news: immortal ghost alien goes off the grid and becomes invisible!

[kurja]

Yes, what the subject line says. Spooky Shit #2: I had this alien sitting in one square for half dozen turns, untargettable and somehow between the squares, projectiles and knives whizzed right through, and the dozen grenades at it's feet didn't work any better to make it fall down or stop shooting back - untill it became invisible and started walking around, only noticeable by the energy weapon shots from here and there....

[kurja]

events log

[kurja]

no comments?

I put this in tracker https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3533933&group_id=157793&atid=805242

[Mattn]

thanks for the report - but without a steps-to-reproduce we can't really fix the bug.

is this always happening to you on this map? does it always happen under some special circumstances?

[kurja]

This has happened to me only this once, so no, I don't know how to reproduce it :/

[Bonbadil]

I had the same problem on the same map when I played with the stable 2.4. But only once, I don't know how to reproduce it. I managed to kill the ghost with a plasma grenade launcher salvo when I spotted where the shoots came from.

[DarkRain]

I found this bug recently, in my case the alien - a hovernet - was off the grid since the beginning of battle (dam map, it spawned in sight of my soldiers - already off-grid) and it became invisible as soon as the alien turn started (presumably when it started moving)
But there's more, as has been reported having one of these might prevent the battle from ending, I killed it last (reaction fire) and the alien turn didn't end, then I killed the server from the console but the game refused to exit from battlescape! Very odd...

[H-Hour]

When you say it was "off grid", do you mean that it appeared outside of the outer boundaries of the map? Or that it didn't sit in the center of a grid on the map?

[Nokim]

When you say it was "off grid", do you mean that it appeared outside of the outer boundaries of the map? Or that it didn't sit in the center of a grid on the map?

In my case - not in center of grid cell on map. Looks like unfinished move animation.

[DarkRain]

It seemed to be stuck in the middle of two adjacent map cells and, as I said, it was spawned that way.

[kbs666]

This has happened to me several times. I cannot reproduce it consistently.

The first case the alien completely disappears but continues to move and fire. Reaction fire, AoE attacks and bleeding will usually do it in but not before it kills a bunch of my guys.

The second case the alien will appear to remain at the same location but is unhittable and eventually it becomes clear it is moving and acting as above.

In both cases the 'ghost' is preceeded by a turn where the alien is not drawn in a single cell on the map. This is noticeable by the odd behavior of the reticle when targeting it. It may not be relevant but for me it happens most on the bridge/junkyard map.

[Sandro]

Invisible aliens happen with significant frequency (say, about 1 in 30 games) in the "red lights and machinery" building area at the dam map. Not sure about exact location, though. In that case, they sometimes can be killed with the reaction fire.

[Mattn]

maybe the seed that is printed at game start can help us to reproduce this.

[H-Hour]

Invisible aliens happen with significant frequency (say, about 1 in 30 games) in the "red lights and machinery" building area at the dam map. Not sure about exact location, though. In that case, they sometimes can be killed with the reaction fire.

Does it always happen to an alien at the same location? Could be a mis-placed start position.

[Sandro]

No -- all 8 are normal from the beginning (all cases were in skirmish games), but sometimes one of them walks into that area and turns invisible.