weird glitch

[Binnatics]

I have been experiencing a very weird glitch. Somehow, sometimes, enemies don't respond to me anymore. I first found this out during a Rakyat Trial. Wanting to get high scores with silent takedowns things went a bit too good. I got a score of 1325, which is incredible. I could sneak around without any guy seeing me. First I thought it had to do with the newly obtained perk 'silent walker' or something, but it turn out to be a bit extreme. They couldn't even see me when I was right in front of them. Later things were normal again (maybe after restarting the game, don't know). When I tried the challenge then, I couldn't come past 730. Anyway, today it happened again. Not only in that trial, but also in another. And when I played around on the islands, the enemies didn't even see me there either. It got to have something to do with the way AI responds to you. They keep acting normal and do their normal stuff, even shoot eachother and animals, but somehow ignore me entirely. You start to feel kind of lonely when ppl stop shooting at you, lol
A restart made an end to this glitch, but I am curious if this will happen more often. Until 2 days ago I had never had such thing happen ????

[mandru]

That is pretty weird Binn.  ???   But at least it's somewhat better than having every bad guy in the game aware of your location before you even come over the horizon.

It's good that a restart cleared it up.

[Binnatics]

But at least it's somewhat better than having every bad guy in the game aware of your location before you even come over the horizon.

That's for sure ;) I think FC3 does a good job in AI-player awareness compared to FC2 :)

[Art Blade]

not happened to me yet.. if it does, I'll be headed towards some of those trials..  :-()

[mandru]

@ What Art said -  Yeah.  Oh Yeah!  >:D

[PZ]

That's for sure ;) I think FC3 does a good job in AI-player awareness compared to FC2 :)

Absolutely  :-X

[Art Blade]

agree.. and unawareness, too  :-D

[Jim di Griz]

Even at 730 Binn, that's a great score  :-X which particular trial was that?

[fragger]

Yes, it is :-X

I like some of the trials. There's one where it switches weapons on you every couple of shots, going through a large range of guns including a bow and arrow. And one where you have to shoot down choppers with an RPG. One of the toughest ones to score on I think is one where all you can do is chuck hand grenades. Please tell me that wasn't the one where you scored 730 Binn, or I'll be insanely jealous (I think I only scored about 100 on that one...) :-()

[fragger]

Speaking of glitches, I have noticed another one. Well, I didn't actually "notice" it, the game kind of bitch-slapped me across the face with it - and it's not a glitch, it's a truly inspired piece of boneheaded programming. We'll call it an "applied glitch":

I have had a few hangs since I started playing, about half a dozen altogether. That's not the problem, annoying as it is, and considering that I've probably put in a couple of hundred hours playing, it's not too bad. Even good old FC2 used to hang on me once in a blue moon. BUT... No matter how many times I manually save, or no matter how many times the game autosaves, when the program hangs and I have to get out via Task Manager and then reload it, none of those saves are remembered - instead the game will only reload from wherever the saves were at when I last exited the game normally. So it appears that whenever a save is made, manually or automatically, the saved game doesn't actually get written to the HD or the cloud or wherever until you exit the game (via the menu). Apparently it just gets stored internally somewhere until you exit.

That's just spectacularly dumb, not to mention damned annoying when you've just put in several hours collecting relics and liberating outposts and stuff, diligently saving along the way, then have to do it all over again after a program crash :D I thought one of the main purposes of a save function was to ensure that you didn't lose everything prior to the save in the event of just such an occurrence ???? So it appears that if I want to be absolutely sure that all my efforts aren't in vain, and since I never know when a hang might happen, I'll have to save and exit the game, then reload it, just in case there's a crash and all my "saves" for that session become "losts".

