Code Bounty: Blob Spores need fixed.

[TheMidnghtRose]

Blob spores are currently unable to do the one thing they are supposed to do. Walk through blob tiles. Blob tiles currently act as walls for them and while they can see through these tiles, they cannot move through them at all, leading many to think that Blob Spore rally is broken.

It was broken by this PR https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/55495 and has been reported three times with the third issue report being closed.
Issue Report #1 and #2 which are still open. https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/56051 , https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/56742

$8 USD to whoever gets Blob Spores able to actually move through blob walls.

[TheMidnghtRose]

Updating Bounty to $15 USD as of 252 days of blob spores being broken.

[TheMidnghtRose]

Updating to $20 USD as of 302 days of blob spores being broken.

[Whoneedspacee]

nevermind blame watermelon

[TheMidnghtRose]

Throw me a PM here or a DM on discord for the cash. I have a paypal setup to send the cash directly to you.

[TheMidnghtRose]

Well that PR was closed by a maintainer who did not want a bandaid fix for blob spores. Still offering the $20 for blob spores being fixed.

[Timberpoes]

I might as well post here since I've investigated this in the past.

The issue was introduced by https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/55495

kevinz changed a piece of code that was commented

Code: Select all

density = FALSE //this being false causes two bugs, being able to attack blob tiles behind other blobs and being unable to move on blob tiles in no gravity, but turning it to 1 causes the blob mobs to be unable to path through blobs, which is probably worse.

Setting it to TRUE. See the first review comment for specifics on the PR.

The comment is largely correct. The issue with setting it to TRUE is that blob spores do not use our astar pathfinding. They don't use any of our pathfinding at all. They use inbuilt BYOND pathfinding from its move procs, which will not pathfind over things with density = TRUE under any circumstance (Believe me, I spent a solid day trying to come up with a workaround. All the code is handled internally by BYOND, we never even get the opportunity to tell its internal pathfinding that the dense blob structure is a valid path).

However, kevinz refactor introduced something new and fun - Setting density = FALSE means projectiles pass harmlessly through blob structures instead, allowing you to shoot the blob core and walk through blob tiles as if they weren't there at all.

At this point, the solution is to convert blob mobs to using one of our pathfinding algorithms to move. Think like Beepsky or our medibots. Then they can be force-moved over dense structures.

Anyone looking to cash in this bounty is likely to encounter this same suggestion.

[TheMidnghtRose]

You know, that explains alot about some of the odd things that the spores were doing.

[Whoneedspacee]

still broken lol

[TheMidnghtRose]

Since I forgot to update it here. $60 for actually fixing this as its gone past the 1 year mark of being broken.

[ABearInTheWoods]

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/65598