Tracking bleeding animals

[Hackfleisch]

Ah that must've been it, I went back inside Trapper's Cabin to wait out the storm.

[Thrasador]

17 minutes ago, Hackfleisch said:

Ah that must've been it, I went back inside Trapper's Cabin to wait out the storm.

I typically avoid this by staying outside till the animal dies....I know you said a blizzard rolled in making that pretty much impossible....unless you lit a fire in a cave or something and then passed time....

When I mentioned rest/pass time, I meant after entering a building it's bad. Apparently entering a building causes the bug, and then most people rest or pass time once they enter the building, and then they come out and the animal is alive and well....

So it's best to try to rest or pass time outside to avoid the whole issue...or chop wood, repair clothes, etc....

Edited August 29, 2017 by Thrasador

[WanderingPalm]

4 hours ago, Thrasador said:

I typically avoid this by staying outside till the animal dies....I know you said a blizzard rolled in making that pretty much impossible....unless you lit a fire in a cave or something and then passed time....

When I mentioned rest/pass time, I meant after entering a building it's bad. Apparently entering a building causes the bug, and then most people rest or pass time once they enter the building, and then they come out and the animal is alive and well....

So it's best to try to rest or pass time outside to avoid the whole issue...or chop wood, repair clothes, etc....

Ugh, how obnoxious. I remember reading about this bug back in the day, but had just assumed it had been long since patched. Then when I ran into a wolf I stabbed in the face on three separate occasions, I just assumed I didn't stab him hard enough the first two times... or that he was invincible. Well, that at least explains why he kept coming right back for more stabbin'.

Also, I friggen' hate these blood spots popping into existence at my feet. It looks awful and destroys my immersion.

[Thrasador]

53 minutes ago, WanderingPalm said:

Ugh, how obnoxious. I remember reading about this bug back in the day, but had just assumed it had been long since patched. Then when I ran into a wolf I stabbed in the face on three separate occasions, I just assumed I didn't stab him hard enough the first two times... or that he was invincible. Well, that at least explains why he kept coming right back for more stabbin'.

Also, I friggen' hate these blood spots popping into existence at my feet. It looks awful and destroys my immersion.

I hope you remain active in the forums @WanderingPalm, so far I haven't disagreed with anything you have said, lol.

[WanderingPalm]

19 hours ago, Thrasador said:

I hope you remain active in the forums @WanderingPalm, so far I haven't disagreed with anything you have said, lol.

Haha, it's only a matter of time until I say something stupid, though...

[Thrasador]

3 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

Haha, it's only a matter of time until I say something stupid, though...

That's the spirit! 

[TROY]

On 8/29/2017 at 5:17 AM, Mroz4k said:

 And also, the idea that they go up slopes you cant climb is wrong - the animals follow the same physics as the player, they will not go up something you cant walk as well. 

 

 

Huh. I guess nobody told this guy that information. Shouldnt run yer mouth about stuff you arent sure of, just to try to contradict things other people say.  Just to the right of center, in this pic, theres a wolf up on those rocks. There is NO WAY to get on those rocks.

[JAFO]

7 minutes ago, TROY said:

I guess nobody told this guy that information. Shouldnt run yer mouth about stuff you arent sure of, just to try to contradict things other people say.

Seconded.. I've seen both wolves and deer run up slopes that I couldn't go up after them.. 

[Thrasador]

3 hours ago, JAFO said:

Seconded.. I've seen both wolves and deer run up slopes that I couldn't go up after them.. 

He also won't just accept the fact that they changed the way blood drops appear now since Wintermute and they didn't tell us because they never wrote a change log for Wintermute. 

I'm sure this was one of the "too many to list them all" changes....

So far every other person in the thread has agreed that the blood drops are now appearing a few at a time, and it's NOT just me...

He thinks it's because of my graphics settings or my graphics card even though I have an Nvidia 980M with everything on maximum and all the sliders maxed out....

Did he ever come back and say...."oops my bad?"

Well I have a list for that....

