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Guard Responce To Being Trapped.


Irenices

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Lets say you stole a guards key and he didnt notice, you lure them into the room they where guarding by makeing some sound, then bam you close the door behind them and lock it leaveing them trapped in the room.

Im wondering if you have thought about how a guard is going to respond a situation like that at all, will they walk into the door and try to go back to there post, or will they yell for help and hope another guard with the key will come let them out?

 

Also a major flaw with locks in T1/2 was the fact that if you stole a guards key they could still open the door the key was for. Im sure you guys are going to not make a silly little mistake like that but i just wanna be sure :)

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Also a major flaw with locks in T1/2 was the fact that if you stole a guards key they could still open the door the key was for. Im sure you guys are going to not make a silly little mistake like that but i just wanna be sure :)

 

Actually, that's not always the case - the level designer had to manually give the AIs two keys if he wanted them to keep opening doors even after their keys on the belts were stolen. I know that at least some of the guards in Thieves' Guild mission had only one set of keys and I succesfully locked them behind doors.

 

Which usually resulted them becoming braindead and not reacting to absolutely anything when I went back to release the poor sods.

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Well personally the AI may be too complicated to even bother with this little flaw in realism. Sometimes what is best for believability is not best for gameplay, and only if it really detracts from the latter should it be considered (and if it's something the team really wants to bother themselves with).

 

Either way, it's a flaw I could easily live with. How could it be made realistic? The only thing that comes to mind is that the guard starts yelling and pounding on the door. However, how would he know that Benny isn't just taffin' with him? I think the best approach would be, if the voice actors have time for another bit of dialogue, and if it's easy enough for the guard to realize that he cannot get back to his patrol route given the circumstances, that the guard would be triggered to say something along the lines of, "Hey! Who's taffin' with me!?" and then go brain dead.

 

If the other guards are playing a trick on him, it's no use whining and banging on the doors about it. He wants to show them that their trick didn't have an effect on him so he'll sulk in the room for a while. Then again, when the door gets unlocked, how will he know to go back to his patrol path? Will it put him on alert (which I would consider the best option), and then following the normal AI command line, go back?

 

Either way, as I said before, if it isn't worth the trouble and doesn't detract from the immersion too much: don't bother.

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AIs should have a general response to realizing something of theirs has been stolen anyway. This behavior should be distinct from the "cannot reach next trolpt" behavior.

 

An AI who can't get to their next patrol point should move on to the next point in their list, and so on until they reach one they can pathfind to. If that doesn't work, they should try to get to any available flee points. And if that doesn't work... well then they're stuck. They might broadcast an audio call for help every now and then, or even lay down and take a nap after a while.

 

It would be quite awesome to (selectively) give AIs the ability to bash down doors though.

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I'd like to see some response. Whether something like "Guys! Quit taffin' with me! I'm just gunna wait here, and you better open that door!" or "Damnit, the taffin' lock is stuck!" followed by maybe pacing back and forth, humming, whistling. That'd be cool.

 

If they shouted and got angry etc that would make locking AIs in rooms unrewarding. There should be a reward of keeping them locked away and quiet.

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Yes. YOU were talking about a door. But how would the AI know that a door is a door? This is a toolset. We don't know what a mapper is doing. He can put a crate in front of a hole, and this is, codewise the same as if the door were closed or locked. We can not provide map specific reactions because there is no map we can assume.

Gerhard

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I thought we are talking about locking AI in a room...

Presumably the AI knows there is a door but it is locked. Which is a different case from an AI which has fallen into a hole or something.

 

 

I suspect Sparhawk is hinting that AIs can't identify doors or arent able to distinguish between doors and other objects that are blocking their paths.

 

If its the latter, I can think of at least one exploit off the top of my head, get a couple of boxes and build a wall almost all the way across a dead end hallway. Set the last few crates at hand to be able to rapidly finish the wall. Now you have to attract a gang of AIs to follow you into the area, either by running into their view then letting them follow or using noisearrows/etc to draw them into the area. When you have a bunch who have moved beyond the wall, the trap is sprung.

 

Run back and finish the wall of crates and, bam, they are all trapped behind the crates. To them the crates are a barrier they arent even aware of but which they cannot move beyond. The levels busted. I have done similar stuff in T1/2 countless times. Crates could eventually get pushed aside by an insistent AI running into them so barrels are the choice object really.

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You're kidding, right? Of course the AI knows if it's trying to pathfind through a door. It HAS to know that, to implement opening them and using keys on them.

 

 

I dont think necessarily so, it may be a trigger between its key and the door, the AI simply walks around, when it has the key the door opens and maybe then its arm is trigger to act like its turning a knob, when it has no key it may try to pathfind through said door but then gives up and wanders off or stalls in a hallway somewhere.

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That's right. So we should provide a recording which applies in how many cases? 10%?

 

 

In fact, imagine what an immersion killing experience it would be to not only lock a bunch of guards up with some barrels and crates in a hallway but then have them stand around bitching about someone locking the door behind them. :huh:

 

So is it possible to make guards aware of crates in some way?

Edited by Maximius
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Well I think a lot of the miscommunication is that most of these suggestions are made without any understanding of how AI works, but most of all, how hard these things are to program. Obviously Sparhawk is telling us, as a respected programmer and insider in the development team, that the system simply doesn't work this way. I believe we should in turn respect his authority on the matter.

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The major problem is that we have limited time and resources. :) But you are right. At least some of the comments are done with a total disregard of how AI work. The problem is that some of these things are totally intuitive for humans, so its easy to forget that such a decisions takes a lot of brainpower to come up with and this makes it very hard to put it into code.

 

Just a small example to illustrate this. Everbody knows what a railing is. It is quite obvious that you can not hide behind a railing. :) However the AI doesn't know this, because a railing is either made out of brushes or a model and in both instances there is no way to tell, just from the data, wether this particular model is a railing or a wall. So how should the AI know that it can hide behkind this model which represents a crate, but not behind the other which represents a railing? Of course you could calculate the surface and some shape characteristics, but this is not trivial for arbitrary models and much less for brushes in Doom 3. So the very intuitive rule "Don't hide behind a railing" is very hard to put into code.

Gerhard

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I wouldn't expect an 'official response' until it's actually coded. We're still working on updating Doom3's area awareness system (AAS) and pathfinding to include frobable/lockable doors (since AI in doom3 didn't frob or unlock anything), and whatever we do will depend on how well that goes. I think stating that is more honest than making random promises to do or not do something.

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