[OPEN BETA] [SP] bCombat infantry AI Mod

[alky_lee 279]

I dont know if this is worth mentioning, but units(tanks, snipers...) over 600m away do not react to incoming fire.

Arma 1.28, latest CBA_A3 and bcombat only, no other mods.

As Lordprimate says, bCombat only works with infantry, and the default engagement/investigation range in the config is 250m, but you can increase that if you want. The config file is bCombat.config.hpp not the config.sqf file.

Edited September 14, 2014 by alky_lee

[fabrizio_t 58]

As Lordprimate says, bCombat only works with infantry, and the default engagement/investigation range in the config is 250m, but you can increase that if you want. The config file is bCombat.config.hpp not the config.sqf file.

Config values for features (including combat switching range, investigation range) are stored into config.sqf, while bcombat_config.hpp stores only core AI skill settings.

---------- Post added at 08:31 ---------- Previous post was at 07:18 ----------

bCombat is now partecipating to the official makearmanotwar contest, within the addons section (thanks Bouben!).

This is our actual (placeholder) page:

bCombat MANW Entry page

Now i'm looking for supporters, so if you like this mod please support it ;)

Also (and i feel stupid) i haven't actully a clue on how to submit the mod to Steam workshop.

If anybody can point me to some guide that's welcome.

Edited September 15, 2014 by fabrizio_T

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

So i did couple of seconds ago :) Still using your mod, its great ;) Wish you good luck man

[Rydygier 1309]

Also (and i feel stupid) i haven't actully a clue on how to submit the mod to Steam workshop.

If anybody can point me to some guide that's welcome.

Things like that seems to me surprisingly undocumented/hard to find/obscure. Maybe it's assumed, everyone is Steam expert. Well, I'm not. I managed to do this playing detective, only after considerable amount of searching for clues, such a way:

1. Locate Arma 3 tools (not trivial task by itself to me) in the Steam - click LIBRARY > TOOLS (second from the bottom), then find "Arma 3 tools" on the probably long list.

2. Click RMB and make shortcut on the desktop, to avoid this procedure in the future.

3. Run the tools and find "Publisher" button. That's the place.

Edited September 15, 2014 by Rydygier

[fabrizio_t 58]

Things like that seems to me surprisingly undocumented/hard to find/obscure. Maybe it's assumed, everyone is Steam expert. Well, I'm not. I managed to do this playing detective, only after considerable amount of searching for clues, such a way:

1. Locate Arma 3 tools (not trivial task by itself to me) in the Steam - click LIBRARY > TOOLS (second from the bottom), then find "Arma 3 tools" on the probably long list.

2. Click RMB and make shortcut on the desktop, to avoid this procedure in the future.

3. Run the tools and find "Publisher" button. That's the place.

Thanks Rydygier, your help is appreciated.

[IndeedPete 1038]

Things like that seems to me surprisingly undocumented/hard to find/obscure. Maybe it's assumed, everyone is Steam expert. Well, I'm not. I managed to do this playing detective, only after considerable amount of searching for clues, such a way:

1. Locate Arma 3 tools (not trivial task by itself to me) in the Steam - click LIBRARY > TOOLS (second from the bottom), then find "Arma 3 tools" on the probably long list.

2. Click RMB and make shortcut on the desktop, to avoid this procedure in the future.

3. Run the tools and find "Publisher" button. That's the place.

4. Be well aware that you have to click like "Start Game..." to bring up the tools GUI and start the Publisher from there. If you start it directly via right click > Publisher it will look exactly the same but publish your stuff as Arma 3 Tool, not as mod. Don't know why BIS would include such horrible functionality but I've spent a good hour yesterday to upload something to the shop with the Publisher. It seems like this thing is still very buggy, description texts are also getting lost on the way...

[fabrizio_t 58]

4. Be well aware that you have to click like "Start Game..." to bring up the tools GUI and start the Publisher from there. If you start it directly via right click > Publisher it will look exactly the same but publish your stuff as Arma 3 Tool, not as mod. Don't know why BIS would include such horrible functionality but I've spent a good hour yesterday to upload something to the shop with the Publisher. It seems like this thing is still very buggy, description texts are also getting lost on the way...

