Edit: This has been fixed in 1.1.0!
This bug is incredibly annoying and has been going on since at least the open beta. It’s been posted multiple times by different people and I have yet to see AGS actually acknowledge it so I’m going to continue to repost it until they do.
I’ve spent 4-5+ hours trying to track down the exact circumstances that cause this bug so I will start by explaining the bug (with a video demonstrating it) then talk about the different ways that I can reliably ‘trigger’ the bug.
If you’re only curious about what ‘activates’ / ‘triggers’ the bug, scroll down to the numbered list section of this post.
Let’s start with what the bug does. Normally, when you do a sideways evade, the camera tries to “stick” to your target so that you have an easier time continuing to attack it. This is good and when it’s working properly, it’s a well done feature. However, once the bug has been ‘activated’, your sideways evades will now cause the camera to become suuuper sluggish for 1-2 seconds (and this time is extended while attacking so it will last indefinitely if you don’t stop attacking for 1-2 seconds).
Take a look at these two clips:
In this first clip, the bug has already become active. You’ll see me do sideways evades and then start shaking my mouse back and forth on my mousepad. I’m moving my mouse fast and consistently. Immediately after the evade, it doesn’t seem like I’m moving my mouse that far or that fast. However, after 1-2 seconds when the camera snaps back to normal, you’ll see me quickly swinging my camera around. The entire time, I’m doing the exact same movements on my mouse. It’s just that the camera is crazy sluggish for the first 1-2 seconds so it seems like I’m not moving it much. Gif Your Game
In this second clip, you’ll see me doing the same thing except for the first two evades, I don’t have the bug active yet so my camera is responding appropriately to my mouse movements. I then deliberately activate the bug (by entering the “aiming” functionality of a Light’s Embrace cast). After the bug has been activated, I do another sideways evade and show my camera being super sluggish. Gif Your Game
Once the bug has been ‘activated’, you can’t turn it off until you fully restart the game. So for the rest of your session, the rapier becomes basically unplayable. You’re forced to either do a sideways evade then miss most of your attacks, or you have to do forward / back evades only (which is far from ideal).
The camera bug will only occur from a sideways evade while you’re near an enemy. So you can still do normal sideways evades without an enemy nearby and your camera will behave normally.
Now that you’ve seen what the bug is, let’s go over a few terms I’m going to be using.
Activated: As mentioned above, once the bug has been ‘activated’, every single sideways evade (with an enemy in front of you) will cause the camera to become sluggish. The only way to “un-activate” the bug is by restarting the game.
Self-Target: When casting a healing spell, there is a button (control by default) that causes that spell to be cast on yourself.
Pre-Self-Target: Normally when you cast a healing spell that can be targeted (Light’s Embrace, Divine Embrace, Sacred Ground) your character will enter an “aiming” phase. So the normal cast sequence is “Press Spell > Aim where you want > Press Spell again to cast”. You can also do “Press Spell > Hold Self-Target button” and this will cast the spell on yourself. Both of these sequences will result in your character entering the “aiming” phase. However, you can skip the aiming phase if you are holding the Self-Target button BEFORE pressing the spell button for the first time. “Self-Target button > Press Spell” will result in skipping the aiming phase and just directly healing yourself with no delay. Unfortunately, there is an input delay bug after light or heavy attacks that breaks this sequence. “Light/Heavy Attack > Self-Target button > Press Spell” will result in the aiming phase being entered. You can just continue to hold the Self-Target button and after 1 second, the spell will be cast on yourself. This isn’t ideal because it slows down your cast, but more importantly in this context, it will cause the bug to become active.
Okay so now let’s go over all the ways that the bug can become “activated”.
- Cast Divine Embrace or Light’s Embrace WITHOUT a proper pre-self-target.
- With the “Targeted Healing” Gameplay setting enabled, initiate a (non pre-self-target) Sacred Ground cast around another player.
- With the “Targeted Healing - Manual Target Lock” Gameplay setting enabled, have your Life Staff out and click the Middle Mouse Button while aiming at another player.
For (1), it doesn’t even matter whether or not you have “Targeted Healing” enabled. Also, even if you are holding the Self-Target button before casting the spell, if you recently did a light or heavy attack as your last action, your character will still enter the “aiming” phase and this will activate the bug.
For (2), if you have “Targeted Healing” enabled, but aren’t near any other players, the bug won’t activate. If you have “Targeted Healing” disabled, you can cast Sacred Ground whenever and however you want and the bug will not be activated.
For (3), if you disable “Targeted Healing - Manual Target Lock”, the bug will never activate from this cause so just disable it and you’ll be in the clear from this one.
This bug is incredibly annoying. Rapier + Life Staff is my favourite weapon combination, but the ONLY way that I can play with it is if I disable “Targeted Healing”, “Targeted Healing - Manual Target Lock”, and make sure to ALWAYS get a reliable Pre-Self-Target cast of Divine Embrace / Light’s Embrace. This last one is difficult to do mid-fight because fairly often I’ll do a light or heavy attack with my life staff and then go to cast a Self-Targeted Light’s Embrace without thinking about it. Because of the input delay / queue bug mentioned above, this causes the “aiming” phase to be initiated on the cast and the bug becomes active.
Also, even if I were to always take care to make sure I do a proper Pre-Self-Target cast of Light’s embrace, I can’t heal group content because I have “Targeted Healing” disabled. On top of that, because of the current weapon swap inconsistencies (which thankfully they claim to be working on), it’s not uncommon for me to think my rapier is out and try to use a spell that ends up being a non-self-target Light’s Embrace (activating the bug)…
Having to restart my game anytime the bug gets activated is annoying enough, but consider that my server now has queues at peak times so if the bug activates during peak times, I’m forced to either sit through an hour long queue or stop using the rapier.
I’ve done a lot of work on this bug just to make your lives easier in fixing it. I really hope you take this post seriously and acknowledge it and forward it to the proper people. As mentioned at the start of this post, I will be reposting this regularly until it is actually acknowledged. That may end up getting me banned from the forums, but if that’s the case then that’s really sad considering the amount of time I’ve put into debugging this and making a detailed post just so that you have an easier time making your game better.
Thanks for your time.