#fail boat

Ok so this came at a really good time because I just got done trying to figure out what the deal is with Fail Boat. As I’m sure we all know if we’ve ever been on Fail Boat (it used to fascinate me as a young kid; it’s only accessible through story mode) there are a lot of interactions that you can do on other islands that are straight up broken on Fail Boat.

Examples

Bird Bombing

Turning A Pygmy Into A Vampire (it works but the vampire bat behaves weirdly)

Feeding A Pygmy

(Please don’t ask me why the hell I decided to capitalize all of those I’m insane)

I think I have deduced the reason.

The spawning function is a bit broken on Fail Boat.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that sometimes pygmies spawn directly over the water. I presume there’s some kind of spawn map that’s not properly set for Fail Boat. But this isn’t the only spawn function that’s broken.

Okay. So. You can still pick up pygmies on Fail Boat. But other stuff is broken. I have decided that there’s likely a player/pygmy interaction hitbox and a game object interaction hitbox, and the game object interaction hitbox is broken. This is why pygmies cannot eat things on fail boat, or be hit by bird bombs, or by burnt dodo rocks.

About that, though.

How did I figure this out?

Well, for some reason, I dragged a burnt dodo rock over to the bottom left half to the screen, and it hit a pygmy.

So, to the best of my deduction, I think that

When a pygmy spawns in, their hit boxes are normally aligned in the exact same spot.

On fail boat, this somehow breaks, causing the hitbox to be to the left and much lower than it usually would be.

This results in the hitbox technically being in the water.

And also partially offscreen.

Pygmies instadrown if you tilt the device whilst on tilt for gravity mode. I believe this is the game turning on drowning for game interaction hitbox when the gravity tilts, and that it is usually tied to the player interaction hitbox (which is still on land). When a pygmy is struck by lightning on failboat, I believe the lightning “arcs” to connect with the other hitbox as well.