Strangest civilian behaviour

[Koni 1]

The odd problems I have with this game sometimes astound me.

Latest one.

I have a few groups of Civilians milling around in a small town in Takistan, all of which have waypoints leading up a hill tied to a trigger for when the player enters the town, so until the player arrives they all stand still, once the player arrives they all start to walk to the top of a hill...

This has been working fine for days.

Now, for some reason, once the player enters the town, the civilians start as if they are going to walk where the waypoints are, but then they all stop, pause for a few seconds as if deciding wether to go where they should, then change their minds and all run towards a fuel station and crowd round a petrol pump.

Waypoints are still where they should be, all of which are synced to a trigger that triggers correctly ?!

Anyone ever had this kind of problem before ?

Edit:

Actually, this problem started the moment I added a few Takistani Locals group patrols using the Ultra Simple Patrol Script v1.4 by JW Custom, so I removed the script from the folder and deleted all the units that has the script executing in their init, but I've still got this civilian behaviour problem, that basically kills the mission.

Any unit that is even added to the mission now is affected by this if the unit has any form of waypoint in any direction, the unit will start on it's waypoint and around the same time ALL units on the map will stop, think about it, then go to the fuel station pump.

Units with no waypoints are not affected, it seems as if it's like a waypoint infection that's hit my mission :(

Edit again, it's now stopped doing it :confused:

Edited October 19, 2011 by Koni

[froggyluv 1667]

I've encountered similar behaviour recently. That being units that have reliably gone to their waypoints a hundred times with testing but as I add more to the mission -even if the other side of map, will just decide once in a while to head somewhere completely else. Strange and frustrating I know.

Have you tried disabling the civilians FSM until player arrives and is there a marker left at the fuel station?

[Koni 1]

No markers left over, nothing, no.

I don't know if it was the patrol script that caused it, or what, though it was a mission breaker really, just hope it dosen't happen again.

[froggyluv 1667]

Yup, don't know what to tell ya.

I have a mission start with a helo taking Player squad to a landing point while simultaneously a sniper teams launches via boat to meet them in the middle of Lingor. When the 'waypoint error' hits it seems to hit at the same time and my chop will fly in new direction and refuse to land/or crash while the boat drives out into open sea....

Frustrated I teamswitched to the driver of the boat and steered him manually to within 50m of his 'GetOut' waypoint and when handing control back over to AI -they disembarked in water and died :(

It's impossible to repro as it only happens occasionally.

[Koni 1]

Their bloody doing it again.

Looks like I'm going to have to cut down on the Civilian ambiance for this mission so it dosen't screw up.

[wiggum2 31]

Try a Waypoint with bahaviour CARELESS and combat-mode BLUE.

Put this in the init of the Civi's:

this disableAI "AUTOTARGET"; this disableAI "TARGET";

[Koni 1]

No change wiggum, well, yes it has changed, but nothing to do with the waypoints and behaviour.

ALL the Civilians in Imarat in Takistan, barring a couple single units are now running to and standing around the fuel pump on the garage forcourt in Imarat. Some have waypoints to go somewhere else and some don't have any waypoints at all BUT this makes no difference, they all start towards the Fuel Station.

It's also exactly the same with the Civilian units down the road in Garmurad, only they decide that the Fuel Station pump further down the road in Garmsar looks more tempting to stand around instead.

So as it stands, I start the mission with pleanty of Civilians to make the place look inhabitated, but after a few minutes both fuel stations have a large crown gathered around the fuel pump in each town and hardly a soul anywhere else.

I have now made sure there are no positioning scripts left running in the game, ie, I did have a place units in buildings script and a patrol script for civilians running on and off, but no more and it's still happening :confused:

[wiggum2 31]

Create a new mission:

Place as many Civilian as you want and give each one a SAD waypoint with CARELESS & BLUE + a cycle waypoint. Inside the unit init:

this disableAI "AUTOTARGET"; this disableAI "TARGET";  

They will randomy walk around a 50m radius.

You can also make them run away by creating a SWITCH trigger with some condition, sync it with the cycle waypoints and create another waypoint for each unit with FAST speed and let them run somewhere if combat starts.

Or just let them run at some place and delete them with:

deleteVehicle civ1

No need to use a patrol script for them this way.

[Koni 1]

Finally pinned down what the exact problem is.

The player unit is a Civilian Takistani man, grouped to a higher ranking Blufor unit that dosen't exist making the player Blufor.

Main enemy in the Campaign are Taliban which are a mixture of Takistani Locals "Independant faction" and armed Civilians grouped to higher ranking Independant units that don't exist making them also Independant.

Independant was then set to be friendly to only Opfor, but I think Civilians also get mixed up with Independant's.

Player then get set to captive true and false on and off as the missions dictate and this problem with the Civilians came about when the player was detected by the Civilians in Imarat when the player was set at captive false.

Setting it to true the Civilians don't have an issue and do what they should, but when player is captive false, they seem to seek protection from the Fuel pump at the Garage for some strange reason.

So I have now changed things around so the Taliban are now linked to Opfor units and Independant faction is friendly to everyone, so the Civilians now have no issue with the player if he is captive true or false, they don't go hug a diesel pump for comfort anymore.

Thing is though, I have done things like this for years and never had problems, but now, for this mission only, things like behaviour start to chage dramatically all of a sudden, so I think I'll go through all my missions and set the factions up like this instead.

Thanks for your reply wiggum, don't normally use waypoints for civs to keep down on the amount of waypoint lines over the map and tend to stick to scripts, though I may start doing your way from now on and see how it goes :)

Edited October 20, 2011 by Koni