[Mike in GA]

I noticed this for the first time yesterday and I was tracking by the blood spots. I'm playing on medium level graphics. The spots would appear two or three at a time and I had to basically walk up to the last visible spot before the next batch would show up. This was not the case I was having pre-wintermute. Tracking is a much slower process than before with the magic blood spots appearing. If the animal changes direction I have to move about until they spots start appearing again. 

[Thrasador]

20 minutes ago, Mike in GA said:

I noticed this for the first time yesterday and I was tracking by the blood spots. I'm playing on medium level graphics. The spots would appear two or three at a time and I had to basically walk up to the last visible spot before the next batch would show up. This was not the case I was having pre-wintermute. Tracking is a much slower process than before with the magic blood spots appearing. If the animal changes direction I have to move about until they spots start appearing again. 

Thanks for yet another confirmation of this new mechanic, Mike!

I appreciate it!

[godhelpme89]

Same on consoles with blood only appearing a few drops at a time. Occasionally they just stop, which is annoying. Did the animal apply a bandage?

On a related note they don't appear at all if the game crashes. I tracked and harvested a wolf last night and when I went inside a trailer the game crashed. Reloaded at the save just after being mauled by the wolf and there were no tracks.

[Thrasador]

6 hours ago, godhelpme89 said:

Same on consoles with blood only appearing a few drops at a time. Occasionally they just stop, which is annoying. Did the animal apply a bandage?

On a related note they don't appear at all if the game crashes. I tracked and harvested a wolf last night and when I went inside a trailer the game crashed. Reloaded at the save just after being mauled by the wolf and there were no tracks.

Awesome....I wonder if they are totally gone, or if you were expected to go back to where they started to make them all gradually appear over again....

They just stop sometimes for me too...I just back up and keep walking over them and turning around until they start going again....

I find the whole thing pretty tedious in general....

The only bit this helps with, is in places where animals criss-cross over their own tracks.....previously that part was very confusing and it could be hard to tell which way to go to continue the trail....

Now the trail only continues if you are following it the right way...

[TROY]

Here's another better photo that shows what I'm referencing even better than the wolf on the rocks. This is nearly a sheer hill, it's the edge of the map, you cant climb it any higher than where im standing even if the slope allowed, its a "no-go" zone for players.  There is no way to get on it from either side, or above, and regardless, I watched the deer run up it, and then had to wait for him to come back to take the pic.  So, animals CAN AND DO go places that a player can't follow, and they die there as well. 

[WanderingPalm]

On 9/5/2017 at 4:33 PM, TROY said:

Here's another better photo that shows what I'm referencing even better than the wolf on the rocks. This is nearly a sheer hill, it's the edge of the map, you cant climb it any higher than where im standing even if the slope allowed, its a "no-go" zone for players.  There is no way to get on it from either side, or above, and regardless, I watched the deer run up it, and then had to wait for him to come back to take the pic.  So, animals CAN AND DO go places that a player can't follow, and they die there as well. 

Ugh, well, it is nice to have proof of what I always suspected, but it does irritate me. I understand the animals being able to go places I can't under normal circumstances-- I just attribute it to their having four legs and being better able to maintain their balance --but when they're bleeding to death? They should be slowing down, running in a single direction (away from the thing that stabbed them), only dodging around obstacles as they are encountered, and avoiding difficult to climb terrain. Instead, we get these spastically running animals that pivot back on their own paths, run directly back at and through the player, climb ridiculous mountains, and generally act completely counter to what is expected.

I didn't mind the strange antics as much when I could actually follow the blood trail, but with this new blood trail mechanic, it just adds insult to injury. Now I can't find the trail unless I can properly anticipate its direction changes-- which make no sense.

Since changing the AI of the animals would likely be a monumental task for the devs, perhaps we could just back to the visible blood trails and suspend our disbelief of the animals' dying antics?

On a side note, it's always cracked me up seeing deer standing on a sharp incline, just rotated to have their feet flat on the ground. Sometimes you can see deer sticking out at near 90 degree angles.

