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There's a question i never asked because i assumed that your inability to reproduce the bug meant it was more complex than i thought.
However, now that i know that you never actually tried to reproduce the bug in a non-debug environment, and that the bug is otherwise perfectly consistent as far as i can tell, it might actually be relevant.


Apologies if it's a dumb question, but is there actually a check for identified branch exits when entering a map?

To clarify, all my encounters with this bug have led me to the following conclusion on how the exit sprites works :
When you enter an area, the exits are all by default set to "stairs".
The only two things that can change this are :

-Identifying a branch exit. This explains why access(branch) "fixes" the bug; Unlike Signal Interpreters, it always causes an identification even, even when that exit is already identified.

-Launching the game (and other similar "reload" actions). During that process, the game checks if a branch exit is already identified, and if it has, its sprite gets set to the branch exit sprite. This explains why restarting the game fixes the issue.
If some part of the setup or some of your tools like the thing that "teleported" you near the spot in the gif above causes the game to "reload", then this would explain why your attempts at debugging failed.


If what i've described is accurate to how the game handles exit sprites, then that might be where the bug comes from;
When entering an area, you can never have any branch exits identified unless said area is a garrison leading to a branch or a "main map" that you looped back to from a submap.
Even some derelict intel that identifies branch exits can only apply after at least a turn has passed.
And given that you previously wrote the following :

I tried this and you do get instant on-sight identification of previously known exits on seeing them again after looping back to the same map (which is something I was always wondering about before),

Maybe you just... never added a check so that when entering a map, already identified branch exits would be set to the "branch exit" sprite?
That check does exists when loading an area after quitting the game and the such, but maybe it doesn't when entering an area?


Again, apologies if that's a dumb question; I don't want to cause you to waste more of your time with this bug, but i also didn't want to have just never asked that question.

Yep this isn't a bug, it's just their behavior, they need to be properly cleared by a Tunneler for the Complex to consider it an official part of their structure. (Note how Engineers actually special log text for doing that.) It's always been like that for the past 10 years, though wasn't nearly as often noticed before so maybe I'll make an exception now that Subcaves are a thing.

if you mine out the rocks in a room that started filled with rocks before the excavators do it the engineers will fill in the missing rocks with rocks
thats pretty annoying if youre trying to get to the subcaves exit fast

found on the subcaves exit materials prefab via mining with mining laser

Yeah I recall that one, and have noticed it a few other times as well, chalking it up to spotting an exit that was previously known before using the chutes, which is what I thought must be causing the bug, and where all my testing efforts were focused, but I have seen absolutely no evidence of it in the code, regardless of whether it happens in releases xD

Testing in an actual release build would be the next step to confirm, but that takes even longer and there's also nothing unique about release builds in this regard so is assumed unlikely to turn up anything. To that point, unfortunately by now I've already put waaaaaaaaay too many hours into this for what is a very unimportant issue, so I've decided it will live on forever!

That makes sense. I'm actually a bit surprised that you even tested it this much because i thought you'd already said that you wouldn't investigate further in the past.

Anyhow, even if you won't investigate it further, i'm still going to do so as much as i can!
I remembered that you do upload your streams, which i could check to see if you experienced the bug in them. I think i'd done that in the past, but didn't find any occurence.
However, some of your more recent streams involve Garrisons and branches... Okay this one is from a year ago, but you can clearly see the bug happening on your computer at 2:30:25 :
https://youtu.be/3lea1bK5o-s?t=9025

(You get the branch(access) intel in the previous same-floor Factory map at 46:19)


Unless i'm missing another possibility, i think all this is enough to prove that your debug environment is different from a release build in some way.
So even though i've just said i would still try to investigate it as much as i can, i don't think i can do much more. My investigation ends here as well!

Yep, my first inclination purely from the logic has been Linux-only, but that wouldn't make much sense given its nature. Of course if any other Linux players are happy to try it out from here and confirm that'd be fine, too

There is no "grab the stairs sprite from outside the game." This would be some other sort of game-specific memory state issue.

Testing in an actual release build would be the next step to confirm, but that takes even longer and there's also nothing unique about release builds in this regard so is assumed unlikely to turn up anything. To that point, unfortunately by now I've already put waaaaaaaaay too many hours into this for what is a very unimportant issue, so I've decided it will live on forever! Pretty rare that that happens, but it's both rare and inconsequential so that's okay. I'm pretty curious about this one, to be sure, but not curious enough to continue derailing development for it

Yeah it's not a bug, just a built-in limitation of the faction system. You can actually create similar situations with Golems elsewhere, not just there. They don't have their own faction and when spawned hostile will actually share a certain faction that might be used for non-0b10 unaffiliated hostiles in other cases. This is just how it's built and is not currently planned to be expanded since the assembled don't have or generally need their own faction. Golems hostile to you will technically be friendly with some other interesting parties in the caves!

Given that it happens for me not just sometimes, but always, i think the problem has to lie with a difference between our computers/setups.
The possibilities i see are :

-The bug only happens on Linux, which would mean everyone who has experienced the bug played on Linux. That might easy to verify?

-The bug is due to something less specific than just playing on Linux, which would make it somewhat difficult to identify without asking a bunch of people to try to reproduce the bug.

-The bug is due to something that for some reason doesn't happen in a debug environment. If your tests included using a non-debug version of Cogmind (unlike in the GIF), then you already know the answer to that one.

-The bug is due to something that for some reason doesn't affect specifically your computer. For instance, maybe in the specific scenario of this bug, the game would try to get the stairs sprite from outside the game folder instead of the one already in the game folder¹. Then, upon failure, the game would default to using the stairs sprite instead.
In this scenario, the bug would not occur on your computer because the sprite the game tries to get does exist on your computer, but not on anyone else's.

¹Because of some error like using an absolute path instead of a relative one, for instance. Actually, i could try to verify that specific possibility myself... (even if this specific possibility makes a lot of assumptions about how the game works.)

As visible in the attached screenshot, Compactors apparently don't attack Golems.
This one was capable of going as far as fully integrating a weapon before dying to corruption!
I'm guessing this a is bug with the faction system.

Good thing i (accidentally) found that out in my adventurer mode bug-seeking run, would've been annoying to try to drop a GOLEM Unit to distract Compactors with no effect in a more serious run.

Ah, on closer examination, this wasn't the old issue which was fixed, it's just a case of circumstances causing the phasewall to get tuck in the open position (it's darker but you can see the different color of the tile there--that's the appearance of an "open" phasewall). In their open position you can fire through them, but they still won't let you move through that space unless you have Structural Interface. If another enemy passed through it would be detected again and close, but they don't otherwise close on their own if they managed to miss the closing trigger due to special circumstances. (This can happen with regular doors as well, but the more unique properties of phasewalls might make this stand out more, also being as rare as it is.)