AI Discussion (dev branch)

[Tankbuster 1733]

5 hours ago, old_painless said:

 

I am not reading anything about actually changing or improving AI behaviour. It seems this is just a fix that makes adjusting skills more easy/intuitive to work with. 

 

So when the dust settles, the AI will be no better or worse than what we have now. Taking cover, reacting to being under fire or driving will be just the same. At least, that is how I read this update (hope I'm wrong and there will also be improvements :-) )

Exactly. All that effort for no net gain and some missions that have to have their AI recalib'd. On the face of it, doesn't seem like a great leap for us.

[computer 113]

There are some things that many AI mods do that should be options / modules for vanilla. 

• AI communicate targets to other nearby groups (radio)
• Bounding which can be done by half a squad, battlebuddies or pairs of battle buddies (depending on distance to targets) / more complex tactics
• Finding overwatch / other positions on their own, ex. MG would find a better overwatch positions and lay down more fire and take bigger leaps when moving.
• MG / AT assistants that stay with MG and actually resupply them
• AI planting mines
• AI Clearing buildings in a somewhat tactical manner (as much as possible), some ai mods do this decently with a fire team entering together and looping through all the building positions

I find it hard not to play arma 3 without an ai mod/script that will make them a bit more interesting.

It feels like some of the functionality of mods like VCOM, ASR AI, bCombat, etc. could be added to the

main game with a few modules, or commands to go with them to allow disabling and changing them.

 

 

SKILL

For as far as skill goes, a command to disable the interpolation is needed.

Some missions might require certain skill. Or some units.
Doing this on a global and unit basis would be really great.
Giving more freedom for mission makers to portray the mission

that they have in their minds.

Maybe script a sniper to be max skill to take one shot and once

that's done make him normal again to provide a experience where

the player team always takes a hit. Maybe script some vehicles to be

less accurate to give the feeling that you are constantly under fire.

More power to mission makers to craft whatever they want :)

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

16 hours ago, iV - Ghost said:

Ghillie Suit

The ghillie suit should give you much more stealth effect then other clothes.

It should be possible to get invisible if your behavior is correct.

 

But it already does.

 

Cheers

[iV - Ghost 50]

Hmmm... maybe I do something wrong on my server.

I have to fight against the ultimate killers. Extrem good shooters (precisionAI = 0.04;)!!!

 

class DifficultyPresets {

	class CustomDifficulty {
	
		class Options {
			...
		};
 
		aiLevelPreset = 3;               // Defines AI skill level: 0 (Low), 1 (Normal), 2 (High), 3 (Custom = CustomAILevel).
		
	};
 
	class CustomAILevel {
		skillAI = 0.50;
		precisionAI = 0.04;
	};
	
};

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

1 hour ago, iV - Ghost said:

Hmmm... maybe I do something wrong on my server.

I have to fight against the ultimate killers. Extrem good shooters (precisionAI = 0.04;)!!!

 

class DifficultyPresets {

	class CustomDifficulty {
	
		class Options {
			...
		};
 
		aiLevelPreset = 3;               // Defines AI skill level: 0 (Low), 1 (Normal), 2 (High), 3 (Custom = CustomAILevel).
		
	};
 
	class CustomAILevel {
		skillAI = 0.50;
		precisionAI = 0.04;
	};
	
};

 

 

You need to give a bit more information, is the AI in combat, are you in combat with other AI units that have spotted you but the group that's engaging you didn't spot you?

Are you using any mods?

If the AI is already firing at you there's not much a full ghillie can do unless you break line of sight and outflank the enemy.

 

Forget tweaking the AI through the difficulty menu, setting precision there to 0.04 doesn't do much at all.

 

Cheers

[iV - Ghost 50]

Here is a link to our modlist: http://www.iv-gaming.de/index/static/view/id/274

I don't place the ALiVE AiSkill Module.

