Can this AI behaviour be fixed?

[Wiki 1558]

Hello gents.

There is still this issue - and it really needs fix:

 

it's very annoying to see a vehicle stops when there is a civilian or an animal in front of it, but never when there is a friendly soldier.

 

The driver will always stop the vehicle when a goat or a rabbit is in front of him, but he will never hesitate to roll over a friendly unit.

[pierremgi 4889]

Consider that as normal promotion in Arma's army.

Joke apart, in Vanilla, if I'm right, the vehicles halt also for friendly guy, and perhaps for enemy ones but usually die before.

For rabbits and bees, I can't say. First things I remove from any of my scenarios.

[target_practice 163]

Personally I've noticed that the AI will try to avoid running over friendlies, but when it tries to drive around them it seems to act on the assumption that they haven't moved, and so often ends up running them over when doing that.

[Harzach 2517]

I have found that AI will make a point of swerving to the other side of the road in order to run over friendlies.

[.kju 3245]

Could be done probably with the same approach as: 

 

[target_practice 163]

Just ran a scenario involving lots of vehicles moving near several squads of infantry, I only saw one soldier get run over, with the vehicles stopping and driving around the rest.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I can't help but feel like some people exaggerate some of the AI's problems.

[martin_lee 33]

I had been and had seen others being ran over. Most of the time they are moving at some (admittedly not what we call high) speed, and just couldn't stop in time. I'd say if they had hit the brake a meter earlier it would have greatly reduced this problem. There should be a new guideline for all the new recruits (and hopefully, those currently in service as well, compulsory 'refreshment' for their R&R)

 

I did saw an interesting case when a vehicle killed someone while turning. It is in a city when the Marshal tried to turn around a corner, the poor guy is kind of being pushed by the front corner of the vehicle and died after being pushed for several meters. It's not being ran over that killed him, it's the push... 

 

p.s.

On 12/15/2018 at 7:06 PM, Wiki said:

The driver will always stop the vehicle when a goat or a rabbit is in front of him

Well, they do have thing for the hearts and minds of the indigenous goat population... 

[JB47394 30]

On 12/18/2018 at 5:26 AM, target_practice said:

Maybe I'm just lucky, but I can't help but feel like some people exaggerate some of the AI's problems.

Try getting them to do anything specific and you'll be tearing your hair out.   Try getting them to do anything reliably and you'll be screaming at the screen.

 

For the most part, if you want the AI to do what the AI does, you're in great shape.  If you want anything else, you're in for a lot of pain and suffering.  Sadly, the existence of many scripting commands for directing the AI suggests the possibility of trying to get them to do other things.  There lies madness.

 

I've seen them run over their own guys.  It's as if somebody swapped a sign in the code and they turn towards instead of away.

[target_practice 163]

1 hour ago, JB47394 said:

Try getting them to do anything specific and you'll be tearing your hair out.   Try getting them to do anything reliably and you'll be screaming at the screen.

While I confess I haven't made many mission relying on consistent AI behavior, when I have they haven't really caused that much trouble for me.

Sometimes I feel like the AI I have and others have is completely different, as many problems talked about on this forum rarely if ever materialise for me.

[krycek 349]

No one(devs) bothered to fix it properly since OFP and I'm 100% sure it won't be fixed in A3 just like any other "blah blah but the engine maaaan" excuse.

Use Rydygier excellent Liability Insurance mod(2nd mod in there), still works great. I don't have to worry about friendly run over casualties and only have to deal with idiotic pathfinding in cities, it's still quite an improvement. Vanilla behaviour is simply trying to avoid running them over until...screw this pedal to the metal.

Unlike some that think it's overexaggeration just like some say "but planes are ok to dive/insert 2001 legacy bug" try to have a few teams and armor in a town especially guiding them through streets. When I say teams I mean at least 30-40 infantry and 5-6 vehicles/armor,  not 2 Vespas 1 rabbit and 5 dudes.

 

[pierremgi 4889]

One of the worse behavior is the AI's (infantry or else) incapability to recognize ,then pass through collapsed obstacles like destroyed fences (netfence_01_m_d_f.p3d) or destroyed walls, terrain or edited or destroyed in game objects. Any player can pass through the breach, an AI can't. It must calculate a path surrounding all these objects.

