing the endboss. What a wimp :D

The bite attack could also use a better animation, it's quite a missed opportunity.
It would've been nice to have Arokh grab & throw the enemy upward and to the side, causing additional fall damage on top of the bite damage, staggering the enemy upon hitting the ground, and thus setting them up for an extra crispy followup, if they are still alive after the bite+fall damage.

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