AI Driving - Feedback topic

[kremator 1065]

Let's keep it to AI driving please gents.

[madrussian 347]

While on the subject of disembarking... Quick thing that always bugged me.  @oukej, maybe you can kill two birds with one stone.

 

Embarking units can be killed while attempting to embark, which is fun for the player (and makes sense):

 

However, currently disembarking units are invulnerable, which doesn't make much sense, and isn't much fun:

 

 

Surely, it's possible to make these disembarking guys vulnerable too?

 

Please correct if I'm wrong.  I played around with PhysX engine long ago, and if I recall correctly, one-way collision detection was possible.  For instance, it should be possible to have dead or unconscious foot units take collision from the truck, but have the truck take no collision from the dead or unconscious guys.  Translation = Enabling foot unit vulnerability while disembarking should be totally possible, without danger of the truck going flying?

 

Thanks again for all your efforts.

[auge103 18]

Well, I have no words for this...

 

It seems like the ai clearly has no idea how to use tracked vehicles nor do they see any obstacles or streets, despite being set to safe.

[joostsidy 685]

6 hours ago, auge103 said:

It seems like the ai clearly has no idea how to use tracked vehicles nor do they see any obstacles or streets, despite being set to safe.

 

Is it truly set to safe? I don't see any crew turned out (or is that not possible with this vehicle?). I usually put vehicles on careless, in my experience that will relieve some (but not all!) of the problems. In careless mode, they will stick to road and shoot at enemies. 

[kremator 1065]

It doesn’t matter WHAT it is set to - this is very poor indeed.  No attempt at avoiding obstacles - worse in fact the tracked vehicle CHOOSES to run over the highest part of a stone wall!!  

 

Edited May 23, 2018 by R0adki11
inappropiate comments removed.

[Tankbuster 1746]

On 10/06/2016 at 8:05 PM, R3vo said:

Well done, I placed a Hunter on Tanoa, placed a waypoint north of Tanoa, and just let the AI drive. Best taxi drive I've ever had - video will follow soon for those not on dev branch e.g ~0.14% of all players

 

Two things I noticed during the drive:

 

- AI likes to cut curves -> This sometimes leads to a collision with close to the street placed objects

- They sometimes enter crossroads to fast, especially when the road went downhill before and the speed was very high (150kph)

 

A question about configuration:

 

How does the driver know the dimensions of the vehicle. In the past, the driver would try to avoid objects which were not even in the path of the vehicle, just very close, which would then lead to very strange accidents.

 

 

 

 

Again, well done, enjoy your weekend ;)

 

 

Video:

 

 

@r3vo, I wonder if you'd be good enough to recreate this video using current stable or dev, just for comparison.:)

[joostsidy 685]

Well, sometimes I try to replicate examples, so If you say you put them on safe, I expect them to be on safe. I don't mind at all to tweak the vehicles a bit with behavior modes, speed limits etc if necessary. I have some good results with mixed convoys on CARELESS mode and with a speed limiter. The big obstacles I encountered where bridges and sometimes stopping an intersections. These can ruin the whole setup and I hope are fixable.

 

Your video hurts the eyes of course with regard to stupid driving behavior but there are some alleviating factors involved regarding the AI. For example, what is the vehicle, or vehicle group trying to do, what did you tell them? following the road or driving cross country (not in safe mode)? Did they encounter an enemy? Is the second vehicle (stuck behind the house) part of the group of the first vehicle? If this is the case it might influence the driving path. What kind of driving formation did you tell them to assume. It is very easy to create examples with stupid looking behavior but a lot of these will definitely not be fixed due to outdated AI coding architecture. On the other hand, I think reasonable driving / convoys can be achieved with some configuration on our part and the most glaring errors fixed by BI.

 

[Tankbuster 1746]

2 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

Well, sometimes I try to replicate examples, so If you say you put them on safe, I expect them to be on safe. I don't mind at all to tweak the vehicles a bit with behavior modes, speed limits etc if necessary. I have some good results with mixed convoys on CARELESS mode and with a speed limiter. The big obstacles I encountered where bridges and sometimes stopping an intersections. These can ruin the whole setup and I hope are fixable.

 

Your video hurts the eyes of course with regard to stupid driving behavior but there are some alleviating factors involved regarding the AI. For example, what is the vehicle, or vehicle group trying to do, what did you tell them? following the road or driving cross country (not in safe mode)? Did they encounter an enemy? Is the second vehicle (stuck behind the house) part of the group of the first vehicle? If this is the case it might influence the driving path. What kind of driving formation did you tell them to assume. It is very easy to create examples with stupid looking behavior but a lot of these will definitely not be fixed due to outdated AI coding architecture. On the other hand, I think reasonable driving / convoys can be achieved with some configuration on our part and the most glaring errors fixed by BI.

