The Bug:
Whilst a melee-type mob pursues a player/entity, they may stop attacking once in a while when pathfinding towards their targets. This is also an issue with certain passive mobs as certain passive mobs (e.g. a villager) may randomly stop fleeing for a second if a player hits that entity. (This issue is just like the MCPE counterpart, MCPE-48144).
Affected Entities:
Please note that there may be more entities affected by this issue that aren't listed below.
Cave Spider
Creeper
Enderman
Endermite
Iron Golem
Silverfish
Skeleton (without bow)
Spider
Stray (without bow)
Villager
Vindicator
Wither Skeleton
Wolf
Zombie
Zombie Villager
Zombified Piglin
Steps to Reproduce:
Summon any of the affected mobs listed above.
Provoke it if necessary and allow the said entity to attack you.
Observe how sometimes, the entity randomly stops and starts pathfinding even though it hasn't made it to its target.
Observed Behavior:
Entities stop and start pathfinding at random intervals even though they haven't fully approached their target. This happens randomly and can last several seconds before it starts to pathfind again.
Expected Behavior:
Entities would not stop and start pathfinding at random intervals when pursuing their target.
Code Analysis:
Code analysis by @unknown can be found in this comment.
Linked issues
clones 2
is duplicated by 11
MC-193008
Mob Randomly Loses Attention to Player, Glitchy Behaviour
Resolved
MC-199760
Vindicators will stop holding up their axe, and stop moving for a second when chasing entities
Resolved
MC-209708
Vindicator attack incorrectly
Resolved
MC-211355
Baby zombie pathfinding issue
Resolved
MC-217261
Endermans sometimes calm down when they have been attacked or seen
Resolved
relates to 4
MC-196449
Piglins, Piglin Brutes, Hoglins and Zoglins have trouble pathfinding to the player when attacking
Resolved
MCPE-48144
Mobs sometimes randomly stop attacking and following the target
Resolved
MC-191642
Inconsistent mob melee attack rate / mobs double-attacking
Reopened
MC-248707
Hostile mobs targeting an entity they cannot pathfind to or have just attacked will repeatedly look at the entity, then away
Reopened
Attachments
Comments 27
I've already posted the link in the description. Its too big so it is in the description. Nevermind, trimmed a video.
This is NOT MC-2310. That bug talks about mobs hitting through blocks whilst this talks about mobs stopping pathfinding rnadomly.
After some testing, I determined a slight issue with Chumbanotz's fix: while the followingTargetEvenIfNotSeen check is problematic as it causes a short circuit (since it forces a return statement for all mobs not having this flag set to true), removing the check itself causes the goal not to stop when the entity has reached its target. This is problematic because for a target which doesn't move, there are situations where the mob would create an improper path where it wouldn't be able to reach the entity within its hitting distance, and it would be stuck not being able to attack, virtually causing MC-147516 again. (The details of whether and why this happen is unclear to me though). Rather than removing the check, it would be better to replace it something in the lines of:
...
else if (!followingTargetEvenIfNotSeen && this.mob.getNavigation().isDone()) {
return false;
}
...This forces an attacker which has reached its target to properly update its path towards the target as it hits by constantly cancelling and reactivating the goal (but only works properly if the lastCanUseCheck check is removed as the original fix suggested), which is probably what this check was originally intended to do.
This relates to MC-159299.