AI Driving - Feedback topic

[oukej 2910]

That is strange... a convoy PID is actually used whenever the vehicles are in a column formation (or any other or custom formation with left/right position offsets equaling zero - this is tested individually per each vehicle).
You can then use https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setConvoySeparation to set the spacing.

[The Man Without Qualities 110]

20 hours ago, oukej said:

That is strange... a convoy PID is actually used whenever the vehicles are in a column formation (or any other or custom formation with left/right position offsets equaling zero - this is tested individually per each vehicle).
You can then use https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/setConvoySeparation to set the spacing.

 

We had those discussions 10 years + ago. As in reality, the distance between vehicles must be altered in relation to the speed as in real life.

Maybe it is not mentioned in the function description but already implemented, but I do not see  it working in A3.

The faster the convoy moves, the larger the spacing must be to avoid crashes cuase of sudden stop.

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

Convoys? What's this utopian talk about functioning AI convoys?

As of now a single tank will easily get stuck when trying to move through an empty city.

 

 

Cheers

[The Man Without Qualities 110]

BIS would say: You must have done something wrong during this test, you did not set this and that, it is one single exception.....

As I said before, during a hours long CTI session, most of my vehicle losses are due to AI driving, not due to enemy fire.

Game is broken IMHO.

[kklownboy 43]

2 hours ago, The Man Without Qualities said:

BIS would say: You must have done something wrong during this test, you did not set this and that, it is one single exception.....

As I said before, during a hours long CTI session, most of my vehicle losses are due to AI driving, not due to enemy fire.

Game is broken IMHO.

they wouldn't say that, they never say stuff like that. The Devs are great, cheers to them, but that doesn't change the fact the AI suck at driving tho... since day one of A3 sucked, and got some what better up in till 1.6~ something and then really suck... ,and now we have some little improvements with convoy etc, but in CTI type play AI drivers are game breaking. I just learn how to us them in ways that don't frustrate me and make me rage quit.  A2 was 10x better driving...

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

2 hours ago, kklownboy said:

they wouldn't say that, they never say stuff like that. The Devs are great, cheers to them, but that doesn't change the fact the AI suck at driving tho... since day one of A3 sucked, and got some what better up in till 1.6~ something and then really suck... ,and now we have some little improvements with convoy etc, but in CTI type play AI drivers are game breaking. I just learn how to us them in ways that don't frustrate me and make me rage quit.  A2 was 10x better driving...

 

Yeah, still the attempt at fixing AI driving just to leave it in a worse state than it was before this close to the end of A3s life cycle is a bit troubling,

since it's basically the state it will end up in, making every mission that revolves around AI driving a diceroll if and when the AI will mess up.

 

Mind you, the driving was already pretty decent when the first changes occured some time in the middle of 2016.

Somehow something got messed up and has been left like that ever since.

 

Considering how "generous" the boundingBoxes are for both buildings and vehicles, it's actually a wonder that vehicles can get stuck like that, let alone ram and collide with them every 10m.

 

Cheers

[FirstPanic 39]

Cannot remember that BIS  EVER  said something to the AI driving behavior.
And you are right... game is broken...  AI & driving doesn't work since month which makes it really really hard to build a mission.

 

To be honest: for me it looks like BIS is focusing on another product (A4???).

[ProfTournesol 956]

2 minutes ago, FirstPanic said:

Cannot remember that BIS  EVER  said something to the AI driving behavior.

 

No luck Sherlock, this very topic was started by them and the devs are posting here.

[Varanon 892]

The latest patch brought it's own share of problems with driving AI. There is a T-Junction at GPS 110  224 on Altis. It used to work, but now, a Marshal APC will not be able to even make that junction, it will approach it and then go into an endless forward-reverse loop.  Ticket is here: https://feedback.bistudio.com/T128476

Tested with current stable and dev branch. Screenshot of "AIDriving" enable_diag true; included

[xon2 102]

I mean there is a little glimmer of hope i should think: now that the last official roadmap is finished and done, one can only hope that the ''resources'' bi is willing to devote to arma 3 over the next couple of years will go into fixing the most glaring issues. And in my book the ai driving and handling of waypoints and routes is the most troublesome area in the whole of arma 3. They pretty much fixed performance with x64 for what can be reasonably expected from arma 3 at this point, and if that ai driving thing got to a state where it is actually usable, i would be happy to have arma 3 stay the way it is from there onewards.

 

I actually welcome the idea of finally reaching a point of stability where i can actually go back to playing the game instead of learning how all the changes alter this and that or go bug hunting cause the latest dlc and mechanics change broke this and that mod feature or such. Its just a pitty when the very dependet variable in the game, that everything else requires in the first place, is broken forfeiting all the rest!

 

And ai driving is not just a thing for SP guys, it would equally benefit all multiplayer scenarios that are not purely pvp focused. Image what missions would be possbile if convoys where a reliable thing. If zeus could really place units down, add waypoints and don't worry aboue micro-managing every single unit.

