Arokh "swimming" glitch - useless, but funny
Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:50 pm
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:
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.
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.