Cyberpunk 2077 Bugs: Where Flying Cars, NPCs in T-Poses, and Other Errors Come From / ITech content

Contents:

• Out of Place Objects
• Aggressive Autopilot
• Blown Up Cars
• Unpredictable Car Behavior
• Flying Cars
• Classic Game Bugs

Cyberpunk 2077, despite its undeniable strengths, will remain etched in the memory of many players due to its release issues. When the game launched in 2020, users frequently encountered serious bugs that disrupted immersion in the world of Night City and prevented completion of the game. CD Projekt RED studio invested significant effort in fixing Cyberpunk 2077's technical shortcomings, but even after Update 2.0 and the Phantom Liberty expansion, released in 2023, players continue to encounter flying objects and observe unpredictable NPC behavior. These issues continue to impact the overall experience of the game, highlighting the importance of a stable gaming experience for players.

In this article, the Skillbox Media Gamedev editorial team analyzes the bugs encountered in Cyberpunk 2077 and examines the causes of their occurrence. We will discuss the most common errors and issues encountered by players, as well as the underlying reasons for these issues. Cyberpunk 2077, despite its ambition and high expectations, was not without technical issues, which have become a topic of discussion among fans. Understanding these bugs will help players prepare for potential difficulties and improve the overall gaming experience.

We do not have complete knowledge of all the features of the REDengine 4 engine used by CD Projekt RED to develop Cyberpunk 2077. Therefore, it is impossible to pinpoint the exact causes of some bugs—only the company's programmers can know this information. However, we can make educated guesses based on generally accepted game development principles. This allows us to understand how various aspects of gameplay and technical details can influence the occurrence of errors and bugs in the game.

Misplaced Objects

Players periodically encounter situations where flying objects appear around their characters. This most often concerns weapons belonging to certain NPCs. Such visual effects can raise questions among players, especially if they affect gameplay. It is important to understand that such phenomena may be related to technical errors or peculiarities of the game mechanics. Graphics optimization and bug fixes can help eliminate such issues, allowing players to focus on gameplay and enjoy the game world without unnecessary distractions.

Objects held by the main character or other characters are separate objects, typically attached to the character model using special anchor points. This solution allows for animation of the character's hand, reducing the risk of weapons or other objects becoming displaced. Using anchor points allows us to achieve a high degree of realism in animation and character interaction with the environment, which is an important aspect in video game and animation development.

In the video, the anchor point appears to be offset from its original position. This can be seen by how the gun continues to follow Jackie's hand. The reason for this offset remains unclear. Perhaps it was necessary for a specific cutscene, after which the anchor point was not returned to its original position. It is important to take into account that the correct position of the anchor point is key to the realism of the animation and the interaction of objects in the scene.

Aggressive Autopilot

One of the common bugs observed after release is the aggressive behavior of the car autopilot. When a player summons their vehicle through a special menu, it should appear near the character, out of their line of sight, and then drive up to them. However, sometimes this process doesn't go as intended: the car can get stuck in the path, collide with an obstacle, or, conversely, ignore it. Such autopilot issues can negatively impact the gameplay and cause frustration among players.

Strange behavior in games can indicate several issues, among which inefficient use of navigation meshes plays a key role. We have already discussed this tool in articles about bugs in Starfield and artificial intelligence in The Last of Us. We recommend saving these materials for a deeper understanding of this topic. In short, navigation meshes act as "vision" for artificial intelligence, and any errors in their settings can lead to serious navigation issues in gameplay.

In large games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, navigation meshes are often generated automatically, which can lead to various problems. Road signs and barriers may not be taken into account during mesh generation. Furthermore, it is possible that level designers add obstacles to the game world after the navigation mesh has been created. This can lead to the system not recognizing objects in its path, negatively impacting gameplay and interaction with the environment. Properly setting up navigation meshes and updating them according to changes in the game world are key to ensuring a high-quality gaming experience.

One of the reasons for bugs in games can be errors in path calculations. For NPCs and objects like cars to act realistically, their movement must appear natural. Simply creating the shortest route from point A to point B is often insufficient. This can lead to vehicles running into pedestrians and indiscriminately hitting everything in their path. However, completely prohibiting such maneuvers is also impractical, as they can be useful in situations such as chases. An effective movement algorithm must consider many factors to ensure realistic behavior of objects in the game world.

Developers can address these challenges in a variety of ways. One approach is to assign a value to certain actions. For example, driving on a sidewalk may be difficult for a car and is only justified in exceptional cases, such as an emergency response. Another approach is to divide the navigation mesh into categories. This allows for the creation of universal sections as well as zones used only in specific situations. With this type of navigation mesh design, the behavior of NPCs and vehicles can be effectively controlled using a single binary variable. When a character or object needs navigation, they immediately check whether all sections of the map are accessible or only certain areas. This approach optimizes gameplay and increases the realism of character interactions with the environment.

