AI Driving - Feedback topic

[kremator 1065]

^^ Holy fecking weeping baby jesus !  This shit really pisses me off !

 

Regarding your question @Grumpy Old Man about QA .... there obviously is NONE !

[pierremgi 4853]

7 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

 

In Arma 2 the time spent setting up a convoy was a mere minute at most.

 

In A3, 9 out of 10 times trying to place a convoy it'll simply not work, and that's being optimistic.

Go to Altis Salt Lake or VR map or any similar barren area, place a convoy there, limit the speed of the lead vehicle to 30, set the group to SAFE behavior and give them a waypoint.

 

Watch how at least 1 vehicle gets stuck, with not one single obstacle in the vicinity.

 

 

This is basically just placing a convoy and making them move.

There are no obstacles, no combat going on, no other scripts or mods hooking into the AI.

That's the most barebones scenario, not some weird edge case that'll happen once in ten years.

Wonder how this got past QA.

 

Cheers

 

 

@Grumpy Old Man

 

Seeing your video, it seems to me you forgot the mandatory column formation to make it works (read my previous post if you have time). And, I didn't see the use of setConvoySeparation.

 

So before falling into a pessimistic syndrome, just pay a little attention on what some guys have written. I know my frenglish doesn't help...

I hope some others will try what I wrote, step by step. It took me faaar more time to write explanation and make videos than scripting a convoy returning fire.

 

As i'm not in a hurry, here is your convoy!

For the helo, on second part of the video, I doubled the separation cause I'm not sure what distance (2D or 3D) is used by the command. And I added also the fly in height of 20 m. The pilot has to manage the formation direction, altitude and helo cinematic. So, it's far better on straight path than in curve.

 

 

 

 

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

49 minutes ago, pierremgi said:

 

@Grumpy Old Man

 

Seeing your video, it seems to me you forgot the mandatory column formation to make it works (read my previous post if you have time). And, I didn't see the use of setConvoySeparation.

 

So before falling into a pessimistic syndrome, just pay a little attention on what some guys have written. I know my frenglish doesn't help...

I hope some others will try what I wrote, step by step. It took me faaar more time to write explanation and make videos than scripting a convoy returning fire.

 

As i'm not in a hurry, here is your convoy!

For the helo, on second part of the video, I doubled the separation cause I'm not sure what distance (2D or 3D) is used by the command. And I added also the fly in height of 20 m. The pilot has to manage the formation direction, altitude and helo cinematic. So, it's far better on straight path than in curve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you're saying the broken convoy with wedge formation in safe behavior is totally fine and nothing to worry about?

Column formation has never been mandatory for groups in safe mode.

 

Entry for Careless and Safe behavior:

 

Quote

The group will form into a Compact Column-like formation, where each unit will directly follow the man in front rather than moving in a formation.

 

Just as a reminder, ever since, putting a group in safe mode automatically put them in column formation.

Place an infantry group, wedge formation, safe mode.

Give them a waypoint.

 

For convoys this is broken and evidence of a huge mess somewhere in the AI brain.

 

 

 

Cheers

[pierremgi 4853]

5 minutes ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

 

So you're saying the broken convoy with wedge formation in safe behavior is totally fine and nothing to worry about?

Column formation has never been mandatory for groups in safe mode.

 

Entry for Careless and Safe behavior:

 

 

Just as a reminder, ever since, putting a group in safe mode automatically put them in column formation.

Place an infantry group, wedge formation, safe mode.

Give them a waypoint.

For convoys this is broken and evidence of a huge mess somewhere in the AI brain.

 

Cheers

 

You're right. I'm wrong.

[fycj 9]

Vehicle AI will never be fixed in ARMA 3 because of physx, the AI just can't deal with acceleration, turning, brakes, etc while on physx

Also Physx is the reason of many physics bugs on arma 3 in multiplayer, all those funny videos about vehicles crashing and sending others into orbit. Arma 2 didn't had physx so the AI was ok and the bugs much less.

 

Even worse, physx is the reason of bad performance in arma 3, because it's handled all by the CPU and makes the game totally cpu limited for other things, even after all the great optimization in the visual aspects and other things

 

Physx implementation for effects are bad too, ragdolls come to mind, they are absolutely immersion breaking, the famous flinching after being hit

[Tankbuster 1746]

Where are you getting your information?

 

A2 was MUCH worse for bouncing vehicles into orbit. It's unrelated to Physx.

 

For 74% of the steam community, (those with relativly modern Nvidia GPUs) Physx runs on the GPU, not the CPU. A3 users are likley to be broadly representative of the wider steam community because we are all, by definition, Steam users, so the 74% probably applies to A3 users too.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

3 hours ago, Tankbuster said:

A2 was MUCH worse for bouncing vehicles into orbit. It's unrelated to Physx.

