Missions with hundreds of AI

[Larry 10]

Hey everyone this is the first time i post in this forum but for years that i have searched and found information for my missions around the hundreds of threads that this great site has!

Recently i have been a bit curious to know what other mission makers and players of OFP think about missions with lots of AI!

I want to ask that because for me, the bigger the scale of a mission and it's battles, the best!

But unfortunately not many missions out there provide that experience. And recently (last few months) i have been working on a few missions to be added into the storyline of a Campaign that i am doing. One of those missions has a little over 200 AI and the last one has a little more then 500 AI.

I am not sure if people will think these are insane numbers, or if people think it's not a big deal. (i do get lots of lag with this last mission).

I also want to know if anyone thinks it's stupid to have mission with so many AI or if on the other hand it's actually awesome.

I also want to say that one problem that i see in the future, if i want to link my missions or campaigns for others to download, is the amount of addons that i use. Usually i use more then 200 addons in a mission... maybe that's going to be complicated for others if they don't have them...

plz guys what u think ? :bounce3:

Edited April 30, 2011 by Larry

[maturin 12]

The player can't do much to affect the outcome a huge battle. He will just be stuck endlessly killing waves of bots made stupid by their small share of CPU cycles.

However, if the AI is spread out over a grand battlefront that the play has to traverse or manipulate, it can be ablast.

[nikiller 18]

hi,

I think the same as maturin, if there's too much AIs it becomes duck shoot because AIs are stupid due to low CPU performance. In other hands be part of a big battle is always cool. Off course if you are not lone rambo killing dozen of AIs but more a soldier in the middle of a big military operation.

Why not use a smart spawning system? I mean spawn and despawn AIs only if it's in player's viewdistance. You still have the feeling that there's a big battle around you but without useless AIs fighting in the other side of the island. Another suggestion is to delete dead bodies and vehicles wrecks. There's a lot of work around to have the feeling that there's a bunch of AIs search the forum.

For the addon question, I highly recommand you to don't use too much different addons. First because nobody wants to search 200 addons to play a mission and second, it will become totally impossible to find what's wrong if there's addon conflict, it happened to me one time and it was damn problem nearly impossible to solve. WW4mod is perfect for big battles, it has very good performances, nice looking, tons of different faction, complete animations, tons of weapons, high disperssion, very good AI without twicking and when vehicles will be release it will be THE mod for ofp. It just needs more support from mission makers. If you need objects use BAS and editor upgrade you have eveything you need to make missions.

cya.

Nikiller.

Edited April 30, 2011 by Nikiller

[Larry 10]

"if there's too much AIs it becomes duck shoot because AIs are stupid due to low CPU performance"

well i still think the AI is pretty good, i get killed so easily, most of the times enemy kills me 50 to 100 meters away even with lots of bushes and vegetation between me and them, which really pisses me off, lol

And it's not "duck shoot" kind of mission with just loads of infantry units coming in waves against MG's, no not at all, that's boring, my missions usually are a lot more dynamic then that, besides the basic armored units i have choppers coming and flying away, unloading troops and ejecting paratroopers, then i have airplanes drooping bomb's like if it were napalm, then all the mortar and artillery shell's make lot's of realist effects and nice battle environment, and i don't usually use arty.scripts, in which no artillery gun is present, i actually have various artillery units firing right next to the player

"Another suggestion is to delete dead bodies and vehicles wrecks."

well i wouldn't want to do that, actually that exact detail is what separates OFP from so many other games, dead bodies and destroyed vehicles everywhere trough the battlefield and missions is one the most realistic effects, i hate when in other games i see dead bodies disappear right in front of me, or just after i turn my back on them.

[hbien 0]

The military simulation Falcon 4 had this same issue (and it was developed back in the 1990s I think). They solved it by a combination of strategic/tactical engagements using a technique they called a "bubble". In the large context there are many military units engaging each other but at the level of strategy board games, e.g. dice-rolling, with units combined (aggregated) such that you have a group of tanks engaging another group of tanks. The actual battle simulation does not go down to the level of detail of physics/bullets/etc but is merely a probability assessment of outcome. Meanwhile, around the player in a "bubble" the units are "de-aggregated" into individual fighting units and then the simulation does address individual bullets/missiles/units/etc.

Until we have gobs of CPU available (and not used for rendering/etc), this is probably the closest you'll get to simulation of a large-scale battle. I encourage you to look at Falcon 4.0:Allied Force (if its still available, or the newer free Open Falcon 5.0?) if you are interested in large scale simulations of which you play a small but important role.

[David Schofield 10]

While I LOVE the idea of having a huge battle, It's just something that would be really, really hard to accomplish... The most I can see, effectively, is around 200 AI total. One hundred on each side. Lag just hurts the gameplay too much :(

[sanctuary 19]

Large scale battle are possible while keeping playable performance when using some smart mission design in the same vein as the dice-rolling that hbien mentionned in Falcon 4.

And using some communication sounds and radio traffic to build up the situation in a believable way for the player (a good example of this was in the CWC campaign in the infamous mission "After Montignac")

An example : the player is inserted behind enemy line with a few squads and is fighting a battle in Montignac in the centre of Everon to disrupt communications, while allied forces are assaulting Saint Pierre in the south.

The player will not see most of the battle of Saint Pierre, putting tons of AI duking it out in that location would then put a big load on the CPU, making gameplay a pain due to performance being severely hit.

Instead of wasting needed CPU cycles, you'll have a script simulating the battle, with some radio and text message broadcasted to make the player "feel" there's indeed a big battle in Saint Pierre and that he is a part of a large scale ongoing fight.

And once the player has achieved his objective, he could then be required to go to Saint Pierre to help the allied force stuck there.

Then you could use the same solution as in DAC : spawn allied and enemy forces there , while deleting the AI and various corpses/wrecks that are staying in Montignac, as they are not needed for the Saint Pierre battle that the player will see and would just put useless strain on the CPU, impacting performance.

You could then do that for several location, scripts simulating things when the player is not present, and spawn / delete AI for where the player is present.

[ProfTournesol 956]

I'm always playing with hundreds of AI, with the help of some scripts and guard waypoints.

1. Only a few groups attacking at the beginning ;

2. Reinforcement scripts, counting the amount of groups that are fleeing in order to send some more in the battle ;

3. A script that regroups weak/defeated groups to bigger ones ;

4. Groups are extensively using guard waypoints, to keep some agressive behaviours and randomness ;

5. A script that buries dead bodies after a while.

Thus you'll have large and long lasting battles, where AI are fighting until the end, without FPS drop.