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Bug Camera issues

  • Thread starter Deleted member 32699
  • Start date
is this a bug?
D

Deleted member 32699

Guest
On the very first day I played Embers Adrift, I had this strange issue with the camera suddenly twitching randomly and then pointing in a completely different direction.
At first I thought it might be my mouse, but as the problem kept recurring and my mouse was otherwise working perfectly, I became suspicious.

I then tried to look for a pattern as to when the problem occurs, but couldn't find one.
Out of nowhere the camera twitches and then points either towards the ground, up in the sky or somewhere else.

Today I met someone ingame who has the same problem - so it seems to be a common (and probably known) bug.

The issue in itself is annoying, but it's even worse in a game like Embers Adrift, where you often have to pay close attention to your surroundings to avoid getting lost.
 
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The guy with whom I was playing today had an issue that resembled this and fixed it by adjusting (reducing I think) mouse sensitivity. (And no, the mouse wasn't being used when it was getting all funky like that.)
 
Hm.

I'm using the default mouse sensitivity, which is relatively low, so it shouldn't really be because the mouse is too sensitive.

But thanks for the tip.

I'll try changing the setting - maybe the default setting is somehow bugged, who knows?
 
Unfortunately, even after changing the mouse sensitivity, the camera continues to do its antics.
 
Ah. Too bad. My friend was working off a new install (I'm pushy heh heh) so everything was default for them as well.

You don't happen to have a touch screen monitor do you? (Or a really dirty keyboard? I have kids. This is a thing.)
 
Neither.

And if the problem were caused by hardware, then in my opinion it would have to be the mouse.

My mouse works perfectly in other 3rd person games - without any camera problems.
 
You are using the macOS client right? I have experienced this myself from time to time and have found no apparent cause or fix. Seems to boil down to Unity not really prioritizing macOS builds (they're more concerned with iOS builds). In other words: it's not something I have experienced on windows clients.
 
Yes, I'm on Mac.

Unfortunately, I forgot to ask the other person with the same problem about their OS - I assumed it must be Windows, as I rarely meet other Mac players.

Anyway, it's a bit annoying, but it's not the end of the world - I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Thanks everyone for your input.

In this context (and since @Aphis reported constant crashes under Windows in another thread), I would also like to emphasise that the Mac client is otherwise absolutely stable.
I've been playing for 10 days now - and quite a few hours - and haven't had a single crash in that time.
 
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Yeah that guy was playing in Windows. As am I.

(In the past I have tried to play whenever there's been a trial but it's always been too unstable for me to purchase. It still is. )
 
For additional clarity I've spent a decent amount of time trying to track this down. At some point I found a correlation with the mouse issue and a CPU spike in the physics system. I then reported the issue to Unity and they said that something else was "stealing" cpu time from the physics system and it's not really related to the physics system. Basically the trail went cold there as they didn't give me anything useful to go off of, and their tooling was proving completely inadequate to figure out the actual source of the problem :(
 
Undone said:
At some point I found a correlation with the mouse issue and a CPU spike in the physics system.
Click to expand...

This is consistent with my impression that the whole system "freezes" for a fraction of a second when the camera twitches.

The most annoying thing is when it happens while you are moving the character with both mouse buttons, because then not only the camera turns, but also the character, causing you to lose your orientation.
 
Karma said:
This is consistent with my impression that the whole system "freezes" for a fraction of a second when the camera twitches.

The most annoying thing is when it happens while you are moving the character with both mouse buttons, because then not only the camera turns, but also the character, causing you to lose your orientation.
Click to expand...
That is consistent with my findings. It happens less frequently at higher frames but I have not yet been able to nail down a specific cause. And the fact that this does not occur in any of my testing on a windows machine leads me to believe it's an engine issue with macOS builds. And unless I can create a sample project that reproduces the problem 100% of the time Unity is never going to fix it unfortunately.
 
Undone said:
It happens less frequently at higher frames [...]
Click to expand...

So if I lower my graphics settings, maybe it will happen less frequently?

At the moment (with modest / balanced graphics settings) it happens all the time - about every few minutes.
 
Karma said:
So if I lower my graphics settings, maybe it will happen less frequently?

At the moment (with modest / balanced graphics settings) it happens all the time - about every few minutes.
Click to expand...
worth trying; it doesn't happen too frequently for me and this is the only mac I have that can realistically run the project.
 
Success!

I reduced both the view distance and the shadow distance to 80% each - and since then the problem has not recurred.
I'll experiment a bit to see how far I can move the sliders up again before the problem returns.

In hindsight, I feel a bit daft for not thinking of this solution sooner, but I was so convinced it must be a bug - and (as you wrote) it must be a bug of sorts, because this isn't normal.

Maybe Unity should focus more on optimising their engine instead of trying to rip off their licensees.
 
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Karma said:
Maybe Unity should focus more on optimising their engine instead of trying to rip off their licensees.
Click to expand...
The macOS gaming market is so minuscule it doesn't really surprise me how little they care; after all, it wouldn't make their stock price go up! It's honestly kind of sad though because when Unity first came to market it only worked on macOS!
 
In my last post, I wrote that the camera problems disappeared after I reduced the view and the shadow distance to 80%.
So I increased the sliders to 90% on a trial basis - and the camera problems were back.
The crazy thing is that the problem persists after I reduced the sliders back to 80%.

Also, I've never had performance (FPS) issues in dungeons before, but the day before yesterday in EV Bats the game turned into a slideshow at times.
I'm really confused (and no - not because of the bats *chuckle*).


Undone said:
The macOS gaming market is so minuscule it doesn't really surprise me how little they care; after all, it wouldn't make their stock price go up! It's honestly kind of sad though because when Unity first came to market it only worked on macOS!
Click to expand...

Oh, I didn't know that Unity was originally exclusive to macOS. Interesting.

And yes, the chances of improvements are slim, probably worse than ever.
The last I heard from Unity was an announced wave of layoffs - not surprising after last year's fiasco.
 
So far I had ignored the FOV slider, but two days ago I started to increase the FOV.

Unfortunately, I realised that besides the camera twitch bug, for which I still don't have a satisfactory solution, there is also a camera distance bug that occasionally and arbitrarily changes the set camera distance after changing the default FOV setting.
 
Karma said:
So far I had ignored the FOV slider, but two days ago I started to increase the FOV.

Unfortunately, I realised that besides the camera twitch bug, for which I still don't have a satisfactory solution, there is also a camera distance bug that occasionally and arbitrarily changes the set camera distance after changing the default FOV setting.
Click to expand...
Does this bug mess up the camera? Or just result in you having to readjust?
 
It regularly messes up the camera distance and then forces me to readjust it by zooming further in or out (the bug can cause both - the camera suddenly zooming further in or out).

I didn't have these problems as long as I left the FOV slider at the default settings - the camera distance always stayed the same.
 
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