JTD Tracker Dog

[dmarkwick 261]

A dog who can smell, and track individual units? We've come up with a solution for this, a player controllable dog who belongs to a handler, and who the player temporarily controls in order to use the special dog smell skill.

Strange concept, so

. :)

(Please excuse the poor FRAPS performance.)

[STALKERGB 6]

Nice little video you have there, I was expecting someone to come up with something like this when i saw the alsatian in the game :)

[Binkowski 26]

That's an awesome concept, I hope to see it put to good use!

[OrLoK 20]

hello there

Great idea.

Rather than smoke as the "scent" why not use a modified version of the friendly/enemy "blobs" available in lower skill levels? Mainly as smoke can be an fps killer for those of us not endowed with big manly rigs.

Also a "leash/lead" could be enabled preventing the dog from leaving a certain radius from the handler until the handler authorises it.

Also info needs to be sent to the handler from the dog to indicate what it has found. and then handler can forward that info in chat/voice to other team mates.

Scenario: handler and dog approach wall concealing two enemy troops.

DOG: he detects "sees" 2 red blobs behind/through wall. or if enemies in close proximity, perhaps one big red blob.

Handler: recieves message "dog has detected enemy presence near and ahead"

he can then communicate this as he wishes to other squad members.

This is because the dog model cannot emulate dog "pointing" or any other reaction that is use to communicate by the dog.

Just some quick thoughts.

Love the idea though.

rgds

LoK

[dmarkwick 261]

Thanks for the feedbacks :)

The current plans are for the dog to be attached to a player on a short "leash" until the player decides to "use" the dog. The player then can detect scents and scent markers to track individuals, and can move about freely. The handler unit (who the player was previously controlling) will follow the dog at a distance, enabling the player to switch back into the handler when the dog finds something, and the handler is NOT miles away :)

The particle solution will stay unfortunately orlok, as each unit has a unique colour "smell" made up of two colours among other reasons. There are a few FPS saving measures built in, only units inside a certain range will emit particles, and those particles are only visible when even closer. So there is a performance-saving culling system already in place, plus, the dog's vision will probably be altered also, and one of the things being considered is reducing the viewdistance (anyone ever see a dog noticing something very far away? I think dogs are naturally only interested in things fairly close by, like < 500m say).

[OrLoK 20]

Hello there,

Particles are cool, just thought i'd throw stuff out there for you to digest. :)

Another thing, dogs do get obsessed by distant things, especially noises and scents. But it may be worth "nerfing" their cpabilities.

Lastly, I was under the impression that a full "slot" would be taken for the dog, as in, at mission start someone plays the dog throughout the mission.

Perhaps implement both ways of dog control?

Again just ideas, and im sure whatever you come up with will be interesting indeed.

rgds

LoK

[dmarkwick 261]

I've got a dog that can indeed be used as a "slot", but there's problems in having a team member who is a dog. For one, the dog doesn't always follow the group, and sometimes will not follow an order (like "move there" etc). Also the dog will report enemy units and will try to talk to you :D

Thinking about it, dogs are not team members, the dog handler is the team member, and he has a dog as a "tool" that he uses. To this end, I think I'm going to implement it this way, have the dog as a tool the handler uses, but the handler is the team member.

[Mark XIII (DayZ) 18]

This is what A2 needs, clever little idea's that are highly usable, good work so far DM :)

Could you make the dog growl maybe if it detects something unknown ? Also could it bark when it closed in on its chosen scent ?

Just some idea's, I'd be happy to work some sounds for you...:)

[squelch 0]

I'm totally blown away by the realistic behaviour the dog exhibits. I watched the video first without sound, so the lack of audible feedback went unnoticed.

I love the concept, and I'm very interested how its done. Can the dog be taught the scent of its mark?

Good job and I look forward to seeing its release.

[cole 0]

Oh wow, first those birds in trees for ArmA, now tracker dogs for ArmA 2. You seriously do have awesome ideas!