 

Oh yeah, those were the days, taking the abrams downhill at 160km/h, achieving escape velocity after hitting a pebble.

 

Cheers

[lexx 1363]

When thinking of A2 and vehicles, I remember very well how they stopped at every single waypoint, and how it was impossible to have them go a longer distance without any issues. Sometimes I wonder if folks played a different A2 than I had.

[dragon01 902]

Yeah, they should indeed all go back to A2 - all this fiddling with AI started, afterall, because of community feedback. It's funny to see more of less the same people get angry about the rework they themselves demanded. It never worked particularly well (although there was a brief time when it worked somewhat better than now). In fact, it's been dodgy even in ArmA1. That said, they might have been playing with some sort of AI mod that didn't transition to A3 (A2 had a bunch of those).

 

Last time AI driving was truly reliable was in OFP, and that was: a) a much simpler game, b) the game for which the AI was originally programmed for.

[froggyluv 2136]

Id never want to go back to Arma 2  driving convoys be damned. How about driving max speed 8mph over dirt in cars that felt less powerful then my wifes electric eggbeater (no jokes).  At least vehicles now feel like actual vehicles as compared to other games and have some real speed to them. Convoys I guess are a bummer but thats not something I use or encounter very often. I was actually pretty impressed in that I had an AI driver drive max speed on a Tanoa coastline road from 1 town to the next,  while being tailed laterally by a machinegun firing Helo chasing us and me as gunner. The AI gets me there everytime on a pretty harrowing and exciting chase.

[SuicideKing 233]

On 7/4/2018 at 11:13 AM, Tankbuster said:

For 74% of the steam community, (those with relativly modern Nvidia GPUs) Physx runs on the GPU, not the CPU

PhysX in Arma 3 runs on the CPU not GPU.

[pierremgi 4853]

Depending on what "physX" we are talking about.

[kklownboy 43]

11 hours ago, pierremgi said:

Depending on what "physX" we are talking about.

we are talking about the PhysX DLL that's in your root Arma 3 folder.... CPU

[barbolani 198]

Hey pierremgi

 

If I got your point, the grouping thing is what may make the difference, going to test.

 

Have you tried this with scripted - spawned vehicles and waypoints?

 

EDIT: I succesfully made it. @pierremgi is truth. It is not totally broken, it is just super tricky. Apart of what he says, what you cannot do in scripted environment is to provide waypoints before the whole group of vehicles is spawning.

 

Sometimes they need like 1 minute to start moving, but in the end, they do.

 

 

[xon2 102]

So i was playing mission Marmot from the steam workshop. And the first mission task is to setup an ambush for a convoy which is supposed to drive by ten minutes after mission start. So i do all my preparations and then i wait, and wait....and wait some more. 35min i finally see the lights of the lead vehicle in the dark,....and its driving damn slow. And there is no other vehicle behind it whatsoever. So i enable zeus mode via simple singleplayer cheat menu mod and go look whats going on. And yep, the rest of the convoy got stuck right at the very beginning of the route. So i really presume that every mission on the steam workshop that contains a convoy is broken and can't be played and finished unless you know about this and fiddle around to get zeus access and micro manage that convoy so you can progress in the mission.

 

I just don't know how the devs can leave it like that! Years of community work goes down the drain because of that random convoy break-up. I feel thats unbecoming for a community oriented game developer like BI likens themselves to this day!

[Tankbuster 1746]

16 minutes ago, xon2 said:

So i was playing mission Marmot from the steam workshop. And the first mission task is to setup an ambush for a convoy which is supposed to drive by ten minutes after mission start. So i do all my preparations and then i wait, and wait....and wait some more. 35min i finally see the lights of the lead vehicle in the dark,....and its driving damn slow. And there is no other vehicle behind it whatsoever. So i enable zeus mode via simple singleplayer cheat menu mod and go look whats going on. And yep, the rest of the convoy got stuck right at the very beginning of the route. So i really presume that every mission on the steam workshop that contains a convoy is broken and can't be played and finished unless you know about this and fiddle around to get zeus access and micro manage that convoy so you can progress in the mission.

 

I just don't know how the devs can leave it like that! Years of community work goes down the drain because of that random convoy break-up. I feel thats unbecoming for a community oriented game developer like BI likens themselves to this day!

And don't forget, it's going to be like this for years. The next iteration of the game isn't due this decade.

