PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Maharin]

i hate that auto turret sound. I dont understand why it is supposed to sound like pistol

They should replace it with the turret sounds from Portal. I'll pitch in for the licensing costs!

 

[Aldranon]

I hope the bandit AI is not too good:

Bandit1: "Boss! The survivor is wearing iron armor and that reduces our gun fire by fifty three percent!"

Boss: "All right boys, ROCKET LAUNCHERS READY! In three... two... "

I'm not sure if the boss did or did not say "one"... I was running me arse off!

 

[Maharin]

Most of the complaints about Z behavior are due to pathfinding. Things such as Z's spinning below the player, walking exactly on the voxel grid below them and failing to climb a single block causing them to carve paths through the floor. All of these are long-running complaints that have been going for years now.
It would have been far easier to sort Z AI first, release it to the public, and fix bugs in the rudimentary behavior before trying to add the complex decision making and teamwork required by bandits.

I'm just glad we finally have confirmation that it's being actively worked on.

While I agree about the path finding being buggy the biggest complaint I have about zombies is when they run. Somehow they get super agile and act like veteran football (American football, that is) players. /boggle

As for the AI being actively worked on, I think the point is that they've intentionally delayed active work because they knew they were making huge low-level changes that would nuke any changes they made previously, making it wasted effort. The only reason this delay seems so long is that you are playing an unfinished game. This would never have been an issue for you or anyone else had you waited for release.

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I hope the bandit AI is not too good:
Bandit1: "Boss! The survivor is wearing iron armor and that reduces our gun fire by fifty three percent!"

Boss: "All right boys, ROCKET LAUNCHERS READY! In three... two... "

I'm not sure if the boss did or did not say "one"... I was running me arse off!

Bandits with sniper rifles is a scary thought.

BOOM! Head shot!

 

[The Gronk]

While I agree about the path finding being buggy the biggest complaint I have about zombies is when they run. Somehow they get super agile and act like veteran football (American football, that is) players. /boggle
As for the AI being actively worked on, I think the point is that they've intentionally delayed active work because they knew they were making huge low-level changes that would nuke any changes they made previously, making it wasted effort. The only reason this delay seems so long is that you are playing an unfinished game. This would never have been an issue for you or anyone else had you waited for release.

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Bandits with sniper rifles is a scary thought.

BOOM! Head shot!

If I'm honest? I think the reason it hasn't been worked on is that the entire subject is frikkin' difficult and nobody wanted to do it. An attitude I can fully understand.

That sounds like a great idea as long as someone else is writing the code

 

[Guppycur]

While I agree about the path finding being buggy the biggest complaint I have about zombies is when they run. Somehow they get super agile and act like veteran football (American football, that is) players. /boggle

Glad you clarified, 'cause I don't see any of them falling all the time, pretending to groan in pain, and a bunch of yellow flags being thrown on the field to stop the clock. =)

 

[Maharin]

If I'm honest? I think the reason it hasn't been worked on is that the entire subject is frikkin' difficult and nobody wanted to do it. An attitude I can fully understand.
That sounds like a great idea as long as someone else is writing the code

I've been programming computers since I was in 6th grade (so 35 years now... how time flies?) and AI has always been an interest of mine. I wish I had spent more time working on it over the years but it is a VERY interesting thought experiment even if you never write a line of code. When you have to start thinking about how you think about the world around you, what you use to make decisions, and how your decisions affect that world around you... repeat... your head starts to spin. And getting a good, working framework that can be used in real time is a lot harder than it sounds.

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Glad you clarified, 'cause I don't see any of them falling all the time, pretending to groan in pain, and a bunch of yellow flags being thrown on the field to stop the clock. =)

That will have to wait for the new AI code.

 

[Guppycur]

Just playing around with Unity it seems that it has become a lot easier to add AI these days; just buy a package and tailor it to your needs. The pimps were waiting on MoCap, so that the animations would be better, AND I believe Kin was re-doing the AI his way.

 

[The Gronk]

Just playing around with Unity it seems that it has become a lot easier to add AI these days; just buy a package and tailor it to your needs. The pimps were waiting on MoCap, so that the animations would be better, AND I believe Kin was re-doing the AI his way.

Having a framework and using it effectively are two different things.

"A knife is simple, using it ain't."

Tex - Robot Jox (1989)

 

[Demonoid74]

I myself use Ice Creatures Ai system for Unity...it has saved me so much time...sure it has a steep learning curve to do more advanced things...Already set up a traffic system for cars and pedestrians wandering around my large suburban town on my own , before I bought that AI system , now hooking it in to trigger other effects from them such as running in fear , creating random attacks against npcs and the player etc.

