d3_citadel_02 pod save/loading
14As stupid as this seems, exploring this bug further may help finishing Half-L.A.I.F. 2!
A few members of the SourceRuns Discord server let me know about this bug, so here's the testing I've been doing:
On the citadel pod ride map, you can influence the angle of the pod that you're sitting in by save/loading.
I created a script which save/loads as fast as possible (the loading screen didn't even disappear when it tries reloading), which I recorded and then sped up so it's nicer to view.
That's why the game freezes every now and again (save stutter).
There's a counter on the top left which keeps track of how many times we save/loaded so far.
We don't NEED to save/load instantly for this to happen, but it makes for a nicer showcase.
Changing host_timescale influences the physics, which is why it is kept at default! It took around 40 minutes for the pod to get this far.
The video is split into two parts, the first showing two attempts at physics manipulation: once in first person, the other in third person. On the bottom right attempt, I stopped save/loading mid-way through (causing my pod to get stuck). On the main view, I simply let it continue until it got stuck on its own.
The earlier we stop save/loading, the lesser our angle changes. Which is good (because we can "survive" it without getting crunched by a wall), but also bad (because our angle didn't change much).
Indeed, if we found the ideal balance of angle manipulation without a broken pod ride, we may get ANY angle when leaving the pod in the end!
Because the pitch change also changes our roll in the process (watch the angles after a turn!), causing the leaving yaw to be manipulated to whatever we'd like it to be.
The main issue (demonstrated in the second part of the video) is that the pod also MOVES after each save/load, offsetting itself from the default position. You can see the offset because of how far the joint on the rail moved from the pod itself (in our example, about 200 units).
That is why we can't ever leave the pod at the end, because by save/loading too much, we simply don't move far enough to hit the trigger (in the video, it's the far-left one) which kicks us out of the pod. And no, we can't manually leave it either. And save/loading at this point does nothing at all - the pod has to be in motion.
I did not have any footage of me actually leaving the pod after just a bit of physics manipulation, but the leaving angle is greatly offset from the usual. And the angle at which we enter (e.g. looking left vs looking right) also influences our exiting angle the same way.
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