 

The above notwithstanding, there can be no reason a vehicle should EVER drive balls out into a building like that.

[joostsidy 685]

6 minutes ago, Tankbuster said:

The above notwithstanding, there can be no reason a vehicle should EVER drive balls out into a building like that.

Since I firmly believe there is a reason for everything, let's categorize this one under eye-hurting outdated coding architecture. ;-) 

Some speculation: the vehicle seems to be grouped to the other one and desperately tries to reach his place in the formation and cannot see the obstacles preventing it, even if it's a house. Some of this behavior is probably intentional, as it is more efficient to let units follow their leader than to let them scan and adjust individually. I believe some of the AI structure came from the older games such as OFP (2001) which had less dense maps with fewer obstacles. There was also a time (still is?) that tank formations acted like infantry formations, which is very inadequate as well. You can't expect a tank to slide a bit alongside a building like an infantry guy can get away with. Point 1: in my missions I almost never group tanks and just control them separately to give them some more space and put them on different hills and roads and such. Point 2: it hurts my eyes and soul that tanks (my favorite!) need so much babysitting.

 

One of my dreams for driving AI in the future is scalability, meaning that if you use only a small number of vehicles (let's say 10), they all automatically get a lot of processing power to navigate their environment with high accuracy. 

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

3 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

@r3vo, I wonder if you'd be good enough to recreate this video using current stable or dev, just for comparison.:)

Was curious about this myself.

Immediately recognized the first few buildings in the video since I had some minor explosive incidents in the vicinity, filming the AI drive to the destination of @R3vos hunter was a given.

 

 

First turn seems to be better in current version, you notice how certain intersections will throw off the AI in the current version, forcing them to swerve almost at every T-intersection.

Also bridges tend to slow AI vehicles down a lot in the current build, despite the changelog stating otherwise, or was that exclusive to malden? I forgot.

 

Cheers

[barbolani 198]

Hi!

 

Maybe (probably I'm wrong) but it seems the current public versión all the driving AI tweaks seem… vanished.

 

I coded convoys for Antistasi Tanoa just using the new commands and everything run well, few waypoints, convoy cohesion, safe, convoy tend to go well, stay on roads until engaged… wonderful!

 

The only issue I found is bridge crossing, it seemed to fail like 50% of times.

 

Now when I ported it to Altis I've been forced to make a total rework of the script. Using the supposed-to-be working params just made only the convoy leader to stay on road and follow waypoints… until it reaches some bridge.

 

In order to keep them in roads I had to make one group for each vehicle, so forget aout cohession, info sharing, etc..

 

Am I wrong?

[barbolani 198]

Hi!

 

Really sorry to bump this but it seems very strange how the thing seems broken and nobody, nor the beloved Devs replying.

 

I just tested creating a few cheap cars / trucks / apcs, add waypoints, first waypoint SAFE, COLUMN, leader limitSpeed 50, the rest with some setConvoySeparation 60 and forcefollowRoad true and happens... nothing, they (except the leader) just dont move.

 

Nothing scripted, nothing complex, pure editor and waypoints.

 

Someone????

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

14 hours ago, barbolani said:

Hi!

 

Really sorry to bump this but it seems very strange how the thing seems broken and nobody, nor the beloved Devs replying.

 

I just tested creating a few cheap cars / trucks / apcs, add waypoints, first waypoint SAFE, COLUMN, leader limitSpeed 50, the rest with some setConvoySeparation 60 and forcefollowRoad true and happens... nothing, they (except the leader) just dont move.

 

Nothing scripted, nothing complex, pure editor and waypoints.

 

Someone????

 

AI "driving" in convoys remains broken after multiple reports.

Can't remember when I was able to make a convoy move from A to B without any incidents, must have been in arma 2.

In A3 I'm having trouble to get convoys moving away from their starting location...

 

Notice the similar conditions of the convoys departure location, a few obstacles surrounding the vehicles.

In A2 none of the vehicles has any trouble to avoid those obstacles, in A3 collisions are basically a given, despite the ridiculous bounding boxes of vehicles.

In A2 every vehicle handles turns (>90°) and intersections just fine, with the occasional swerve for whatever reason.

Most importantly the convoy keeps moving without getting stuck/other shenanigans.

 

Just downloaded A2 to showcase this:

 

 

Now here we are in A3:

 

 

Convoy leader has speed limited to 30km/h in order to allow the trucks to catch up.

Convoy separation is set to 10.

