Should_be_off? Should_be_open? Dynamic idle AI events?

[Sotha]

I've been theoretizing how to make devious and interesting things with the AI.

 

I'm probably earning the bizarre idea prize for this one, but I'd like to see discussion on this.

 

Should lights have should_be_off spawnarg to compliment the should_be_on spawnarg?

When the AI sees a light on that should be off, he would then take measures to shut down the light: find the electric light's lever to kill the light, or douse flames.

 

It is entirely sensible to ask why on earth would the mapper want to have AI's shutting down lights.

Maybe there is an electric light that turns on in the guard room when important security systems are disengaged, and seeing this light go on, would make the AI walk to the system and re-enable it. And catch the player panties down.

 

Also, mappers could use fires as a distraction. They could set a nearby haystack on fire, and AI's who see it would move to the scene and douse the fires. Would make an interesting chance to sneak in somewhere after doing a mild distraction. Simple torchflame entities would do the trick!

 

Same applies to doors. Should doors have should_be_open spawnarg? Maybe there is an important floodgate that should be open at all times. Closing it would cause trouble, so the AI want's to move to the controls and re-open it.

 

I want to also give free tips to the mappers. Imagine linking potentially hazardous systems with idle AI's. The player closes the floodgate so a, say a sewer, gets drained. Player gets in the sewer. When he is investigating the sewer, a totally dynamic random passerby AI notices the floodgate is shut and decides to fix (low probability should_be_open) the issue. The player is trapped in sewers that suddenly get flooded.

 

These kinds of totally dynamic events could breed a new level of missions with interesting events that could occur, making individual play sessions unique.

[grayman]

Makes sense.

 

What does the AI douse a flame with? A bucket of water? Since they don't carry water buckets around, they'd need code and animations to find a bucket, find a water source, fill the bucket, and douse the flame. (Sounds like a lot to ask.)

 

As for doors that should be open, I'd have to put back the visual stim I removed in 1.07. Since most doors are closed, they were flooding nearby AI with stims which the AI process and decide to ignore only if they can see the door. For a non-patrolling AI on station near a closed door he can't see, he's constantly pinged. So I deleted those stims.

[Tels]

Idea makes sense to me - imagine you have a "reception window" in the guard station that should be open all the times - if player closes it, guards cannot look out, so they will reopen it. And if you do that often enough, you piss them off.

 

As for the technical stims, it makes sense to send them only for these special doors, and there will be few of them per FM (and none in old FMs).

 

The "douse haystack" idea is intriguing, but as grayman said, might get complicated. I'd rather see a more flexible animation framework, where you can tell AI different tasks (stand in front fire, warm hands, stand in front of cooking pot, stir, etc) and he chooses on of these at random and does whatever he has to do. That way you don't need patrol paths (the AI knows how to go to the fire) and no difficult probabilities etc. Just a list of "point where to go, and a list for this point of animations to play".