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mikemhz

ArmA 3 AI Pathing Rant

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I'm doing this instead of leaving a negative review. I just want the devs to hear this and know they messed up.

You have created various islands which include large cities, hotels, apartments, offices, e.t.c. However, your AI is embarrassingly bad at navigating them. No, wait, 'embarrassingly bad' is too flattering. They AI straight up cannot move through most buildings in the game. The AI cannot move in a straight line towards anything. Everything about the AI is designed around groups and formations... and zero about simple navigation. This means that creating interesting, natural, logical missions involving anything but moving en-mass across terrain literally impossible.

For example, Kavala castle, possibly the main landmark in all of Altis, the AI cannot navigate from the walls to the main gate. They can't enter or exit the castle. Your pitifully narrow focus on AI moving in formation on flat terrain with no obstacles has completely crippled any opportunity for developers to create realistic urban scenarios. Create a group of civilians and put them in the castle, put a waypoint outside of the castle and explain to me why 1. the civilian group move in 10m spaced formation and 2. can't even make it down the steps?

The hotel building at the beach resort in the North of Altis. "Oh, wow, look, a unique location and building not found anywhere else of the island. And totally accessible. I know, I will create a mission to clear out this building with an assault team. 3 hours later. Great, my mission is complete, this is going to be so cool... Oh so the AI can only navigate 5% of the building?". They literally walk in the door and then seem to run out of navigation mesh and turn around to run all the way around the front and back of the building to regroup. It's as if the developers gave up half way through. What is the purpose of this building, location, this city, the island, if you can't make AI move around it in a believable manner?

The engine, tools and content are all there to actually make amazing single and multi player experiences at near AAA quality. But you have completely gutted any opportunity for that with horrible, awful, disgraceful AI pathing.

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Arma 3 AI can only walk on objects and structures using simple paths and positions defined in the model. The original main focus of the OFP/ARMA series has been open terrains and streets and covers in urban areas rather than interiors. In buildings the AI has been mainly used to man static positions rather than to use buildings dynamically.

It has been out of the scope of A3 development to change this AI system (no matter how much we'd like to).

Knowing the limitations - it's been a tough and controversial call - we have still created some unique locations on our terrains (Kavala Castle, Ghost Hotel on Altis, Temple or rock formations on Tanoa) which have limited AI accessibility or are not suited for usage with (moving) AI at all.

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What might help would be to have Models (Buildings) with really well thought out positions for them rather than "some windows/ middle of the Stairs/1 on Rooftops". Many times these things seem random and as if the model creators werent thinking about how AI might fight/Clear/Maneuver/Defend in one of these buildings. I know for me personally when I heard the SP would be getting their DLC that was one of the first things I thought we'd be getting -maybe a really well built up town with objects firmly focuses on playing with AI..but Alas.....

 

The other point of getting the AI to move in straight lines could definitely get some love and would really help mod makers get AI to where they need them to go with the proper orientation in a jiffy.Some of this has been helped and is somewhat doable with the various DisableAI "AutoCombat" etc type commands but we could always use more.

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1 hour ago, froggyluv said:

I know for me personally when I heard the SP would be getting their DLC that was one of the first things I thought we'd be getting -maybe a really well built up town with objects firmly focuses on playing with AI..

A man can dream... and this is my dream as well.

 

Oh how I hope AI path-finding within buildings is within scope and a major priority for Arma 4. :shoot:

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You want to go insane even quicker? Try and get a Helicopter to Destroy a Building. Or just target a location and fire a salvo of unguided Rockets.

 

They won't! The AI can't seem to get out of their own way. They refuse to follow orders. There are umpteen commands that are redundant, and unnecessary, but no "destroy" or "attack" functions?

 

You need a trillion lines of code, to try and hack/fake what you want. You shouldn't need a computer science degree just to play this game.

 

It's still the greatest game I've ever worked on, but man is it frustrating!

 

_wp setWaypointType "DESTROY";  // worthless, should attempt to destroy any object

_wp setWaypointType "ATTACK";  //doesn't exist, attack any pos [x,y,z]

 

Anyways.... yeah, welcome to ArmA. We all feel your pain.

if (rantOver) then { forumChat "Best game ever!"; };

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20 hours ago, oukej said:

Arma 3 AI can only walk on objects and structures using simple paths and positions defined in the model. The original main focus of the OFP/ARMA series has been open terrains and streets and covers in urban areas rather than interiors. In buildings the AI has been mainly used to man static positions rather than to use buildings dynamically.

It has been out of the scope of A3 development to change this AI system (no matter how much we'd like to).

Knowing the limitations - it's been a tough and controversial call - we have still created some unique locations on our terrains (Kavala Castle, Ghost Hotel on Altis, Temple or rock formations on Tanoa) which have limited AI accessibility or are not suited for usage with (moving) AI at all.

 

 

I understand that you probably cannot answer this question, but I'll ask anyway.

 

Will the new Enfusion Engine  address some of these issues? Is that within the scope of development of the Enfusion Engine? 

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21 hours ago, stburr91 said:

 

 

I understand that you probably cannot answer this question, but I'll ask anyway.

 

Will the new Enfusion Engine  address some of these issues? Is that within the scope of development of the Enfusion Engine? 

If I'm correct in my current understanding, the Enfusion engine is not improving AI meaningfully, it's really more about animations etc. It's good enough for zombies, basically.

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On 2/13/2019 at 4:23 PM, stburr91 said:

 

 

I understand that you probably cannot answer this question, but I'll ask anyway.

 

Will the new Enfusion Engine  address some of these issues? Is that within the scope of development of the Enfusion Engine? 

At the very least, the zombies, pursuing a goal, are able to jump over the fence, enter the house, climb the stairs in the house on the floors, and find them in one of the many rooms.

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