Intense_X AI questions

Larry,


After starting to kind of get the feel of how to
set up the Ai and everything...

I came to the realization that a lot of the time the
AI could not see the player..
unless you created him in front of the player and facing him.

Whish I'm sure technically thats the thing to do...
but isn't allways practical in game-play that all enemies are
allways going to be facing you..

So what I'm asking is Their some setting in the
AI to adjust to increase their sight?

Just for example: In an early Aum the Perfect AI
could be adjust to see the player allmost instantly
( Regardless of where or how far away player was)
without the player being direct in front of him
..

This would make it nice to have Ai that can see from behind
and chase immediatly as Game Starts;

I do hope that at least this will be in The Professional
version?



*** Teutonic Darkness ***

Hello Teutonic!

I finally got my ftp access back, so here's a screen for you



So to put it in words, the Npc Sight angle goes from 0 to 360 and can be adjusted from with in the General panel in the Advanced Section.


360 makes your enemies some kind of freaks who have eyes in their butts.. If a player is hiding behind a wall though, they would still not be able to see him, even with their super butt sight.

To make Npcs be able to see through walls is a feature i didn't thought anyone would ask for, so it's not in a Panel(i had overloaded them with settings already...). You can still do this with IntenseX - Basic with a little bit of coding.

Follow my instructions in this post to have your own script file. Now add the following function to your script:

Code:

---

function is_SubAction_CheckLOSFromStanceToStance(a,b,c,d)
{
   return (IS_TRUE);
}

---

That's it. Your Npcs can now look through walls.


Here's some insight about what you've just done(if you're actually going to do this). All Npcs use another instance of this function which is called exacly the same, in order to do their c_traces and see if they can spot an enemy. If the function returns IS_FALSE, they can't, otherwise , they can. Now if we override this function with our version, which always returns IS_TRUE.. problem solved. C-Script always uses the function defined last if two functions share the same name and number of parameters.



As you've already guessed, using IntenseScript you'll be able set the player on your Npc's memory, so you can have an Npc chasing the player(or anyone else for that matter), at any time you want, regardless if there are walls in-between or not..


One last thing that you should mind.. If you want an Npc to automatically go after the player, on game-start, regardless if the Npc is miles away from the player, or right beside him, you should play a bit with the LOD values, also located in the General Panel in Advanced Section.

LOD in IntenseX prevents an Npc from getting Activated, thus spending precious CPU resources, unless he is close enough to the player, or there's line of sight between the two. If you don't want LOD in your game, then simple set the Short Range Npc Activation and Long Range Npc Activation, to an equal high value. If your level is 500 meters long for example, then set the number 500 in both those values, to get the Npcs going after the player, the minute he sets his foot on your freak-land

Let me know how it goes..

Cheers,
Aris

Larry,

Thats a lot of excellent info to know...
But no I would not want all enemies to be able to
do this.

Maybe there is a way for certain Enemies only to do this?
For certain parts of the level that will have only
1 Enemy for example it would be nice...

Doing this for all would not appear right...

however having a few that can do this does cast
the illusion that The Enemy is actually
hunting and stalking player..
rather than just waiting around for the
player to make the wrong turn
where they lurk around the corner.


Would make for an awesome "AI Boss" to beat before finishing
the level...



*** Teutonic Darkness ***

I have a question to add.

when the rpg and adventure templates come out will intense ai be able to work with these?

I mean instead of making a 1st person shooter, make a 3rd person or isometric rpg and the like?

Hello,

Quote:

---

Maybe there is a way for certain Enemies only to do this?
For certain parts of the level that will have only
1 Enemy for example it would be nice...

---

That's where IntenseScript comes in... So you can do some micromanagement to individual Npcs, at any given time, or maybe when the player walks somewhere, or whatever. You get to name your Npcs, BadGuy1, BadGuy2, BigBoss or whatever, and then say something like: If player walks over there, then Spawn big boss, and make him hunt the player down(even if he doesn't currently see him)..

I used exacly that for the Strafes in Mother's Den. They would hunt you down the minute they're created, and suprise you in corners and stuff...

Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to command an Npc in any other way for IntenseX Basic. But in IntenseX Plus you get 'Following Paths', so your Npcs won't have to just stand there waiting for the player to come, if that's what's bothering you...

Quote:

---

when the rpg and adventure templates come out will intense ai be able to work with these?

---

Hey jikito. I have no idea, cause i don't know what doug's code is going to be like. I think he's working on some new Lite-C templates now, and that's probably where the new adventure and rpg templates are going to come out. IntenseX will upgrade to Lite-C when it becomes official and c-script is announced as obsolete.

Quote:

---

I mean instead of making a 1st person shooter, make a 3rd person or isometric rpg and the like?

---

You're not really limited to 1st person shooters with IntenseX Basic. Other camera types are already there. In IntenseX - Commercial you'll get Intense Dialogues, and probably a point and click movement too, so that should be way more than enough to cover your adventure game needs. I'll probably have my take on some rpg features as well.. Most rpg elements can be covered with Intense Dialogues, but i'll be still missing an inventory system and rpg stats (strength,agility,willpower, blah..)

Cheers!
Aris