absence_noticeability spontaneously stopped working

[Jnon]

During testing of a map, I've noticed that objects I had previously flagged with "absence_noticeability" spawnargs are no longer altering AI when stolen/removed. I had four separate items in my map that, in previous test runs, had always alerted NPCs when stolen and subsequently noticed. Now, these same objects (unchanged in any way since the last time they were tested) suddenly no longer function. They are in the same positions, they are well lit, they should be triggering suspicion, but they no longer do.

I recently upgraded TDM to v2.13, I'm not certain if this had any influence on anything. My DarkRadiant version is 3.9.2 amd64 on Ubuntu, which I believe is latest. Has anything changed about the absence_noticeability system? And if not, what would be the best way to go about troubleshooting this?

[datiswous]

You can test it in a seperate install with 2.12. See if it works there.

[Jnon]

18 minutes ago, datiswous said:

You can test it in a seperate install with 2.12. See if it works there.

I almost forgot the installer lets you pick older versions... I'm installing 2.12 now, I'll report if there's any difference.

There's no issue with running a map made in latest DarkRadiant on an older version of TDM, is there?

[Jnon]

Okay, I installed v2.12 and copy-pasted the map files from my 2.13 /fms/ folder. No modifications or changes.

In v2.13, the AI ignores the stolen loot item.

In v2.12, the AI is alerted as expected.

Based on this, I can only conclude that something in 2.13 has changed with the absence_noticeability spawnarg, or else something else is borked. Nothing gets output in TDM's console that I can see, if there are other logs I can pull to troubleshoot I can try to provide them.

I would be interested to see if this can be replicated by other people. v2.13 only came out very recently, has anybody tried playing a map with absence_noticeability in it, or creating one and testing it? Also, would be this a good candidate for a report on the DarkMod bug tracker?

[peter_spy]

You might want to refer to this topic and recheck: 

 

[Jnon]

10 hours ago, peter_spy said:

You might want to refer to this topic and recheck: 

 

If I understand this bug correctly, adding the absence_alert spawnarg causes the entire absence alert to stop working. I'm not seeing that behavior here. I have absence_noticeability 1, absence_alert 10 set on this loot item, and the patrolling AI successfully enters alert when the map is run in TDM v2.12, but does not enter alert at all in TDM v2.13

I did notice this note in the bugtracker which suggests absence_alert_increase instead of absence_alert as a spawnarg, but this was noted back in 2022... if this were the case, that'd be reflected in v2.12, yet absence_alert still seems to function fine. Unless the proposed change never got worked in until just now.

In either case, I'll try putting absence_alert_increase in the v2.13 map and see if that changes anything.

[Jnon]

I tried removing absence_alert and adding absence_alert_increase at various levels, but there was no change in behavior. v2.12 AI go to alert, v2.13 AI do not.

It might be anecdotal, but I felt that the AI in v2.12 were more sensitive to getting alert than v2.13. Guards in the latter just commented on footstep sounds in the same room, whereas the former actually came to look around and investigate.

[peter_spy]

12 hours ago, Jnon said:

If I understand this bug correctly, adding the absence_alert spawnarg causes the entire absence alert to stop working.

It did bump the alert level to one arbitrary value, there was no way to control this as the description suggested. It should not work anymore.

Absence_noticeability + absence_alert_increase are the pair that should work, as it is  described in the wiki: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Alert_%26_Suspicion_Triggers#Controlling_AI_Reactions_to_Missing_Objects

If they don't work like in the description, then there is a regression and should be reported as a bug.

[Jnon]

15 hours ago, peter_spy said:

It did bump the alert level to one arbitrary value, there was no way to control this as the description suggested. It should not work anymore.

Absence_noticeability + absence_alert_increase are the pair that should work, as it is  described in the wiki: https://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Alert_%26_Suspicion_Triggers#Controlling_AI_Reactions_to_Missing_Objects

If they don't work like in the description, then there is a regression and should be reported as a bug.

I retried, setting the loot object to absence_noticeability 1 and absence_alert_increase 23 (which should be "agitated searching") and still get zero reaction from patrolling AI, so bug report it shall be

[Jnon]

Bug Report created, and can be found here:

 

https://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=6623

[peter_spy]

Nice, that's how a good ticket should look like

[datiswous]

Maybe you can test with these cvars:

On 1/5/2025 at 4:20 PM, stgatilov said:

There are several cvars about this:

• g_lightQuotientAlgo: value = 0 uses the old system, value = 1 uses the new system.
• g_showLIghtQuotient: enables debug visualization like in the video above.
• g_les*: lots of internal parameters to tweak the system (you should not mess with them).

Because maybe it could be related to the new AI vision system that is implemented since 2.13

 

Edited June 5 by datiswous

[Jnon]

On 6/5/2025 at 8:38 PM, datiswous said:

Maybe you can test with these cvars

As you suspected, activating g_lightQuotientAlgo 0 makes AI notice missing objects again. Whatever the issue is, it seems tied to the new light estimate system.