Er, yeah, sure, okay, I don't mind doing that every freaking time I want to save... >:((

[Art Blade]

Fragger, not sure if there is still hope: The game will put you to either your nearest safehouse or radio tower no matter where you saved before you exited. Only during the game, for some reason, it might, if not always, put you exactly where you manually saved or where you died, until you quit and exit. Then that savegame will turn into a "nearest safehouse or radio tower" relative to your last position. However, it will keep your inventory, including relics. So maybe it appeared to be lost but if you check closely you should find out that you didn't lose anything but your position. Go test it :)

[Binnatics]

Fragger, not sure if there is still hope: The game will put you to either your nearest safehouse or radio tower no matter where you saved before you exited. Only during the game, for some reason, it might, if not always, put you exactly where you manually saved or where you died, until you quit and exit. Then that savegame will turn into a "nearest safehouse or radio tower" relative to your last position. However, it will keep your inventory, including relics. So maybe it appeared to be lost but if you check closely you should find out that you didn't lose anything but your position. Go test it :)

That is not entirely true, I guess. Sometimes I get a "in the middle of nowhere" savepoint the next day I play, so sometimes the game DOES remember what I wanted to save. On other occasions the game finds it time to pop me back into a savehouse or radiotower no matter what I was doing, while I'm still in the game. Maybe that has to do with the definition of insanity; don't go on doing the same thing over and over again thinking that you will manage eventually :-D
Anyway, I've still not found a good logic behind the saving behaviour. What you tell, Fragger, is extremely horrible. I thought that might have to do with this "cloud" thing, but on the other hand the game allows you to play off line so it would at least be possible to save off line as well. Weird :-\\

About that challenge: no, it was not the one with the grenades. That one is indeed extremely hard. I managed to get 455 if I'm right. The one I referred to is "dashing assault". My current 'real' highscore is 855 :-() My glitched highscore is 2025 >:D

[PZ]

Yes, there is something strange with the way the game chooses to save at time.  I was doing a tower and fell 3 times (died).  On the third reload I was in a liberated outpost rather than at the base of the tower.

[fragger]

I'm not sure if my post was properly read and/or understood, or maybe I didn't make myself clear enough. Allow me to try again :-()

This is part of what I wrote:

So it appears that whenever a save is made, manually or automatically, the saved game doesn't actually get written to the HD or the cloud or wherever until you exit the game (via the menu). Apparently it just gets stored internally somewhere until you exit.

In other words, all saves made during a given gaming session are temporary and are lost in the event of a program hang because no saves are actually "finalised" until the game is properly exited via the menu. When a hang takes place, all the saves for that aborted session simply disappear because they don't get a chance to be written, because a legal exit from the game has not been reached. Saves are merely temporary until you close the gaming session - then they become finalised (actually written somewhere and no longer stored internally). So when the game is reloaded after a hang, the only saved games available are the ones that were finalised the last time the game was exited properly, i.e. via the menu.

It's like if you're walking to the bank to deposit money that's in your wallet, but you lose the wallet before you get to the bank. That money doesn't get saved and if you view your account statement, you'll only see what money went into your account the last time you did get the wallet to the bank.

I was playing with the specific purpose of collecting relics and loot chests and making sure I did plenty of saves, but on two occasions now after program hangs I've reloaded the game to find that all the chests and relics I'd collected during the aborted session were back on the map, and any outposts I'd liberated were back in enemy hands. I had to do everything I'd done during the aborted session all over again. And believe me, after having to redo everything that took me several hours to do - twice - I definitely noticed that something was amiss :-()

I stress again that this only happens when the game is reloaded after a hang, not after a normal program exit. Then the saves are written and they w@&k just fine.

[PZ]

That's good to know fragger  :-X

I've only experienced one issue on the PC, and that was after I installed the latest nVidia drivers.  Other than that, I've not had any software issues even though I've installed mods  >:D

[Jim di Griz]

That is annoying that the manual save appears to be no more than a save to cache/clipboard function and not validated until you perform an exit to menu. Although I'm not sure in how far the two operating systems differ, but my lady wife tells me that she never exits to main menu on the PS3 version, just does the save and exits via the PS button and her save is good; ie: it recalls everything done - so that's not necessarily true about the save functionality, at least not on the PS3.

