Can't Wait To Get Stoned

[Fidcal]

TWO updates in one month? Nice going.

 

Good to hear about the improved leaning - something I value especially after the disappointment of the phony TDS substitute. Will the light gem be affected by leaning out into a bright area? Sometimes is in T2, sometimes not - don't know the 'rules' there, remind me somebody.

 

And the AI throwing stuff at an out of reach player - much better than just fist shaking. Will this rely on bottles and stones that happen to be lying around or will AI carry stuff. Will their accuracy be changeable by level editors? Seems if they have this ability that presumably you have some AI planned to throw some kind of weapon like a dagger?

 

And AI searching just gets better and better.

[Gildoran]

Right now leaning affects the lightgem, but that may change in the future.

 

So far AI can't pick things up, so they throw spawned items.

 

BTW, I like the title. When I first saw it I didn't realize it had to do with TDM.

[Vadrosaul]

It might be pure coincidence that the shot was taken at that frame, but unless that bottle has a guided missile in it, why is it thrown straight at the player and not spinning?

[Komag]

I'm not sure how you could show the spinning in a still shot. If it didn't spin, I would assume we would see the model straight upright in the world, but I guess it might shoot at the player like an arrow.

 

So the question is valid enough, does the bottle spin yet? (if it doesn't, surely they will make it so later on)

[SneaksieDave]

It might be pure coincidence that the shot was taken at that frame, but unless that bottle has a guided missile in it, why is it thrown straight at the player and not spinning?

He's not throwing it, he's using an invisible bottle gun. Which yes, before anyone asks, creates bottles out of thin air. A gun is a bit out of place in TDM, but what else can you do? We have to come up with some way to explain the lack of angular momentum in thrown objects - it's far too important a topic to simply dismiss. We all know that proper throwing physics has always been the crux of good thief-style gameplay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sorry

[Crispy]

Honestly, if we spent forever tweaking the behaviour of thrown projectiles, we'd be well into 2050 and the mod still wouldn't be done. This is not high priority.

 

Let's put it this way: Which would you prefer: a perfectly tweaked object-throwing simulation, or better AI? Because that's what it comes down to.

[Komag]

Oh no problem, I agree with the priorities and am glad to read the impressive progress noted in the update

[MadhatteR]

I was wondering about the "rudimentary 'take cover' behaviour" will it be anything like the behaviour in fear? cause what they did in fear is giving the items in the 3dworld id-tags so that the AI knew what to do if there was any object in the neighbourhood to take cover with. This also reduced the need for raw CPU processing power.

 

If you could implement something like that then you could focus on the animations of the characters instead of writing something like this behaviour completely anew.

 

greetz

 

p.s. i dont know anything from coding but webbased coding, so it is rude to asume it will be easy to implement into the dark mod and you probably have your priorities somewhere else

p.s.s. the update is looking good

[Ishtvan]

Actually it's pretty easy to get things to spin, it's just one line in the projectile def to give it a launch angular velocity.

 

As for special mapper-placed tags for everthing to take cover behind, we usually try to avoid solutions that make the mapper place tags everywhere for things, when possible. If we did that for everything, the mapper would spend all their mapping time placing special-case objects. Also, the AI should be able to know that they can take cover by going around a corner if the player is on the other side, but it would get pretty tedious to tag every corner in the map.

[Crispy]

Actually it's pretty easy to get things to spin, it's just one line in the projectile def to give it a launch angular velocity.

Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember seeing that somewhere. (I'd remember it better, except that someone else wrote the projectile def.) So it might well be in already.

 

My comment was more directed at being able to change the accuracy... AFAIK that's not possible at the moment, so our guards are all crack shots with the wine bottle. Not really worth the time to change that.

 

At the moment the cover search is completely dynamic, to the extent that it works. There are still a lot of issues to sort out, so I kinda wish that it hadn't been mentioned on the front page. I prefer to avoid announcing what I'm working on until it's actually done, myself. Oh well. Cat's out of the bag now.

[MadhatteR]

Now that you mention it, I vaguely remember seeing that somewhere. (I'd remember it better, except that someone else wrote the projectile def.) So it might well be in already.

 

My comment was more directed at being able to change the accuracy... AFAIK that's not possible at the moment, so our guards are all crack shots with the wine bottle. Not really worth the time to change that.

