Sotha's Animations

[Obsttorte]

climbing AI, stunts, poisons, that sort of stuff. I'll maybe experiment some more later.

This reminds me that I have to upload the ai takes torch when alerted thingy sometimes (and the hook, and .... )

 

EDIT: AI's climbing ladders would be really cool, but I guess this is impossible to script properly due to the way aas works (it doesn't take climbables into account).

 

So after all it could only be used for a cutscene or so.

[Sotha]

EDIT: AI's climbing ladders would be really cool, but I guess this is impossible to script properly due to the way aas works (it doesn't take climbables into account).

So after all it could only be used for a cutscene or so.

 

Not necessarily. I don't know yet how to do it in practice, but theoretically this might work:

1) make ladder climb animation. The animation must be tailored exactly to the height of the ladder that is climbed. Sounds like a big limitation, and surely is, but with modular building it could be mitigated. (All AI climbable ladders designed to be magically the same length.)

2) In a conversation, walk the AI to the ground, next to the ladder.

3) play the ladder animation, which includes the AI grabbing the ladder, climbing and hoisting himself on the level above. His body climbs all the way up, but his origin is still on the first floor.

4) When the animation ends, teleport AI to the level above. Now his origin is in the floor above!

 

If the level above has AAS flood on it, the path finding should work normally. The AI could climb as many times as needed, as long as he wasn't disturbed. He would need a special conversation for climbing up and climbing down. The AI aquities should be set to 0 for the duration of the climb, and he should have 1 hitpoint so that any interference with the climbing either does not disturb the AI, or kills him so that he falls down in a cool ragdoll.

 

So it should allow relatively neat AI climbing on a part of a routine patrol. The downside is that it would not allow AI to climb when they are searching, but -hey- if you are looking for trouble would you really want to turn out back against the world and climb? Hell-no!

[Sotha]

I just *had* to see it for myself now.

 

Here is a quick mockup I made. Animation + control conversation took about 30 mins to do.

 

So basically, it is an Ultra-RIT (Maybe an Über-RIT?) for climbing. AI goes to a specific position, hits a trigger_entityname that waits for the AI in question. Conversation if fired. Convo plays the anim and triggers a script that teleports the AI after the animation. (This works now simply with trigger lever to save time.) The box he climbs onto is worldspawn.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLmWjQXQoMc&feature=youtu.be

 

Maybe he should come down with an ukemi?

[Obsttorte]

What I've meant was that the ai automatically ues the climbing option when for example chasing the player or trying to get to a certain point, like they do with elevators if set up properly.

 

EDIT: What is an ukemi?

[grayman]

The AAS system understands elevators. It doesn't understand ladders. We'd need to extend AAS information (both the AAS generator and the DLL need to be smarter) to know an AI can get from one AAS area to another when the areas are roughly connected by ladder brushes.

[Sotha]

@Obst, I understood that, and in reaction, I said that it may even be better if the AI does not chase the player via ladders; if they did, it would be a source of silly exploit as the AI is very vulnerable on the ladder.

 

Imagine yourself chasing a guy via ladder. He could easily wait for you on level 2 when you are climbing and kick you in the face when you are totally helpless. Now imagine an army of AI chasing a single guy, and all the AI queue to wait to get to the ladder so that they can climb and get kicked in the face by the guy giggling at the top.

 

As this shows, ladder climbing is probably one more of example that may be better handled by U-RIT, than made into core mod.EDIT: an ukemi is a kind of tumbling/somersault. Martial artists and parkour people do that. You land via a somersault mechanism, in which you transform some of the landing energy into a tumble going forward.

[Bikerdude]

Blimey, Ai that can follow you up a ladder - scary!

[New Horizon]

Ladders and Reviving were two things the team long ago voted against putting in the design doc, for very good reasons.

[RPGista]

I think this could revolutionase TDM a bit. You have werewolves that are fooled if the player climbs a small height between two floor plataforms. Soldiers that cant climb a table and meet the player on top of it. Werewolves, zombies and spiders in particular would profit greatly if they can follow the player up to areas where he might consider himself "safe", for the horror factor. I mean, spiders and possibly werewolves should, in theory, climb walls and ceilings by default (though I know this is not how it works in Doom's engine). So a system where they can at least climb between valid areas of different height should definitely be a welcomed addition to gameplay chalenge and fun (not to say coherence).

