I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue. Often I see ants, radscorpions moving half buried under the landscape. Sometimes when I kill them they simply fall through the world but, others they get stuck and, twitch, Not knowing wether or not to be above or below the ground.

I recently ran into another form of this glitch. I was trying to recover the dead NCR ranger but, once I found him he was half buried and, It breaks this little side quest. I can't finish it because I can't recover his body. :brokencomputer:

Here is a screen of the Glitch, [img]http://s967.photobucket.com/albums/ae157/chucksteel/Game%20Glitch/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot146.jpg[/img]

Has anyone else seen this? Is there a fix? I've searched the threads but, haven't found any answers.

thanks for any help.

cev

This is all guesswork, but from what I've seen, when animations are played on actors the collision detection is a bit hit-and-miss. If you have an NPC sticking his arm out whilst standing next to a wall, the arm may well go through the wall. Presumably what is happening is that the animation is played and then Havok comes in to try and work out the consequences of the new object shape, but if collision surfaces have become too far merged or interlocked it is unable to separate them. I found this out the hard way when I navmeshed too close to a static object (a bar) and had an NPC get her arm stuck in it whilst walking past.

Couple this with the fact that the navmesh in the wasteland often dives underneath the scenery and it might explain why scorpions and the like often get stuck. I think the game tries to spawn actors on the navmesh, and if it's underground, Havok may not always be able to sort out the consequences. It also occurs to me that the shape of the actor might play a part. A tall, thin humanoid would spawn with only a small proportion of their body below ground, whilst a low, flat scorpion or ant might have the bulk of their body below the ground surface, and the proportions above and below might have an impact on how Havok determines what goes where.

In my experience the problem was more prevalent in NV than in Fallout 3, and from what I've seen the navmeshing in NV is a bit more... unpolished, than in Fallout 3.

Like I said, the above is only guesswork and might be total rot, of course.

I've had this problem too. Enemies sitting half way between rocks and outside of it etc. Hopefully a new patch will fix this.

Its not an uncommon problem. A number have posted about this. Ive seen this issue on my copy since day 1. The severity differs from person to person.
It wasnt enough to be annoying for me. As far as the dead NCR ranger, you may be able to use some console commands to help bring him back.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_console_commands

I wonder if you can simply disable him then re-enable him or something.

This has been going on since Morrowind.

It all boils down to a cell not rendering correctly. Sometimes a building or even a whole town will be missing. The fix is to save and exit the game, then reload.

As for Critters, usually this clears out after 72 game hours if you stay away from the cell. It helps to kill most or all of the critters in a cell so they respawn. However I have noticed as I play that misrendered objects sort themselves out as time goes on.

So, just put it down to illusions caused by acute Rad Poisoning.

Thanks for all of your replies,

I found others talking about this issue shortly after posting this, didn't think to search for "Clipping". :brokencomputer:

I wasn't annoyed by the creatures glitching through the world, I thought it was kind of funny. When the dead NPC was stuck and broke the quest I got mad. I've tried to save, exit and, reload but, that didn't fix the problem. I guess I'll leave the quest unfinished for a while to see if the cell re-renders correctly.

I did see a bit of this during my adventures in the DC wasteland but, I'm seeing it a lot out, in the Mojave desert.

cev