 

At the moment the cover search is completely dynamic, to the extent that it works. There are still a lot of issues to sort out, so I kinda wish that it hadn't been mentioned on the front page. I prefer to avoid announcing what I'm working on until it's actually done, myself. Oh well. Cat's out of the bag now.

 

no harm's done i enjoyed reading it, just wondering how you were going about it, nothing more now i wont bother you anymore with such tedious questions and just be waiting for another update

 

greetzzz

[Ishtvan]

My comment was more directed at being able to change the accuracy... AFAIK that's not possible at the moment, so our guards are all crack shots with the wine bottle. Not really worth the time to change that.

I kind've remember seeing something about accuracy, but can't recall if it was in the SDK code or the key/value settings on the AI.

 

Okay, I did a quick search for "accuracy" thru the SDK, and found the key, it's just called "attack_accuracy".

 

Here are the key value pairs, some of these others might be useful if we want them to throw more than one rock or something (I think attack_cone is the max angle they can face you at and still launch an attack at you, but I'm not sure):

 

In: idAI::LaunchProjectile

attack_accuracy = spawnArgs.GetFloat( "attack_accuracy", "7" );
attack_cone = spawnArgs.GetFloat( "attack_cone", "70" );
projectile_spread = spawnArgs.GetFloat( "projectile_spread", "0" );
num_projectiles = spawnArgs.GetInt( "num_projectiles", "1" );

 

Here's where attack_accuracy is applied, also in idAI::LaunchProjectile.

 

attack_accuracy is on a scale that includes the number "7". Judging from the code below, I think "0" is the most accurate, and higher numbers are off more, but I'm not entirely sure.

 

They seemed to do a randomizer by just taking the sin of the current time plus a phase offset given by the entity number times some fudge factor, so the accuracy is periodic in time instead of being completely random. Maybe that looks good when they're firing a machine gun, I dunno. That's what I take to mean by "so the tracers look less random in their spread." I guess that's still okay for our much slower arrow firing application, since we'll effectively be sampling the sine at random points in time so it should be random enough.

 

	// set aiming direction
GetAimDir( muzzle, target, this, dir );
ang = dir.ToAngles();

// adjust his aim so it's not perfect.  uses sine based movement so the tracers appear less random in their spread.
float t = MS2SEC( gameLocal.time + entityNumber * 497 );
ang.pitch += idMath::Sin16( t * 5.1 ) * attack_accuracy;
ang.yaw	+= idMath::Sin16( t * 6.7 ) * attack_accuracy;

 

[EDIT: Unless they happen to be firing at a rate corresponding to the period of the sinusoid or an integer multiple, then they would have the same accuracy every time, but what are the odds of that? Even then, pitch and yaw offset have different periods]

[Dunedain]

Will guards sometimes just shake their fist at you or hurl insults if they can't get to you? It would seem quite odd for every guard to have a ready supply of wine bottles and/or stones on them to fling at people they can't easily get their hands on. Plus, if several guards couldn't get to you, it could get rather goofy with a crowd of guards all standing around throwing things at you and the resulting rain of stuff bouncing all over the place and littering the floor. hehe

[Gildoran]

Maybe that looks good when they're firing a machine gun, I dunno.

I think it's so that it looks as though the AI has a consistent aiming direction like a human would. (e.g. if you were to hold down the trigger of a machine gun, the bullets wouldn't just fly in random directions - they'd form a continuous arc as you correct your aim)

[Crispy]

We don't yet have any "frustrated" animations, but we'd like to, yes. The animators have a large pile of work to get through and not many pairs of hands to do it with.

 

(Applications from people capable of doing animation are gladly welcomed. )

 

Thanks for that Ishtvan - I'll check it out.

[Ishtvan]

I think it's so that it looks as though the AI has a consistent aiming direction like a human would. (e.g. if you were to hold down the trigger of a machine gun, the bullets wouldn't just fly in random directions - they'd form a continuous arc as you correct your aim)

Yeah, I agree. In our case though, most of the AI will be shooting discrete arrow shots so I don't think that applies. Maybe at some point either us or an FM author will create some AI that fire more continuously though, so we should probably keep it.

[New Horizon]

Just so there is no doubt that we know what we're doing here, I have personally gone over the heads of my fellow Dark Mod Team Leads and reassigned all programmers to get spinning bottles working for the official release. AI, Sound Prop, and even the Dark Radiant Editor will have to wait until after the official release.

