Zombies at boltons

[frankit]

Did you ever give Crowd Agents a shot? You could add to what you have by populating some areas with slow moving CA Zombies... Attaching a CA Destination actor would 'attract' them to the player....

[Snipe34]

Snipe34,my ai is based on the ut3 stuff and when a bot sees you he will travel to the nearest pathnode to the player before breaking off if needs be,so if I have few pathnodes a zombie might see you and head for your position and you move away making his behaviour very odd.with lots of nodes this behaviour isn't as noticeable.

Yeah the wander off and switch back. I always liked the way they do that, but it's different to what you want. I want flanking behaviour, so yeah, different

and btw like the new shine on your roads, indeed your whole Gothic atmosphere.

Frankit's ideas of crowd agents is interesting but they have no collision?

[gaz661]

last night I pasted 800 volumepathnodes from an earlier version of the map(because I knew they would work) and set it running.at 14 hours it crashed.so this morning I started messing with the navmesh.obvious advantage,in an hour or so I had done a quarter of the map.another advantage is the zombies head straight towards you with no detour.but its not getting into smaller places like the residential houses.

another problem is that the groundspeed of the zombies has been altered somehow(much slower).im using an older playercontroller for the navmesh but it should not mess with the groundspeed.the controller has 2 states,wandering and then attacking if the player is within a certain distance,but I think this kind of zombie isn't much use unless there are an awfull lot of them.the way my pathnode system works I only need 10 zombies in the whole map and you cant stand still for long before they are on you.

I will look into crowd agents,i have used them before for fleeing survivors.

[frankit]

Frankit's ideas of crowd agents is interesting but they have no collision?

Crowd Agents have zero collision but the upside is a saving on clock cycles. They do have basic obstacle avoidance, but need clean lines of bounds to work well. If Gaz flies his Harrier into them, it won't have any effect. But if crowds walk into the player or the player walks into them while carrying a Dynamic Crowd Destination then it will trigger a handy event that can be used to maim the player or play gory animations etc. This is the basis behind the Jazz mini game (mobile). For PC / UTGame type games, its necessary to add a bool to the CA anim tree to get agent animations to fire ...

[Snipe34]

Yeah, I'm no expert with navmeshes. They caused me similar problems so I keep to pathnodes. Usually I'd say 'send your map over' to look at paths, but it's not that simple with UDK, lol.
UDK must do a lot of whinging at you Gaz, 'pathnode X is unnecessary!!' etc etc etc It's the way UDK is programmed and I like it. I think with your 14 hour build and crash UDK is agreeing with me. I used to vet UT2004 maps before they went on a server(and UDK is basically a UT2004 massive update). 99% of dudes would saturate their maps with nodes. Often I'd delete the lot and re-path. It was quicker. Rather than 500 nodes on a road for example, I'd have 2, up/down and another dozen or so into buildings. Too many nodes slows AI thinking, slows the game, the server... AI goes from A to B. Having a choice of 2 rather than 100 is obviously quicker for the AI to think thru.

Beyond pathing there's code options, and I'm probably / maybe / perhaps as good a coder as you ^^ There's a lot of hopeful code in UTBot like 'state TacticalMove' that could be useful as my understanding of code improves. I'm saying besides pathing, I want my monsters to dodge, duck and generally avoid bullets. Least that's my way forward - pathing but more, bots with coded smart moves.

Crowd Agents, I intended them for survivor types too, but Frankit's knowledge on the subject is excellent, thanks man!