Any idea, even though it's at an early stage of development, if it will be fully MP compatible? :)

[OrLoK 20]

Hello there,

I can understand you going for the dog as a tool, but I for one would love to play a "doggy" role and it would open up a massive range of play possibilites.

Imagine being hunted by a pack of human controlled wolves? spooky!

But its easy for me to demand that, whereas you have to program it!

Whatever and however you do it, I'd love to see it.

Oh and if you need any Alpha testing? hint hint!

rgds

LoK

[dmarkwick 261]

Hello there,

I can understand you going for the dog as a tool, but I for one would love to play a "doggy" role and it would open up a massive range of play possibilites.

Imagine being hunted by a pack of human controlled wolves? spooky!

But its easy for me to demand that, whereas you have to program it!

Well, you can do that anyway right now with the default ArmA2 dog. All I'm doing is adding the ability to parent it to a human, plus give it the smell skill.

---------- Post added at 09:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:14 PM ----------

Any idea, even though it's at an early stage of development, if it will be fully MP compatible? :)

As long as all players see the dog's position, I'll count that as MP compatible :) only the dog player is supposed to see the particles.

[bravo 6 0]

Nice idea!

Hope it works in mp.

keep it up :)

edit: After finding the units now dog needs to bark :D

Handler: recieves message "dog has detected enemy presence near and ahead"

I would keep it natural, ie, instead of chat text, would be better to have sounds, maybe different sounds to identity the possible "threat"/target/etc.

Edited June 25, 2009 by bravo 6

[Alex72 1]

DM does it again. :)

Nice to have you around. ;) Cant wait to test. Thanks mate.

Alex

[kremator 1065]

Never mind Zombies ! I can now feel like Mr Burns ..... RELEASE THE HOUNDS SMITHERS !

Seriously good work DM. As above can't wait to try them out in a mission.

[Feint 137]

Such a cool idea! Really well done too. Personally, I think altering the dog's vision will make viewing the smoke more difficult, but that's your call, obviously.

Not sure if this is possible, but can you give the dog a weapon such as a horn (bark) or a short range bite? Bite could be a silenced weapon with a range of 1-2 meters and no sound (or the sound of a snarl). Horn weapon exists on cars and consists just of a sound being emitted and no bullets or anything. And you could have different settings for the horn. For example, an M4 has single shot and burst. You could do the same thing for the bark. But the burst setting would be a howl, like howling at the moon.

Anyway, just some ideas to help you out. :)

Edited June 28, 2009 by Feint

[vshadow 0]

I want to see a first person view from the dog in a black and white view where you can see the end of its nose (lol), the colours of the smell could still be present in this view and stand out more from the black and white background that way.

Edit: I knew that idea had to have come from somewhere! Here is a screen shot a bit like what I mean (but in colour)

http://uk.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/dogslife/images/0/7/

It comes from a game called “dogs life†I remember it being on a demo disk a few years back and I was bored (excuses, excuses) whatever it shows what I mean.:o

Edited June 28, 2009 by vshadow

[Teddybear1 11]

Hello!

Iwonder if it would be possible to set the speed of the dogs according to what alert-level the unit has and make sure that all patrolls has a dog that,on it`s own,when handler tells it can,goes ahead of patroll and searches

for the enemy,instead of a viceble trace,cloud of smoke,could you make an other "class name" like an inviceble rock that it goes in search of and that triggers a barking response.

If you want the approriate bark,just serch for dogsbark.wma online and use the film to get the recording by using Audio Recorder in Vista.(if you got it).

You can make a civilian problem into a mission by making a script that uses a

civilian girl and a "smelly" rock that could be used to program a caracter into

the game as "module:Person of interest" to the dog and a module that can make all AI boots to run off ,with the dog after them.:p

It would be cool if the dog can have some sort of bell that make you hear it comming,but also that it could be programmed to ignore player,if alert-level for the unit is set to relaxed:j:.