 

By being able to navigate between valid areas, changes made to AI wouldnt affect previous maps where those areas werent created and accounted for by the mapper. But future maps could take advantage of this, and instead of putting a noclip brush over a big dinner table, they could put a nodraw instead and allow a soldier, now capable of doing so, to follow the player there in his mission.

 

This would require a "lifting himself up" and "climbing down" animation only (aside from the coding).

 

The werewolf, as it did before, would just need the "crawling" anim that could be used on the floor or any other surface, to climb walls.

 

Zombies could just use human anims, and spiders are already there, all they need to do is walk.

 

I say, great work Sotha, for the anims and ideas.

[i30817]

Pathfinding being height aware is a major feature of pathfinding libraries and very hard indeed to do genererically (without location triggers and with animations that don't look fake with different situations).

 

Another which no library i know of handles is walking on walls seemlessly (spiders etc). All the algorithims simplify to a cylinder with z-up collision so this idea is something all of them hate (not to mention gravity). So it gets 'handled' with scripts for cheap gotchas.

Edited October 26, 2013 by i30817

[RPGista]

Ok, so lets brainstorm about current AI. When they climb stairs, which can have any length, they assume a different animation set, and gradually overcome the overall difference between two planes. Couldnt a very thin (almost vertical) invisible "stair" be used to allow AI to climb betweem two planes using a different animation? Because steps are valid, reachable areas, wouldnt AI have no trouble navigating through them "vertically"? Could a spider walk around a near vertical stair (a wall), left and right, up and down, but using different animations? It would probably look bumpy, but you get my meaning, the same could probably be said of a near vertical slope.

[161803398874989]

Pathfinding being height aware is a major feature of pathfinding libraries and very hard indeed to do genererically (without location triggers and with animations that don't look fake with different situations).

 

Another which no library i know of handles is walking on walls seemlessly (spiders etc). All the algorithims simplify to a cylinder with z-up collision so this idea is something all of them hate (not to mention gravity). So it gets 'handled' with scripts for cheap gotchas.

It's easy to rotate models, right? Why not put some type of monsterclip (I believe it's called that, places where the AI can walk) on the walls and rotate the model should it encounter a corner?

[i30817]

If you assume walls are completly planar that might work, and if the pathfiding is extended to allow vertical 'walk areas'. But collision would certainly not work.

[161803398874989]

How about multiplying all the data with a matrix? Rotation is a linear operator and matrix multiplication is decently fast. It'd also allow for non vertical walls.

The problem would be climbing over stuff.

 

Sorry, being stupid. What does it mean when you say it only works for planar walls? If you can get it working for non-planar floors, all you need to do is use matrix multiplication to turn everything all the data. Could be a bit memory intensive though.

Edited October 27, 2013 by 161803398874989

[Sotha]

Capital Punishment comes to Bridgeport!

 

Heathens, Taffers, Witches and other Villains beware!

 

The law will reach you eventually and you will punished for your vile actions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaAy0bxJ-j0&feature=youtu.be

 

What are you looking at?

1) A few frame animation, which essentially stores the 'hanged' pose.

2) An ambient AI generated by Arcturus' method mentioned here: http://forums.thedar...post__p__266395

Actually the AI is in two pieces, head and body, and the head had to be rotated and placed manually and it is binded to the body and "bindtojoint" "head". The ambient AI body is playing the "hanged" animation and the head is playing "death" animation.

3) The entire mess is bound to a func_pendulum Noose.

 

Yes, I know the noose is ridiculously big, but that is standard TDM asset. A more suitable one could be done quickly in DR.

[Sotha]

Hideous halloween, people!

 

 

 

My halloween contribution will be making a package that makes these hanged corpses easily available to all mappers. I'll just do last tests tomorrow and upload them. Any TDM character model that uses the proguard skeleton can be used.

