Trouble with our old friend the climbable-area bug.

[sturmovik]

Longtime player here, and I've run into everyone's favorite bug, the zero-climbable-area problem!

For those who don't know, this is a longstanding bug in which one or more animals in a habitat will show zero climbable area in their habitat, even as they are actively climbing and the traversable-area map shows the object(s) as climbable. I'm very familiar with this bug and the usual work-around of deleting and un-deleting something climbable so that the game has to recalculate traversable area for the whole habitat, and that's always worked for me until now.

I just built this Binturong habitat the other day, and it and the new Clouded Leopard habitat next door refuse to detect their climbables no matter what I do. I've forced it to recalculate a dozen times, saved/quit/reloaded multiple times and used everything else I know to solve this, but these two habitats are determined not to work. For the Leopard habitat, I also noticed that animals couldn't detect increased nature cover unless I moved the gate off of the habitat and then control-z'd it back, which I've never seen before.

Habitats built in this save file both before and since work normally with respect to both of these issues. This is a very large save file and the laptop I am using is near-minimal for PZ, but I use Nvidia GeForce NOW remote streaming and haven't had serious performance problems before. I suspect the problems in these two habitats are related to the initial height of the climbables above the barriers; that water is several meters deep, and originally I built the island with null barriers all around (which works fine in my very-similar capuchin habitat). I suspect this in part because the old animal-escapes-if-it-climbs-too-high bug has also shown occasionally with these two habitats. I tried raising the barriers well above the highest climbables, and as you can see I've now changed to wooden barriers on the island itself without effect (and another side-note; you'd expect those wooden barriers to be climbable/jumpable for the Binturong at 1 meter high, but it still shows zero escape points).

In summary, I'm wondering if any other experienced players know any other ways around this/these bug(s). Unfortunately, I am travelling tomorrow and won't have access to this computer or any device signed in to this account until at least Thursday; I won't be able to see any replies, and with this in mind I've tried to provide all possible relevant information. Thanks for any help, and see you later!

 

[iloveyourzoos]

Not sure if this will help, but as a trouble shooting possibility you might try removing the yellow siamang brachiation item, and then moving the animals to the trade center and back to the exhibit, to see if that helps. It's possible that the "special" climbing is somehow overriding any calculation of the other items? (I know that it's all supposed to work equally, but this would allow you to check if the "older" climbing systems work for the animals).

 

[XT]

I second removing the new climbable item. I gather it requires a fair bit of empty space around it to function properly and that may be creating issues. They need to give guides for the new climbing frame like they did for the floating platform (who's requirements are so large, it's impossible to use).

 

[sturmovik]

Thanks for the idea, but it didn't work. Just played around with it for another hour and a half, and no progress. I move every animal out, delete every climbable in the exhibit, move one animal back in, add one climbable, no progress. I try the same thing except this time I add the climbable before moving the animal back in, no progress. And also, now when I built a throwaway temporary habitat to hold them in while I get the main habitat figured out... climbables in that habitat don't register either (I mean the dirt-simple one-meter posts). This last is new since last week. In all case the animals climb on them, they show the green traversability lines, but they don't count towards climbable space.

While trying to solve this, I noticed a completely different problem- with the keepers moving animals around/between exhibits. When I click on an exhibit to move an animal into it, it will say "Invalid destination" unless I click within a few feet of the habitat gate. This is on perfectly flat or near-flat terrain, clear in all directions for plenty of space. This occurs on the three habitats (binturong, clouded leopard and the aforementioned temporary holding pen) that are most recently built, which are also the newest three; more than 50 older habitats have been stable and normal through this entire process.

Other things that I can add to the habitats, specifically vegetation, enrichment items and hard shelter, count like they should in all cases. The only thing I can think of to do still is empty the habitats, remove the gates, delete every piece of barrier and rebuild as if completely new... and I don't know why that would solve any problem that what I've already tried hasn't solved.

I'm submitting a ticket on this tonight; thanks for your responses, and will continue to update in order to provide info to anyone else who may find this in the future with this same problem.

Finally, here's what happens when you put a six-meter pole right inside a habitat gate.

 

[GRAMPERS62]

Wonder if you could post a screenshot of the traversable area for the animal?

 

[sturmovik]

Here are screenshots of a small test habitat I built next to the main binturong habitat to see if the problem would persist in a new habitat. Also, two other shots showing how a very small movement of the cursor affects whether the destination is considered valid or not. All of these problems are occurring identically in the main Binturong and Clouded Leopard habitats. I've had a ticket open since Saturday, no response.

And yes, those keepers are flying. They climbed the trunk as soon as they entered.

