[2022] A4 The Grand Arena: Merveil image and Entrance minimap icon erroneously appear in dead-end arena

" poorFishwife wrote: In A4 The Grand Arena (Act4Area5Level2), there is always one dead-end arena with a single entrance door leading in and no other exit -- but in some instances of this dead-end arena, a MerveilsImage (MerveilYoung) will erroneously appear to telegraph the location of a second exit door which does not exist.

To Reproduce:
1. Create an instance of A4 The Grand Arena.
2. Find the single arena room which is a dead-end, and enter it.
3. Walk near each wall of the dead-end arena room. If a second Entrance minimap icon unexpectedly appears, you've reproduced the bug. If not, start over from Step 1.
4. Walk towards the unexpected second Entrance minimap icon. The MerveilsImage will appear and play its animation, and the Entrance minimap icon will disappear.

The bug does not occur 100% of the time. I didn't carefully measure frequency, but it might be 50/50.


Expected Behaviour:
In the dead-end arena, no MerveilsImage or associated Entrance minimap icon should appear, since there is no second exit to telegraph.


Here is an example of a dead-end arena instance in which the bug occurs.
State 1_bug (top): The hidden MerveilsImage's associated Entrance minimap icon erroneously shows the location of an exit which does not exist. Note the unexpected orange Entrance minimap icon on a wall with no door.
Spoiler

State 2_bug (bottom): The player has approached the MerveilsImage, triggering its animation and causing its Entrance minimap icon to disappear.
Spoiler

(Another example of State 1_bug with /bug: https://i.imgur.com/SXl3TQv.png)


Note that in non-dead-end arenas, the MerveilsImage and its associated Entrance minimap icon seem to be designed intentionally (and are working properly) to help guide players to where future not-yet-extant exit doors will appear. The Entrance minimap icon seems to be a "telegraph" for the exit door's position, spoofing the future location of the actual door's minimap icon which appears later. For example, here is an arena where MerveilsImage works properly:

State 1_expected (top): The hidden MerveilsImage's associated Entrance minimap icon correctly telegraphs the location of an exit door which will exist when approached.
Spoiler

State 2_expected (bottom): The player has approached the MerveilsImage, triggering its animation and causing its Entrance minimap icon to disappear -- while simultaneously triggering the exit door to appear, and the exit door's Entrance minimap icon to appear, as expected. If you compare these two states carefully, you'll see that the two Entrance minimap icons are not in the same position (because the first one was a spoofed icon from MerveilsImage, slightly offset from the position where the true exit door's minimap icon eventually appears.)
Spoiler



The reason I think this is the case is because of a reference to the MerveilsImage Entrance minimap icon in this file:
Metadata\Terrain\Mountain\Arena\Colosseum\Objects\MerveilsImage.ot
MinimapIcon
{
icon = "Entrance"
hide_on_transition = true
}


Affected Areas
I'm not certain, but I think the problematic dead-end arena might be small_1_2.arm (from Metadata\Terrain\Mountain\Arena\Colosseum\Rooms\Colosseum). This .arm file has only one telepad and does not have doormerveil, but unexpectedly does have a reference to MerveilYoung.ao.

This is just my guess, though! There may be other affected files too, for example, the Endgame Map equivalent of that part of The Grand Arena (i.e. maybe also here? Metadata\Terrain\EndGame\MapDaressoArena\Rooms\Colosseum\).


In the past I'd seen a handful of posts from players who incorrectly believed they received an uncompletable instance with "no way forward" to Daresso, and incorrectly thought they had to create a new instance. It seems like this bug might be contributing to that confusion.

Thanks for your report, I'll pass this on.