#gameplay-ai | Unreal Source | Page 174

ocean wren Jun 7, 2022, 9:37 PM

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I really want to show some of that ship location data being used though.. Maybe some shipping lane data.. I guess I could pull it out of some real world data stream

misty wharf Jun 7, 2022, 9:45 PM

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just put a lot of american flags on it so nobody will dare to say it's bad lol

ocean wren Jun 7, 2022, 9:46 PM

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This is for the UK unfortunately.. they'll get a bit sniffy if I add the US flag 🙂

misty wharf Jun 7, 2022, 9:46 PM

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haha

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pictures of Boris? alex

opal crest Jun 7, 2022, 9:46 PM

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Add Eagles^H^H^H^H^H^H Puffins and Boids and a sloganizer = profit???

ocean wren Jun 7, 2022, 9:46 PM

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Yeah, just a picture of boris in his stupid goddam harness waving a pathetic goddam flag 😉

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Looks like I'll have to figure out where to get some AIS data for a few weeks of ship movements

misty wharf Jun 7, 2022, 9:47 PM

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too bad the russians turned off their superyacht tracking systems

ocean wren Jun 7, 2022, 9:50 PM

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Thats exactly what I wanted to show 🙂

ocean wren Jun 7, 2022, 10:31 PM

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Good old americans, turns out I can get AIS data for murica at least!

zinc creek Jun 8, 2022, 12:19 AM

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Hi everyone, was wondering if anyone has done AI for voice commands in game? Meaning I wanted to do simple voice commands in game like “Alexa, what time is it?” And the game would respond with the local time… just simple commands for now

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 4:45 AM

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Yeah, I've done it

mint terrace Jun 8, 2022, 4:51 AM

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we all thought the voice assistants would become skynet, but it'll be Zoombalexa

zinc creek Jun 8, 2022, 5:39 AM

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ocean wren Yeah, I've done it

ill send you a dm

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 5:46 AM

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voice commands for generative content in VR is a thing 🙂

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I'm trying to convince my colleagues about the future of generated content and how voice prompt guided generators (and similar) will be the future.

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given large language models like DallE2 are so powerful at images.. its not hard to imagine the same for 3D content and then extrapolate that to behaviour and video etc.

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https://twitter.com/i/status/1501928429607809026

Nikolay Jetchev (@NJetchev)

"Armored Knight from the Orient"

I am getting better at shiny metal surfaces. With this prompt, CLIPMatrix created the 3D knight with beautiful surface engravings.

Would be curious to hear the opinion of some Blender pro - how quickly can a human artist do this?

#AIart #3dart

Likes

139

▶ Play video

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generating 3D meshes from a text prompt

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and of course, speech-to-text -> 3D mesh

charred lava Jun 8, 2022, 10:31 AM

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About EQS. With EQS I find a cover Point, but sometimes the path to that cover point isn't good. The AI walks past the target to reach the cover point. I rather want him to take a longer path where he avoids line of sight with the Player. So maybe writing a MoveTo Task that chooses a fitting path? But also, I would like the EQS check to consider if there are available "good" paths and if not, invalidate the context item.

misty wharf Jun 8, 2022, 11:30 AM

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You would probably need a more elaborate setup to determine whether the point is valid so it doesn't pick those, or have a second query which determines what kind of path to take to the point

charred lava Jun 8, 2022, 11:41 AM

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Aren't there resources for validating Navigation Paths? x) I probably manage, but I hoped that there is something available already.

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 11:58 AM

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No, there's not 😦

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part of the problem is that EQS can provide you a point that isn't visible to an enemy alright, but doesn't have anything to do with pathfinding, so the pathfinder would have to be implemented to take into account that same visibility

charred lava Jun 8, 2022, 12:18 PM

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okay thanks you two

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 12:53 PM

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Personally, I'd munge the recast navpoly's to have visibility scores and then use that in the A*

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But its not a quick fix 🙂

twin hornet Jun 8, 2022, 1:06 PM

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I have navmesh with some modifiers placed in level, is there any event on when the AI enters a modifier?

twin hornet Jun 8, 2022, 1:22 PM

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basically I have a LowHeight modifier and I need the AI the crouch when they enter that modifier

twin hornet Jun 8, 2022, 2:58 PM

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well, I figured that out, so to anyone interested this is the code that allowed me to access the area class of the path that the AI is currently in

UPathFollowingComponent* pathFollowingComp = OwnerComp.GetAIOwner()->GetPathFollowingComponent();
int32 currentPathElement = pathFollowingComp->GetCurrentPathElement();
FNavMeshPath* path = pathFollowingComp->GetPath()->CastPath<FNavMeshPath>();
TArray<FNavPathPoint>& pathPoints = path->GetPathPoints();
ARecastNavMesh* navMesh = Cast<ARecastNavMesh>(path->GetNavigationDataUsed());
const UClass* areaClass = navMesh->GetAreaClass(navMesh->GetPolyAreaID(pathPoints[currentPathElement].NodeRef));

misty wharf Jun 8, 2022, 3:09 PM

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Nice :)

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I had a hunch it might be something in the path following comp but wasn't sure of the specifics

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 3:14 PM

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Doesn't that code just scream "easily understandable" 🙂

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C++ is such a pain in the arse 🙂

opal crest Jun 8, 2022, 3:33 PM

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charred lava About EQS. With EQS I find a cover Point, but sometimes the path to that cover p...