It is easier , but still takes a lot of work , I just need to get over this weird "writers block" burn out I have and get in there and start getting stuff done again!

 

[Aldranon]

Bandits with sniper rifles is a scary thought.

BOOM! Head shot!

I hope that insta-deaths are a rare thing. I hope they fix the "no gun sway" sniper rifles, that would make real snipers a rarity again.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Thanks for the replies guys! Here's to hoping bandits and AI/Pathfinding will make it into this new Alpha!

Ah, and a happy new year!

 

[Maharin]

I wonder if moving the door to your base from time to time (blocking off one passage, opening up another, that sort of thing) would confuse the breadcrumb system?

 

[The Gronk]

I myself use Ice Creatures Ai system for Unity...it has saved me so much time...sure it has a steep learning curve to do more advanced things...Already set up a traffic system for cars and pedestrians wandering around my large suburban town on my own , before I bought that AI system , now hooking it in to trigger other effects from them such as running in fear , creating random attacks against npcs and the player etc.
It is easier , but still takes a lot of work , I just need to get over this weird "writers block" burn out I have and get in there and start getting stuff done again!

Yep, the reason I'm hanging around the forum today is to put off going through 6000-7000 lines of NPC generation code. They're all getting randomly generated backstories... mostly <cough> inspired by <cough> the "Traveller" RPG book.

 

[Aldranon]

Yep, the reason I'm hanging around the forum today is to put off going through 6000-7000 lines of NPC generation code. They're all getting randomly generated backstories... mostly <cough> inspired by <cough> the "Traveller" RPG book.

The old futuristic RPG??? Man, how old ARE you? FGMP-15?

 

[Gazz]

There were a lot of underlying systems that had to be reconstructed and now that this is shaping up they can start using it to improve other factors of the system. Their AI system, I'm sure, will be rebuilt to take into account all of the additional information now available. I think it is still a little too early to ask for a status on the roof of the house when the foundation was just poured and is still drying.

We havent even gotten to the drywall, yet. =)

But if you want to, you can now give a specific zombie type a "skill" to make it run faster when it has been set on fire or run slower when the temperature is below x or be stronger when other zombies are nearby or become green and angry when it has taken 50% damage. (not sure about the last one)

None of that would be a buff but a conditional effect attached directly to an entity.

Not quite AI but a big deal for enemy diversity.

 

[The Gronk]

The old futuristic RPG??? Man, how old ARE you? FGMP-15?

Old enough to have programmed the solar system generator in at least 3 languages over the years. The weird thing is that it still produces reasonably accurate results, impressive since it was written before we even discovered the first exoplanet. There appear to be more rocky planets closer to suns than we expected but the amount of modification required to produce an accurate generator is surprisingly small.

I still have a dog-eared copy of the original book

 

[The Gronk]

We havent even gotten to the drywall, yet. =)
But if you want to, you can now give a specific zombie type a "skill" to make it run faster when it has been set on fire or run slower when the temperature is below x or be stronger when other zombies are nearby or become green and angry when it has taken 50% damage. (not sure about the last one)

None of that would be a buff but a conditional effect attached directly to an entity.

Not quite AI but a big deal for enemy diversity.

That sounds like it opens the way for having Z's run indoors again. I really miss that mechanic, it terrified me

 

[Aldranon]

Old enough to have programmed the solar system generator in at least 3 languages over the years. The weird thing is that it still produces reasonably accurate results, impressive since it was written before we even discovered the first exoplanet. There appear to be more rocky planets closer to suns than we expected but the amount of modification required to produce an accurate generator is surprisingly small.

As we still don't see earth sized planets well, maybe it is accurate? My belief is Gaia planets like earth are rare, but when you consider that quadrillions of planets could be earth-like candidates... What ever or whoever made the universe, did not think small.

 

[The Gronk]

As we still don't see earth sized planets well, maybe it is accurate? My belief is Gaia planets like earth are rare, but when you consider that quadrillions of planets could be earth-like candidates... What ever or whoever made the universe, did not think small.

NASA once tried to get the SI denomination for the size of the universe to be the "helluva" simply for the joke "the universe is a helluva wide". I'm disappointed it didn't catch on.

 

[Gazz]

That sounds like it opens the way for having Z's run indoors again. I really miss that mechanic, it terrified me

Yeah, possible.

The stat exists but isn't hooked up, yet. When it does, the actual light level of the zombie's position can change it's stats.

A mole zombie that sees well in darkness but not by day? Why not?