Random Boxing Lions

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
So my lion habitat is set up, was wondering around my park putting in new trash cans, no where near them.. And my female lion is boxed for no apparent reason..
The picture in the post is of my enclosure.. There is no reason these animals should be boxed.
 

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NZFanatic

NZFanatic
I had a similar problem with a snow leopard. Turned out there was a clipping issue with one of the rocks in the enclosure - when the leopard tried to jump on the rock, she would clip inside it, and then appear randomly on top of it, and then she would end up boxed. I deleted the rock and it hasn't happened since. Perhaps you have a glitchy item in your enclosure, too.

It might be worth following the lioness around for a while if it's a recurring problem, to try and isolate exactly what she is doing before she winds up boxed.
 

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
NZFanatic said:
I had a similar problem with a snow leopard. Turned out there was a clipping issue with one of the rocks in the enclosure - when the leopard tried to jump on the rock, she would clip inside it, and then appear randomly on top of it, and then she would end up boxed. I deleted the rock and it hasn't happened since. Perhaps you have a glitchy item in your enclosure, too.

It might be worth following the lioness around for a while if it's a recurring problem, to try and isolate exactly what she is doing before she winds up boxed.
Click to expand...
My barrier is 5 high.. and i made sure nothing was to close.. about the only thing really close to the barrier is a couple of plants.. and if that is causing the glitch, then they need to fix it.. because that makes no sense, being that it is only the reed grasses in the corners.. it's something they should be able to walk through..
 

Nioell

Nioell
Random boxing of animals is sadly still a (rather annoying) thing. Before the latest update I actually never had that much problems with it but now the animals in my main franchise zoo keep getting boxed for no reason at all. It mostly happens while I'm building...like e.g. I was working on a new bear habitat placing rocks and stuff and my giraffes, lions and komodos kept getting boxed on the other side of the zoo. I mean I kinda get why it happens to the animals IN the habitat you're working on especially when placing climbable stuff, but this doesn't make sense at all since these habitats and animals are in no way connected.
 

NZFanatic

NZFanatic
Kiwolf said:
My barrier is 5 high.. and i made sure nothing was to close.. about the only thing really close to the barrier is a couple of plants.. and if that is causing the glitch, then they need to fix it.. because that makes no sense, being that it is only the reed grasses in the corners.. it's something they should be able to walk through..
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with the barrier. Where did I even mention a barrier? Why are you telling me about your barriers?

It is a glitch, but it's to do with animal pathfinding, not barriers. It's easily solved as well if you just do what I said - follow the animal around, find out what it's doing immediately before it winds up boxed, fix the problem. Like I said, all I had to do was remove a single rock and my snow leopards stopped getting boxed for "no reason". It happened to one of my giraffes, too, and I realised it was because I had positioned the rubbing pillar to close to a rock, and the giraffe wound up on top of the rock while using the pillar. Since the rock wasn't actually traversible terrain for the giraffe, the game glitched and the giraffe was boxed.

Moved the rubbing pillar, lo and behold no more "random" boxing.
 

Garyd73

Garyd73
Thank you NZFanatic for this info, I have this from time to time and didn't think off following the animals to see what is causing it. A good idea I will do now my bears, thank you.
 

LN

LN
One of my snow leopards got constantly boxed up. Followed him to see why.

Turns out I had a path under my habitat, and although visually the path was fully enclosed by terrain, that layer of terrain was so thin, the game actually thought the leopard should be able to attack(scare) unsuspecting guests that where walking beneath it by glitching through the terrain which caused the animal to be boxed up, because he was in the terrain. All I had to do was thicken the layer of terrain.

I understand these kind of issues can be annoying, but the way the game calculates stuff and it is programmed, these (minor) things can happen.
Most of the times things happen for a reason. Try to find the reason, then report it or fix it.

Kiwolf said:
My barrier is 5 high.. and i made sure nothing was to close.. about the only thing really close to the barrier is a couple of plants.. and if that is causing the glitch, then they need to fix it.. because that makes no sense, being that it is only the reed grasses in the corners.. it's something they should be able to walk through..
Click to expand...

To add to NZFanatic's comment. It's not only stuff inside the habitat that can help animals glitch through barriers. Objects that are just outside of it can do that as well. Like your donation boxes.
 
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Paul_Crowther

Senior Community Manager
Frontier
Please be sure to report any issue like this on our Issue Tracker so our developers can investigate. If you can follow the advice in the thread and find out exactly where this stuff is happening it will help our developers narrow down the review.
 
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VioletGrey

VioletGrey
I had the same issue with the Japanese Macaques. At least one would constantly be boxed up for no reason I could figure out.
 

Qiou87

Qiou87
Schlappi said:
The issue tracker is crap, doesn't work on me.
Click to expand...

Just typing "box" in the Issue Tracker gives you 3 pages of reports. I found at least 6 ou 7 different reports of people who have an issue.

To be clear: animals don't get boxed if you just watch them, or if you are managing your zoo in the menus. They start to get boxed randomly after I start building something, even if it is very far from their habitat (like over 500m away, in an empty area). This is quite unsettling because to unbox your camera goes to the other side of the zoo and you leave the Group edit mode, so every time it makes you lose 10sec to go back to where you were and restart editing. Also if you were moving some piece with "X" it will reset.