In Cyberpunk 2077, some aspects function inconsistently. For example, cars parked near the player character may have access to the entire navigation space. This allows them to reach their owner faster, which may raise some questions about the realism and logic of NPC behavior in the game.

Blown Up Cars

After the 2.0 update, players began frequently noticing scorched cars roaming freely around the city as if nothing had happened. These cars attract attention and become an important part of the gameplay, adding atmosphere and realism to the world. Players are discussing how these scorched machines affect the gameplay experience and what they mean in the context of the update.

In this situation, the game engine incorrectly selects the car model. Typically, when a vehicle's "health bar" reaches zero, a series of sequential events is triggered: an explosion occurs, movement physics are disabled, and the player is unable to enter the car. As a result, the explosion causes the default car model to be replaced with the model of the exploded vehicle. However, in some cases, the replacement occurs outside the game's logic. This may be due to the fact that the incorrect model is superimposed on the car when an object appears in the game world. Also, external factors, such as a collision with another object, can cause the mesh to be replaced. This bug is so specific that without access to the source code it is impossible to determine its cause.

Similar issues are observed with enemies in games. Some of them continue to exist in the game world even if the player manages to decapitate them. This phenomenon raises questions about the game's mechanics and bugs. We have already discussed similar problems in the article about bugs in Starfield, where various aspects of game logic and their impact on the player were also considered.

In both cases, the issue may be related to an incorrect calculation of the death logic. Ideally, when the variable responsible for health reaches zero, the NPC should stop moving, ragdoll physics for a dead body should activate, and the player should be given the opportunity to search the character. However, for some reason, this logic was not implemented properly. Perhaps the enemy's health, despite being headless, did not drop to zero. A detailed analysis of the code is necessary to identify and fix the causes of this logic violation, which will improve the gameplay and increase the level of player interaction with the game environment.

The cause of the bug may be quite unusual. Perhaps the spawner, after finishing the battle, tried to revive the enemy in the same place and chose the one who had just been killed from a limited pool of characters. As a result, a regular character with an updated set of variables but a corrupted mesh appeared in the location. This may cause visual artifacts and disruption to gameplay, which negatively impacts user experience. To address this issue, it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of the spawn mechanics and identify possible vulnerabilities in the character respawn logic.

Unpredictable Car Behavior

When driving around the city, cars can exhibit unpredictable behavior: they can fall through the asphalt or, conversely, rise into the air, as if on a trampoline. In such situations, the cause lies in colliders—an invisible geometric system responsible for denoting solid surfaces within the game engine. Properly setting up colliders is a key aspect in game and app development, ensuring realistic object interactions and preventing various anomalies. Optimizing colliders helps avoid issues with physics simulation, which ultimately leads to improved gameplay and higher overall product quality.

Most physical objects displayed on the screen are initially transparent. Simply placing a static mesh, such as a rock or other object, into a scene causes the player to be able to walk through it. To prevent this, programmers and designers manually add invisible collision geometry within the object. These colliders can be simple shapes like rectangles and spheres, or more complex, unique shapes. While colliders can sometimes accurately replicate the shape of objects, this is rare, as excessive polygon counts can significantly impact system performance and reduce game performance. Properly setting up collisions is an important aspect of game design, as it affects how characters interact with the environment and ensures realistic gameplay. Collisions can occur not only with solid surfaces. Hitboxes, familiar to many players, are colliders. In some games, they can be intangible and serve as a means of conveying information, ensuring the correct interaction of objects in the game space. Properly setting up hitboxes and colliders is essential for creating realistic gameplay and minimizing bugs, which in turn improves the quality of the gaming experience.

In the video, you can see how the scene loads with a delay: the surrounding world is formed before the viewers' eyes. Most likely, the bridge collider didn't have time to load in this location, which caused the car to crash. This issue indicates insufficient optimization of object loading priorities. Collision geometry should load simultaneously with the physics object, preferably at a significant distance from the protagonist. If the system can't handle this, developers can implement dynamic loading in the open world, which reduces the load on the CPU and GPU. Optimizing object loading is a key aspect in game development, affecting the smoothness of gameplay and overall graphics quality.

Flying Cars

The odd behavior of vehicles isn't limited to them suddenly taking off. This phenomenon affects both player-driven vehicles and vehicles used by NPCs. Such unexpected moments can significantly impact the gameplay and experience.