[Thrasador]

1 hour ago, WanderingPalm said:

Ugh, well, it is nice to have proof of what I always suspected, but it does irritate me. I understand the animals being able to go places I can't under normal circumstances-- I just attribute it to their having four legs and being better able to maintain their balance --but when they're bleeding to death? They should be slowing down, running in a single direction (away from the thing that stabbed them), only dodging around obstacles as they are encountered, and avoiding difficult to climb terrain. Instead, we get these spastically running animals that pivot back on their own paths, run directly back at and through the player, climb ridiculous mountains, and generally act completely counter to what is expected.

I didn't mind the strange antics as much when I could actually follow the blood trail, but with this new blood trail mechanic, it just adds insult to injury. Now I can't find the trail unless I can properly anticipate its direction changes-- which make no sense.

Since changing the AI of the animals would likely be a monumental task for the devs, perhaps we could just back to the visible blood trails and suspend our disbelief of the animals' dying antics?

On a side note, it's always cracked me up seeing deer standing on a sharp incline, just rotated to have their feet flat on the ground. Sometimes you can see deer sticking out at near 90 degree angles.

I agree the new "appear as you go: blood trail mechanic mixed with poor animal pathing is fail. If they wanted to add the new blood trail mechanic, they should have fixed injured animal pathing beforehand. This was another poorly planned change on their part.

I don't understand why they make constant little changes to everything....like this blood trail thing, and hiding the scent bars on the HUD, but they won't spend time actually improving things we want improved like being able to craft a hat.

It's like they complain about not having enough time to program all our ideas, but they spend a tremendous amount of time reprogramming things that were fine in the first place....

How many times have they rebuilt the whole HUD/UI from scratch since the game started development?

Look at all these new changes we made! Yeah, we didn't ask for any of those changes.....thanks anyways....

It's just poor use of programming time to constantly tweak things already in the game, instead of adding actual new ideas some people have been requesting for years now. How many more times are they going to change the HUD? Is it finished yet?

To be honest they never even actually ever listed all the changes that occured with Wintermute. We have been figuring the changes out on our own for the last month. They never released a change log for Wintermute, and if you go check the Master Change Log thread under News and Updates for August 1st it says something like "too many changes to list them all." Which isn't particularly helpful....

Holy crap I complain A LOT. I really don't mean to complain so much, but it's clear a lot of things are frustrating me with the game. I just want to see more stuff added, like more clothes crafting, and moose, and revisiting cured hides not weighing less, and then lowering crafted clothing weights (because some of them are ridiculous and don't make sense like rabbit mittens). Those changes are much more important to me than hiding the scent bars after a few seconds, and changing blood drops....

Edited September 8, 2017 by Thrasador

[Timber Wolf]

I've really never bothered following the blood trails, because I found it to be easier just to hang out somewhere warm and wait for the animal to bleed out.  Then go outside and find the carcass, which is sometimes close to the spot where it was wounded.

However, this thread got my attention and I had to take a look for myself.  So, I beat the crap out of a wolf with my hatchet to see what would happen.  Right after the fight, all that could be seen was the initial blood splatter from the fight.  Then I had to move forward to start seeing the blood trail.  I could move forward and backward and forward again and watch the blood trail appear, disappear and then reappear - in the same spot.  I could move sideways and have the same thing happen.  This means the blood trails are only visible in a small radius around the character. 

I wonder if this change is connected to the implementation of the scent mechanic, which also functions in relation to a radius around the character.  It might be an unintended byproduct and could probably be logged as a bug.

 

[JAFO]

4 hours ago, Timber Wolf said:

I wonder if this change is connected to the implementation of the scent mechanic, which also functions in relation to a radius around the character.  It might be an unintended byproduct and could probably be logged as a bug.

I doubt they're connected.. after all, the scent radius is much bigger than the blood-spotting radius.. but agree it should be flagged as a bug, if only to draw their attention to this badly-done and annoying mechanic.

