Please ask your basic (newbie) questions in here. - by scumble
Ziemanskye on 8/6/2008 at 18:11
Can you use a loop in the action? It has been a while since I've used any script stuff, but maybe you just keep doing a loop of adding one of the item until the globalint has been reached. I'm pretty certain we should be able to do something like that, but as I say, I've not used any scripting stuff for ages (or even T3Ed, to be honest, I'm out in smesh-modelling country)
Judith on 8/6/2008 at 18:34
Yes, we can, just remember not to include PCTextures or Texture folders within your package, as they get baked within ibt file anyway :]
The same goes for textures from (
http://www.davegh.com/blade/davegh.htm) this guy. Yeah, I know, some of you hate T3 for those painted textures but I tried a lot of those in action and they fit the theme very well.
Beleg Cúthalion on 8/6/2008 at 19:01
Ah, now I know where you got yours from. ;) However, I think some of them are really too...well...cute. I'm not one of those who think TDS was overly comic-like, but I think I'll try to make it look more straight and sharp. Plus, assuming that I'm not the only one who admires realistic sceneries when done on a computer*, I think the look of a mission with TDS's good graphics gets belittled enough without that I have to emphasize it in addition with clearly painted textures. On the other side; I've already thought about making a French-impressionistic seaside mission (a little homage to Moira) with textures that look like water-paintings. But at the moment, this is one of the far-end-points of the agenda.
*But I like them – to acquit myself of being a ivory-tower computer freak – also in reality.
About the 3D objects; I'll post this in the static mesh thread...
Beleg Cúthalion on 16/6/2008 at 21:24
One little question: Has anyone experienced crashes after messing with the patrols? I've added a few of them today (just two guards and a patrol with one or two look points per street) and now the game freezes as soon as I walk around a bit in these new sections. I didn't change anything important else left aside the usual design things, that's why I assume this might be an issue of AIs reaching a certain buggy point on their patrol. I have a couple of change direction patrols (markers linked in one way only), circle patrols, two look points for one patrol marker with options set differently (random, shuffle etc.) but overall nothing two complicated I believe.
Are there things to watch out for which are not written down in the wiki?
Flux on 18/6/2008 at 17:12
Is it a freeze or crash? Logs?
I can't offer any more solutions, I had some nightmares during valley, though very seldom crashes regarding patrols. Even if the patrol links look green, bots refuses to act the way they should or game crashes.
The only useful tip I can give, if you haven't that habit already, select that area from top view, then click show selected actors, then click "rebuild visible actors" on render/build geometry window and then do ai build, it will just save you time. Since you might want to rebuild ai several times, check in game, gnarl, go back and try new things, rebuild etc...If you follow this, be sure to select your skybox also, because when you enter that small problematic area in your level, it would need a skybox naturally.
Also, check if there are any smeshes around them with collision set to "artist-generated". Some of them have horrible collisions, causing very strange things, including patrol weirdness. One pagan in valley refused to walk under some cave mesh, which was at least 20 feet above him, even though the whole area was flat and clear from obstacles. Yes, 20 feet above him. I got around by setting pyhsics to none and add invisible walls for that particular mesh.
Beleg Cúthalion on 18/6/2008 at 19:33
I've deleted four of the watchmen to see that the freeze (no real crash, I could usually close it with "Windows-Key + D", although I haven't checked any logs yet) didn't happen again. I'll try what you said when I find the time, thanks a lot. :) However, the patrols themselves appeared to work. It was rather a random freeze after some time standing in/near one of the areas.
Edit 1: I somehow haven't found the things in the menu you told me about (except this build only selected...option in the build settings). Anyway, after deleting all the markers and AIs from the critical sections I put new ones (two guards, five patrol points) and it worked. After adding three look points I had another freeze, after lowering two of them so that they were beneath the level of the linked patrol point it worked again, but somehow one of the guards now walks the patrol from back to front without that I have changed anything I know of (if there is such an reversed-order option at all). Unlinking and linking him again didn't work. Basically it's two guards (one archer) walking the same patrol from the same starting point - which in fact works with all the other similarly-done patrols even when I did copy the patrol points (what I didn't do now, just to be extra sure). So except for the fact that the archer walks the patrol in reversed order it seems to work now. :confused:
Flux on 20/6/2008 at 12:18
Look on the left toolbar, just under add/subtract section. You'll see an eye connected to a rectangle, also a closed eye connected to a rectangle.(show/hide selected actors only). If they don't appear, there is a small triangle button just in that area. Click it to open that group, check that.
Beleg Cúthalion on 20/6/2008 at 12:24
So you don't raise the patrol points to nav mesh level..? :confused: That's weird. Especially when you have several levels above each other like in a mansion or something. Are you sure everything else causes troubles? At the moment all of my markers are a few feet above the actual position the AI has to get to (and with "lowering..." I meant that I put the look points slightly below the patrol point z-level).
Oh, and now you've edited your post. :p Well, I'll have a looksie soon. :)
Flux on 20/6/2008 at 13:05
I edited my post because I realized that you are talking about lowering/rising look points. That's ok. Well, if you want the ai look up or down, you'll want to do that.
Yes, you shouldn't raise or lower patrol points. Once you right click on a surface and add patrol point, just leave it there. Build the ai, if there isn't any bsp errors or funky meshes with strange collisions around, ai will walk/patrol around. You can move patrol points around left or right, but do not lower or raise it. When you look the original missions, you'll see that most of them look like buried underground, that's ok.
Actually, if you raise patrol points above the ground, it will still work. Still be careful about it, don't expect ai to perform acrobatic jumps.:p
I said it before, I'll say it again.:p TDS ai pathfinding is the best I've ever seen in any game engine. It doesn't work like the "apples" from other unreal engines. Once the spatial database is built, it doesn't matter where you put the patrol points, they will update themselves automatically even if you change their position.
Just look at this screenshots, remember the starting area in valley where you enter caves through iron door?
(
http://images.bittersense.com/aipath4.jpg) http://images.bittersense.com/aipath4.jpg
(
http://images.bittersense.com/aipath2.jpg) http://images.bittersense.com/aipath2.jpg
That female pagan can patrol over those static meshes with strange collisions. Once in a while, she can fall down while chasing the player, that's understandable. (that needs a different tweak, non-related to patrol points)
However, my point is, there are invisible brushes under meshes, they are actually providing the ai network, so that she can walk over the rocks. The rocks are 1-2 feet above the invisible brushes.
So, long story short, if you are putting patrol points over bsp, you don't even have to tweak them if it's a flat surface. With rocks and meshes, putting invisible brushes under will still work. As you can see in aipth2.jpg, the patrol point looks buried under rock, that's not a problem.
Beleg Cúthalion on 20/6/2008 at 13:36
My patrol points (if placed in the top view window) are way below the first street level. And especially with multiple levels (like in a building, as I said before), I doubt that it would work if all patrol points were on the same very low (standard) level. And I almost believe I saw patrol points on street level in the original maps also.
Inline Image:
http://www.eidosforum.de/images/smilies/addon/kratz.gif In return it means that it
must work with the markers on different altitudes. Well, I'll see.
What wonders me concerning your pictures is that you apparently didn't use navmesh subtraction volumes to
add a surface to the navmesh (especially with a bridge made of static meshes). That would have saved you performance I believe, although I don't exactly remember whether this particular area had any brushes to make zoning easier. :confused:
