Harshest instant death location I've seen... but then...?

[Ranzer]

I didn't know instant death locations were a thing until tonight.

I was looking for the prepper cache in ML when a blizzard started up, and I stumbled into the instant death shown in the video below (the video is recorded in a new Pilgrim sandbox because sadly Shadowplay wasn't enabled during my Stalker death, which would have been really helpful as you'll soon see...).

This happened on day 103 of my Stalker run (I recently got back into TLD, this is the longest I've lasted in Stalker so far). I was pretty upset and confused, mostly confused because it didn't even say "You've died..." or anything, it just hard cut from the blizzard to the death statistics screen blended with... some other menu? Like one of the journal menus maybe? I just sat there staring at it for maybe a minute... and then the "You are at risk of hypothermia" warning popped up in the top right. What the hell? Am I dead or not?

I clicked "Save Journal" and then "Quit", went back to the Survival menu, Load game... and my sandbox is still there? I load it, it pops me back in the last interior location I entered (day 102). I can't interact with anything, I can't open my journal or inventory, I can't even remember if I could move (I could definitely look around at least). Escape doesn't even bring up the game menu so I Alt+F4.

I make a backup of my saves. I wouldn't normally, but I felt like there's a chance they could be needed as part of a bug report. I start TLD back up, and load my sandbox. Everything seems fine now? Minus a day's progress sure, but I appear to be hale and hearty.

Eventually google directs me to the debug log, and I find...

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
  at Utils.GetInventoryIconTexture (GearItem gi) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.UpdateCollectibleList () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.SetLogGridItemIndex (System.Int32 index) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.DoControlsCollectibleList () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.DoControls () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.Update () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.Enable (System.Boolean enable) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.EnableStatsView () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Panel_Log.EnableDeathView () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at GameManager.HandlePlayerDeath (System.String overrideCauseOfDeath) [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 
  at Condition.Update () [0x00000] in <00000000000000000000000000000000>:0 

 

Call it save scumming if you want, or call it divine intervention... I'll still be able to sleep soundly in my bear skin bedroll knowing one bug cancelled out another.

 

 

[hozz1235]

Whoa...seemed like a legit path.  Odd that you stood there looking around for quite some time before the wall finally kicked in.  I'd submit that as a support ticket.

[Ranzer]

Yeah, I've submitted both the kill spot and the exception when it tried to kill me (even though the exception saved my bacon heh).

Really hope they fix the kill spot and that there aren't any others that are easy to stumble into... makes me pretty nervous about exploring at all.

[ajb1978]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Instant kill spots have no place in survivor mode. Story mode sure--they're necessary to keep people like me from going out of bounds and breaking stuff. But not survivor mode, where exploration and going places you're not supposed to are pretty much the whole purpose of the game.

[Ranzer]

Yup... needing to know where all the invisible kill spots are so you can avoid them is a bit crazy. Especially since Hinterland don't appear to know where they are even. Their response to my bug report so far has been:

"I jumped in to take a look at this location and found that there doesn't seem to be a kill plane in this location when investigating from my side."

Can anyone else test this and report back if it happens for you? (In a new Pilgrim run, don't risk your real sandbox heh). It happens 100% of the time for me using the current Steam version (Build # 1.94 76129 S) but I assume it should be the same for any up to date install.

[Hotzn]

11 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Instant kill spots have no place in survivor mode. Story mode sure--they're necessary to keep people like me from going out of bounds and breaking stuff. But not survivor mode, where exploration and going places you're not supposed to are pretty much the whole purpose of the game.

I totally second that. On a side note, watching the video I knew that I was going to get half a heart attack when it actually happens... and still I did, even knowing it. Haha.

[Ranzer]

4 hours ago, Hotzn said:

I totally second that. On a side note, watching the video I knew that I was going to get half a heart attack when it actually happens... and still I did, even knowing it. Haha.

Yeah, I think the lack of any sort of warning makes it more of a shock. Like at least if you fall or get mauled or whatever you can anticipate the crunch.

[ajb1978]

13 hours ago, Ranzer said:

Can anyone else test this and report back if it happens for you? (In a new Pilgrim run, don't risk your real sandbox heh). It happens 100% of the time for me using the current Steam version (Build # 1.94 76129 S) but I assume it should be the same for any up to date install.

Killwall confirmed.

[odizzido]

I really hope that stuff goes away, or they are identified properly. If the kill zones were coloured pink that would improve the game for me, but removing them completely would be best.

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

26 minutes ago, odizzido said:

I really hope that stuff goes away, or they are identified properly. If the kill zones were coloured pink that would improve the game for me, but removing them completely would be best.

some sort of approach warning (similar to the thin ice icon) would be nice, or even some sort of rock pattern or gimmick around the edge of the 'proper world', to let you know that you are entering an unstable area and at risk of crashes, getting stuck on scenery etc.

