One way of reproducing Prawn falling through terrain bug

ranmafan

Hi Unknown World devs,

So while I was jumping out of the Blood Kelp trench in a Prawn suit, a specific series of actions seemed to trigger my falling through the world. Here're the details as best as I can tell:

1) Prawn Suit: 2 drill arms, 2 storage modules, Depth Module, Jump Jet upgrades
2) Location: Blood Kelp trench - going up the side that has the entrance to the Ancient Fossil skull chamber. Lots of steep walls
3) What I did:
I made a large jump upwards, and was falling down towards the ground.
While I was falling, I opened my PDA to manage some beacons.
It appears that around the time my PDA was opening, I hit the ground and fell right through.
I managed to save myself with the jump jets by passing through the non-surfaced side to the normal terrain. (I had no grappling arm installed)

- It appears that something about opening the PDA or other interface at critical moments may cause the collision detection to fail. I will continue to attempt reproducing this bug to see if it's more consistent.

shiny

Has happened to me twice. First time just north of the Aurora, second time in the lost river. Second time I was just walking through the brine and slipped through a crack in the integrity of the ground.

Callmechook

Mainly you'll find this happens after the deployment of the Prawn from the Cyclops. By using the jump function as you do so you can negate the bug 99% of the time. The other times I've experienced it are after making a big jump into a completely new area. I suspect what's happening is that the coding isn't reading that the Prawn should land on a solid at these times for some reason. Either the deployment cut scene is causing the issue or it's a glitch in the transition from the falling graphics and the landing one.

Not being a Dev I don't know if it's possible but could the build for the moth be used to modify how the Prawn moves and write in code so that the Prawn walks on the surface? Clearly at some points for some reason the game isn't reading that the Prawn is no longer falling to the surface but has reached it. So the issue has to be a problem in telling the game that this is a solid not a liquid.

I would suggest maybe a change to the deployment, the arms from the Cyclops could extend to place the Prawn down and we would have to manoeuvre to a depth to allow this with maybe the Cyclops telling us we are now at a deployment depth or a mod in the way the Prawn falls could rectify the issue. Could we have some sort of landing gear written in that reacts to the surface as a solid? Or could some of the coding that makes the Cyclops react to the planet as a solid somehow be used to modify the Prawn's behaviour? Mine hits surfaces that haven't rendered yet so the build for that is getting that there's solids around and not going through them.

Since the jump option seems to be dealing with the issue the problem is def. in that transition area. The Prawn doesn't seem to like the free fall situation and can't tell when it hits a solid. So if we took out the free fall and substituted a manned deployment from the Cyclops and a build that uses a similar movement to the one on the Glide and the Moth then it might well clear this up. Making a controlled-ish descent when jumping will stop you going through the floor so if nothing else I hope that information will be of help to someone. In a weeks worth (game time) of playing I've lost one Prawn, (before I knew of this issue) and had to reload at most a couple of times so although not a fix using jump is definitely addressing the issue to some extent and might help in being able to get a permanent fix.

This all might be something that the Dev's are already aware of but I thought it didn't hurt to post incase it a case of new eyes new perspective and that it might be something to consider. I'll apologise to everyone now for this long post but I wanted to explain what I've found in playing so that the right people get the information (That's you Lukas If nothing else this is a minor issue in a stunning game and nothing that really gives me any issues now so if this post helps you also overcome the bug then it was worth writing.

Happy playing guys. I'm off to face the Sea Dragon (Gulp) See you all if I make it out alive