Group is in safe mode the entire time.

 

I'm at my wits end here and can only hope A4 won't have these problems.

As of now A3 will be the last iteration in this franchise for me, unless the (by now overwhelming) issues with AI will be resolved.

 

Cheers

[xon2 102]

Hrm, todays published roadmap 2018 does not state any specifics about what is planned to be fixed or improved....it just says;

 

''Even though Arma 3's development is winding down, we're pleased to announce that we still have a bunch of new content lined up. Plus we'll continue to release (smaller) platform updates with fixes and improvements. We currently aim to deliver at least two more significant updates in 2018''

 

Lets just hope that ai driving is on the internal fixing list! I should think we have made ourselves heard loud enough

 

 

[Sparker 185]

Sorry to post my workaround to 'convoys get stuck trying to depart' problem', but in case @barbolani needs it: if convoy is detected to get stuck by a script, try to select a new different leader for the convoy group. AI will do some replanning and eventually they will start moving... that's the best I know right now.

[barbolani 198]

I can say some time ago in the past, convoys were working delicious. Not sure what's happened in recent patches, but, what worries me is the total lack of response from BIS on this. They made something that worked, not now, and nobody says anything...

[barbolani 198]

Still no response? Not even "hey you are wrong, this is working perfect, I cannot reproduce"???? 

[Tankbuster 1746]

On 14/06/2018 at 11:52 PM, barbolani said:

I can say some time ago in the past, convoys were working delicious. Not sure what's happened in recent patches, but, what worries me is the total lack of response from BIS on this. They made something that worked, not now, and nobody says anything...

Lots of people are saying, but nobody is listening, mate.

[barbolani 198]

Hollidays? Bugixing department strike? :)

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

1 hour ago, barbolani said:

Hollidays? Bugixing department strike? :)

 

End of A3's life cycle, more likely.

Fixing stuff that has to work on multiple layers, like AI driving, takes up loads of resources,

most likely won't happen from what it looks like.

 

Cheers

[barbolani 198]

Thats definetly bad news for two reasons:

 

- I state again convoys at some point worked. If not now, I can bet reverting things does not require the same processess and resources than just creating the whole thing. If they even lack of that...

- BIS I suppose Will exist for a someday Arma 4, which, in regards of this it Will have the same problem. Fixing this in advance and having people happy is to hit twice in a row.

[krycek 349]

Yea sounds familiar "we don't have resources to change the flight AI system,we don't have resources to change AI driving etc". The best advice is to vote\think with your wallet for A4 and not falling for pretty screens or any "features" they might promise.

I'm willing to bet if there was even a single serious title to compete with Arma series from another company things would have been different since A2.

[.kju 3244]

A3 is EOL from what BI is saying. so nothing will change from here

 

bigger question is if A4 will have AI in the first place (to what we have been used to in terms of scope) and to what extent

A3 leaderships essential non investment in AI area suggests they dont intend to use it for Enfusion.

maybe a few parts, or code sections (refactored hopefully), yet more built on "Enscript engine" (Take on Mars/Carrier Command)

[barbolani 198]

Well, maybe we are going a bit off topic. I work in the IT industry, and I can say any serious oftware development reaches EOL of some product on two cases:

 

- Company no longer exists or the product is used very Little. That is definetly not the case with 4 million licenses and the latest public news we all have read.

- Another product has been published. Aka Arma 4.

 

It makes no sense to me seeing a company which stills sells well the product just to discontinue it, even worse in a feature that DID work.

[haleks 8212]

26 minutes ago, krycek said:

Yea sounds familiar "we don't have resources to change the flight AI system,we don't have resources to change AI driving etc". The best advice is to vote\think with your wallet for A4 and not falling for pretty screens or any "features" they might promise.

I'm willing to bet if there was even a single serious title to compete with Arma series from another company things would have been different since A2.

 

100% agreed.

 

I do like Arma 3, and don't regret buying it (although I have a special relation with that game - not a gamer one), but in the end, it is pretty much an upgraded version of Arma 2. The AI is unable to use any of the new features (stances adjusments, weapon resting etc), and in some other areas it feels like a downgrade : AI driving is down the gutter, PhysX for vehicles brought a ton of unsolved problems, night missions are now impossible without NVGs (thanks to the graphic update) etc. Arma 3 is great as a MP or COOP game, but as soon as you mingle players and AIs together, you end up completely overwhelmed by ergonomy issues and immersion breakers.

 

Clearly, if Arma 4 looks like it's going to use the same basis regarding AI behaviours and interactions, I'll steer clear of it. I'll probably won't be able to run it anyway. ^^'