Need some help with AI packages

[The Serinator]

Novice Fallout modder here, trying to create a small-scale firefight within a small enclosed Vault space.

 

Overhead image:

http://www.burninationclan.com/fileshare/f...ffFirefight.JPG

 

The 3 green dots represent the security officers who are inside the security office.

The 2 red dots in the hallway represent the Enclave soldiers.

The yellow line represents an overturned table intended to be used as cover.

The red lines represent the Enclave soldiers' patrol path.

 

Notes:

- The door from the hallway to the security office is open.

- The navmesh is fully set up, including appropriately sized cover edges.

- All NPCs have custom factions and are generated using custom leveled lists to scale to the player's level.

- Enclave soldier AI Data & AI Packages are identical to default Enclave soldiers.

- Vault security NPCs are identical to Vault 101 Security guards, set to Aggressive and Brave instead of the default settings of Very Aggressive and Foolhardy.

 

What should happen:

The 2 Enclave soldiers walk into view of the open door to the security room and are quickly mowed down by the security officers.

 

What does happen:

- The security officer behind the overturned table pretends he's the mole in a game of whack-a-mole, ducking and standing repeatedly, rarely firing. He also refuses to use his grenade until his assault rifle runs out of ammo.

- The two security officers next to the door sometimes stay in place and fire at the Enclave, sometimes run out into the hallway 1 by 1 and get killed. Sometimes they simply sit still and do nothing as the Enclave soldiers take pot shots at Captain Whack-A-Mole. Sometimes they join in on the Whack-A-Mole fun, only on the wrong side of the table, fully exposed to the fiery barrage of Enclave laser rifles (fixed by removing the cover edge on that side).

- The Enclave soldiers usually do exactly what they should do: Patrol into view, and begin aggressively shooting at the security guards, sometimes rushing into the security office wildly, sometimes ducking in and out of cover, sometimes ducking out of sight in the hallway, joining in on the Whack-A-Mole fun while out of view of the guards.

 

I've spent the last 2 full evenings working on this and I am quickly running ideas on how to make this happen outside of doing some very arbitrary scripting of the event (once I figure out how to do so, which will be another exercise in these last night nights of "fun").

- Guards use the DefaultGuardNPC package, linked to an Xmarker right behind the table (failed completely)

- Guards use the DefaultAmbush256/DefaultAmbush256Hiding package (worked almost right once and only once)

- Guards use custom Ambush/Guard packages (utter failures)

- Use only the DefaultSandbox512 AI Package and spawn the Guards in the office and Soldiers in the hallway in full view of each other (results in complete annihilation of Vault guards in 95% of test cases)

 

There are some other methods I have tried as well, but I'm at the point where my brain has grown muddled with experimenting. Any help on this would be much appreciated. I just want the stupid guards to fire at the Enclave soldiers from their positions without charging into the hallway and dying.

[anarion9]

I have experienced variants of the behavior that you are describing and am currently dealing with a similar situation where I would like defenders to keep their positions in a fight. I don't have the answers but I have a couple of thoughts. Unfortunately, I cant see your image.

 

Ideas:

- have you fiddled with any of the AI flags in the packages? Some of these can invalidate your package like if you check must complete in a guard package, I believe that is not good.

- have you tried the use weapon package, I am thinking about giving that a whirl

- the Guard package doesn't do what I always want it to do which is have the person stand there and guard something or a spot. I don't think that its really designed for that.

- another thought is that you could edit the cover more (like make it minimal just to see if thats whats affecting their desire to run out from safety. The standard cover generating tool often makes strange decisions. Its possible that the whack-a-mole behavior is related to that.

 

Without seeing the actual layout, its hard for me to help you troubleshoot but I would like to work through this with you since I am facing the same problem tomorrow when I get home from work. The Geck wiki has some useful sections on this but I imagine that you have already read them. Check out the use weapon deal. I have never used that package but it sounds interesting if you are just trying to have a combat proceed in a more controlled fashion.

 

Last thought, make sure that you simplify their packages so that they are not rolling over to a sandbox package or something. I realize that they dont need a sandbox package to do whatever they want. It seems like their behavior is to guard until they detect a combatant, then run around and do whatever it takes to kill the enemy. Frustrating but an interesting problem to solve too.

[Deleted1084753User]

Unfortunately, I cant see your image.

 

http://www.burninationclan.com/fileshare/f...ffFirefight.JPG

 

Spaces = broken links.

[The Serinator]

I have experienced variants of the behavior that you are describing and am currently dealing with a similar situation where I would like defenders to keep their positions in a fight. I don't have the answers but I have a couple of thoughts. Unfortunately, I cant see your image.

I have fixed the broken link - a product of frustration and being too late in the evening.

 

Ideas:

- have you fiddled with any of the AI flags in the packages? Some of these can invalidate your package like if you check must complete in a guard package, I believe that is not good.

