First "bug" encountered today...

[PZ]

... was doing an assassination mission - heavy fighting on the rooftops.  The opposition managed to knock me off the roof and I fell into a building (rather than simply falling to the street)!  This might not sound like much if you haven't played the game, but you cannot go into most buildings.

Here I was, instructed to follow a target (who was running away) and I'm trapped inside.  :D The interesting thing is that I could see some of the nearby building textures, while other parts were transparent allowing me to see through the walls into the street (I just couldn't get through the invisible walls).  It was like I was trapped within a mesh and the textures no longer covered it.  The only other time I have experienced anything like this is falling through the map in FC2.

[Art Blade]

That's something that happens sometimes. I fell through a roof of building in Oblivion once, and got trapped inside. I also could see through the walls... it's a matter of level design, of meshes not sealed properly.

[Dweller_Benthos]

...and seeing through the walls is pretty common, most stuff made in 3D games is "one-sided", IOW, the texture only appears when you look at it from a certain direction. This saves memory & processing time, why generate the other side if you can only see one side at a time?  Way back in the days of the original DOOM, this was called HOM for hall of mirrors, where a hole in the map would show up quite noticeably as a weird repeating mirror effect, even if there was a wall on the "other side" that you should be able to see the back of. Most things are made so that the collision mesh that keeps you from walking through walls is also one sided, but sometimes not, which is what PZ experienced, the collision mesh didn't let you walk through the wall that was essentially invisible.

[fragger]

Ah yes, I remember the Hall of Mirrors effect, it was quite disconcerting. There was a level in Duke Nukem where that could happen, too. Can't remember where, of course, but there was a wall junction somewhere that you could step through and get that effect. You could step back out of it, though, if you could find your way out again past all the flashing magic mirrors.

Also, playing the original Tomb Raider once, I somehow managed to get Lara outside the map. She rapidly dwindled away from me until she was left hanging in a black limbo in the distance, pointy conical breasts still heaving. Looked kinda weird - on both counts (or should I say on all three counts) ;)

[Art Blade]

lol  ;D ;D ;D

[spaceboy]

I fell through the AC2 map to water below one time (under the map but in water).  The extra problem with this in AC2 is that you have no way to kill yourself, so you have to quit the game.

Funny stuff on the Doom and Duke stories, and interesting input on textures etc.

A guard's arm got glitched on AC2 I killed him and as he slid down the roof his arm got "caught" on the edge of the roof - he just hung there dead from one arm.  I left him as a notice to all other guards to watch out for me lol.

[Art Blade]

hehe, "watch out, or I'll hang you by the arm!"  ;D

[PZ]

I enjoy the game mechanics regarding the dead bodies - I often see a guard slip off the roof while I'm looting his body - can hear the citizens buzzing in horror below, yet my looting of the now absent body continues.  ;D

It is also fun to throw bodies off the roof and see what happens in the street below.

[Art Blade]

I had suffered from one glitch today (so far, the only one). In the end game, where you have to enter that retunda to beat (literally) the pope, he was not there. The red mark on the minimap was there, though. I jumped into that retunda, and couldn't get out again, the surrounding walls not being climbable, I was stuck. I did find a floating object that looked a little like a key, or some decoration, probably it was the only bit of the pope that materialised there. Since I couldn't kill myself, I decided to quit and restart, and then the pope was there. Made me a little nervous, then, thinking I had to replay the entire sequence... but it was alright after the restart.

[PZ]

Interesting - I've never encountered anything like that on the console, but I've not finished the game on the PC yet.

[fragger]

You beat up the pope, huh? Did he get "insensed" by that? ;D

[Art Blade]

I beg your pardon? I know "incensed" but I still don't get it...

[fragger]

Like when there's a papal procession at the Vatican, and a couple of guys up front are swinging those incense burners from side to side, and to become "incensed", meaning to get very cranky.

I think I better quit while I'm behind...

Sorry mate, it was a ill-thought-out attempt at humour, compounded by a typo... Time for me to shut up already and play some violent computer game, before you get incensed with me ::)

[Art Blade]

don't worry, and thanks for the info :) Didn't know that those things were called that, but now I do  :)

[PZ]

**SPOILER**

Yes, the Pope was quite annoyed that Ezio beats him to a pulp, but it's OK - the Pope is Rodrigo Borgia, the bad guy you've been battling throughout the entire game.  In fact, he freely claims that the only reason he became Pope was to discover the vault where he believes God resides (he wants power and plans to take it from God).  Yes, that fool thinks that God lives in a cave beneath the Vatican.

