Death, rebirth, and quick saves

[Dweller_Benthos]

So, I died for the first time last night. I was trying to sneak up on a guard post when I saw a leopard attacking a deer. I wanted to keep quiet so I snuck up on the leopard and started attacking with my knife. Bad idea, he made short w@&k of me and I respawned at the last radio tower which luckily wasn't far away.

I'll never do that again.

Then, I was sneaking up on the same guard post trying to be all cool and get the stealth bonus when I did a quick save before trying to shoot a pirate in the head with the bow. Of course I missed and the alarm was sounded, so I loaded the save game and found myself back at the radio tower, not in the cave I had saved from. Seems a quick save only saves the world state and not your position in it and bumps you back to the radio tower. I had done this before at the mushroom mansion (forget the guy's name, I haven't done the mission yet) as I wanted to get some more upgrades before starting that mission. So when I loaded the game, I was back at the radio tower and had to get back to where I wanted to be. Hitting escape and going to the menu and selecting save seems to get you back in the same position you saved in, so I guess quick save is only for emergencies.

[DKM2]

When is it not an emergency?   :)

I try and do my saves at safe houses, so I know exactly where I'll be when re-loading.
But with all the auto-saving it doesn't always w@&k.
Plus its different when you load from within your current game session or re-loading from a new game session.
I swear, a woman designed this feature.

[Jim di Griz]

I found that when you die whilst taking an outpost, it will spawn you just outside the camp...mostly. Same as with the Wanted Dead side missions and Hunter ones - though it will randomly start me at a radio tower occasionally, or if I die twice on the same attempt.

I know what you mean about stealth and the machete/tanto attacks - I tried it on a heavy before I found out about the skill required to do so. It does seem unfair that a stealth attack on whatever person/beast isn't deemed effective. I think a close quarters bow shot to the head or neck should be able to kill a big cat.

[JRD]

Jim is right. When you are attacking an outpost and die you respawn in the surroundingof the camp most of the times.

Else, if you just fall over a cliff and die, you'll respawn at the nearest tower or friendly camp.

I swear, a woman designed this feature.

:-D  :-X

Damn right... even though there's some loginc in respawning it may change completely without further notice and you'll just have to cope with that!  >:(

[Dweller_Benthos]

Well, another thing..... I had just liberated an outpost (very messy, was going for an attack from a technical jeep, drove in the back, got stuck under the gateway, and whenever I tried to change to the mounted gun, there wasn't enough room and it booted me out IN FRONT of the jeep where everyone was shooting at me) anyway, was walking around the outpost, headed for the vending machine when BLINK game gone, crash to desktop. Nice. Restart and I'm in the safe house at the outpost, nothing missing from my inventory, so there's that.

Then, one time, I was about to try something stupid, e.g. fly a hang glider for the first time from the top of that volcano with the steep sides and cliffs down to the crater lake, so I decided to do a save first in case something went wrong. Well, it crashed WHILE it was saving. Great. Restarted and I was back at the safe house in the last outpost I had saved at, inventory intact from what I remember, but a very long way from that volcano.

I beginning to think one of those new memory sticks I installed when I upgraded is bad, I'm getting weird crashes and sometimes for no reason, as in, I leave the computer doing nothing, no programs running, come back a few minutes later and it's rebooted from a blue screen crash. Weird errors I've never seen before too, like DRIVER_CORRUPTED_EXPOOL in ntoskrnl.exe or hal.dll crash with no explanation. HAL (hardware abstraction layer) and NT OS kernal are very important low level systems, if they are crashing, something is seriously wrong, especially when there's no other programs running except the desktop. So off to get a memory test program I guess.

[Art Blade]

holy crap, that's bad, man (no, not batman). Sounds as if it was worth putting an armchair along with a bag of crisps next to your PC and watching you and your PC. Better than what was on TV the last time I checked (more than a decade ago), both more entertaining and more thrilling  >:D

Great read, but I do see the tragic, too. I seriously hope that you can sort it out and enjoy the game without additional hardware issues. The game itself is buggy enough, already  :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Right, maybe I should do a video series of how not to play FC3.

Still getting problems with vehicles and my custom key bindings. I can now switch from the driver's seat to the mounted gun, but can't switch back. I have to exit the vehicle and get back in at the driver's seat. Not very convenient.

[Art Blade]

  oh MAN!  :-()

[Dweller_Benthos]

Not to mention I have the tendency to hit the exit vehicle button instead of the hand brake. Leaves me bouncing in the middle of the road as my jeep continues on by itself.

Oh yeah, with that last crash at the outpost, I had just nicely parked a jeep with a 50 cal mounted on it, was going to use that in the next section and of course, it wasn't there when I reloaded.

Still nice to see the old FC2 technique of shooting the driver of an enemy vehicle works nice.

[Art Blade]

I kept my cars as long as I didn't use any other vehicle and as long as I didn't park it in areas that keep respawning (as in, occupied by pirates/mercs). And my car was still there after I restarted the game. :)

[Dweller_Benthos]

I only seem to get in trouble while driving, even with a mounted MG. So, I've been walking most everywhere.

[fragger]

A couple of times I've made note of a car or hang glider and thought, "I'll use that in a bit", moved away a short distance to do something, then came back only to find that the vehicle in question had disappeared ????

[Art Blade]

hehe D_B :) I usually walk, too :)

fragger, it is as in FC2: "ownership" -- you need to use the vehicle first, else it's not yours and may be removed. Hang gliders seem special, they can't be owned and they respawn the moment you leave the area. There is one more reason why cars and boats may disappear: those AI people have no respect and take them if they need them 

[PZ]

You might be right about that being a RAM issue D_B.  Random failures are often attributed to that problem.  Luckily it is easy enough to exclude that block of memory.