The only flags I played with were in the Ambush package, experimenting with the "Hide" (didn't cause the NPC to actually hide) & "Continue In Combat" flags.

 

- have you tried the use weapon package, I am thinking about giving that a whirl

Not yet, but I'm going to give it a shot tonight.

 

- the Guard package doesn't do what I always want it to do which is have the person stand there and guard something or a spot. I don't think that its really designed for that.

If you set the range on the wait location to 0 or a very small number, it appears to keep the NPC still, or to move very little. It should be possible to set the NPC to stay at a marker, such as the mercenary in Moira's shop.

 

- another thought is that you could edit the cover more (like make it minimal just to see if thats whats affecting their desire to run out from safety. The standard cover generating tool often makes strange decisions. Its possible that the whack-a-mole behavior is related to that.

I first did the auto-cover generation, and then manually added/removed cover areas as made sense - mostly with the very small pre-fabricated Enclave bunkers, the over-turned table, a few walls that weren't detected properly, and a column.

 

Without seeing the actual layout, its hard for me to help you troubleshoot but I would like to work through this with you since I am facing the same problem tomorrow when I get home from work. The Geck wiki has some useful sections on this but I imagine that you have already read them. Check out the use weapon deal. I have never used that package but it sounds interesting if you are just trying to have a combat proceed in a more controlled fashion.

The diagram should be easily visible now, and I'll be trying out the UseWeapon package tonight. My only real concern with that is if it will still function properly after 1 soldier is dead since the package seems limited to firing at only one target (and unless I missed something, there can only be one linked reference per object in the GECK). Perhaps setting up two weapon packages each assigned to a soldier. Hopefully that doesn't break them.

 

Last thought, make sure that you simplify their packages so that they are not rolling over to a sandbox package or something. I realize that they dont need a sandbox package to do whatever they want. It seems like their behavior is to guard until they detect a combatant, then run around and do whatever it takes to kill the enemy. Frustrating but an interesting problem to solve too.

From a high-level view, they should stay in place until they detect the soldiers, then gun them down from the cover provided from the security office. Afterwards they should stay in place with weapons drawn (looking like they're prepared in case anymore come) and then one of the NPCs will force a dialogue with the player once the player comes into their view.

[anarion9]

I found something else today as I am doing a little research before starting on my own scenario. The LOS test sounded interesting in that it might show you if your cover is causing them to do odd things. I will test out the use weapon package a little. As itis a package, you could conditionalize it so that he moves onto a new package when the target is dead. Let us know how it goes.

[The Serinator]

UseWeapon package seemed to cause all sorts of crazy behavior. Not only did they not follow the package at all, the guards didn't seem to spawn properly and they just charged in like idiots assuming they didn't just run around in circles...

 

I also tried playing around with a custom class to jack up the guards' explosive skill higher than small guns. Seemed to have zero effect, as they still wouldn't use grenades until their assault rifles ran out of ammo.

[anarion9]

Ok, I have another idea. The key to making the Guard package work the way I think we both want it to is to use the combat flag "Continue during combat behavior" in the Guard package instead of the ambush package. Maybe you were already using that but that is likely the reason that my guys were leaving their posts during combat to get a better shot. The text in the geck wiki states that this will "The actor will engage the target, but will not move outside the guard radius in order to pursue the target". This may seem obvious but I have not really had time to mess with it. I will try today and let you know.

[The Serinator]

Ok, I have another idea. The key to making the Guard package work the way I think we both want it to is to use the combat flag "Continue during combat behavior" in the Guard package instead of the ambush package. Maybe you were already using that but that is likely the reason that my guys were leaving their posts during combat to get a better shot. The text in the geck wiki states that this will "The actor will engage the target, but will not move outside the guard radius in order to pursue the target". This may seem obvious but I have not really had time to mess with it. I will try today and let you know.

They seemed to ignore that when I tried using a guard radius of 1 or 0. I'd recommend using 10 or 20, as that should give them enough room to feel "comfortable" moving in and out of cover within that radius. I'm considering scrapping the scripted fire fights outside of the finale, and just place corpses to show the aftermath to the player. The finale is supposed to be big and chaotic, so standard combat behavior and NPCs getting killed will be A-OK to me.

[Spiney4]

I apologize for the lateness, but, have you tried preferred pathing?

 

http://geck.bethsoft.com/index.php/Navmesh_Creation_Workflow :

 

"Marking a preferred triangle with a cover edge will make NPCs want to use that particular cover location more than others. This is a great technique when setting up firefights."

 

Sorry for the lateness of this reply. Cover was something I never added a lot of in my mod, but I notice that NPCs really do make attempts to use preferred pathing cover over all other options, unless its just useless to get at their targets.

 

I also found it useful when NPCs were running into newly opened doors and the doors were blocking their paths. But thats an aside.

[The Serinator]

I'll definitely give that a try. I can't seem to make any of those particular features of the GECK do anything though, despite following the documentation notes in the GECK wiki.