 

So i hope BI won't devote all there resources on the 3rd party dlc strategy to bring ''more shiny new things'' but really go....''what do we need to fix to let arma 3 be a functional, working enjoyable expereince''!

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

19 hours ago, Grumpy Old Man said:

 

Yeah, still the attempt at fixing AI driving just to leave it in a worse state than it was before this close to the end of A3s life cycle is a bit troubling,

since it's basically the state it will end up in, making every mission that revolves around AI driving a diceroll if and when the AI will mess up.

 

Mind you, the driving was already pretty decent when the first changes occured some time in the middle of 2016.

Somehow something got messed up and has been left like that ever since.

 

Considering how "generous" the boundingBoxes are for both buildings and vehicles, it's actually a wonder that vehicles can get stuck like that, let alone ram and collide with them every 10m.

 

Cheers

 

the subtle hint from the company is "play PvP or go away"

 

i guess pvp is cheaper no need for AI programming

[The Man Without Qualities 110]

5 hours ago, xon2 said:

I mean there is a little glimmer of hope i should think: now that the last official roadmap is finished and done, one can only hope that the ''resources'' bi is willing to devote to arma 3 over the next couple of years will go into fixing the most glaring issues. And in my book the ai driving and handling of waypoints and routes is the most troublesome area in the whole of arma 3. They pretty much fixed performance with x64 for what can be reasonably expected from arma 3 at this point, and if that ai driving thing got to a state where it is actually usable, i would be happy to have arma 3 stay the way it is from there onewards.

 

I actually welcome the idea of finally reaching a point of stability where i can actually go back to playing the game instead of learning how all the changes alter this and that or go bug hunting cause the latest dlc and mechanics change broke this and that mod feature or such. Its just a pitty when the very dependet variable in the game, that everything else requires in the first place, is broken forfeiting all the rest!

 

And ai driving is not just a thing for SP guys, it would equally benefit all multiplayer scenarios that are not purely pvp focused. Image what missions would be possbile if convoys where a reliable thing. If zeus could really place units down, add waypoints and don't worry aboue micro-managing every single unit.

 

So i hope BI won't devote all there resources on the 3rd party dlc strategy to bring ''more shiny new things'' but really go....''what do we need to fix to let arma 3 be a functional, working enjoyable expereince''!

 

 

The affected MP missions are all CTI missions, even those which were crippled down to pure "PvP"-like functionality set (no AI commander, no AI squad leader), even in those CTIs you want to employ some AI driver.

During such an CTI I am most of the time busy looking after AIs in vehicles at map, see if the move at map, if not I check with unit camera function if vehicle stcks or flipped and try to help by giving new waypoints or using (yes! there is an anti-BIS-AI-driving-feature!!!) "flip vehicle" function to spawn the vehicle back on track/wheels.

It is really,really hard and annoying work.

If you play with active AI squads it becomes almost a full-time job when 12 squads with 12 crew max out there which means 12x4 vehicles when 3 crew per vehicle in average.

Pampering 48 vehicles with nuts AI drivers is basically a permanent roadshow of what is wrong with BIS AI and BIS AI driving.

 

The only solution until now: I rather rely on infantry tactics and skip using vehicles 

 

 

 

[oukej 2910]

13 hours ago, fn_Quiksilver said:

the subtle hint from the company is "play PvP or go away"

You can't help yourself, can you? ;) I'm sorry to say it this way but that is simply a total bullshit :P

[.kju 3239]

There is only so much the community can do with scripting, and configs for AI.

Some of the internal diags for AI, and more docu of AI related config parameters would help oukej.

[h - 169]

Quite.
IMO there should have been a large detailed wiki article with lot of pics and vids written years ago about how the AI "sees" the world, how it's "thinking" process works (how it interprets what it "sees" > how it reacts to > why it reacts that way), why on earth there even is the "auto-combat" mode (and why the AI acts like it acts when in it), and so on, which would of course include this driving "brain" as well..

[.kju 3239]

well BI has many useful diags and drawModes like for AI, physx, performance that would have helped, and still would, the modding community a great deal

 

IE:

 

 

 

(waypoints)

 

like from their own debug console

action = "diag_toggle ""combat""";
action = "diag_toggle ""costmap""";
action = "diag_toggle ""transparent""";
action = "diag_toggle ""collision""";
action = "diag_toggle ""path""";
action = "diag_toggle ""force""";
action = "diag_toggle ""animation""";

action = "diag_drawmode ""Normal""";
action = "diag_drawmode ""FireGeometry""";
action = "diag_drawmode ""ViewGeometry""";
action = "diag_drawmode ""Geometry""";

and they have tons more (not all useful to community people though, yet a good bunch a very much so)

[xon2 102]

@oukej And with BI's official roadmap finished and no more feature enriching planned, will you guys look at going into ''fix and polish, so it can rest in happiness mode''?

[h - 169]

19 minutes ago, .kju said:

well BI has many useful diags and drawModes like for AI, physx, performance that would have helped, and still would, the modding community a great deal

Indeed, back in the day when that first pic was shown I thought my hopes would finally become true, but no :(

[R0adki11 3945]

1 hour ago, xon2 said:

And with BI's official roadmap finished and no more feature enriching planned, will you guys look at going into ''fix and polish, so it can rest in happiness mode''?