[lexx 1363]

22 minutes ago, xon2 said:

So i was playing mission Marmot from the steam workshop. And the first mission task is to setup an ambush for a convoy which is supposed to drive by ten minutes after mission start. So i do all my preparations and then i wait, and wait....and wait some more. 35min i finally see the lights of the lead vehicle in the dark,....and its driving damn slow. And there is no other vehicle behind it whatsoever. So i enable zeus mode via simple singleplayer cheat menu mod and go look whats going on. And yep, the rest of the convoy got stuck right at the very beginning of the route. So i really presume that every mission on the steam workshop that contains a convoy is broken and can't be played and finished unless you know about this and fiddle around to get zeus access and micro manage that convoy so you can progress in the mission.

 

I just don't know how the devs can leave it like that! Years of community work goes down the drain because of that random convoy break-up. I feel thats unbecoming for a community oriented game developer like BI likens themselves to this day!

 

Don't know the mission, but for me it sounds like the creator should have tested the scenario more and maybe add a fail safe or two. Personally - and to my knowledge - I don't have issues with convoys in my missions.

[kremator 1065]

A convoy is a convoy is a convoy.  The devs should have left it in a working state.  We shouldn’t HAVE to jump through hoops to get this to work !

[dragon01 902]

No, it isn't. That's the whole point. Wheeled or tracked, speed, separation, distance, those things matter. Yes, it used to be easier to make it work, but the way I see it, the way it is now offers more control. It's logical that you have, at the very least, to set proper formation for the convoy to maintain. Do not blame the devs when it's the mission makers who don't bother setting up their missions in a proper, fail-safe way. 

[xon2 102]

@dragib01 So you have found a failsafe way of setting up convoys that elimate those random stops and break ups? If so, and presuming you have tested this extensively, pls. post a step by step guide. Because column, safe, slowest (limited) speed is not doing it! And adding script commands like convoy seperation and a specific speed have proven for mixed results by a bunch of people at best. If you know how to get 100% reliably working, sure let us know.

[Grumpy Old Man 3545]

24 minutes ago, dragon01 said:

No, it isn't. That's the whole point. Wheeled or tracked, speed, separation, distance, those things matter. Yes, it used to be easier to make it work, but the way I see it, the way it is now offers more control. It's logical that you have, at the very least, to set proper formation for the convoy to maintain. Do not blame the devs when it's the mission makers who don't bother setting up their missions in a proper, fail-safe way. 

Curious, when was the last time you set up a typical convoy, with hunter as lead and tail vehicle and 2 hemtt in between?

Using safe mode, limited speed mode and formation column is basically all there is to it.

Vehicles stop 9 out of 10 times, breaking the convoy and not leaving point A, let alone move towards their destination.

 

What exactly do you expect the average mission maker to be?

Making convoys fail safe and idiot proof (goes for AI in general in a game genre like this) is the job of the devs, mission makers should make... *snare roll* ...missions.

 

Take a look at this one:

 

 

Here's the mission file. Have at it.

 

Cheers

[Tankbuster 1746]

The domain that file is hosted is loaded with irony.

[lexx 1363]

1 hour ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

Take a look at this one:

 

 

 

Yes, this is "new" - noticed it the first time around march 2018. You'll have to have the vehicles start *on* the road, then it should work. At least it does for me.

[.kju 3244]

4 hours ago, dragon01 said:

Do not blame the devs when it's the mission makers who don't bother setting up their missions in a proper, fail-safe way. 

 

First off you don't break existing default behavior and thus wreck all existing missions. If your change is so drastic, you make it opt-in, or the new default still works as good at least as before at least.

 

Now if after the change different low level setup/a different approach to solve the topic at hand is required, it has to be introduced (blog post, video, etc) and documented (wiki page, demo mission(s), diag commands, etc) accordingly.

Not even when resources are limited, but especially when resources are limited (as it means it wont get maintained as too many topics were not in A3) - you have to account for this if you tackle such a central design aspect of the game.

 

Like what is the situation now? Most existing missions are broken, only experts who invest a large amount of time get to acceptable results (if at all) and there is no consensus or even community documentation how to solve it.

[barbolani 198]

9 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

Curious, when was the last time you set up a typical convoy, with hunter as lead and tail vehicle and 2 hemtt in between?

Using safe mode, limited speed mode and formation column is basically all there is to it.

Vehicles stop 9 out of 10 times, breaking the convoy and not leaving point A, let alone move towards their destination.

 

What exactly do you expect the average mission maker to be?

Making convoys fail safe and idiot proof (goes for AI in general in a game genre like this) is the job of the devs, mission makers should make... *snare roll* ...missions.

 

Take a look at this one:

 

 

Here's the mission file. Have at it.

 

Cheers

 

@Grumpy Old Man, you havent done @pierre MGI tricks about grouping the vehicles in that vid. Pierre's trick worked for me in both editor and script spawned, I suggest you to try it.