Wolves/Deer bug. Update to ticket #192 (v1.38)

[Grax]

This was partially previously reported in ticket #192, which discussed a wolf eating "nothing" (ie: despawned deer). I have a bit more information to add to this. My intention was to wait for a wolf to kill a deer, then shoot the wolf, thereby getting both animal's meat.

The first bug occurred in "Hunter's Last stand", the bowl shaped depression right outside Alan's cave. A wolf was chasing a deer and the deer ran to the back of the bowl. When it got near to the rock wall, they both stopped moving. I approached and found the wolf standing still with the deer stuck in a "running" animation. They were actually intersecting each other. The wolf just stod stock still, ignoring my presence. The deer also ignored me, continuing in his running animation that was getting him nowhere. For the heck of it, I wondered if I could shoot both at once, so I aimd my rifle at the deer's flank just in front of where the two animals intersected (they were at right angles to each other). The bullet killed the deer, at which point the wolf came back to life and attacked me. My theory is that the curved rock wall of the bowl somehow confused the deer's "running away" programming to the point where the deer didn't know which direction to turn, so it stayed in one spot.

The other bugs I ran into are more closely related to ticket #192 (eating a despawned deer corpse). In trying to catch wolves that are chasing deer, I have had several bugs occur related to deer despawning. It appears that wolves are persistent and deer despawn a certain distance from the player (which is not good, btw).

The first bug was exactly as reported in ticket #192. That is to say, I was chasing a wolf that was chasing a deer. They went over a hill and out of my sight. When I finally caught up, I observed the wolf doing the "eating a deer animation", but there was no deer corpse.

The second bug was similar. This time when I caught up to the wolf, he wasn't doing the eating animation, but was simply standing still frozen like a statue, with no sign of the deer anywhere. My guess: The deer despawned and the wolf's programmming got "stuck". This happened on two different occasions in two different areas.

The third type is when the deer despawns and the wolf actually immediately goes back to normal behavior. This happened once.

Deer despawning has also happened to me when I'm trying to herd a deer toward a wolf. I get the deer to run in the right direction, but as soon as it turns a corner and is out of my sight, it despawns, which is quite frustrating.