Ok, keep these advices coming, they're going to save me much time!

In the meantime i've setup and verified the Workshop ID for the mod, which is a start ...

[stlassen 16]

Voted! :thumbsup:

[fabrizio_t 58]

Thank you for supporting.

bCombat needs about 80-90 more supporters in order to get promoted.

Bring it there and i promise you'll get a packaged addon version of the mod, distributable via Steam Workshop ;)

Fair enough ?

[stlassen 16]

Thank you for supporting.

bCombat needs about 80-90 more supporters in order to get promoted.

Bring it there and i promise you'll get a packaged addon version of the mod, distributable via Steam Workshop ;)

Fair enough ?

:D :D Well... Mods via Steam! How does that work btw? I can't seem to have mods both manually installed and installed from Steam.

[fabrizio_t 58]

:D :D Well... Mods via Steam! How does that work btw? I can't seem to have mods both manually installed and installed from Steam.

Easy, you subscribe it and mod gets installed and updated.

At least that's how it works with missions, i think addons work the same way.

bCombat will still be alternatively available for manual install though (e.g. GitHUb sources), as i like having people being able to fiddle freely with code.

[stlassen 16]

Easy, you subscribe it and mod gets installed and updated.

At least that's how it works with missions, i think addons work the same way.

bCombat will still be alternatively available for manual install though (e.g. GitHUb sources), as i like having people being able to fiddle freely with code.

I don't know. I would have thought so too, but I've tried with a few and they don't show up in A3, not even if I start A3 vanilla style (no @mods in commandline). Nothing shows up.

[lordprimate 159]

where do i vote???

[potemps 1]

Voted ;) You need a more supporters Fabrizio, you should try to make some kind of video with features or something like that, we really need a good AI in Arma :)

@stlassen, to vote you are need to enter this link

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/Z3gpQ2HmCy#.VBaiqvl_u-4

[lordprimate 159]

72 votes to go

[stlassen 16]

Voted ;) You need a more supporters Fabrizio, you should try to make some kind of video with features or something like that, we really need a good AI in Arma :)

@stlassen, to vote you are need to enter this link

http://makearmanotwar.com/entry/Z3gpQ2HmCy#.VBaiqvl_u-4

huh??? I know. I think I was the second to vote. ;)

[sttosin 67]

Supported. Surprised you cut it so close.

[fabrizio_t 58]

Supported. Surprised you cut it so close.

Well, i didn't really consider partecipating to the contest till now since i think AI mods are quite "niche", compared to more mainstream stuff.

That said, partecipating gives me some more hints to better measure actual interest into bCombat.

[tortuosit 486]

Well, i didn't really consider partecipating to the contest till now since i think AI mods are quite "niche", compared to more mainstream stuff.

That said, partecipating gives me some more hints to better measure actual interest into bCombat.

Good plan :) I didn't participate because I don't need the 500k, which I would win for sure ;) EUR 1000 per code line, ha!

[fabrizio_t 58]

Good plan :) I didn't participate because I don't need the 500k, which I would win for sure ;) EUR 1000 per code line, ha!

Well, to be fair it's not 500k, but 50k best case (except for total modification) ... and for each line of code that made in probably 100 were trashed.

Consider that on FlexAI / bDetect / bCombat / other unreleased stuff for ArmA2/ArmA3 i managed to spend over 800 hours till now.

Thing is i'm so slow :)

I hang around since 2002 (i'm 41 now!) and everything i did and i released is for free, reason being i like what i do and feel motivated when people enjoy it.

Gratification. That's what's "paying" all modders here, by more than a decade. Hope it will stay so.

So no, i didn't partecipate to the contest for the glory or money: wanting that and thinking i'd stand a chance i've have subscribed way before.

It's like a joke: along the way many people suggested me to join the contest, finally i thought "why not ?".

I'm genuinely curious to see how many supporters bCombat is going to collect along the way, that's all.

