Hi All,

Just made some final tweaks to the post-release update of GameGuru, so feel free to check out the PublicPreview build on Steam now or you can wait until Tuesday evening when I will release it live for everyone. I spent a few hours double-checking the AI to make sure the basic stuff behaves, and I am happy with the result.



I made a small video from five runs of a quick level I used to test the soldier path following and combat (uses Enhanced Weapon and Construction Site assets). I often get slammed on Steam for poor and broken AI, so I want to focus on the above video to see if there is anything 'core' we are missing in how the soldiers behave.

All the soldiers are using the same script, most have waypoint paths to follow and all armed with shotguns. Do you see any broken logic in the video or any game logic that is standard in modern games and not utilized here for these particular Shotgun Soldiers?

well to be honest, the enemies should see the player thru this kind of fence

Yes enemies should see player through fence, but that's the only thing. Very impressive, love the way they avoid your fire.... running away low. Excellent.

That can actually be set in the .fpe if you want them to see through fences.

@Lee great vid … Hearing is probably the only problem I can see when im messing with AI.
Good if you want to simulate them hiding behind a wall but not so good when there wandering a waypoint or in view.

which command to use for this?

canseethrough = 1 ?

Indeed, reacting to sound would be nice.
But a good video of the AI ducking away, running and attacking.
The script which you used for the soldiers, is that charge.lua ?

That's the one … Very handy it is to especially for glass and fences.

Thanks, synchromesh.

I hope, in MAX, that we will be able to select an item and simply check a box for something like this instead of having to dig through commands in some FPE file somewhere.

canseethrough = 1 via properties panel aside than in the fpe file, would be nice.

@ Lee
Nice soldier behaviour on the vid.

I just won't soldiers shooting or walking thru the walls.
Soldiers working fine on the upper floors of a building.
And maybe being able to set weapon to a soldier via properties panel, or some sort of lua command to ask, which weapon does a soldier carry? (AIweaponName(e)).

And plese, can you clarify to me something about weapon slot? (I'm working on a project that gets statistics from the entities, and presents them in a form.)

Global.lua says:



I guess should be some wrong here. although maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

In fact GetWeaponSlot gets the weapon ID, and GetWeaponID gets the weapon slot, this can be a bit confusing.

Here on the pic below I'm using:



As you can see I've forced to invert the commands to get the expected result.





Thanks in advance

I proposed it to lee, that and changing the weapons in the same way, he said its a good idea, lets see if he implement it.

AI are fine on their own, but honestly I think it feels a bit too much like they aren't...coordinated as a team? Like the AI will all think and act of their own regardless of nearby teammates.

So some suggestions to make AI feel a bit more intelligent and coordinated as a team:
-Make AI try to avoid using the same path as other nearby AI (could be as simple as making them try avoid getting within a "bubble" of one another, maybe have this bubble's size tweakable per-NPC?)
-Make AI avoid going near a spot where another AI died for a period of time (This would appear like they "learned" that a spot is unsafe, and would make them feel just a bit smarter. Prevents them from all piling up in a doorway that the player has the muzzle of an SMG pointed down )
-Have AI try to use cover more often when it's available, rather than trying to rush the player or standing in the open until they start getting shot at (make them only rush the player if they haven't seen him in a while, Ex: when the player is hiding in cover)

These suggestions are "extra", I don't feel like they are necessary but they would definitely help make the AI feel very smart.

We could easily do this ourselves in Lua, but it would be nice to include these features so those Steam reviewers have something to ogle over

0:03 - AI turns the opposite way to the player for some reason
0:19 - AI rushes into the open when they should look for cover
0:51 - AI starts firing weapon whilst still in the running animation
1:09 - AI doesn't seem to know where to run to.
1:54 - AI doesn't face the player, does a single step forward, then turns. Bit odd.
2:03 - AI scuttles over to a piece that doesn't offer cover

I think it's OK for the AI to run away from the player if necessary, if it's to find cover or to alert other enemies. I also agree with other comments about AI reacting to sound.
If an AI fires their gun, other AI in the area should come over to investigate.
If a player fires their gun, AI should alert each other and go investigate as a group.
If the player walks up behind an AI, they should turn around and be startled, but if the player crouches and moves up behind them, they should be less aware.
If an AI spots the player, they should move to investigate the spot where the player was last seen, weapon raised. After a few seconds of looking, they should return to their original loop (I was trying out this behaviour back on Extraction Point by simply swapping some animation numbers around - https://youtu.be/50Nr8JCMZqI ).

Lastly a bit of blue sky thinking; AI's viewcone, viewdistance, health, and damage done, should all be effected by a modifier value, e.g. health = 100 * x . X being a tweakable value in the options menu of standalone, and test game, called... "difficulty"

AE

Lee, AI used to patrol using different idle and walk animations when not in an alert state, then when alerted would then switch to an aiming pose. But that disappeared when you revamped the AI into the new modular system, any chance we can get that back?

Scratch that, i see from your video that it does that for you, i'm assuming you have a different buikd fr the AI than we do at the moment? Because my soldiers are all in permanent aiming poses, even when walking waypoints oblivious to me.