scumble on 25/12/2011 at 07:21
I think I was more surprised at the stupidity of this NPC, but while working through Faldar's tooth I was about to take out this Silver Hand person when they stepped on a pressure plate and activated one of those rotating spike walls:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/72776465@N03/6567832557/" title="2011-12-25_00001 by scumble, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7145/6567832557_a1ef2bb47a.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="2011-12-25_00001"></a>
Has anyone encountered anything similar lately? I know there are various bugs such as NPCs dying inside walls, but this is the first time I have seen an actual "suicide".
Ostriig on 25/12/2011 at 11:11
Tons. In fact, that's a tactic - loose an arrow into a wall that causes enemies to trip over a trap when they go investigate. I can only assume Bethesda left this sort of behaviour in deliberately, it should've been easy to flag all/most traps in a dungeons as known to its inhabitants.
What they don't have any excuse for is your followers not being able to spot traps even after they've already stepped on them once.
zombe on 26/12/2011 at 08:22
You seem to have got the false impression that Skyrim/Oblivion AI (I am not aware of ANY changes in engine - nearly certain there are none and scripting hackery has its limits) has any such capability to begin with. The only way they can "avoid" some of the traps is if they have the perk that allows them to ignore floor-plates.
Adding a flag for dungeon inhabitants to similarly ignore all relevant traps should be (while definitely not effort free) doable via scripting tho - in case you was referring to extending the gameplay mechanics that way.
CCCToad on 29/12/2011 at 05:09
had an incident like that last night. A falmer tripped a cord, which resulted in him being impaled by a one of the "spike hand" traps. What made it worse was that he wasn't alerted, and it seemed like he stepped on it as part of his regular patrol route.
Dia on 29/12/2011 at 12:31
I fought a dragon on a snowy mountainside and won, but what amused the hell outta me was the position the dragon's body assumed after its final death throw. It kind of just sat there with its legs splayed, showing the soles of its feet and looking comical.
Inline Image:
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c262/Diah_/TTLG%20Stuff/2011-12-20_00004Deaddragonsfinalrestingpose.jpgDuring another dragon battle, the thing flew off, circled, then looked as though it was going to dive bomb me while I was standing on a grassy ledge. I don't know if it miscalculated or there was some kind of strange glitch, but the dragon hit the lip of the ledge and actually plowed a furrough in the earth right past me! I thought it had broken its neck, but to my surprise, it clambered to its feet and resumed its attack. This time I was able to slay it with one blow to the snout. Amazing.
scumble on 29/12/2011 at 12:48
Dragons have flopped into that position several times for me. I think it's more likely if they die on an incline and start to slide backwards. I think the physical properties of the dragon are a bit off, because they tend to look like they are made of rubber once expired.
I've also seen them slide across the ground - I thought that was intentional, as if they were trying to use themselves as some sort of missile...
AltF4 on 30/12/2011 at 00:39
Whilst en route to kynesgrove, I encounted the bandits at Valthiem towers. Being an archer extraodinaire, I promptly shot the archer on top of the closest tower.
Due to my toon having the stagger perk, the poor archer promptly fell off the tower onto the bridge below, but didnt expire (i'm playing on a higher difficulty level, so I guess the bandit had enough health to survive the fall).
I bulls-eyed the bandit again, and lo - shot her off the bridge into the raging river below.
Again, not enough to finish her off. On what must have been her last legs, she struggled for the edge, only to be torn apart by a pack of rampaging slaughterfish. It was a mercy killing really, as she was headed for the waterfall which would have surely spelled her final doom...
Ostriig on 31/12/2011 at 16:19
Quote Posted by zombe
You seem to have got the false impression that Skyrim/Oblivion AI (I am not aware of ANY changes in engine - nearly certain there are none and scripting hackery has its limits) has any such capability to begin with. The only way they can "avoid" some of the traps is if they have the perk that allows them to ignore floor-plates.
Adding a flag for dungeon inhabitants to similarly ignore all relevant traps should be (while definitely not effort free) doable via scripting tho - in case you was referring to extending the gameplay mechanics that way.
Sorry, forgot to pop back in here. Those were largely the lines I was thinking along. At first I did consider the possibility of spawning a sort of selective-collision object over the relevant items, but I haven't seen much in the way of dynamic obstacle avoidance from the NPCs, and since the walkmeshes are generated when making the levels and I don't know the innards of the AI I figured better skip that. Not to mention it would've been costly.
So I went to roughly what you're describing with flagging the traps. The game already has the ability of distinguishing between actors that have the perk you mentioned or not, and spawning some sort of bKnown flag relative to the denizens of a cell/dungeon for
most (not all, so as to give the appearance of possible forgetfulness or negligence) traps really shouldn't have been difficult to implement. Likewise, having your followers or simply other "non-inhabitant" NPCs flag specific traps as known after stepping on them once, or maybe seeing someone else step in them. Which is why I was quite disappointed to see them seemingly ignore this aspect despite all the dev time they've had on hand. It's one of those things, to me it looks like Beth keep getting better and better at some of those things they're really good at, but some stuff that really needs improvement just seems to slip out of mind. I wonder if perhaps they've been using largely the same in-house QA staff for years now and they've just gotten used to some things and don't notice them. I can't imagine the testers never happened upon Lydia walking into the same trap time and again or that they did but thought it was "funny".
scumble on 31/12/2011 at 17:38
It's one of the irritating things about the companion/NPC AI. The pathfinding is generally quite good considering the complexity of terrain, although apparently the AI sometimes cheat by magically transporting themselves through boundaries.
Given the complexities of the game it's not surprising some details got missed, but it would be nice for them to fix it up. Would be nice to find there is a way to tweak this once they release the construction set.
Back on topic, I shot this bandit from across a cave and he failed to fall off the rope bridge properly:
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/72776465@N03/6607558295/" title="Unusual resting position by scumble, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7154/6607558295_591025d92a.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="Unusual resting position"></a>
More recently, I wandered into a Necromancer's ancient fort party and dispatched a couple of perimeter guards by arrow. Inside the wall, one of them was concentrating a little too hard on his potion making.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/72776465@N03/6609332929/" title="Death at the alchemy table by scumble, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7153/6609332929_fbaa2acb47.jpg" width="500" height="313" alt="Death at the alchemy table"></a>
Malf on 3/1/2012 at 17:35
So those oily patches that can be lit up with Flames? Well I realised last night that there's quite often a round lamp hung above them, and sure enough, shooting the lamp results in a satisfying WHOOMPF.
Unfortunately, I'm now at a sufficiently high level that level scaling means enemies are barely hurt by these traps :(
