VERY Bizzare and Weird Bug in Daily Challenge

[Sairek Ceareste]

I don't know what bug this is or why it happened. I was playing just fine, when suddenly the "Level Cleared!!" message popped up when I paused. I was like "Um... okay...?" And then the screen started spazzing REALLY weird and everything froze in place. Paused the game and took a screen shot:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=441971137


After taking that screencap, I immediately opened my Fraps up as fast as I could and hit the record button before the game crashed or something. As a result the sound quality is kind of off (but it's the visuals that matter anyways).

Here's the video, as you can see, my bonus timer is still counting down even though everything else in the game is frozen:


https://youtu.be/vjIcjUwuNRU


Mind you, this video is only recording at 20fps (My computer is worse than a potato battery; sorry). This was a lot worse as far worse visually at 60FPS before I began recording with the game paused.

I couldn't preform any actions until Nina fazed out, and then fazed back in. Only then was I able to shoot and turn around in place until eventually it just... recovered. After all that (with me kind of sucking after from being a bit weirded out), I managed to finish the daily challenge just fine without any problems -- aside from still finding a ridiculous amount of glass cannons compared to every other drop. Could kill enemies fine, move fine, take damage fine, etc.

[batterystaplegames]

This is... the best bug I have ever seen.

So, to recap and be clear: out of the blue, you paused the game during the level (did you pause where your Nina in the video is stuck?), and the level clear! message popped up. The game's camera spazzed out (looks like the game set the screenshake parameter to an outrageously high amount and it took awhile to decay). Even after recovering, it took awhile for you to be able to move... but you could still shoot, but the bullets wouldn't go anywhere.

Other suspicious bits -- at 1:08, a "38" damage number comes up from the bottom of the screen, and then a beta Rolly spawns. 38 seems to be your Wave Beam charge attack damage (since the end of the video shows you hitting for 19 base).

I'm going to need some time to look into this one, but damn if it isn't the most entertaining one I've seen in awhile!

(Also, about the glass cannons -- the game should be coded such that it doesn't care whether or not you pick them up in terms of whether or not to spawn more -- but are you always ignoring them? Might give me a clue to run with.)

(Wait, that's totally what it is. If you don't have even a single one of an item, the game is long enough and the passive pool is currently shallow enough that it'll eventually try to force you to take one. This is a bug on our end, I'd say, and I'll fix it.)

[Sairek Ceareste]

Originally posted by batterystaplegames:

This is... the best bug I have ever seen.

So, to recap and be clear: out of the blue, you paused the game during the level (did you pause where your Nina in the video is stuck?), and the level clear! message popped up. The game's camera spazzed out (looks like the game set the screenshake parameter to an outrageously high amount and it took awhile to decay). Even after recovering, it took awhile for you to be able to move... but you could still shoot, but the bullets wouldn't go anywhere.

Other suspicious bits -- at 1:08, a "38" damage number comes up from the bottom of the screen, and then a beta Rolly spawns. 38 seems to be your Wave Beam charge attack damage (since the end of the video shows you hitting for 19 base).

I'm going to need some time to look into this one, but damn if it isn't the most entertaining one I've seen in awhile!

(Also, about the glass cannons -- the game should be coded such that it doesn't care whether or not you pick them up in terms of whether or not to spawn more -- but are you always ignoring them? Might give me a clue to run with.)

(Wait, that's totally what it is. If you don't have even a single one of an item, the game is long enough and the passive pool is currently shallow enough that it'll eventually try to force you to take one. This is a bug on our end, I'd say, and I'll fix it.)

And this is one of the best bugs I have ever found.


The level clear messaged popped up and the game froze and I was all like "Wut?". Then the horrible screen shaking occured right afterwards. Mind you, there was the normal sound when you enter a portal when you clear the stage. After the sound ended (around the same time length it would take for loading a new level to commence) was when the screen began shaking horribly. When it began to shake was when I paused the game. The "Level cleared!!" message was there for a good 10 seconds. The video recording caught it just as it was slowly fading out; I screen capped it right after pausing whilst I was quickly alt-tabbing out of the game window to get Fraps running. But I did indeed pause where my Nina got stuck.


I'm pretty sure the glass cannon bug is because I never pick them up. But it's explotative for sure. I mean, I could get eight different double jump, or tank power ups, or whatever power up I desire in a stage together if I wanted to.


In any case, I don't know what triggered this to happen at all but I'm sure I can theorize the causes for a couple of the effects:

- Firstly, I targeted an enemy -- that's why the charged shot is on the screen and that's probably why the 38 is there near the end (38 was indeed my charged shot damage).
- I'm pretty sure it was a bat I destroyed if I remember correctly (plus the positioning of where the shot was makes sense).
- Combined with me eliminating a bat (which causes screen shaking when destroyed) and a super slowed down game, this most likely caused the screenshake to multiply for some reason. Or at least, it was most likely the reason that triggered the screen to shake in the first place after the whole teleporting trigger was done.

My screenshake intensity is reduced down to a mere 20%. I don't want to imagine how more wild it would have been with the shaking capped at 100%...

Anyways, those explanations make sense to me and I think they were merely side effects of the main problem, which was me getting randomly thrown in the level clear trigger -- and I have absolutely no clue as to why that happened. My only guess as to why the game was frozen in place for so long is that the effect happened several times in a single frame, or over multiple frames in a row somehow.


By the way, in the video, you can see that lag spikes can cause the flame shield projectiles to mis-align. After the lag spike in the video, the flames weren't seperated properly to form a complete circle anymore.

[batterystaplegames]

Yeah, the Flameshield pieces need to self-align if that happens -- in the pipe for later.

I'm pretty sure what happened here is that *somehow* your game clock got reset. This caused the game loop to interpret one frame as having a MASSIVELY negative elapsed time, which explains the screen shake (it decays with time.. so if time moves backwards, it increases!), the enemies spawning, and your lack of control (since the game thought you hadn't spawned yet).

..I'm not sure how your clock got reset, but I can patch in a "no negative timesteps!" check pretty easily.

Thanks again. Awesome bug.

[batterystaplegames]

Oh -- I think, instead of actually triggering the level clear! flag, the timestep bug brought you back to when displaying "level clear!" was appropriate, based on the current time. (This also explains why it showed up, but didn't kick you into the next level.)