This alone is going to motivate me to further work on many other aspects of this mod, e.g. the Steam Workshop addon version i hinted before.

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Participate in such things is really good, 3 years ago i take part in a Germany wide "Crysis Screenshot Contest". The Screenshot needs to be Ingame Graphics/ or CryEngineEditor and should convey the point of the game. After i send them my image i forgot about those contest and didnt check results, 3 weeks later i recieved message: 1st Place. ^^

Hope it runs well for you, nobody knows what will happen at the end. I wish you good luck dude :)

[fabrizio_t 58]

Participate in such things is really good, 3 years ago i take part in a Germany wide "Crysis Screenshot Contest". The Screenshot needs to be Ingame Graphics/ or CryEngineEditor and should convey the point of the game. After i send them my image i forgot about those contest and didnt check results, 3 weeks later i recieved message: 1st Place. ^^

Hope it runs well for you, nobody knows what will happen at the end. I wish you good luck dude :)

Thank you, let's see.

I'm polishing v0.17 for a RC release, at the moment i'm playtesting changes and balancing its features.

There's still a few shortcomings / bugs, which are being looked in.

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

My AI mates have some kind of pathfinding issues since 2-3 weeks (stable branch) they have problems to step into buildings or/and to search that buildings. A couple of weeks ago it worked flawlessly with this setup:

bcombat_allow_cover = true;							// (Boolean) Toggle feature on / off
bcombat_cover_mode = 1;								// (0,1) 0 = apply only to leader, 1 = apply to all units
bcombat_cover_radius = [15, 20]; 						// (Array) [ maximum distance from object, maximum distance from building] 

Since the last patch they prefer to fool around and standing dircetly facing a wall instead searching the building. The mission i play (i play only wholeLottaAltis) has a "unstuckAI" command, when stuck i activate unstuck and they do what they should do.

Got 1 question: Whole Lotta Altis is a dynamic campaign based mission with instant AI spawn, did i suppose right that it would be better to have cqb_radar set to off? Cause when i do that it seems to disable another important mod "TPW_Hud".

It seems to disable those markers which are created by tpw_hud. Have you an advice?

[fabrizio_t 58]

My AI mates have some kind of pathfinding issues since 2-3 weeks (stable branch) they have problems to step into buildings or/and to search that buildings. A couple of weeks ago it worked flawlessly with this setup:

bcombat_allow_cover = true;							// (Boolean) Toggle feature on / off
bcombat_cover_mode = 1;								// (0,1) 0 = apply only to leader, 1 = apply to all units
bcombat_cover_radius = [15, 20]; 						// (Array) [ maximum distance from object, maximum distance from building] 

Since the last patch they prefer to fool around and standing dircetly facing a wall instead searching the building. The mission i play (i play only wholeLottaAltis) has a "unstuckAI" command, when stuck i activate unstuck and they do what they should do.

Got 1 question: Whole Lotta Altis is a dynamic campaign based mission with instant AI spawn, did i suppose right that it would be better to have cqb_radar set to off? Cause when i do that it seems to disable another important mod "TPW_Hud".

It seems to disable those markers which are created by tpw_hud. Have you an advice?

Developing on DEV version, i've seen a lot of pathfinding problems lately. They're the no. 1 issue in ArmA3 in my opinion.

I would not be surprised if some of these issues made into stable patch.

Try setting:

bcombat_cover_radius = [15, 0]; 						// (Array) [ maximum distance from object, maximum distance from building] 

If units stuck into buildings become too much a hassle.

I see no reason to disable bcombat_cqb_radar, except for performance issues.

Despite the fancy name, this feature grants many useful CQB enhancements, such as:

* It reminds AI of its known targets (AI units tend "forgetting" them quickly)

* It widens AI peripheral vision, by monitoring visible targets in FOV; vanilla AI has some tunnel-vision issues

* it allows for faster target acquisition

It should not collide in any way with other stuff like "TPW_Hud" theoretically, please doublecheck it and let me know, ty.

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Okay thanks for detail information, will readjust my config to provided settings and will report then :)