 

 

I'm using some scripts:

• GOM_AircraftLoadout
• Virtual Vehicle Spawner
• lights (script to switch streetlamps on/off)
• doorlocked (a script to breach locked doors)
• 2 Airdrop scripts
• AutoMedic (healing caller on addaction (advanced ACE medical))
• CrateSpawner (script to spawn crates)
• CleanUp (deleting corpse, empty groups, ...)
• and my HandleAi.sqf.

 

 

HandleAi.sqf

private "_this";
_this = _this select 0;
 


// REMOVE NVG & ADD FLASHLIGHT & REDUCE SPOTTING RANGE (EAST)
if ((side _this == east) and (!isPlayer _this)) then {

	_this unassignItem "NVGoggles_OPFOR";
	_this removeItem "NVGoggles_OPFOR";
  
    _this addPrimaryWeaponItem "acc_flashlight";
	_this assignItem "acc_flashlight";
	_this enableGunLights "ForceOn";

    // REDUCE SPOTTING RANGE BY NIGHT
    _isNight = sunOrMoon;
	
    if (_isNight < 1) then {

	    _this setskill ["spotDistance", 0.08];
	    _this setskill ["spotTime", 0.07];
	
    }
	else {
	    
		_this setskill ["spotDistance", 0.45];
	    _this setskill ["spotTime", 0.09];
		
	};
	
};

 

called in description.ext

// LOADOUT MANAGEMENT
class Extended_Init_EventHandlers {

    class Man {
	    init = "_this call (compile preprocessFileLineNumbers 'scripts\misc\HandleAi.sqf')";
	};
};

 

 

But the enemy is very good in spotting and shooting.

The next step would be taken the enemys weapon.^^

Edited August 5, 2017 by iV - Ghost
adding something

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

So you're basically using vanilla AI settings and think they're to accurate?

Welcome to the club!

 

 

@klamacz

One thing I've been wondering about for years, maybe you could clear this up: CfgAiSkill in config.bin is basically handling how the AI values set with setSkill are being interpreted, right?

So the only reliable way to ensure that AI use a specific skill in a mission is to overwrite these CfgAISkill settings with your own mod?

 

Any other way to make 100% sure that the AI in my mission are using the values that I set using setSkill, no matter how another player has configured his own difficulty profile inside the game settings/another mod overwriting the CfgAISkill settings?

 

This stuff is pretty convoluted as far as I'm concerned, so maybe it's possible to ditch those dozens of corners your setSkill value has to take and streamline it to one single definite value that's the same across multiple difficulty settings?

 

Cheers

[KeyCat 131]

On den 3 augusti 2017 at 4:41 PM, Grumpy Old Man said:

Why change something like this almost 4 years into the games life cycle?

 

I understand you concern but I really welcome this change. We will play A3 for years to come so given time missions/addons will be sorted (if needed). This will improve the AI and give us better way to scale the AI's skill so from me.

 

If this AI improvement "breaks" old missions maybe it will be possible to make a single addon that gets the old skill behavior back so old missions still works or maybe it's possible to have a small tool that unpack the mission and change values to match old AI skill settings and then repack the mission.

 

I know that CiA has collected tons of missions so I understand your and their concern.

 

[KeyCat 131]

On den 4 augusti 2017 at 6:47 PM, iV - Ghost said:

We are seen through these objects before we become loud. We don't need to shoot first.

I think the Ai don't know that they exist.

 

I haven't done any real testing for a long time but what you list is not my experience. The "AI see true bushes/grass/tree" has been debunked many times - just search in the forum or YT. I forgot the name but there are a clever script you can run to test this for yourself. Or you can just make a simple mission on Tanoa and verify the above.

 

On den 4 augusti 2017 at 11:54 PM, iV - Ghost said:

Ghillie Suit

The ghillie suit should give you much more stealth effect then other clothes.

It should be possible to get invisible if your behavior is correct.

 

Same here, when I tested some time ago I could stay undetected (if they hadn't spotted/heard me before) most of the time with the Ghille if laying completely still and have some vegetation around me. This even if AI walked within 5-10 m.

 

Maybe obvious but slow crawl is a good tactic that may miss. That being said you can not slow crawl with a pistol in your hand you must have your main weapon. Bug? I don't know but just a thing to be aware of then fighting against the AI.