This is clearly a bug and has nothing to do with habitat design since if you watch your animals for a long time, nothing happens. Then you start to add a tree or a rock on the other side of the park, and boom! they are boxed.
 

LN

LN
Qiou87 said:
To be clear: animals don't get boxed if you just watch them, or if you are managing your zoo in the menus.
Click to expand...

I can tell you, they do, there is more than 1 reason why animals get boxed up.

The biggest problem with the issue tracker isn't the tracker, but it's users.

For example, how does one expect Frontier to fix something when this is what's issued:

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net issues.frontierstore.net
(this is also a user that was just looking at his animal when it happened).

There is not much helpful information there.

Sounds like you discovered more info that might be usefull for any dev to know though for your particular case. It's already more info than most of the issues on the tracker even mention.

Some objects can make animals clip through barriers or terrain, which in turn leads to the game boxing the animal back up, as the game "thinks" it's outside the game area (underground), I've seen this with my Snow Leopards like I described above. I can assure, I've watched the animal do his trick over and over again, without placing, moving or removing anything inside or outside his habitat. Everytime I unboxed him, he went back to his ritual within 5 minutes. But I figured the problem out, and problem was solved.

The problem you described occurs as well, I've seen that too, but in my case it regularly involves the animals that are in the same habitat as I'm working in.
 
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Qiou87

Qiou87
Yes, you are right, there are different problems with animals getting boxed, and probably different root causes. Probably those involving "physics glitches" that trigger the boxing inside the habitat due to some terrain element (I've had those as well, and animals escaping that way too). But even in a perfect habitat, an animal can get boxed if you displace or add a new element in that habitat (which I can understand). And finally, and that's the problem I was describing, animals get boxed randomly when I work on the opposite side of the park even though they never get boxed if I just watch them for a while.

Totally agree with your assessment of why the issue tracker is problematic, but to be fair that's a human-wide problem. Ask doctors, help desk workers, etc. Most times people give you irrelevant information, sometimes wrong information as well, so a clear diagnostic is very difficult to make. I think the most overlooked part of the issue tracker by users is the "steps to replicate" part. If a dev cannot replicate the issue for themselves, they cannot solve the issue - period. There should be a clear notice in red, how to fill in that area and what is the kind of info to be filled in to actually help the devs with their job.
 
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LN

LN
Qiou87 said:
Yes, you are right, there are different problems with animals getting boxed, and probably different root causes. Probably those involving "physics glitches" that trigger the boxing inside the habitat due to some terrain element (I've had those as well, and animals escaping that way too). But even in a perfect habitat, an animal can get boxed if you displace or add a new element in that habitat (which I can understand). And finally, and that's the problem I was describing, animals get boxed randomly when I work on the opposite side of the park even though they never get boxed if I just watch them for a while.

Totally agree with your assessment of why the issue tracker is problematic, but to be fair that's a human-wide problem. Ask doctors, help desk workers, etc. Most times people give you irrelevant information, sometimes wrong information as well, so a clear diagnostic is very difficult to make. I think the most overlooked part of the issue tracker by users is the "steps to replicate" part. If a dev cannot replicate the issue for themselves, they cannot solve the issue - period. There should be a clear notice in red, how to fill in that area and what is the kind of info to be filled in to actually help the devs with their job.
Click to expand...

Totally agree. And yes random animals getting boxed up when working on the other side of the park is not what should happen, and it happens indeed.

And yes, you are spot on with the issue tracker as well. 👍
 

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
Qiou87 said:
Just typing "box" in the Issue Tracker gives you 3 pages of reports. I found at least 6 ou 7 different reports of people who have an issue.

To be clear: animals don't get boxed if you just watch them, or if you are managing your zoo in the menus. They start to get boxed randomly after I start building something, even if it is very far from their habitat (like over 500m away, in an empty area). This is quite unsettling because to unbox your camera goes to the other side of the zoo and you leave the Group edit mode, so every time it makes you lose 10sec to go back to where you were and restart editing. Also if you were moving some piece with "X" it will reset.

This is clearly a bug and has nothing to do with habitat design since if you watch your animals for a long time, nothing happens. Then you start to add a tree or a rock on the other side of the park, and boom! they are boxed.
Click to expand...
That is what has been happening to my lions.. and i have noticed it with a couple of other animals, as well.. Won't be anywhere near their habitat, will be working on a new area.. and poof.. Boxed animal..
 

Kiwolf

Kiwolf
i won't use issue tracker.. Still have problems from my first issues where i keep having to reload the game through steam cloud or my direct file save on my comp.. nothing has been done about that one. And that is worse then the animals being randomly boxed when designing and decorating new habitats, ect..... So yeah.. my faith in the tracker is null.
 

LN

LN
Kiwolf said:
i won't use issue tracker.. Still have problems from my first issues where i keep having to reload the game through steam cloud or my direct file save on my comp.. nothing has been done about that one. And that is worse then the animals being randomly boxed when designing and decorating new habitats, ect..... So yeah.. my faith in the tracker is null.
Click to expand...

That's a thing Frontier can't help with. That happens because Steam doesn't upload the files correctly or the connection has been cut off before the upload process is completed.

If you shut down your pc while Steam is still uploading you'll get this message next time you start, it's not Frontier's fault.

Turning off Steam Cloud is the best solution for this.
 
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