 

[GRAMPERS62]

The sky walking staff is due to the tree blocking the six-meter arch that must remain clear at the staff gate.
The climb space issue is a bit more tricky. I do not have the binturong so I'm not certain if they are limited as to what they can climb. There was an issue with the koalas like this and I think it was solved in an update. I've wondered if there was an issue with how close some animals could get to climbable objects blocking their access.

 

[sturmovik]

Yeah, I only included the keeper bit for comic relief. It just occurred to me to try moving some non-SE Asia DLC animals into the affected habitats and see if they work; these are my first two Asia DLC animals, and that seems like a simple test that would provide some useful information.

 

[sturmovik]

So, I moved a base-game red panda into each of the habitats in turn. No luck, same problem. I made sure all climbables were usable by the red panda, and I moved all other animals out of both habitats prior to the panda being sent there. Before moving the panda out of its own habitat, I checked that it had normal climbable-detection there; I left it in one of the new habitats to see if anything changes the next time I load the game and pathfinding/traversability is recalculated (no reason that should work, ik, but no reason not to try it)

Your comment about a six-meter distance around the gates needing to remain clear (which I didn't know, by the way, ty for the info) gave me an idea. Since that seems to be about the distance that my keepers consider a valid place to put the animals in these habitats, I went ahead and marked out with logs the space that they consider valid. While doing this I noticed something else odd - the valid space changes with the angle of the camera. The same point that is valid at one camera angle is well outside of the valid area at another camera angle. The higher the camera angle, the smaller the valid area. Low camera angle, most of the habitat is valid... with the caveat listed below. The area marked by the logs in this pic is what is valid from directly above. (Note- the logs themselves do not affect traversable area for either species, and I've watched keepers walk over them)

Now, after that I tried putting animals into the area that was valid at a low camera angle but not at a high angle. My keepers happily went to put the binturong in question into Habitat 59. Only problem is... this is Habitat 61. Look at the overview pic. That's the Binturongs down at the bottom. You see that red dot at the very top, under the monorail, completely by itself? That's "Habitat 59". Originally, 59 went all the way around the lake, fully enclosing the other two island habitats; the plan was to put flamingos in there after getting the rest of the habitats done. After these problems started, I moved 59's gate and deleted all barrier sections in case they were causing the problem, but I've now rebooted the game numerous times with no improvement.

I've done habitats in habitats before with no problem, but these ones here are/were null barriers for all habitats concerned with only water separating them; I may have screwed up the barriers somehow or simply confused the game, although I don't see how that would cause climbable-detection problems or how it would affect the temporary brick holding habitat, which is on land that was never touched by Habitat 59.

At this point, I'm still waiting for Frontier to answer my ticket before doing anything. If nothing else... well, I'm glad I saved under a new save slot when beginning this build; I'll just start the build over, get the island habitats working and figure the rest out after that.

Thanks for your suggestions and comments so far and in future!

 

[GRAMPERS62]

I see now. Building habitats inside other habitats is not how the game was intended. While we can place them that way, we could call it an exploit that often has some unexpected results. Often, we can create a c shaped habitat around another to give the same illusion with the open part being where the staff gate enters the inner habitat.

 

[sturmovik]

Agreed. While I have been able to do it before without trouble, that was using a physical (non-null) barrier for the inner habitat, and with land instead of water between them. I remember that time, when I placed the inner habitat gate, I was mentally standing at arms length from my computer, turned away with my other hand over my eyes fully expecting all hell to break loose... and then pleasantly surprised when it worked perfectly. That probably gave me unrealistic expectations for this more complex build; otherwise I would have included this information much earlier in this thread.

At this point, I think I'll just scrap this build and start it over. Honestly, it wasn't my best design work anyway; I don't mind losing it. I'll leave the ticket open with Frontier, just in case they have anything to add, but I don't foresee anything significant. Guess the only way to find out what doesn't work is to push the envelope and try and find new ways to break the game.

Thanks for your time and answers, and good luck building!

 

[sturmovik]

Yep. Frontier just got back to me, and recommended I build a new, larger test habitat well away from anything else concerned here. I did and, guess what, everything works normally. So, problem solved, and I'll lose a few habitats by starting this build over but nothing particularly good. Definite case of player error but, with a game this good and large and complex the only way to learn what it can't do is push it until it breaks. Thanks again for your attention and advice!

Now I just have to figure out why, since this morning's system update, my keyboard plays a musical chime with every keystroke while using Nvidia GeForce NOW to play PZ.

EDIT: I have successfully fixed GeForce by utilizing the ancient masters' technique of turning the computer off, and turning it on again.