 

10 hours ago, iV - Ghost said:

Here is a link to our modlist: http://www.iv-gaming.de/index/static/view/id/274

I don't place the ALiVE AiSkill Module.

 

When testing the AI you should always run vanilla A3. If you use mods and leave feedback here it will just add noise and won't help the dev's. Just my 0.20 SEK

 

 

[old_painless 182]

In the spirit of simplifying skill adjustment, could we at least get the feature back where you can change skills for OPFOR and BLUFOR separately in the UI ? 

[Variable 322]

In the spirit of simplifying skill adjustment, could we at least get the feature back where you can change skills for OPFOR and BLUFOR separately in the UI ? 

How is re-adding a redundant complexity that was removed in the past considered a simplification?

[old_painless 182]

In SP setting it is not at all redundant and not a complexity at all, unless you can't manage two sets of sliders. There were plenty of complaints when it was removed, last time they "fixed" the AI settings

[Variable 322]

There will just be an equal shitstorm if they return the old separation.

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

19 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

Forget tweaking the AI through the difficulty menu, setting precision there to 0.04 doesn't do much at all.

What does this mean? Why wouldn't it do anything? Isn't that what the menu is for?

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

12 minutes ago, HeroesandvillainsOS said:

What does this mean? Why wouldn't it do anything? Isn't that what the menu is for?

From all that I tried it had no noticeable effect.

Try placing one opfor soldier firing at a blufor soldier named test at 200m, put this into the opfors init:

_trace = [this,100] spawn BIS:fnc_bulletTrace;
this reveal test;

Then play around with the precision values and restart the mission.

 

Cheers

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

14 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

From all that I tried it had no noticeable effect.

Try placing one opfor soldier firing at a blufor soldier named test at 200m, put this into the opfors init:

_trace = [this,100] spawn BIS:fnc_bulletTrace;
this reveal test;

Then play around with the precision values and restart the mission.

 

Cheers

Well if that's the case BI should really be made aware of it and fix it. Would make any testing of their new adjustments totally worthless and a complete waste of time.

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

2 minutes ago, HeroesandvillainsOS said:

Well if that's the case BI should really be made aware of it and fix it. Would make any testing of their new adjustments totally worthless and a complete waste of time.

There's already been a plethora of threads and tickets most likely too.

AI reaction time also has been discussed ad nauseam, shooting a tank with crew turned out makes the crew instantly (on the same frame) turn off the headlights and turn in.

 

Cheers

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

26 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

There's already been a plethora of threads and tickets most likely too.

AI reaction time also has been discussed ad nauseam, shooting a tank with crew turned out makes the crew instantly (on the same frame) turn off the headlights and turn in.

 

Cheers

That sounds like a run-of-the-mill bug. An unpleasant and unfortunate one but still.

 

But AI precision not having any impact when adjusted in the difficulty menu, if true, is a HUGE deal and needs to be fixed ASAP if so. That's like on a whole other plain of bugginess and makes any difficulty testing comepletely moot.

[old_painless 182]

3 hours ago, HeroesandvillainsOS said:

But AI precision not having any impact when adjusted in the difficulty menu, if true, is a HUGE deal and needs to be fixed ASAP if so. That's like on a whole other plain of bugginess and makes any difficulty testing comepletely moot.

 

Agree. However, perhaps the non-linearity of AI adjustments from sliders gives the impression that it does nothing. Inspection of skillFinal with various slider settings might help?

[oukej 2910]

On 27. 7. 2017 at 9:38 PM, kremator said:

EDIT:  I notice that we haven't had anything AI related since May 4th from @oukej /reallyreallysadface

Sorry about that :/
 

On 3. 8. 2017 at 9:04 PM, krycek said:

They aren't also some indie dev with small funds that barely scraps by...