I've done this. The basic technique I used was to:
a) Write a context that returns the set of actors we want to avoid exposing ourself to -- I used a sphere catch to gather anything 'hostile' within a given radius)

b) write a custom EQS test in C++, get the path using FindPathToLocationSyncronously, and then, here's where it can get expensive depending how you tune this:

For each path segment, subdivide it into test points. For each actor we want to avoid who is facing the path (there's a ton of ways to do this: I used cone-line-segement intersection) do a line trace from the test point to the actor. If it hits the actor, fail the test.

c) use this test in your EQS. Ideally, the rest of your design has filtered down the number of candidate paths here, so you don't have to do the expensive test too often.

twin hornet Jun 8, 2022, 3:42 PM

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ocean wren Doesn't that code just scream "easily understandable" 🙂

at least for me, I thought that should be smth basic that is easily accessible, well... apparently not

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also there isnt public on segment finished event so now Im overriding path following component to override its OnSegmentFinished virtual function

severe tangle Jun 8, 2022, 3:59 PM

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I use Move To task node in Behavior Tree, and when AI is doing this task it's not registering any AddForce events, do I need to pause this movement then add force and reenable it? Or is there some more convenient solution?

misty wharf Jun 8, 2022, 4:07 PM

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Physics based force or on the character movement comp?

severe tangle Jun 8, 2022, 4:08 PM

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Yes I forgot to mention that

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Character movement comp

misty wharf Jun 8, 2022, 4:14 PM

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Hmm

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I'm not 100% sure but it seems like CMC forces should still apply if moving like that because the CMC itself just uses forces to move around - have you tried giving it a really large force just to see?

severe tangle Jun 8, 2022, 4:16 PM

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Yes I t ried simple line trace and on hit add large force but it was ignored until AI reached its target location and wait node triggered, then the force was applying

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The only force that is being applied correctly is at Z axis

charred lava Jun 8, 2022, 4:30 PM

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opal crest I've done this. The basic technique I used was to: a) Write a context that retu...

Thanks! I try it out as you described.

opal crest Jun 8, 2022, 4:53 PM

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charred lava Thanks! I try it out as you described.

Great! Curious to see how it goes for you.

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 8:55 PM

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Personally, I'd go the "lets modify the navmesh cost" route.. you could theoretically just spam navareas to bias the pathing, but that's pretty nasty

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Basically, just intersect all the navpoly's with the enemy visibility cones, or do a centroid of the navpoly dot product with all the enemies vision

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 8:56 PM

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hey folks
in ai character can we multicast some event?

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 8:56 PM

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also, don't forget that you can do navmesh raycasts pretty quickly

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 8:57 PM

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polar furnace hey folks in ai character can we multicast some event?

Pretty sure there's a multicast delegate isn't there? personally I've used FMessageEndpoint for multicast messaging too

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 8:58 PM

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ocean wren Pretty sure there's a multicast delegate isn't there? personally I've used FMess...

it doesnt work for me

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 8:58 PM

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FMessageEndpoint is a pub/sub message passing mechanism, I've found to be really handy

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But then I've made message based architectures for maaaany years now 🙂

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 8:59 PM

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should work right ?

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 8:59 PM

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oh blueprint? no idea 🙂

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 8:59 PM

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ocean wren oh blueprint? no idea 🙂

i have cpp parent

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i will test it now

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:00 PM

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That's more of a networking thing, not an AI thing

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 9:00 PM

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ocean wren That's more of a networking thing, not an AI thing

i know but multicast work in everywhere except ai character

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for me at least

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:01 PM

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Well, usually you only do AI on the server anyway, so no need for replicating anything

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so you'd RPC from client to server, do the logic on the server and that'd automatically propagate to clients

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through playersstate or the like

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 9:02 PM

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ocean wren through playersstate or the like

i just wanna write some debug thing for myself

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 9:04 PM

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ocean wren through playersstate or the like

beginplay just run in server?

