Movement command bug?

MrNooby

So I'll often alt tab while my party is moving to where they can travel to a different area for a few moments, glance at what tabs I've got open and the like. Come back, my party is there, good to go.

You must gather your party before venturing forth.

Look at map. One of my NPCs is sitting all the way back at where they were before I alt tabbed, even though I know for a fact that I had all of my party members selected. The character that it effects is random, I've had it happen to any of them, sometimes even 2, and once 3. It doesn't happen only when I'm alt tabbed, but when I'm not I just tell them to move again and that fixes it.

I never had this problem in the first game, only the second. Is there any sort of fix for this?

ithildurnew

One fix would be to not make a habit out of alt-tabbing while moving, or in general while running any game. Bad habit to get into, most game documentations specifically have dev's warning against doing this.

Errond669

for me it happens regardless of minimising the game, sometimes character just gets stuck, all other go, and one just stands because his command just stopped, like "well i cannot do that now, i'll just wait now". I would say bug of some kind, i have no idea why not really blocked characters do that.

Lord_Tansheron

Characters have a habit of just doing silly things when the smallest obstacle happens along - like, say, when the party is trying to squeeze through a narrow hallway. Apparently they don't like waiting their turn, so they just go on strike.

That's a fairly common behavior, likely rooted in the pathfinding routines of the engine. Could just be that is what you saw, and that the tab-out was a coincidence. Since you're more likely to tab out on long paths and since long paths also increase the likelihood of something going wrong as they move, that might just be what happened.

But it's definitely not impossible that this is an entirely unrelated bug of its own. I do frequently tab out while traveling, too, but I have never seen this behavior. Maybe someone else has?

MrNooby

I definitely see it happen more often in tight corridors - but the odd thing is, I never once had any problem like this in BG1, even in firewine ruins, where it's tight corridors everywhere, or the thieves "maze" (maze my ass).

I have had it happen a few times outside of that aswell though, sometimes just in the city itself, like the docks (why must they only have an exit point at the top), and I'll notice one of my characters is still hanging back at the bottom of the map.

Gallowglass

I've seen this behaviour in BG1ee as well as BG2ee. Often, in fact. [Edit: without Alt-TABbing or otherwise switching window.]

What seems to be happening is this:-

1) when a party is ordered to move, each party member calculates a path;
2) any party member who cannot see any clear path immediately (typically because other party members are already blocking a doorway or chicane) will ignore the movement command;
3) whenever a moving character encounters an obstacle not anticipated when the path was calculated (typically because another party member or random NPC has now walked into the way), the blocked character will re-calculate a path;
4) any party member who cannot see a clear path on re-calculation will abandon the movement command and stop;
5) when a temporary blockage (from another NPC etc.) clears, unfortunately that does not trigger another re-calculation (and thereby a resumption of movement) because the blocked movement command was not retained as "pending".

MrNooby

That doesn't explain why it sometimes happens in open areas like in the city however. It certainly does seem to happen more often in tight areas though, which might be why I didn't see it in BG1 - there wasn't really a ton of tight areas, and I could have just gotten lucky in firewine ruins.

Lord_Tansheron

Cities do have choke points as well. There's often weird walkways or stairs or corners, which while the optimal path also lead to congestion - and then stoppage.