It could be much fun to play with it,if it could be run from it`s own module with a "playfull behaveior" that had its own memmory address that made it act like in a movieteser on the Arma2.com webspace.

Teddybear1 out.

:rolleyes::)

[mrcash2009 0]

This is superb!

Why use a badly controllable UAV, when you can use dogs :)

One thing would be good it to have a tracking collar device attached so it would ping the map every so often too.

Well anyway there's so many interesting angles for this, I for one would use it plenty if it was a script pack or pbo of some kind in the future with dta config for parameters.

[dmarkwick 261]

Sadly, the dog cannot have black & white vision for everything except for the particles :) the post-processing that allows colour correction works on a fully rendered screen, and cannot do multi-pass effects yet.

Edited June 29, 2009 by DMarkwick

[Alex72 1]

Any FPS hits with this addon? Sounds awesome. :)

Alex

[dmarkwick 261]

Any FPS hits with this addon? Sounds awesome. :)

Alex

None that I've seen. I'm constantly working in FPS-saving measures, all particles/lights do not show for the vast majority of the time, only very close ones do, so there's scope there for culling unnecessary processing. Also, the dog might as well have his viewdistance cut right down, as he's only concerned with close by smells and stuff up to a few hundred meters away.

Currently, the dog doesn't have any attack or bark. Also, the dog is a team member, which actually I don't like so I'll be switching it back to a non-team member dog. So the handler uses it as a tool rather than have the dog act as a team member, I'm a little disturbed when the dog calls out enemies and even takes group leader position when the handler dies

The dog's implementation will probably be:

Static dog (still able to run away when attacked though) will have an action applied to any player who gets close to the dog, enabling the player to "leash" the dog to him. Then another user action will be available, "use dog", and the player becomes the dog, with his old "body" following behind some distance. The user will also be able to place the dog in a vehicle for transportation.

The addon is acting a lot better now, the handler will follow the dog wherever he goes, maintaining a distance of between 20 and 40 meters. This is to allow the dog to do his thing, and the handler won't stink the area out and confuse the dog. The trails are generally very clear, and pretty soon you'll be able to tell, roughly, the sort of target you're tracking. For example, as uniforms are made differently for each side, using different methods & materials, so then the smell will be slightly different, and you can tell east from west for example, even if it's rather roughly with some small room for error.

Another problem is what to do about night tracking, as particles do not have a luminosity property. I'm currently working in a light system where the trails & unit smells are lit up in a similar way to how the particles fade in & out due to distance. Early tests are generally positive, and I think it's the only way to go. My justification is: dogs are inherently more aware of smells, sounds etc so a visual representation of this as a very dim light is a reasonable analogy suitable for the ArmA2 engine. Only the dog sees the particles and lights, as far as anyone else is concerned it will be pitch black

Edited June 29, 2009 by DMarkwick

[funnyguy1 0]

Mindblowing!

Suggestions:

Fist of all sounds, as other suggested "go go go" or something like that (I don't know do what you usually say to a dog, since I don't have one) while relasing the dog, and a whistle to call it back. The dog also should be able to bark in order to report enemys.

I'd suggest making an AI-only version of the dog, that searches the nearest enemy units. The animal should move at full speed being far away from the enemy, and slow down the closer it gets. Also, the spotting abilities should be limitted, and some randomness, or additional waypoints should be implemented so that it didn't run straight towards the target. Maybe some sort of 2/3 sec random interruption of the search.

edit: Doesn't a dog see in bw only? Give it some sort of FLIR. Realism ftw! Just kidding, it'll be good because it'll be harder to spot targets on larger distances, and would help during the night.

Edited June 29, 2009 by funnyguy1

[welcome to hell 23]

One thing i noticed is that the dog walks on the right of the handler, while it should walk on the left side!

[Sgt.Spoetnik 10]

Great stuff, a nice addition for Arma2 ! Cant wait to try it.