Jumping on the bait. We are independent. We are a relatively small team. Gamedev isn't a gold mine. Funds don't always multiply dev power. Growth is only good when it's sustainable. Good devs are a rare breed.
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

I'm happy you have replied to most of questions here. I will not ask "when", but will ask "are You" planing to fix :
AI Infantry:
- Rooftop pathfinding

AI relies on a pathlod in the model. If the pathlod is missing on some vanilla game building's rooftop (rooftop that's normally accessible from the bottom, e.g. via ladder) please report such building via http://feedback.bistudio.com/
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- Rearming
- Selfhealing

This should work. AI has to receiver such order. Rearming is partially broken because the AI sometimes tries to rearm from itself (don't ask) - that's a bug, tracked and ...to be fixed.
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- Clearing buildings

Not planned.

 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- BRAKING (fill fix raming friendly infantry, fromation keeping etc.)
- Attention to nearby infantry

Probably related issues. Best directed to https://forums.bistudio.com/forums/topic/191515-ai-driving-feedback-topic/

Apart from adjusting AI PID we could increase vehicle's braking power. Someone's volunteering to create a shared test scenario where we'd all see the same bad situations happen the same way every time?
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- Using HE rounds against infatry (tanks to be precise)

AI is unable to reload the weapon to a different ammo based on the AI's current target. The target selection and prioritization is already a complex beast. Adding ammo switching / reload (uninterruptible action needed to get better numbers on some target) to the mix would be too tricky. So most probably - won't happen. Sorry about that.
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- Air freezed choppers (hovering and waiting for death to come)

Use https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/allowFleeing

helicopter allowFleeing 0

 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

- pathfinding for wheeled vehicles (also for tracked - bypassing forrest and vegetation that cant be destroed - fixing vehicles stuck on trees)

They should be finding routes around forests. Quickly checked and the planning seems to work. (Open the img in full screen, follow the thin yellow line from the Hunter. Goes nicely around the forest.).

Ofc may not be in all situations - but we need to know those exact situations.
There should also be a fail safe if they can't move for unknown reason to back up and try differently.

 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 2:26 PM, Vasily.B said:

If you have lack of AI programmers, maybe its good to connect with some other studio, same as You have done with some DLC? Just thinking out loud and looking for some idea...

AI is predominantly core/engine stuff. That limits external cooperation.

 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 3:29 PM, Alwarren said:

A change from 0.2 to 0.21 might have more effect than a change from 0.2 to 0.19.

That should be fixed now.
 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 3:29 PM, Alwarren said:

I also fail to see the necessity of that change.

People have often resorted to low skills in order to make AI less accurate. Sometimes (unknowingly) breaking the AI on lower difficulty presets (or as our QA puts it - making the AI brain-dead ;)) or in different aspects.

This might not have been an issue for missions tailored for a certain difficulty and played privately only with such settings. But anything public was subject to difficulty scaling and parts of AI broken by it.

Moreover some skills are used for several AI aspects at once.
The issue has been troubling us for some time. Our concerns are no less than yours. On the other hand the change opens the gate to a better use of weapon AI properties (aiming), more useful scaling of AI skill through difficulty and overall better and easier balancing.

 

On 4. 8. 2017 at 6:04 PM, iV - Ghost said:

The Ai shouldn't see you:

• through bushes
• through trees (leaves)
• through gras
• through boards in front of the windows
• In the dark
• through channel pipes and other stuff from the editor

In the game it shouldn't.

 

On 5. 8. 2017 at 1:12 AM, teabagginpeople said:

This and as pointed out. Ai  hear a sound and Just immediately  know it's enemy.  would  be nice to have some sligh change of awareness to  search /  curious / need to confirm state inbetween.

Such state exists. Interestingly enough - when AI can't confirm a target visually or by target's own hostile actions (shooting a weapon) the AI will not consider such target as an enemy and won't fire at it. Hearing movement is not enough. You can try it yourself - sprint towards an enemy, in a pitch black night, without NVG or flashlight. Just don't bump into the guy.

 

15 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

This stuff is pretty convoluted as far as I'm concerned, so maybe it's possible to ditch those dozens of corners your setSkill value has to take and streamline it to one single definite value that's the same across multiple difficulty settings?

So basically remove the difficulty scaling altogether?

 

6 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

From all that I tried it had no noticeable effect.