The scene in the video may also have had issues with colliders. The car may have collided with an invisible obstacle or become stuck between road fragments. This could have resulted in the car being assigned unrealistically high speed values ​​or in a strong, one-time buoyancy impulse. Such situations often arise in computer graphics and games when physics doesn't account for all aspects of object interactions, which can significantly impact gameplay and user experience. Therefore, it is important to carefully configure colliders and test scenes to avoid such problems.

Impulse in Cyberpunk 2077 can be linked to the frame rate, which often leads to various issues in gameplay. In the attached video, filmed in Unreal Engine 5, you can see how a white circle, which represents a simple "actor", reacts to a shot. This uses the Add Force function, which works differently depending on the frame rate. In this example, when the frame rate was limited to 30, the circle ended up outside the scene. Without this limitation, the function worked correctly. This highlights the importance of optimizing the frame rate to ensure the stable operation of game mechanics.

One cause of problems can be incorrect calculation of variables. When specifying speed or impulse, you can use both integers and floating-point numbers. Using floating-point numbers provides greater precision in calculations, but also increases the likelihood of errors. The system may allow incorrect multiplication or rounding of values, which will ultimately lead to results that differ significantly from those expected by the programmers.

Classic Game Bugs

Cyberpunk 2077 has many well-known glitches that can be encountered at every turn. For example, some NPCs occasionally adopt T-poses and A-poses, which is a sign that the models haven't yet been animated. This is their default state, which sometimes piques players' curiosity. These visual bugs become part of the unique experience of the game, creating an atmosphere of unpredictability in the high-tech world of Night City.

If an animation fails to load or loads with an error, the engine leaves NPCs in the scene without animations. This issue often doesn't affect the rest of the code, so characters may be in a T-pose, resulting in incorrect movement or shooting. Solving this issue may require checking that animations are loading and integrating correctly into the gameplay.

In Cyberpunk 2077, one of the common issues is unnatural body physics. Enemy corpses may fall to the ground in strange positions, and limbs sometimes begin to twitch involuntarily. In the most severe cases, body models can even "fly" around the environment. Ragdoll physics problems are common in many video games, and they often occur when one object ends up inside another. In such situations, the bodies try to push each other away, but because they get stuck, the result is chaotic movement reminiscent of breakdancing. This negatively affects the overall immersion in the game and causes dissatisfaction among players.

One common bug in games is the exotic placement of NPCs. Sometimes the spawner fails to correctly place characters in the intended locations, resulting in them appearing in unexpected locations. The video may show an invisible spawner, which could explain the illogical spawn location of the characters.

Another strange situation: the character is hit by a car, but remains lying on the hood. This is not just a bug, but evidence of insufficient thought into the logic of such scenes. Ideally, the car should push the character sideways, preventing them from continuing to move on the hood. Moments like these are critical to creating a realistic gaming experience. Correct physics of object interaction helps to avoid ridiculous situations and makes the game more exciting.

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The bugs in Cyberpunk 2077 left a lasting impression on players. CD Projekt RED faced a challenging task: creating an ambitious project in a new genre using an engine previously used for other types of games. This, of course, does not excuse the project's shortcomings, but it highlights the challenges that game development can face. Even after several years, the developers have not been able to resolve all the issues, likely due to the numerous temporary solutions introduced in the early stages of development. To avoid similar situations in the future, competent pre-production is essential, laying the foundations for the game's experience and the scale of the project. Proper preparation at this stage allows you to minimize risks and create a high-quality product.

Reading literature and materials on topics that interest you not only enriches your knowledge, but also helps develop critical thinking. Immersing yourself in a variety of sources helps you better understand the world and expand your horizons. Regularly reading articles, books, and research allows you to stay abreast of the latest trends and discoveries in your field. Don't miss the opportunity to expand your knowledge and skills by focusing on quality sources and relevant publications.

Starfield Bugs: Causes of Creepy Faces, "Walking Dead" Creeps, and Other Issues

Starfield, like most modern video games, can be plagued by various bugs that affect the overall experience. One common issue is creepy character faces, which can appear unnatural due to graphical errors or animation flaws. These flaws are often related to engine features and the difficulty of creating realistic models.

Another common issue is "Walking Dead" Creeps, which can appear in the game. This phenomenon is usually due to improperly processed character animations or glitches in the game's logic, leading to unexpected and often comical situations. These bugs can ruin the atmosphere, but they also add an element of surprise that some players might find amusing.

Bugs in Starfield can have a variety of causes. Coding issues, insufficient testing on different platforms, and the complexities of creating an open world can all lead to various errors. The developers are constantly working on fixes and updates to improve the gameplay and address known issues.

Ultimately, despite the presence of bugs, Starfield remains an engaging project with a wealth of gameplay content. Players can enjoy exploring unique worlds and interacting with diverse characters, despite some technical flaws.