Bug? Load game -> Radar room lost all items from list

[Ragnaman]

I assume radar rooms require remote cameras to see items before they show up on the list (i actually thought you need to scan things with scanner for items to show up on radar list), i had a very detailed list of items in radar rooms for me to enable scanning for.

Upon loading a game today, the list contained only ship wrecks, quartz and such tier items in the list. I took cameras for a ride and then radar populated its list.


Is this a bug ? I should not be losing data that I acquired before. Not in antimatter-age at least.

[EvilNecroid]

i had my cameras packed away in a box somewhere but today when i loaded in i had this problem of not having things i needed showing up on the list so to refresh the surrounding area i went outside and had a little swim around where i wanted to scan and then came back and the list was updated

[SternLX]

Not a bug. The list will fill in as you move around into areas with scan-able resources. This happens every time you load up the game. The terrain loads along with resources as you move into it(or the Camera Drones). You don't have to even have to see the resources for the list to populate.

[Ragnaman]

Originally posted by SternLX:

Not a bug. The list will fill in as you move around into areas with scan-able resources. This happens every time you load up the game. The terrain loads along with resources as you move into it(or the Camera Drones). You don't have to even have to see the resources for the list to populate.

Not a bug ? Are you sure about that ?

[SternLX]

Very sure. It's the way the game engine loads the resources.
The list in the scanner room is directly connected to the loading of those resources locations.

[John Doe]

This is most definately a bug. Makes absolutely no sense for it to reset on loading.
Also, scanner targets need to disappear when the item has been looted.

These bugs have been in the game for ages.

[Xitones]

The scanner room only verify loaded chuncks of terrain, if a chunk was not loaded then its not possible to scan if there is any resource there

[Xitones]

Originally posted by John Doe:

This is most definately a bug. Makes absolutely no sense for it to reset on loading.
Also, scanner targets need to disappear when the item has been looted.

These bugs have been in the game for ages.

The only bug related to scanner room is that some times blueprints do not show or shaw an empty space, regarding resources the only bug is that it still identifies drilled resource as if they still exists.
The rest is not bug, as i said before, the scanner room only verify loaded chunks.

[SternLX]

Originally posted by Xitones:

The scanner room only verify loaded chuncks of terrain, if a chunk was not loaded then its not possible to scan if there is any resource there

This ^^
The data for the resources is tied directly to terrain chunks, once you've loaded that data the position of the resources becomes known and adds it to the Scan list database. That database is temporary and only per session.
When you start a scan for a specific resource, it's just looking up those resources in the database that was just populated and revealing those locations slowly.

Edit: I should add that the Scan list database is temporary because of performance reasons. If it was fully populated it would take forever to load a saved game.

[Ragnaman]

Ok, it kind of, sort of makes it a non bug from a technical/code perspective. In terms of gameplay experience however it is kind of bad for immersion.

So what if game chunks were not loaded upon game state load, that is not an excuse to erase a players progress in the game. Update these chunks slowly as the radar is given a task up to its range, radar is slow anyway, would not make much difference. The bug thus here is not the current implementation, it is how this breaks the immersion and forces one to think about data structures not about how to survive on aquatic planet.

I still dont buy the chunk loading excuse. If i step outside briefly and get updated list for radar, how come this suddenly is not an issue for the radar station to find that particular resource in chunks i have not yet been to in this game state. Chunk loading point is moot.

[DonJuanDoja]

Not a bug. Just because people think it is doesn't mean it is. The Scanner Room can't see anything that's not loaded into memory. It's that simple.

Your really don't want the game to load all terrain and assets in the radius of the scanner rooms range. It'll destroy performance. In fact I think scanner rooms destroy performance the way it is already depending on what and where you scan.

The right way to use it is turn it on, then go exploring and it will find resources wherever you are as long as it's in range.

[Xitones]

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

Ok, it kind of, sort of makes it a non bug from a technical/code perspective. In terms of gameplay experience however it is kind of bad for immersion.

So what if game chunks were not loaded upon game state load, that is not an excuse to erase a players progress in the game. Update these chunks slowly as the radar is given a task up to its range, radar is slow anyway, would not make much difference. The biggest bug here is not the code, it is how this breaks the immersion and forces one to think about data structures not about how to survive on aquatic planet.

Its difficult to do this in a 3d wolrd made like subnautica because to make the game load faster it has a separete list of chunks loaded on the session, so that the entire game does not take 20 min to load the entire world/parameters.
So in code perspective they created a 50m long radious around the user where the game loads the session list of chunks, then as the player moves the list is updated with new chunks.
The full data of the chunk is a sexond list where there is all game chunks, and in this list there is every single information of user interaction with that chunk.
That the reason why the game file gets bigger and bigger and the far you are in the game, worst become the chunk load time is bacause of this massive list of data that the game needs to load.
So, continuing from the load time perspective, the bigger the game time on a save the bigger the loading time to load all chunks of the world.

I think i expressed ok, any doubts feel free to ask.

[Ragnaman]

Not only a bug is presented as a feature, but turns out there is a bad optimisation regarding radar rooms. Good to know. I did notice a hit on performance when 50+ items were displayed on hud.

[DeFragged]

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

Ok, it kind of, sort of makes it a non bug from a technical/code perspective. In terms of gameplay experience however it is kind of bad for immersion.

Snip snip

I still dont buy the chunk loading excuse. If i step outside briefly and get updated list for radar, how come this suddenly is not an issue for the radar station to find that particular resource in chunks i have not yet been to in this game state. Chunk loading point is moot.

Subnautica is a persistent world with a large number of persistent entities and objects. It remembers EVERYTHING you've done to change it. And everytime you enter a brand new chunk for the first time it has to generate hundreds of items, actors, objects, etc.

All this eats memory. The longer you play the more memory it has to use to store relevant info for the current session. No, it's not optimized, but it's what we have till the sequel.

This is not comparable to other open world games like GTA or the Witcher. Those games spontaneously generate events, npcs, etc - everything is transient for optimization.

Subnautica does not do that because it's all about the world. Large Wildlife stays dead. Resources remain depleted. Wrecks remain explored and doors remain cut. Stuff you dumped stays where you left it.

Of COURSE it tries to cut down on system strain where it can. Is it immersion breaking? Mildly. Could it be better? Probably. Is it worth trying to sound like you know the limitations and problems and dismissing the devs 'because you know better'? I doubt it.

tl;dr - scanning has flaws but literally nothing that ruins the game.

[Mortemas]

Are you trying to say 4546b is not real? Thanks. You just broke immersion for me.

[PcbZorg]

I still think that the thing is broken. I didn't reload the save, it all happened during one play session. The scanner room scannable items disappeared, then appeared when i manually surveyed the deposits, but when i got back to base and clicked on scan it did not find anything, and next time there i wasn't even able to acess the whole list anymore. I could see page 1 of 3 and page 3 of 3, no page 2. No reloads. All happened in one continuing play session. There's something wrong with the scanning room. It just doesn't work as common sense logic would dictate.