[Art Blade]

At least he didn't get to the vault -- I beat him to it  ;)

[PZ]

I've played that ending scene at least 6-8 times now, and have become quite adept at hand-to-hand combat.  (In fact, during the time when I watched my father and brothers hanged and the old thief says "You'd better run, boy... and fast" I stayed and did battle with the brutes and other guards even though I was unarmed - in the end I killed them all and never needed to run at all.)

Back to the story, as I was beating the Pope to a pulp and had him in a grab hold while pummeling his face and gut he said "You are right to fear me boy..."  I had a good laugh with that scripted line.

[Art Blade]

hahaha, I don't know if during my only playthrough I heard myself saying that to the pope, and it didn't occur to me to grab him. I just wanted to punch his lights out quickly while he stumbled backwards trying to avoid all the beating I gave him  :)

[mandru]

I just got my first concerning glitch in AC2.  I completed the Assassins tomb run where the empty cathedral is being refurbished and you have to climb through scaffolding and into the pinnacle at the top of the dome.  The seal was my second one collected which was the one for the female assassin that poisoned Alexander the Great.

After getting the seal and out of the cathedral which was a longer story than it should have been because I missed the fact that a window opened right there by the sarcophagus for escape (it was possibly omitted in the cut scene when gaining the seal and there is no other way out  ) I hightailed it for the Sanctuary back at the family villa to install it.

Arriving at the proper place to plug the seal in it was showing as already collected and the corresponding lock on Altair's tomb was retracted.  There was no animation showing the corresponding unlock scene  but quick check in my inventory shows that I'm still carrying the seal on me.

It should be OK but I do hope that this doesn't come back to bite me.   :(

[PZ]

Sorry to hear about your issue, but you're probably going to be OK as long as the lock retracted.  The things you carry do not possess weight, so even it you have it on your person, it should not be problematic - that is unless the program expects your inventory to be empty of these objects.

I've never experienced any problem, but I never check my inventory either, so if I did have this issue, I'd not have known about it.  As to the escape route - there is always a flashing prompt once you collect the seal.  the method of escape varies each time, but is always close to the sarcophagus.

[mandru]

OK, it sorted itself out.   ^-^

When I went back into the game after posting here about the bug I went back down into the Sanctuary and the poison lock was back in place.  I was able to use the seal as intended, the cut scene played as the lock retracted and everything is back on track. 8)

I have picked up another seal by going through the soldier populated library (no glitch this time) and as to Assassin Tombs exits are "always close to the sarcophagus".  That's a good thing to know.   :-X

[PZ]

I'm glad it worked out  :-X

I found the first three tomb missions the most fun, because you need to figure out the path, but can take your time.  However, the last three become increasingly more difficult because in addition to discovering the path, you'll need to achieve your goal within a specific amount of time.  Also, you'll need to use different techniques of jumping, which can be a challenge on the PC (I recall Art had a bit of trouble in one of the tomb missions).  However, you might get lucky like I did - the most difficult one only took me a couple of tries (I think I accidentally hit the right combination of key strokes/mouse movements  :-())

[Art Blade]

Indeed, I had problems with fixed camera positions that prevented me from finding the right spot to jump and on top I had to look at my avatar from the side at one point while he needed to jump straight -- so I had to be careful not to steer to the right as the camera angle suggested but straight which looked like I wanted to smash through a wall. Stuff like that. And I fell often because of that.

[mandru]

Yeah, I've encountered some of those situations where the camera switches over to automatic views like when you are in a narrow tight space so the camera can't get behind you or when a mob of soldiers trap you against a wall with an overhang and all you can see is your feet so that any direction you try to escape to only results in driving you deeper against the wall.

Climbing a viewpoint tower and hearing that voice "Get down!  Citizens are not allowed up here!" (it's funny the archers even say that when they are down on ground level, so there's another glitch  ;D ) is also a whole lot of fun when you can't crank your field of view around enough to see which way you need to scuttle to move to safety.

The really frustrating part of that is that I've tried switching over to the first person camera view in those situations but the FP point of view is disabled.  ???

What's the point of even having the FP POV option at all if it can be shut off (outside of cut scenes) when it is needed most?  ::)

[PZ]

What's the point of even having the FP POV option at all if it can be shut off (outside of cut scenes) when it is needed most?  ::)

None at all - I've never used FP view because it is not useful for anything other than taking pristine screen captures.