Try placing one opfor soldier firing at a blufor soldier named test at 200m, put this into the opfors init:

_trace = [this,100] spawn BIS:fnc_bulletTrace;
this reveal test;

Then play around with the precision values and restart the mission.

 

Cheers

A pic taken from quick try of 0.2 skill AI shooting @ a 50m distant target. You should be seeing similar results. The total imprecision is a combined effect of the "aiming error" feature and AIDispersion from weapon config.
(When testing this - fyi - the aiming error ramps up after AI reloads the magazine. At this point the AI on different skills may have similarly imprecise shooting. However a more skilled AI (or with higher difficulty) the recovery to accurate aiming is much faster.)


Ftr - before the change the AIDispersion could've been multiplied to insane values. AI was sometimes unable to hit a target at 15m.

[R0adki11 3945]

45 minutes ago, oukej said:

-snip-

Thanks for taking the time at the weekend to reply, i am sure this will help answer some questions from the community.

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

3 hours ago, oukej said:

So basically remove the difficulty scaling altogether?

 

A pic taken from quick try of 0.2 skill AI shooting @ a 50m distant target. You should be seeing similar results. The total imprecision is a combined effect of the "aiming error" feature and AIDispersion from weapon config.
(When testing this - fyi - the aiming error ramps up after AI reloads the magazine. At this point the AI on different skills may have similarly imprecise shooting. However a more skilled AI (or with higher difficulty) the recovery to accurate aiming is much faster.)


Ftr - before the change the AIDispersion could've been multiplied to insane values. AI was sometimes unable to hit a target at 15m.

 

Removing the difficulty scaling was not what I meant, what I meant was that when setting a skill via setSkill that it will be the same for every player, no matter if he's running regular/veteran or elite setting for this specific unit without having the skill value being recalculated depending on difficulty setting or cfgAISkill, only another usage of setSkill should be able to change the specific skill.

It's not really a command to set a units skill if it's not consistent across all difficulties, why use setSkill then in the first place if it doesn't have any impact when being tweaked to simulate untrained troops, when someone playing on another difficulty might not even get hit at all because he's on recruit or custom 0.1/0.1 difficulty, another player on elite might not even experience any difference between such a tweaked "untrained" unit and a regular editor placed unit.

 

Unable to hit a target at 15m using the precision difficulty slider? That's only possible using setSkill "aimingAccuracy" as far as I tried.

I don't see any difference using AI precision of 0.05, 0.5 or 1.0 in the difficulty settings, maybe I'm missing something.

This is what I encounter on current stable branch, AI skill in difficulty menu at 0.5, precision at 0.04 (somehow jumps to 0.05 every time) then changing precision to 0.5 and 1.0 with no significant change to the actual firing precision also, the "aimingAccuracy" skill somehow always returns 0.75, if that matters at all:

 

 

Thanks for looking into it, much appreciated!

 

Cheers

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

thanks for the heads up @oukej its appreciated!

 

As a priority I think wheeled-vehicle driving on roads needs to be smoothed out before the relevant dev team members step away from the project.

 

Other things (like better infantry behaviors) I would class as "nice to have" but not necessary.

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

8 hours ago, oukej said:

This should work. AI has to receiver such order. Rearming is partially broken because the AI sometimes tries to rearm from itself (don't ask) - that's a bug, tracked and ...to be fixed.

 

Tiny tweak which would please me greatly (and the players on our server) is to enable Treating/Healing of Incapacitated/Unconscious units. It should be little more than a 1-liner tweak. I left some notes about this in discord convo, and here is the FT for it:

 

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T126026

 

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

1 hour ago, fn_Quiksilver said:

 

Tiny tweak which would please me greatly (and the players on our server) is to enable Treating/Healing of Incapacitated/Unconscious units. It should be little more than a 1-liner tweak. I left some notes about this in discord convo, and here is the FT for it:

 

https://feedback.bistudio.com/T126026

 

 

 

This is absolutely needed.

Giving incapacitated/unconscious units priority above wounded units would also be welcome.

 

Cheers