AI closing (or not closing) doors

[grayman]

Would anyone who was around when the door-opening/closing animations were designed care to talk about how the design decisions were made?

[grayman]

Thief AI don't turn around at all. In fact, I don't think they even stop when going through a doorway (they might pause a bit while opening a door, but not when closing it). This seems far more natural to me than what TDM AI do, which is - stopping, opening a door, walking thru, stopping again, turning 180, closing the door, turning 180, continue walking. Does anyone IRL ever do this when not locking the door behind them?

 

For 1.06, I'll be coalescing the ideas in this thread into a proposal for door-handling changes. Perhaps in response to that, someone will describe why TDM AI open/close doors the way they do.

[Springheel]

I'm not sure there was an specific decision involved. We didn't want the doors to just auto-close without the AI doing anything, and while a real person could probably grab the edge of the door and time the momentum so that it closes behind them without turning around, that's not really viable for AI. I don't see any problem at all with AI turning around to close the door...seems pretty natural to me, except when they're running, of course.

[stumpy]

I have seen AI close doors while other AI are walking through the door hole only to then get stuck and block the door indefinitely. So you got an AI walking in the door and an AI trying to open the blocked door or walking into the other AI. So I always try to make sure that only one AI uses one door and it isn't used by other AI. There's no distance restriction where AI stop moving if an AI is in a blocking position, there was a basic one in doomed where you could target AI in the same path loop or adjacent loops, and set the AI to wait a specific time until the other AI got out of range, but you would use it as if there were two AI only one of the AI would get the wait on seeing target, else you'lled get them both waiting for the other to move.

[grayman]

I have seen AI close doors while other AI are walking through the door hole only to then get stuck and block the door indefinitely. So you got an AI walking in the door and an AI trying to open the blocked door or walking into the other AI. So I always try to make sure that only one AI uses one door and it isn't used by other AI. There's no distance restriction where AI stop moving if an AI is in a blocking position, there was a basic one in doomed where you could target AI in the same path loop or adjacent loops, and set the AI to wait a specific time until the other AI got out of range, but you would use it as if there were two AI only one of the AI would get the wait on seeing target, else you'lled get them both waiting for the other to move.

 

What version of TDM were you using?

 

Starting with 1.04, AI are more polite around open doors.

 

 

 

[demagogue]

I don't see any problem at all with AI turning around to close the door...seems pretty natural to me, except when they're running, of course.

 

I agree. I've already gotten myself into the habit of turning around and closing a door behind me, for performance and safety reasons. So I never held it against the AI doing the same thing. Great minds think alike ... or something.

[Springheel]

Not to mention that in TDS, where the doors just automatically closed, it was a piece of cake to follow guards into locked areas. Since the guard didn't turn around you could easily slip through the door and then find a place to hide.