In this post, I won’t be focusing on any one glitch or group of glitches. Rather, I will be showcasing a collection of random glitches I happened to find in my time playing games and exploring some potential answers to what may have caused them.
Because of this, this blog isn’t going to be as structured as the others. But, I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I enjoy finding them.
Also, I will have some gifs that flash a little bit, so viewer discretion is advised before continuing.
In the image above, the texture for the road in the distance has been corrupted somehow. Though the exact cause of that corruption is unknown, it most likely has to do with render distance (the distance set by the game’s engine in which textures and models are shown).
Render distance and the mishaps that can come from it will be discussed in a later blog. But for right now, it can be assumed that the render distance for this game is set to be really low, or in other words, it is really close to the character.
Because of that low setting, the game is trying to render the texture in a way that saves space, most likely by loading in a lower quality/poly version. But, something has gone wrong and the game is folding the texture instead of keeping it flat, leading to the amusing sight above.
In this next image, the texture for the waterfall has a graphical bug. You can see a line running horizontally through the water.
This is caused by the textures being stitched together. What that means is that, because textures aren’t infinitely large, multiple textures need to be put together to form a single, hopefully seamless texture.
But in this case, it isn’t seamless, and the player can clearly see where one texture ends and the other begins.
In the gif above, the fog for the particular area I am in is glitching out. Again, the exact cause of this is unknown — especially because, out of the several times I went to that area, this was the only time it glitched like this — however, it is most likely another rendering bug.
The engine is supposed to overlay a fog effect in this particular area when the player enters it, while de-rendering it when they leave. But for some reason, the engine is having a hard time figuring out where or when to render in that fog, leading to the effect seen above.
In the gif above, what is being shown is a camera glitch. The camera, which in this game is a free floating, third-person point of view, is supposed to stay a specific distance away from the player at all times.
However, when the player enters the waterfall, the camera doesn’t know what to do. It tries to get closer to the player — like it is supposed to do in this game — but somehow glitches out and tries to climb the waterfall without the player. When the player gets far enough away, the camera resets back to the player, leading to the rapid back-and-forth movements seen.
Lastly, here is a model offset glitch. As discussed in a previous blog, this glitch happens when the engine can’t calculate exactly where to place a model, leading to it being slightly off.
In this case, the player is loading into a new area. But instead of loading in on the floor, the player is being loaded in slightly in the air, leading to a small fall after the loading screen vanishes.
But, regardless of the cause or the glitch found, it is still interesting to see the different ways that glitches can arise.