On one of my treks behind the curtain to the opposite end of the BR bridge, I ended up warping back to the tunnel entrance at the far end of the map- I do wonder if the risk of causing glitches or crashes is the reason for the permadeath wall...

[odizzido]

Yeah, a lot of games will have certain easy to see things. New tomb raider 1 had a particular pattern of rock which you knew you could climb, STALKER has hills turn a little darker when they're too steep to climb, etc. I really think TLD could benefit from more of this sort of thing. It has some already with the viney walls that we can climb but having more clues as to what you can and cannot do would be nice.

From what I understand, the death walls are there so players stay where the devs want them to be......but as someone mentioned it really makes it so people are scared to explore because who knows when our character will just die for no reason. I am not a fan of invisible walls at all, infact I really dislike them a lot, but they're better than death walls. I would do rather get stuck and quit than have my character die for no reason.

[ajb1978]

3 hours ago, odizzido said:

I am not a fan of invisible walls at all, infact I really dislike them a lot, but they're better than death walls. I would do rather get stuck and quit than have my character die for no reason.

Reminds me of old D&D games where I really tried to allow total player freedom, but at the same time if things just started to get too far off the rails I'd be like "Look guys let's try to rein this in. I'm not saying you can't raise an army and wage war against the Emirates of Ylarum...I'm just saying I'm not going to allow it. So if you insist on pursuing that route your character will be retired and you can roll a new one more in line with this story."

Edited June 11, 2021 by ajb1978

[Ranzer]

52 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

Reminds me of old D&D games where I really tried to allow total player freedom, but at the same time if things just started to get too far off the rails I'd be like "Look guys let's try to rein this in. I'm not saying you can't raise an army and wage war against the Emirates of Ylarum...I'm just saying I'm not going to allow it. So if you insist on pursuing that route your character will be retired and you can roll a new one more in line with this story."

DM: "Sure ok, you gather your coin together and attempt to raise an army. A dragon kills you."

[Guest jeffpeng]

Instant death bounds are just a bad concept in general. If there is a place devs don't want you to go there are legitimate and ... well, cheesy but still okay ways to achieve that.

The right way to do it would be to.... construct the terrain in a way that you can't get there in the first place.

The cheesy way would be to have an invisible wall as mentioned above.

[MarrowStone]

A wendigo got you. No other explanation. 

[ben676]

This is why so many open world games are set on islands, they have natural borders. So, we just need Hinterland to fill the rest of Great Bear

[stratvox]

This looks like a bug to me, not a killwall nor an invisible wall. It's like the game thinks the edge of that cliff is in a different place than it shows on the screen. Either both of the folks who made the vids should do debug screenies and send 'em in.

[Ranzer]

Just to update Hinterland support have now confirmed the kill wall and added it to their internal bug list.

Edit: That said, I still find it terrifying that these things just exist randomly about the place. The ones at the bottom of ravines that you have no hope of climbing out of are one thing, but ones that you can just stumble into are crazy.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Ranzer

[stratvox]

Well, I remember back when goating started to become a thing a few years back, and Raph came in and said to us (paraphrasing), "just so you know, if you get stuck somewhere climbing around and starve to death, that's a you problem, not a Hinterland problem". My response to that is "of course, it's not like death traps don't exist in the real world anyway."

I know where you are; you're way up high on that cliff at the end of Mystery Lake near the bear den. It's hard to call that a place you can 'just stumble into'. Getting up there is not trivially easy to do. I mean, it's good to report it so it can get fixed for sure; I love goating, so it's better if it's fixed, but if I punch it while goating along a rock face that was clearly only ever intended to look good, maybe just maybe it's a teensy bit my fault, at least enough so that I can't really call a terrain mistake that causes dying by falling up there "terrifying". Also, I'm willing to bet that particular bug has existed there since they made ML some eight years ago or so, and you're the first one to find it... not exactly somewhere that's commonly traversed by players  

Maybe I belabour the point. It's actually pretty cool that you got up there; I might have to go regoat that area it's been a long time since I last did any rock climbing there and I'm pretty sure I'm a lot better at it now than I was the last time I was doing that in ML.

Finding out where you can get to (which is a LOT more places than you'd think) is actually a lot of fun by itself in this world. Raph, if you can work goating and maybe even some kind of reasonable rock climbing mechanic into TLD 2: The TLDening it'd be awesome. And by reasonable I mean not what's in Tomb Raider, even though it's not bad for what it is. I even have some ideas about how you could handle the UI for that sort of thing (without jumping! ) within the context of the trad TLD interface.