Sulphur on 27/8/2020 at 19:09
What's happening there, as I understand it, is that the director is telling the alien your general location to investigate, which is when it pops out of the vent. At this point the Menace level starts building, which is a metric that dictates when the threshold is crossed for the alien to give up menacing you and pop back into a vent if its senses haven't found you. Since the director only gives the alien a very general idea of where you are, it probably does pop out from vents facing a random direction - it doesn't know if you're in front of it or ahead of it. Whether the direction is stochastic, I have no idea, it's probably a standard random flip for 0 or 1.
The behaviour's in this part of the article (quoting because it's easier):
Quote Posted by "Gamasutra"
When backstage, the alien has parameters for how long it sweeps, the overall distance and the amount of time it will sit idle in the vents before sweeping again.
and
Quote Posted by "Gamasutra"
Once the alien climbs back out of the vent, the duration of the front stage sweep is tied within certain ranges defined by designers. This range means it's either shorter or longer with each separate instance, but still maintains the overall pacing by having it give up and go back into the vents periodically. Plus the distance of the sweep as it moves around the space is also constrained to within a certain region, so it won't wander off too far around the map in one sitting. It's tied largely to a region defined within proximity of the vent that it emerged from. In addition, there is an important distinction be made when the alien is simply wandering around - or sweeping - to when it is exploring an area based on a disturbance.
So in the hallways you're talking about, it's possible that the sweep space is fairly constrained and so the Menace level builds quicker, which is why it keeps popping back into the vent.
Sulphur on 28/8/2020 at 03:09
That's the video of the article we're already discussing. The AI behaviour tree is great, and does work like that to give the illusion of the alien learning as the game progresses.
Marecki on 28/8/2020 at 11:10
Quote Posted by Sulphur
What's happening there, as I understand it, is that the director is telling the alien your general location to investigate, which is when it pops out of the vent. At this point the Menace level starts building, which is a metric that dictates when the threshold is crossed for the alien to give up menacing you and pop back into a vent if its senses haven't found you. Since the director only gives the alien a very general idea of where you are, it probably does pop out from vents facing a random direction - it doesn't know if you're in front of it or ahead of it. Whether the direction is stochastic, I have no idea, it's probably a standard random flip for 0 or 1.
If anything it's probably a standard random flip between 0 and 359 :) Then again, having looked at the article more carefully I think it might be something else. While I still do not see an explicit statement on what factors exactly, other than sensors having been triggered, make the Alien leave back stage, there is a mention that higher difficulty levels decrease the
timer which runs while it is there and eventually forces it out. Combine that with the facts that to the game engine the Alien remains an object (an invisible one) while back stage and that the back stage is effectively a giant empty room, my hypothesis is:
1. The Alien goes back stage. Timer starts;
2. Player character produces no signals on which the Alien's sensors could trigger so it moves around, in straight lines due to there being no obstacles up there, as instructed by the director;
3. Timer expires;
4. The Alien heads to the nearest vent and comes out, facing whichever direction it last faced backstage.
Sulphur on 28/8/2020 at 12:03
Quote Posted by Marecki
If anything it's probably a standard random flip between 0 and 359 :) Then again, having looked at the article more carefully I think it might be something else. While I still do not see an explicit statement on what factors exactly, other than sensors having been triggered, make the Alien leave back stage, there is a mention that higher difficulty levels decrease the
timer which runs while it is there and eventually forces it out. Combine that with the facts that to the game engine the Alien remains an object (an invisible one) while back stage and that the back stage is effectively a giant empty room, my hypothesis is:
1. The Alien goes back stage. Timer starts;
2. Player character produces no signals on which the Alien's sensors could trigger so it moves around, in straight lines due to there being no obstacles up there, as instructed by the director;
3. Timer expires;
4. The Alien heads to the nearest vent and comes out, facing whichever direction it last faced backstage.
Sounds about right; we will have to guess given the devs haven't really written a paper on the AI like, say, Monolith did with F.E.A.R. Keeping in mind the point of the director is to provide pacing to the game, there are probably pre-set variables for each level that dictate how often the alien comes out to establish threat if you don't do anything egregious to alert it during backstage (the timer is a cooldown timer for it to pop out, and I remember some sections of the levels where the alien wasn't very active relative to other sections).
Should be obvious, but I admire how the entire game was constructed, from its reverse-engineering of the original movie's aesethetic and extrapolation of the technology to the effort they put into making the alien seem like a real creature traversing the level architecture - as with most AI, it's smoke and mirrors, but it's cleverly crafted IMO and that makes it easier to forgive the flaws where the illusion breaks down.
Thirith on 29/8/2020 at 18:33
I just tried out SWAT 4 with the a Elite Force mod. It adds the ability to command the team using voice commands, and while the game oddly didn't recognise it when I said “Blue team” (I hadn't trained Windows Voice Recognition yet, so that might be the issue), other than that it worked very well - arguably better than using the somewhat awkward graphical command menu.
Tomi on 29/8/2020 at 19:33
Ah, good old SWAT 4. That hospital mission is still one of the best things that I've played.
Tomi on 30/8/2020 at 10:00
Thanks to Sulphur's recommendation a while back, I've been playing Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. You were spot on Sulph, this does feel like oldschool Wolf and it's pretty damn good! The fun gameplay from The New Order is still there, but they've ditched most things that I didn't care about in TNO. The guns are fairly basic but they feel good, the story is straightforward and simple and there aren't many cutscenes or conversations with NPCs, but that's not really a bad thing. It's all about the action. This time stealth also seems to be a more viable option, but it's always just an option - violence is still a perfectly good solution for any problem that you encounter in the game. The locations are very Wolf-like and the space nazis and mech robots have been replaced by occult nazis and zombie soldiers. The Old Blood has all the ingredients of a great Wolfenstein game.
Sulphur on 30/8/2020 at 14:41
:thumb: I thought you might like it. Keep in mind it's a bit of a compromise in both directions between oldschool Wolf and TNO's newschool, so it only ever ends up as a decent game that doesn't climb to any real heights as such in terms of the experience. It's fun enough to finish, though!
Thirith on 30/8/2020 at 18:15
I think I'm nearing the end of Control. Just did the pretty cool sequence in the Ashtray Maze. All in all, I'm still enjoying the game well enough, but Max Payne 2 may always remain my favourite Remedy game, and I don't think I'll need to play the DLC - though once I've played Alan Wake: American Nightmare, I might feel differently.
I also played some more No Man's Sky in VR - sitting down, this time round, since the game is clearly not designed to work well if you're standing and turn by physically turning. Which is a massive shame, because it makes me feel much less like I'm physically there... but then it's not like the game is really grabbing me to begin with. It's pleasant and has some cool elements, but I don't think it's compelling enough for me in terms of what I can actually do in the world, nor of presenting me with a world that is particularly enjoyable to just be in.
henke on 31/8/2020 at 18:44
ELASTO MANIA 2
yeah
that's right.
2020 aint all bad I guess, cuz all of a sudden there's an Elasto Mania 2 on PC. Just like that. (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1370850/Elasto_Mania_II/)
For those that aren't familiar, Elasto Mania was an indie physics-based arcade game that came out in 2000 and inspired everything from Trials to Stilt Fella. The sequel was initially released in 2017 for iOS and just came to PC. The presentation is as simple as it was in 2000, but it has some nice bells and whistles, like Steam Leaderboards and Workshop support. S'good.
