ascottk on 30/4/2005 at 00:26

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I wonder if they used a seperate AI to have Garrett climb the wall. Here's the (http://www.eidosinteractive.com/downloads/search.html?gmid=141) TDS Trailer Link. In the Rutherford Castle mission the camera is closer to the guards while you see Garrett in the background climbing the wall (and the player shouldn't have climbing gloves yet). This scene seems to be custom made just for the trailer because I haven't been able to have a seperate Garrett AI. I wonder how they did that . . .

Bumbleson on 30/4/2005 at 01:35

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I may have watched the wrong trailer, but I haven't seen a scene where Garrett climbs a wall in Rutherford Castle. The only wall climbing scene shows Garrett from above (I'm not sure which mission that is) and a blood stain on the floor. I can see no guards.
In any case, if you have the debug menu installed, you can create that kind of scenes yourself.

Doc_Brown on 30/4/2005 at 03:35

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I've still got it. I think I might be able to just email it, if anyone's interested.

Dark Arrow on 30/4/2005 at 14:47

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Once we have the animations implemented in the game, the rest will be simple.

This is the way I would do it:

Conditions:
Make the AI check for Player's position (controlled by volumes which set a global to a certain value).
Check for AI's alert level. (What exactly is the difference between yellow and red? When does red become yellow and when does yellow turn to red?)
Check on what level the AI is in.

Actions:
Call an invisible elevator to the floor where the AI is. (I'm not sure hoew elevators work, so this may be a problem)
Get the AI to stand in front of the ladders.
Play climbing animations for a certain set of time.
Call the elevator which is now positioned below the AI to the other level.
Force the AI to walk forward when it has reached the upper level.

That is how I would start building this. Perhaps it wouldn't be the prettiest way, but it could work.

Crispy on 1/5/2005 at 03:37

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Straightforward in concept, perhaps. Simple in execution, no. :)

The problem with that is that it would only work for when guards can see Garrett. They wouldn't pursue other enemies up ladders, and they wouldn't climb ladders as part of their normal searching or patrolling activities. What happens if a guard is alerted, chases Garrett up a ladder, gives up, decides to return to his patrol route, but then can't because he doesn't know how to climb ladders except when chasing Garrett? This might be partially solvable through doing copious amounts of scripting (if I've just given up searching and my level is not the same as my 'home' level, go climb the appropriate ladder), but it would entail a large amount of work.

I wonder... perhaps one could abuse navmesh addition/subtraction volumes to trick the AIs into walking off laddered ledges and into the wall below ladders. (The navmesh would have to connect vertically - not sure how doable this is, but I suspect you could rotate a navmesh addition volume 90 degrees.) When they enter strategically placed volumes at those locations, you could trigger an elevator or whatever to push them up or slowly let them come down.

Edit: Okay, I've done some testing, and navmesh volumes seem to only add navmesh on polygons that have an inclination of less than or equal to 45 degrees. In English, that means that vertical navmesh - and even highly sloped navmesh - is impossible, at least using volumes. :( On the bright side, I've had limited success using static meshes; if you make a ladder by connecting several ladder segments and tell them to add to navmesh, they create navmesh links all the way down the ladder. (Messy links, but links nonetheless.) What they don't do is connect that navmesh to the rest of the navmesh, which is necessary for the AIs to try and use it in their normal pathfinding routines; which, for those not paying attention, is what I'm trying to do. :) In theory, it should be possible to position some invisible and non-colliding static meshes to close the gaps. Working on it!

"Interesting" things would happen if two AIs tried to use the same ladder at the same time, though. :cheeky:

Maybe I'll look at it for my next impossible project. (My current one is making Enforcers behave telepathically.) :cool:

My best guess as to the colour-coded alert states is:

Green: Not aware or suspicious of any enemy presence.
Yellow: Suspicious; actively searching out enemies.
Red: Fighting or pursuing an enemy.

...but I haven't actually tested these out, so I don't know for sure. Krypt? Anyone?