Topic: [Fixed - persists in 3.70] Inconsistent Snow Penalties for Certain Animals?  (Read 4654 times)


Lithopian11

« on: October 05, 2021, 09:13:47 PM »
The patch notes for 3.70 mentioned that certain animals had reduced snow movement penalties applied to them. I'm not really seeing this, however, at least not consistently. I had a hare get tired out completely after chasing it in knee deep snow in about 20 seconds. I was on skis. Then I had another hare outrun me for a very long time in thigh deep snow. (I ended up giving up). The speed in which it became tired seemed quite similar to the speed without snow. I also just came upon a lynx that was already breathless when I found it in thigh deep snow (I don't believe it had heard me prior to me seeing it for the first time). I thought lynxes had a resistance to snow penalties, but perhaps the resistance isn't as high as I was guessing. Is this intended behavior, and I'm just not used to the new snow penalty system, or is there a problem here? Has anyone else noticed anything unexpected with the way animals tire in snow? There was no crust in any of these encounters.

I also noticed my dogs were becoming fatigued following me on skis in less than thigh deep snow, but ever since the snow has become more than thigh deep, they can follow me just fine, without tiring.

This post was largely copied and pasted from my post on the Steam forums for quickness; I wanted to post it here as well since I wasn't sure how often those are checked (hope that's allowed! :) ).

This character was created in 3.63. I'm on Windows 10 20H2.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2021, 11:45:39 AM by Sami »

Sami

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« Reply #1 on: November 02, 2021, 11:45:12 AM »
This was been checked thoroughly and indeed we found something to tweak and fix.
The snow movement penalties itself were working flawlessly when it comes to the speed an animal can move in the deep snow.
However, there were few faulty calculations in fatigue rate which animals suffer when moving the snow. This could result either in animals tiring too easily, or too little. The issue appears on border areas of certain snow depths, so that's why you have rightly noticed the dogs not tiring in the deepest snow.
In most cases the snow penalty system is working as it should, but some oddities may be witnessed - as you did.

It should be noted that animals which are adapted to moving in the snow can and will still get tired. Even if a hare would run on solid surface in the summertime, it will eventually tire out if it can't rest every now and then. This can naturally happen on snowy surface as well, even though hares are adapted to moving in the snow. The same goes for the lynx too. So we don't actually know what tired that lynx out. It could have been this issue, or the lynx might have been running after the game just a little earlier. For the many reasons this glitch isn't easy to spot, and wasn't easy to discover from the code either.
But it's great that you paid attention to this. We've found the issue and the snow related fatigue accumulation issues will be fixed in the next patch.

Fixed - persists in 3.70.
- Sami | UnReal World creator