 

A new roadmap is going to be announced soon, with details of Arma3 beyond Tanks DLC

 

[x3kj 1247]

Please give us script commands to directly control AI drivers via script - essentially mimicing the controls you have as human commander in your vehicle, but as "remote" so to speak. This would allow us to create custom driving behaviour for short periods, where the default pathing AI either failed or simply doesn't work for this (e.g. reverse driving for cars and tanks, or turning a tank on the spot to change armor towards some threat).

 

The combat/engagement behaviour of AI tanks is really not up to the task and destroys all authenticity unfortunately. To fix that we need ways to control vehicles directly for short periods, without relying on the path finding logic. Access to path finding logic would also be something of course, but i expect that's propably not feasible? And adding new features into that by us (e.g. reverse driving) is propably not doable either i suspect? Really, i'm not picky, i take any improvement in this area i can get... it's that significant imo.

 

The best armor simulation is not worth a damn in non-pure-PvP, if AI doesn't care one bit about it's orientation dependant protection.

 

 

[Grumpy Old Man 3540]

On 5/3/2018 at 3:45 AM, oukej said:

You can't help yourself, can you? ;) I'm sorry to say it this way but that is simply a total bullshit :P

 

So are there any plans on getting back and revert/actually improve the AI driving?

Leaving it in its current state for the rest of A3s lifetime will be a bummer for everyone involved in making AI heavy missions.

 

Cheers

[krycek 349]

4 vehicle convoy ( 1 suv, 1 technical, 1 boxer truck and 1 M-ATV) with safe\column formation and me being convoy leader. After a while 3rd and 4th vehicle (mrap) started to randomly stop at intersections (scratch this,they randomly stop everywhere). Had to order it to "return to formation" to unstuck it. We stopped in La Rochelle and after this I ordered the rest of the convoy to follow me again and so on, anyway in the vid there are multiple occurrences of this bug. I do hope a hotfix will be released to fix this instead of waiting 6 months-an year for the next big patch.

At one point the Mrap also smashed into the boxer truck (not in vid) but it was pretty random. So far it seems they do manage to use the breaks and avoid collisions but right now the AI driving is simply broken.

Suggestions for the devs:

#1.I advise to make AI or player led mixed convoys and use them around your maps more than 2 mins, I'm pretty sure you were aware of this before Tanks DLC. I don't see how something this obvious escaped testing. Just because they behave in the first minutes doesn't mean anything.

#2. If the new A3 roadmap doesn't include serious AI fixes to your driving (and flying like dive bombing but no high hopes) I suggest to call the next Arma: A4 Napoleonic wars line infantry sim.

 

 

[Tankbuster 1733]

On 03/05/2018 at 2:45 AM, oukej said:

You can't help yourself, can you? ;) I'm sorry to say it this way but that is simply a total bullshit :P

The problem is that refusing to admit that the AI driving is utterly ruined might appear to be denying it.

 

Then, consider that this very thread was started by one of your leading chaps at a time when the AI driving was actually fairly serviceable. But it wasn't long before @klamacz shuffled off stage left, hoping no one would notice and then, presumably, unsubscribed himself from the topic. And in the following months, the AI driving just got worse and worse.

 

For someone like me, who watched this game grow up into the (among other things) COOP fest it was back in 2010, all this is really frustrating. We appear to be going backwards - which is more than can be said for the AI tank drivers. :)

 

I read with amusement the "would you buy a BI product again" thread complete with its terrible grammar and ill-formed opinions. But I find myself, every day, coming round a tiny bit more to their thinking. And that makes me very sad indeed because I've not played another PC game in over a decade.

[Alwarren 2765]

18 hours ago, x3kj said:

Please give us script commands to directly control AI drivers via script - essentially mimicing the controls you have as human commander in your vehicle, but as "remote" so to speak. This would allow us to create custom driving behaviour for short periods, where the default pathing AI either failed or simply doesn't work for this (e.g. reverse driving for cars and tanks, or turning a tank on the spot to change armor towards some threat).

 

 

I second that, there should be a command or set of commands that can force a driver to take a certain path regardless of whether it thinks that is a good idea or not. We were working on a script to improve convoy driving, but there are things that are simply beyond the control of a scripter, and frankly that is driving us up the wall (not AI driving, they would hit every other but THIS wall)

[Alwarren 2765]

27 minutes ago, Tankbuster said:

The problem is that refusing to admit that the AI driving is utterly ruined might appear to be denying it.

 

Some stuff broke in the last couple of updates, that's for sure. Missions that used to work all of a sudden stop working.
Plus some very annoying bugs like this one https://feedback.bistudio.com/T126313 are still around and never got fixed, making some missions (anything "Protect the convoy") practically impossible.

 

I mean, I understand that reports like "driving is completely broken" are ignored, but there is a load of well-reported bugs that are still completely ignored, and quite frankly it's making it almost impossible to do anything with AI driving, especially in convoys.