One example? Place an AI at north of main airfield on Tanoa. Ask it to go further north to pass the terrain fences. It never uses the hole in destroyed fence (terrain object). Destroy the fence, same. You need to delete it (if possible) or hide it.

So, it's nice to crush/destroy walls, firing or hitting them. But that doesn't make any change in AIs brain for path.Just expect some change with the capability to see enemies...

[Wiki 1558]

I've made a short video showing this problem (and the problem about the medic never coming)

 

[joostsidy 685]

47 minutes ago, Wiki said:

I've made a short video showing this problem (and the problem about the medic never coming)

 

 

The vehicle killed you because he thought you were an idiot and a coward standing in the middle of the road with your back to the enemy. The medic couldn't be bothered to help you, because you seemed insisting on getting killed. ;-)

 

Jokes aside, I don't dispute the AI is sometimes crude, but I don't think this is a good example. The problem is more serious with multiple vehicles and infantry moving up together or moving in non-combat situations. I tend to separate them (even on different roads :-( in order to prevent accidents and holdups. What helps is to decrease the speed of the vehicle in certain situations. If the AI has better speed management in Arma (4) that would improve the situation IMO.

[lex__1 422]

It seems like AI loses their spatial position when they are in vehicles. The units maintain their ranks and perform the movement ideally, but not for all situations, even if there are no obstacles to the execution of the maneuver.
Similarly, they make mistakes and often do not take into account the environment.
Once there was an attempt to resolve the issue - AI vehicle is moving in reverse, but it was not fully implemented. AI is trying to do this through a full turn of the vehicle body, 180 ° in the opposite direction. AI trying to make this maneuver - makes hitting obstacles or other AI.

[joostsidy 685]

29 minutes ago, lex__1 said:

It seems like AI loses their spatial position when they are in vehicles. The units maintain their ranks and perform the movement ideally, but not for all situations, even if there are no obstacles to the execution of the maneuver.
Similarly, they make mistakes and often do not take into account the environment.
Once there was an attempt to resolve the issue - AI vehicle is moving in reverse, but it was not fully implemented. AI is trying to do this through a full turn of the vehicle body, 180 ° in the opposite direction. AI trying to make this maneuver - makes hitting obstacles or other AI.

 

This is indeed one of the crudest and definitely failing AI behaviours. It seemed (at least at the start of Arma 3) that vehicle group AI was just copied from infantry AI, so the vehicles try to act as if they are people. Something went horribly wrong in the design as vehicle groups were behaving better in OFP.

 

I'm not sure if this is related to OP's topic however (vehicles driving over people)..

[Wiki 1558]

5 minutes ago, joostsidy said:

 

This is indeed one of the crudest and definitely failing AI behaviours. It seemed (at least at the start of Arma 3) that vehicle group AI was just copied from infantry AI, so the vehicles try to act as if they are people. Something went horribly wrong in the design as vehicle groups were behaving better in OFP.

 

I'm not sure if this is related to OP's topic however (vehicles driving over people)..

Kinda, it"s still vehicle AI behaviour.

 

Back in OFP, the terrains were flat so it was easier for the vehicles.

[lex__1 422]

5 minutes ago, Wiki said:

Kinda, it"s still vehicle AI behaviour.

 

Back in OFP, the terrains were flat so it was easier for the vehicles.

On the video AI lose their spatial position in a flat space, in the complete absence of obstacles. One obstacle is other vehicles, but AI takes a long time to decide on the route of travel, and they do not use the entire range and vehicle maneuvering methods.

[target_practice 163]

I have to wonder what Arma's AI code looks like for BIS to have so much trouble tweaking it without breaking things.

I imagine it must be nigh-illegible spaghetti at this point.

[Wiki 1558]

15 minutes ago, lex__1 said:

On the video AI lose their spatial position in a flat space, in the complete absence of obstacles. One obstacle is other vehicles, but AI takes a long time to decide on the route of travel, and they do not use the entire range and vehicle maneuvering methods.