Edited September 9, 2017 by JAFO

[Timber Wolf]

2 minutes ago, JAFO said:

I doubt they're connected.. after all, the scent radius is much bigger than the blood-spotting radius..

The size of the radius is irrelevant, the usage of a radius for both mechanics is what matters.

[JAFO]

1 hour ago, Timber Wolf said:

The size of the radius is irrelevant, the usage of a radius for both mechanics is what matters.

Fair point.. but the game already uses radii in all kinds of ways.. visual detection, noise detection, and more.

[Fluxion]

Deer seem to always survive a shot that's not critical. Bear and Wolves can always be found later by mapping from a high vantage point or by crows whether you go inside or not. Shooting a bear face-on, in the neck which is higher than the face, gives you a very high chance of a critical hit. HOWEVER your adrenalin will go through the roof and you will need nerves of steel. Always be crouched too for better stability and he won't see you as quick. And stay close to rocks etc it seems to work as cover.

[Guest Marcurios]

wolves also just dissapear at times, i shot one in the belly followed it for quite a while, didn't lose sight of it til it started limping, then i looked away just for one second to pick up 2 sticks, and when i looked up it was gone completely, it limped slowly, then i picked up the bloodtrail and followed it, it suggested that in the time that i had picked up the 2 sticks, it walked like more then a mile at a snails pace cause it limped and totally outran me which ofcourse isn't possible, then the trail just stopped and the wolf was nowhere to be found.

seems to me that the game is surely bugged there..

[devamadhu]

On 8/26/2017 at 6:23 PM, WanderingPalm said:

How do you pass time without putting down your bedroll? Or do you whip out your roll, throw it on the ground, and then pass time on it for the hour? And does this actually keep them from dying farther away from you --like, do they stop moving while you pass time, so are just dead in the spot you last saw them when you come out of it? Because that would be amazing and I definitely need to start doing this if that's how it works!

Yup, they pop into existence a couple of dots at a time for me, too. It makes tracking incredibly difficult because the dots don't seem to exist at all from a few steps away. They also sometimes just... stop. Even when the creature bleeds out and dies elsewhere. I've also noticed that the blood spots are less red-colored now. They look more like black splats, even when fresh. Anyone else seeing that, too? Oh, and I'm on PS4-- maybe the console versions have a lower draw distance on blood?

 

But yeah, absolutely be on the lookout for crows circling your kill! I thought I'd lost the wolf I'd killed, but two days later I saw crows circling somewhere they never had before, and found my kill (in the tall grass right where I'd apparently walked by it a dozen times before....). So crows are now my best friend. XD

This exact same thing happens to me too. My laptop is decent, but the game runs much better with low quality graphics, so I suspect it's a graphics/draw distance issue for me as well.

It's annoying to the point that I almost never bother with the blood trail anymore - I just let enough time pass and go looking for the dead animal. Most of the regions are contained to the point that it's easy enough to find the carcass. Forlorn Muskeg and Pleasant Valley have enough open space to make things extra challenging though.

[devamadhu]

On 8/5/2019 at 12:15 PM, Guest Marcurios said:

wolves also just dissapear at times, i shot one in the belly followed it for quite a while, didn't lose sight of it til it started limping, then i looked away just for one second to pick up 2 sticks, and when i looked up it was gone completely, it limped slowly, then i picked up the bloodtrail and followed it, it suggested that in the time that i had picked up the 2 sticks, it walked like more then a mile at a snails pace cause it limped and totally outran me which ofcourse isn't possible, then the trail just stopped and the wolf was nowhere to be found.

seems to me that the game is surely bugged there..

I saw a video recently (on these forums) which showed a wolf moving super fast when the player would look away for a moment. I wonder if it's a similar issue/bug.

[Jolan]

On 8/29/2017 at 5:17 AM, Mroz4k said:

he animals follow the same physics as the player, they will not go up something you cant walk as well

I've actually watched both deer and wolves "walk" up things I can't.  Its not as bad as it was ages ago, but it still happens.  Its actually funny because they keep the same animation they have on flat land.