Loading Zone bug

[RJ_Dalton]

So, I just reported this, but I'm wondering if anyone else knows if this has been addressed or if there's any kind of fix.  Apparently, you can't pick up items in an area where you can transition to a new region.  I was at the cave at the end of carter dam and dropped the travois.  When I turned to grab my gear out of it, it instead entered the cave, which auto-saved.  Now, the gear appears to be lost because I can't open or pick up the thing and can't quit to reload the save back in the dam.

This is very frustrating.  That had both my weapons and most of my food in it and this is very late in the game, so I've already harvest most of the easy food out there.  Without a rifle to shoot deer, this playthrough is pretty much over.

Edited July 3, 2024 by RJ_Dalton

[artmunki]

Dropping anything right next to a transition point is always a  risk, I find. I've come close to losing food, cookpots, and once even my good ol' bearskin sleeping bag. The transition points - especially transition caves - seem to be sorta fuzzy areas, and it's all too easy to be in that area without noticing. And with the way the deployed travois works, I can easily see how it could be very difficult to access one or both of its hitboxes in that area.

You can usually manage to grab most things by sorta turning your back on the transition point and carefully searching around for the item's hitbox (try crouching as you do it too), but sometimes it can take a while to find, and unfortunately it's not impossible for dropped items to be too far into the transition to be touchable at all. If your travois is sorta pointing into the transition, I'd suggest trying to find the hitbox for the storage part first, as it's likely to be furthest from the actual transition point. That way you can at least get your gear out. The handle end is probably well into the transition zone though, so all I can say is best of luck in finding that hitbox!

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

Try backing up very slowly towards the transition trigger.  You may be able to look down or to the side and interact with the travois that way.  This used to work with the coal pieces at the entrance to the FM / BI transition cave.

[RJ_Dalton]

On 7/4/2024 at 10:11 AM, artmunki said:

Dropping anything right next to a transition point is always a  risk, I find. I've come close to losing food, cookpots, and once even my good ol' bearskin sleeping bag. The transition points - especially transition caves - seem to be sorta fuzzy areas, and it's all too easy to be in that area without noticing. And with the way the deployed travois works, I can easily see how it could be very difficult to access one or both of its hitboxes in that area.

You can usually manage to grab most things by sorta turning your back on the transition point and carefully searching around for the item's hitbox (try crouching as you do it too), but sometimes it can take a while to find, and unfortunately it's not impossible for dropped items to be too far into the transition to be touchable at all. If your travois is sorta pointing into the transition, I'd suggest trying to find the hitbox for the storage part first, as it's likely to be furthest from the actual transition point. That way you can at least get your gear out. The handle end is probably well into the transition zone though, so all I can say is best of luck in finding that hitbox!

I tried turning my back to the cave and it hasn't worked.  I can hover it over the spot that I'd grab the inventory, but clicking there does nothing and if I go off from it, it just registers me as going into the cave.  It's very frustrating.  I assume this is one of those edge cases that shows up when you have a long period of constantly adding new stuff.  I mean, a simple solution to it would be to change the loading zones areas so that you can't bring the travois into them, or at least move the loading zone for the caves actually into the caves (where you already can't carry the travois).  That'd be a band-aid fix and it'd be better to fix the issue where objects in the loading area can't be interacted with, but I have no idea how you'd do that because I'm not much of a coder, but a band-aid fix at the very least would be appreciated.

I'm just annoyed to loose that run.  It's just lucky for me that I'd completed the final story challenge for the DLC before this happened.

[artmunki]

41 minutes ago, RJ_Dalton said:

I tried turning my back to the cave and it hasn't worked.  I can hover it over the spot that I'd grab the inventory, but clicking there does nothing and if I go off from it, it just registers me as going into the cave.  It's very frustrating.  I assume this is one of those edge cases that shows up when you have a long period of constantly adding new stuff.  I mean, a simple solution to it would be to change the loading zones areas so that you can't bring the travois into them, or at least move the loading zone for the caves actually into the caves (where you already can't carry the travois).  That'd be a band-aid fix and it'd be better to fix the issue where objects in the loading area can't be interacted with, but I have no idea how you'd do that because I'm not much of a coder, but a band-aid fix at the very least would be appreciated.

I'm just annoyed to loose that run.  It's just lucky for me that I'd completed the final story challenge for the DLC before this happened.

Honestly, my first reaction here was that it was just bad luck, not really something for Hinterland to address. But the more I think about it, I do think you might have a point about the cave-mouth transition area - that the edge of that fuzzy zone should probably be a hard no-go for the travois, to avoid exactly this issue.

I haven't seen this problem mentioned by anyone else, but I doubt you're the only person who's walked in the mouth of a transition cave still pulling the sled, found their way blocked at the entrance and dropped the travois immediately to unload it, only to find they can't access it because the whole thing's in the transition zone. I'm not sure how many caves this would apply to on the island - I've been picturing the AC-TWM cave between Pillar's Footrest & Deer Clearing (probably because that's where I almost lost my bedroll, so I know how fuzzy that entryway is), but there are definitely a fair few other caves you can just walk into without clicking to enter, and I imagine at least some of them could have this same issue. The game's already coded to stop you dead when you approach certain obstacles with the travois, and it also knows when you're in the cave entry zone, so I don't imagine it would be to difficult to add those zones to the obstacle conditions list, so to speak. I guess there could be some issue with the way the object-interaction reticle is kinda disabled when you're pulling the travois, or it might be hard for the code to distinguish between cave-mouth transition areas and the similarly fuzzy external transitions between zones (which obviously shouldn't be obstacles for the travois), but I have no idea how any of that is coded so I'm just blind guessing at potential coding problems here.

Might actually be worth submitting a ticket to Hinterland about this, even tho it isn't technically a bug. It doesn't seem like a difficult fix, nor does it seem substantially different to how the travois already operates with other obstacles - most players wouldn't even notice any difference tbh, but it's a really annoying problem if you get yourself into that situation.

To be honest tho, I don't really see why that would be a run-ending issue. Incredibly frustrating certainly, but if you're playing on any difficulty/custom level that allows rifles, surely those can't be the only weapons you have. I mean, even if you've scrapped every other rifle & pistol in the game for some reason, or you had all the ammo on the island in your sled, you can still make bows. Don't let this end your run - just take it as a new late-game challenge you have to deal with. Make your way to somewhere else you've stashed weapons and re-equip, or pick up some saplings you left to cure and start working on your bowcraft. I mean, I can only speak for myself here, but for my part I look forward to thinking of new tasks to do in the late game, if only to give me something concrete to work towards. Worst case scenario, it shouldn't take you much more than an in-game week or two to get back on your feet, and there's always rabbits, fishing and cattails to keep you fed until then. Biggest bummer about it will be the lingering bitterness every time you use that cave again, and you have to see your travois still stuck there, but that's how TLD works - best way to learn is by making mistakes.