In view of the amount of system crashes you're experiencing, it might be worthwhile checking your PC/network environment to stop that happening.

[Art Blade]

Wow.. I've had a few crashes but I've never really missed anything after reloading. I don't understand the logic behind the savegame mechanics.

[fragger]

I haven't nailed it down for sure, but it's looking like the hangs are happening whenever I'm interacting with the vending machines. Not every time I interact with one of course, but as far as I recall that's when it does happen. I do know already that if I try to sell any more than about six single things in a row it will freeze.

Maybe I should bite the bullet and let the 1.03 and 1.04 patches download and see if it helps (I'm still on 1.02). When I have a couple of hours to spare I'll try it... My net speed is never great but at this time of the year, living as I do in an area surrounded by resort towns, everyone and his dog arrives from the cities for their end-of-year vacations and of course they all bring their lappies, tablets and smartphones with them to clog up the local bandwidth and reduce the access speed to a crawl - I'm averaging around 3.5 KB/S right now. Flipping blow-ins... :-()

@Jim, that's also a possibility, I will look into that. However, I only ever play offline and there are times when I can play the game for hours and hours (I had it going for 10 hours once without a hiccup), but just now it hung again after only about half an hour (sigh - another Wanted Dead mission I'll have to do over - and I pulled it off really well this time...)

[Art Blade]

This game is so great if you ignore all those great let-downs.

[fragger]

 ^-^ Amen

[JRD]

In other words, all saves made during a given gaming session are temporary and are lost in the event of a program hang because no saves are actually "finalised" until the game is properly exited via the menu. When a hang takes place, all the saves for that aborted session simply disappear because they don't get a chance to be written, because a legal exit from the game has not been reached. Saves are merely temporary until you close the gaming session - then they become finalised (actually written somewhere and no longer stored internally). So when the game is reloaded after a hang, the only saved games available are the ones that were finalised the last time the game was exited properly, i.e. via the menu.

Not sure if it is entirely true, fragger. I've only experienced one hang event in FC3 so far. Iwas playing for three hours in a row and stopped by a recently liberated outpost to sell stuff. I realised I had way too many unnecessary animal skins with me and decided to get rid of them. Since there's no "quick sell" button to sell items you can use for crafting I had to go one by one, which caused the game to froze. I had to start the task manager and force close the game.

I may be wrong, but I think the Uplay screen was still on and running when I shot FC3 down... that's something to keep in mind!

When I loaded my latest save game I was still into the outpost, right in front of the vending/selling machine. Some of my latest actions wasn't saved though. I had a memory card uncollected and a couple chests unlooted (is this a word?  ???? ). If your theory was entirely correct, then I'd have lost three hours worth of gaming, which  I haven't.

Maybe it has someting to do with your connection speed. After I finish the game I always see the Uplay screen "synchronizing" my savegames. I believe it does stores game save files while you play but when you have a limited connection speed it may stores only the latest save file and upload it to the cloud only once, when you close the game via the menu. In case of a hang, there's no time for a synch!  ????

[Binnatics]

I once had an odd experience with this 'synchronizing' achievements and stats etc. It "wasn't possible to match cloud and local data" and the game (Uplay) prompted me to "play anyway". I did that, and the game tried to synchronize again which of course didn't w@&k :D
Then I thought; I'm fucked. I've fallen between wall and ship and there's no way to get it back on track :-\\

Desperate I pressed "play game" again and suddenly it worked ::)

What I'm trying to say is that I don't think an internet connection is needed to properly save progress. I get the 'wallet to bank' idea and I think that must be what's happening. Maybe that's designed for this cloud saving as is happening everytime I quit the game but is indeed uselesly making life hard for ppl with bad connection.

Still, this hanging in the vending machine is a weird glitch. Never happened to me. A patch might indeed save the problem ????

[Art Blade]

A patch might indeed save the problem ????

Let's hope not, better not save but solve that problem..  :-D

[Binnatics]

Oops :-[ Might have even thought I did that on purpose

[durian]