[Springheel]

Looks like there's some strange angles going on with the feet--especially visible on the zombie.

[Sotha]

yep, it is either that, or the feet are 90 deg straight, like they were standing on the floor.

 

The zombie neck also looks strange, but that is maskable by the noose, I suppose.

[Sotha]

Hanged AI can be downloaded here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR0ORZU5sraX3k2QWhZZEt2VUU/edit?usp=sharing

 

Readme file contains detailed instructions.

 

There are poses in two flavours, hands on the side and hands bound behind the back (prisoner).

 

Enjoy!

[Goldwell]

Yay going to download now

[Sotha]

Finally had to play around with TDM for a while.

 

I wondered whether it is possible to have unique AI response to finding dead comrades. Tonights mini project was to find out that it is.

 

See the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuMWjbs-NOU&feature=youtu.be

 

What you are seeing:

An AI is killed. (Don't mind what he was doing when the sword hits him, this is my animation testing map and the AIs may do some crazy stuff.)

Pulling the lever simply gives the AI around the corner a new target so he walks by and sees the dead guy.

An objective "AI body is found" gets ticked off, and it fires a script that drops the AI back to non-alert state.

A conversation is fired. Because the AI is now non-alerted, he obeys the conversation normally. The convo makes the AI to walk to the dead guy, play a silly anim and some relevant barks. Once the conversation ends, the AI resumes doing what they were doing.

 

This technique could allow AI that reacts with a custom response to seeing their loved ones dead. Or laugh at their worst enemies demise. Or something similar.

Note that the "find body" objective does not care if the AI is dead or just KOd.

[Goldwell]

Sotha that idea about the pissing thing sounds great but I was wondering if there is a drunken guard passed out flat on the floor type thing? I know we can put guards to sleep but I want one face down and limbs spread out like he literally passed out from drinking too much. I guess how they awaken would be the hardest part to do.

[Sotha]

Sotha that idea about the pissing thing sounds great but I was wondering if there is a drunken guard passed out flat on the floor type thing? I know we can put guards to sleep but I want one face down and limbs spread out like he literally passed out from drinking too much. I guess how they awaken would be the hardest part to do.

 

We might already have it. See here:

http://forums.thedar...post__p__323177

 

See 0:11.

 

Basically that anim needs to be cut in 2 parts:

#1: Guy lying in the ground and #2 the get-up part.

 

This kind of setup might work, but I need someone to test it with some dummy animations:

AI -> path_cycleanim -> path_anim -> patrol

path_cycleanim is untested, but should cycle animation until AI is triggered: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Path_Nodes#path_cycleanim

the above would cycle the lying-on-ground -part.

path_anim plays the get-up part.

 

In effect the AI would lie on the ground until triggered. Then he would get up and resume patrol.

 

Could you please test if path_cycleanim works like that?

[Lux]

As soon as you add a "fleshy member" to a pissing animation, people will start to take aim with their bows and try and skewer the poor sod in the sausage. Really I think the hands down there in the appropriate way would cover anything and we don't need to deal with the ESRB over having a cock in the game, yeah? (not that we would)

 

What's next, John Holmes gettin' all up on the nude pagan woman model?

Edited November 21, 2013 by Lux

[kyyrma]

As soon as you add a "fleshy member" to a pissing animation, people will start to take aim with their bows and try and skewer the poor sod in the sausage. Really I think the hands down there in the appropriate way would cover anything and we don't need to deal with the ESRB over having a cock in the game, yeah? (not that we would)

 

What's next, John Holmes gettin' all up on the nude pagan woman model?

 

While I'm all in for gritty details in the TDM world, I must say I'm with Lux on this one. Not because seeing a guard's pecker offends me or anything, but simply that its really hard to make it so that it doesn't become too silly. Especially when its not a necessary detail for the animation to do its job. IMO the function of a piss animation is to provide a window of opportunity for the player, and that window of opportunity is telegraphed to the player by the animation and sound effect. No fleshy members required.

 

And anyway, in most scenarios the NPC will probably face a wall and it will be dark as hell. So maybe its better to just leave it to the players imagination?

Edited November 21, 2013 by kyyrma