Bugs/Scanner/SuitAI/Broken?

[dreamer757]

To preface the issues, I'm an offline only, single-player game guy. I do not have internet at home, I tether a smartphone when I need something. I'm running Win10, i7 4790k, 16gb ram, GTX 960. And yes, I've searched the internet and these forums for my issues. Several weeks (months?) ago I installed this (gog version) and played a goodly ways into it. Had a small base setup, adjusted the starter buggy how I liked it and built a small starter flyer. At some point in all of this, the suit AI disappeared. Along with that, the scanner stopped working. With neither of those working, I can't progress in the game. I went back into GOG/Galaxy and did a "repair" online and tried again. Also tried deleting my savegame to start new. When I did that, it didn't play the beginning where you are on the ship in orbit and the suit AI never loaded at all. None of these actions fixed the overall issues. Eventually I un-installed and re-installed (when I took my PC to a place with an internet connection. Last night I fired it back up for round two. It played pretty well until a ways in. Again, the scanner stopped working and the suit AI disappeared. I had saved a few games so I went back to an early stable game and the scanner and suit were gone, even on these. Today I tethered my phone in and tried the same stable game and magically I got the AI and the scanner back. Does this game HAVE to be online to be able to play? The offline/single player nature of the game is what made me buy it at all.

[Menzagitat]

- The game doesn't need online connection.
- The start on the ship is the tutorial. If you play it once, it is deactivated but you can activate it again in the option menu before you start a new game.
- The scanner will not scan everything but only certain new blocks which you have to discover or whatever the story(journal, quest list) tells you to scan. But I know of a few bug reports where the scanner was not able to scan some crystals or monoliths. I do not know if those were ever fixed but are quite rare.
- I do not understand what you mean by "suit AI". You mean the voice? The tutorial has more spoken dialogs, generated by a text-to-speech engine. Later when you are on the planet, there are fewer dialogs. You hear the suit only when your health goes down and maybe in some other cases which I do not remember anymore.

[dreamer757]

In my case, the scanner will not scan a monolith or a crash "black box" beacon, which I had not previously scanned, or any crystals or nests. It will have the counter-rotating concentric circles, but when you hit the trigger, the progress ring doesn't come up to show how much you have scanned, it just burns battery up. Re-loading battery doesn't change this, it just goes through battery without actually scanning.

Regarding the suit AI, yes, I mean Joy, who sometimes gives mission updates and tells you if you are hungry, thirsty, cold, or tired. She just disappears entirely and never says another word.

And after tethering my phone and loading a previous save that was when these things were working fine, suddenly they all work again. When I tried the same save prior to tethering in, the AI and scanner were not working. I'm thinking I just need to tether in now and then and run it, save it, and move on.

Also I forgot to mention game version, 1.0.7.2, downloaded a couple of Sunday's ago.

Thank you for the reply.

[Menzagitat]

Actually I do not remember testing the game with my internet cable pulled out.
There are log files which might give hints if some error happens:

C:\Users\your user name\AppData\LocalLow\Craneballs\PlanetNomad\Player.log

There is also a Player-prev.log file which is the log from the previous session.
These are supposed to be sent via the bug reporting (from the game menu) if the user wants to report a crash or a bug. Maybe this needs an online connection. Or maybe something else.
Good that you tested this and we know that the connection is needed.

[dreamer757]

I looked at the Player.log file. I don't think I'll post the whole thing here, but it pretty frequently tries to reach www.google-analytics.com, and also bugs.planetnomads.com and planetnomads.com. I also found cdp.cloud.unity3d.com in the list, unresolved. It is also trying to load up from a file that starts C:\buildslave which doesn't exist. I have my games saved on an E: drive, as I've had issues with windows account problems. I looked for (typed in) E:\buildslave and that doesn't bring up anything either. Makes me think this is a temp file created for each game instance or something. Sometimes it can reach the C:\buildslave, other times it fails.

Last night I played for several hours with no issues, saved a series of "stable" games, only to have it drop the scanner on me again. This time it did not drop the suit AI/voice. Odd.

[Menzagitat]

That C:\buildslave location is weird both by location and name.
By location because the game should try to work with places where it has access rights and the root of the drive is not such a place in a system where an administrator configures the system for a guest.
But I am not familiar with the GoG version you say you are playing either.
with Steam I know I can check the game integrity to be sure it is not changed by some virus.
You can try contacting the developers directly if you want, maybe you get more information.
https://bugs.planet-nomads.com/bug/report

[dreamer757]

Hey man, I appreciate all your thoughts and replies. Thanks for taking the time. I may visit the bug report page and see if I can send the files to them manually to look at. Definitely weird.

The C:\buildslave file struck me as odd from that location as well, everything else is usually in a program files sub-file or something like that. What is odd is that sometimes in the player.log, it can pull files from that, other times it fails.

Again, thanks.

[redbeard]

The one thing that struck me as you was describing your issue with the scanner is, it uses a charge, once that charge is gone you must replace the battery in it. Is it possible that is what is happening here? Also, you only scan 5 black boxes (at the man made sites), after that, that quest line is done.