True :)

[haleks 8212]

55 minutes ago, target_practice said:

I have to wonder what Arma's AI code looks like for BIS to have so much trouble tweaking it without breaking things.

I imagine it must be nigh-illegible spaghetti at this point.

 

It's more likely a combination of old AI scripts and evolving environments : while the AI itself didn't change much (to the point that it uses none of the new abilities brought by Arma3, be it new stances, weapon resting etc), the terrains and the complexity of urban areas have changed a lot.

 

Given the recent focus on Multiplayer and the way new features are added for players exclusively (the Tactical Ping could be soooo usefull to alert AI squad mates, even something as simple as that was not implemented...), it is obvious that Arma3 will stay as it is. I'm actually pretty skeptical for the AI in Arma4 : either most of their behaviours are remade from scratch (I don't see that happening), or BIS keep the same basis and consider AI as a cheap way to fill MP missions.

[target_practice 163]

1 hour ago, haleks said:

I'm actually pretty skeptical for the AI in Arma4 : either most of their behaviours are remade from scratch (I don't see that happening), or BIS keep the same basis and consider AI as a cheap way to fill MP missions.

Given that Arma 4 will almost certainly be an Enfusion game, I don't think they'd be able to copy over old code even if they wanted to.

I wouldn't be surprised if BIS does try to use it as an opportunity to redo the entire AI system. After all, they're making a new engine basically scratch, so I doubt they'd refrain from doing that if they believe it to be sufficient benefit.

I definitely hope they don't try to go the easy route and dumb down the AI as you suggest in any case, as that would be removing half of what Arma is.

[haleks 8212]

1 hour ago, target_practice said:

Given that Arma 4 will almost certainly be an Enfusion game, I don't think they'd be able to copy over old code even if they wanted to.

I wouldn't be surprised if BIS does try to use it as an opportunity to redo the entire AI system. After all, they're making a new engine basically scratch, so I doubt they'd refrain from doing that if they believe it to be sufficient benefit.

I definitely hope they don't try to go the easy route and dumb down the AI as you suggest in any case, as that would be removing half of what Arma is.

 

Enfusion isn't an all new engine - look at DayZ : a lot of stuff are very similar to the way Arma is designed.

Just because the scripting language changes, doesn't necessarily mean that BI has the capacity (or the will) to completely redesign how AI behave and interact (with vehicles, other units or the environment).

 

The current limits are not tied to the scripting language itself - at least I'm convinced it's not the case, given what modders have been able to achieve in many areas.

 

Besides, the only form of advanced AI we've seen so far within Enfusion are the zombies from Dayz, and they're very much unimpressive.

[target_practice 163]

53 minutes ago, haleks said:

Enfusion isn't an all new engine - look at DayZ : a lot of stuff are very similar to the way Arma is designed.

From my understanding, DayZ is essentially a hybrid of RV3 and Enfusion, with BIS using it as an environment to test components of the engine, such as the renderer.

As for it being a new engine, I refer to this post.

As the linked post mentions, Enfusion is meant to be a modern engine capable of being scripted to run essentially any game (a la Unreal and Unity) , rather than being limited by hard coded systems.

53 minutes ago, haleks said:

Just because the scripting language changes, doesn't necessarily mean that BI has the capacity (or the will) to completely redesign how AI behave and interact (with vehicles, other units or the environment).

That is true, but if all they wanted to change was the scripting language was the only thing they wanted to change they wouldn't be making a new engine; Enfusion will in all likelyhood have notably different architecture and design from RV, making it impossible to simply port code over. I think BIS have stated on a few occasions that DayZ currently only supports basic AI systems like that of the zombies for this reason.

 

All in all, BIS is much bigger company than it used to be, if they have the resources to build an entirely new engine while maintaining and developing several other games, I really doubt it'll be hard for them to improve the AI in the future on their new platform.

[.kju 3245]

AI component/base is very likely coming from Enforce (Take on Mars, Carrier Command). Obviously they have to redo a lot of functionality from RV engine

[Wiki 1558]

Not to mention the Medic system.

 

In the video, you can see I"m badly injured, can barely walk - and still, although he ain't doing anything, the medic doesn't give a shit about me.