[gaz661]

after a 15 hour build last night pathing was complete,but as I expected half the volume pathnodes didn't link.as I said its a lot of trial and error and with this build time I think its a no go.generally I place all pathnodes and select them all,copy and paste then replace the new ones with vpathnodes.as they are directly over the pathnodes they always work well.but in this instance the vpathnodes were not directly above and so some did not connect.i don't think copy/pasting the full 7000 pathnodes is a good idea.

less pathnodes is better?this is what I believed when I first started and stuck to epics guidelines of no closer than 2000 units.but through much,much experimenting I find no performance loss with more.i guess because hardware is so much faster than in 2004.

surprisingly,out of the 7000 pathnodes currently in there I only get about 24 'pathnode X is unnecessary!!' warnings.

im still continuing to fill one version with navmesh as it did show a lot of promise as well as lowering the map file size by nearly 30 mb.currently the pathnode version is at 270 mb and I know things can get weird after 300 mb.flying enemies work really well with navmesh.and zombies are crossing over between pylons,so I don't know what I did differently before.

im sure I read a thread ages ago where someone was using both navmesh and pathnodes but my udk ignores pathnodes if I place any pylons.this would be an awesome solution if its possible.anyone know about that?

ive used tactical move in other ai's but I don't want my zombies to dodge or think,zombie is hungry=zombie must eat.

[Snipe34]

ah yeah your monsters are 'different.' You want them to go straight for the vitals.
Only 24 pathnode x unnecessary!!, omg you're doing something right!! I live learn, thanks for the explanation about what you did.

Pathnodes also ignored on mine when I use a navmesh. I dunno how to use both either, like you I hope someone does.
I'm also interested in getting the TriggeredPath working via kismet. It's for runtime pathing changes and useful to know.

[gaz661]

Moo Ha Ha,new weapon.enough said.

[frankit]

Sweet Weapon! You're a sick man Gaz, but I guess you know that already ... I much prefer this vid over the others as its brighter and easier to get a feel for the game. Couple of suggestions since you said you were open to feedback:

1. The animation 'appears' to slow down as you chop, but I think the gore should speed up ...
2. Ambient zombie-attacking-sounds could be louder in the mix, even with the active chainsaw (i.e. something disturbingly horrifying sounding).
3. The facial expressions on the attacking zombies could be more ****ed up... Or maybe rampant zombie limbs coming at you faster would be better....

But I remember now that these are Romero zombies and so maybe you have different ideas.... BTW: What's that round green energy field @ 0:18?

[gaz661]

thanks frankit.

1.yeah,ive used the kills slow time mutator code in my chainsaw code to slow things when a zombie goes pop.i think it works for the horizontal chop when the bodies gib but I may take it off the vertical chop when the zombie splits in half.i should mention ive only spent around 6 hours on the chainsaw so far and more needs to be done.

2.despite a background in music I don't spend enough time on the audio side of things.i need to do more.

3.zombies are still very much in development.this rig was hastily chopped whilst I was getting the dismemberment working and will be much improved.ive been working with morphs too,but im not there yet.

the green marker is the waypoint that gets the player to where I want them.this level is a training level to get the player used to the weapons and other things.i used this to show the chainsaw because it gets to the action quicker.

[Snipe34]

Woohoo, chainy

And flying intestines very nice work Gaz!!

[gaz661]

thanks snipe,done a lot of tweeking and frankit was right,i have removed the mutator from both modes and its more satisfying to use.also added a petrol function.the motor is running while equipped so it uses fuel and more when revved for action.
struggling to get my chain mic to work though,im assigning a scaler parameter to the panner node,just like ive done with my tank treads,but its not working.its not to noticeable that the chain speed does not increase but ii would like it too.

on another note,finally got everything working in flash so the menus and achievements screen all update correctly.its amazing how putting in some achievements changes the way you play a game.

on yet another note,ive noticed that the number of members who have read this thread has dropped from 51 to 39 in the last couple of weeks.hows that happening?
I know almost everyone has gone to ue4 but surely that wont unregister them from these forums.

[Snipe34]

Audiences are notoriously fickle

I'm envious of the success you're having with your work. I think you get too close and don't realize how much you've achieved.

[frankit]

Where is the thread viewing stat Gaz?

Was the fall off time based? Maybe the deserters will return over time...

[gaz661]

just scroll to the bottom of the page.its shown there.and a list of names.