[Ombrenuit]

Honestly, if we spent forever tweaking the behaviour of thrown projectiles, we'd be well into 2050 and the mod still wouldn't be done. This is not high priority.

 

Let's put it this way: Which would you prefer: a perfectly tweaked object-throwing simulation, or better AI? Because that's what it comes down to.

 

Why bother if it isn't going to look good? We don't exactly need this.

[Crispy]

Better an implemented feature without all the bells and whistles than not implementing a feature at all, right? Also, it was chosen for me to do because it was an easy and non-critical D3 coding task for me to cut my teeth on. Gives me some experience with D3 coding without having to jump straight into the deep end.

 

Anyway, it doesn't matter - it may be easier than I thought to prettify it, since Doom 3 actually already has those settings. So next time I work on the mod I promise I'll try to get the projectiles spinning nicely. Happy now?

[Ombrenuit]

My only concern is that this will be taken to an extreme ^^; I can imagine running down a hall, three guards behind me, bottles magically appearing in front of them firing at me and a wave of "Ahhhs!" and Garrett groans. Do these guys have very limited ammunition, such as two bottles or so (some guards not having bottles, some do? which can possibly be pick pocketed off?) Please tell me these suckers also aren't on rapid fire.

 

Like spice, if used to a minimum, it can add a refreshing and interesting flavor to the game. However, spice should never be used to completely change the taste of the dish, and if overdone, this will only cause serious frustration, leave a bad taste in everyone's mouths, and end up with criticisms of realism.

 

No one wants to fail the mission because they attracted a series of guards who bottled them to death when they are in an empty room. Are the bottles slow enough to dodge? Can they be caught?

Edited December 25, 2006 by Ombrenuit

[Springheel]

Do these guys have very limited ammunition, such as two bottles or so

 

The characters will spawn random small objects that they might realistically be carrying on their person or find in the immediate vicinity. The includes (but is not limited to) bottles, apples, small stones, forks, dice, knives, debris, etc.

 

Please tell me these suckers also aren't on rapid fire.

 

Oh yes. They work much like the D3 machine gun, firing several bottles per second.

 

No one wants to fail the mission because they attracted a series of guards who bottled them to death when they are in an empty room.

 

Then one has several options.

 

One can:

 

1. Not attract a series of guards (novel for a stealth game, I know)

 

2. Not stand in plain view somewhere that these series of guards can't reach one.

 

3. Not remain there indefinitely while the guards pace around and throw things.

[Crispy]

I can imagine running down a hall, three guards behind me, bottles magically appearing in front of them firing at me and a wave of "Ahhhs!" and Garrett groans.

Not a chance. They will only throw stuff at you when they can't get to you any other way, and they have to stand still to do it. Guards in hot pursuit will not throw wine bottles.

 

Remember in Thief where you could stand on the middle of a huge dining room table and the guards would all stand around it yelling at you, powerless? This is meant to prevent those kinds of situations. That's all. If you don't try to exploit the AI's lack of climbing ability, you won't even see it happen.

 

Please tell me these suckers also aren't on rapid fire.

Only if by "rapid fire" you mean "one every 5-15 seconds or so" (exact duration is still subject to tweaking).

 

There is no "bottle machinegun".

 

Seriously, what do you take us for? We're not about to ruin our own mod. It may take a while (and I completely understand your impatience), but we're going to finish it, and we're going to do it right. Have some faith in your fellow fans.

[Ombrenuit]

Well that clears some things up and now I understand much better that it was meant to fix an exploit. Keep up the good work (and Merry Christmas!)

[ZylonBane]

As I already mentioned over on TTLG, it would be nice if the type of object thrown was based on the material type the AI is stand on. So for example, if they're standing on grass or rock they throw stones. If they're on tile or wood they throw bottles, etc.

 

On the other hand, the whole concept of AIs pulling objects out of thin air seem a bit dodgy. Wouldn't it be less immersion-breaking to just give every guard AI a set of throwing knives?

[Crispy]

As I already mentioned over on TTLG, it would be nice if the type of object thrown was based on the material type the AI is stand on. So for example, if they're standing on grass or rock they throw stones. If they're on tile or wood they throw bottles, etc.

That's not a bad idea. Not really worth the time to implement right now, but maybe later.

 

On the other hand, the whole concept of AIs pulling objects out of thin air seem a bit dodgy.

On the other other hand, AIs have been doing it in games for decades and nobody has cared.