This is the second part in my collection of glitches that don’t particularly fit any criteria. This will just be a list of some more random glitches I have come across and some possible answers to what they are or what caused them.
Like last time, this post will be slightly shorter than the others. And like last time, there will be some gifs with flashing lights, so viewer discretion is advised.
This glitch is a small one. The barrel in the background breaks without anything touching it.
The reason the barrel breaks at all is because it is a part of a dynamic set, or models and background elements meant to interact with the character and any NPCs that might be around them. In the case of the barrel, it is supposed to break when the character or NPC touches it, giving the illusion that the models have some physicality to them.
However, the engine gets confused here and breaks the barrel without any prompting, leading to the amusing (and slightly confusing) sight above.
In this image, it can be hard to see what is happening.
There is supposed to be a large ship next to the dock. You can see two things floating above the sea. Those are two objects that belong to the boat.
The reason that they are floating there is because the boat hasn’t loaded in yet. The boat itself is a model, which means that it is stored offscreen when not near the player in order to save on resources. But for some reason, those two items have loaded in without the rest of the ship.
This one is unique as well because of the fact that the ship is a model. Usually, unless the thing being represented is supposed to move at some point, large structures like this ship are part of the map, not individual models. This helps save resources and helps the game run smoother.
But for whatever reason, the devs (short for developers) decided to make the ship a model. Unless I am forgetting something, this ship only moves in cutscenes, never during regular gameplay. So, if not for this glitch, I would have assumed that it wasn’t a model but rather a part of the map itself.
In the gif above, a part of the map is being unlocked by the character. The section of the map that is being unlocked should light up and reveal the map based on the outlines.
But, for some reason, the part that is being revealed looks nothing like the part that it is supposed to be revealing.
This could be caused by some sort of offset. The engine got confused about where to play the animation, and it overlaid the animation slightly off center. The engine could have also just played the wrong animation.
If it is the second option, it does lead to the question: what caused that to begin with? Usually, predetermined animations like this are chosen by the devs to make sure that the correct one plays. So if the wrong one is playing here, that means that one of the devs chose the wrong animation to play.
However, I have played this specific game several times, and this is the first time I have seen this particular glitch. That means that it wasn’t a dev error, but rather the game/engine making an error.
This leads me to believe that it is simply some sort of offset glitch. Nothing too unusual, but kind of jarring when you aren’t expecting it.