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:04 PM

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no it runs on both

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 9:05 PM

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void APCSAICharacter::BeginPlay()
{
    Super::BeginPlay();
    // Debug
    UE_LOG(LogTemp, Warning, TEXT("%d"), HasAuthority())
}

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:05 PM

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HasAuthority is only true on the server

polar furnace Jun 8, 2022, 9:05 PM

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mb mb

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its ok now xd

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23 line above it print 1

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my eng is soo bad sry

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:07 PM

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no problem

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so's mine 🙂

opal crest Jun 8, 2022, 9:22 PM

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ocean wren Personally, I'd go the "lets modify the navmesh cost" route.. you could theoreti...

Yeah, intersecting vision with navmesh is pretty quick. I wonder if you could use discontinuities in the navmesh as a proxy for vision blocking? You could verify with a quick real raycast if you find one. Since part of the point of this -- for me at least -- was convincing AI to use cover on their way to a goal location.

ocean wren Jun 8, 2022, 9:26 PM

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You basically just want to approximately find "hidden" polygons and make sure their path cost is lower than "seen" ones I think

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don't want to make a hard limit or anything

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then let the A* do its thing

opal crest Jun 8, 2022, 9:32 PM

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Yeah, that could be a lot more efficient than what I'm doing now.

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Thanks!

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Worst case I just need to trace to the center of each polygon in the vision cone to mark visible or non visible.

low galleon Jun 9, 2022, 12:40 AM

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Hi, does anyone know the difference between the Pathfinding and Pathfinding Batch Tasks in EQS? The only difference I could see on the documentation was the "Scan Range Multiplier"

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green wing Jun 9, 2022, 1:36 AM

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How can I expand the navmeshbounds to actually connect and go closer to the walls? Doing this for the VR pawn.

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Oh, I think I got it figured out

mint terrace Jun 9, 2022, 1:45 AM

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https://giphy.com/gifs/hackmylife-trutv-hack-my-life-L12ZXih8cd6YHZKLYi

Giphy

truTV’s Hack My Life

mint terrace Jun 9, 2022, 3:04 AM

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since there's nothing else going on in here, that problem above was almost certainly solved in these settings:

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 2:15 PM

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Is it possible to swap behavior trees for AI controller and completely preserve the execution and blackboard state of previous tree? Like for example I want to be able to start a dialogue with an NPC that is sitting on a bench and I don't want to neither make the NPC abort current interaction nor bother myself with saving the state of interacting in component or controller. Instead, I'd like to just run a separate BT for dialogues and after the dialogue is over to just switch it back to the routine BT so that the execution continues from the last task which was the interaction with an actor

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 2:20 PM

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You could run a subtree in your main tree for dialogue

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 2:22 PM

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but then I'd have to run a task for this and in my current implementation the interaction (i.e. playing montages) stops after the task is finished. I mean currently I am running a subtree anyway, it doesn't solve the issue of preserving the interaction state

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or do you imply that I should split starting and ending interaction into separate tasks and put them in a selector and have the logic to control whether the interaction should begin or end?

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 2:26 PM

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Well, it sounds like the dialogue is simply as higher priority task in your BT

harsh storm Jun 9, 2022, 2:26 PM

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Still waiting for zoombapup's "Not Epic's BT"™️ plugin

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 2:27 PM

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Yeah, got paying projects to do right now 🙂

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Those damn people and their damn money

harsh storm Jun 9, 2022, 2:27 PM

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Absurd.

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 2:27 PM

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Absolutely

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Rude even

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The main difference would be that mine would be implemented as a treeview like the statetree editor.. and it would run proper parallel nodes and evaluate from the root every update

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or rather, evaluate from a stack, but allow you to traverse from the root every update

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rather than use Epic's "lets try to be efficient by only changing on events" kind of thing

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 2:33 PM

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ocean wren Well, it sounds like the dialogue is simply as higher priority task in your BT

it is, but running it as a higher priority subtree is hard in my case because my "interact with actor" task is latent (it returns EBTNodeResult::InProgress) so getting out of routine branch will abort this task and I'll have to handle it, which I am currently doing. I get it that I could split start and finish interaction into separate tasks, but I was just wondering maybe there was a way to completely put one BT on hold in AI controller and start another BT and then after some time resume the initial BT in the very same execution spot it was before swapping

misty wharf Jun 9, 2022, 3:01 PM

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I don't think that's possible at least easily

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the behavior tree component holds a bunch of state for it I think so you would need two of those

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 3:09 PM

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Hey guys! I'm checking out smart objects recently and in the docs it says that it will also support players as well.
Is that a planned feature for the future? because I can't seem to find Player Behavior that was mentioned in the docs.

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 4:02 PM

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After tinkering with smart objects a bit I think they are pretty ai independent. It is the ai module that has some support for smart objects

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 4:18 PM

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I can't see why you'd want smart objects for non AI stuff, those are just "objects"

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the point of smart objects is to allow the object to direct the AI for usage

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I guess if you stretch the metaphor a bit, you could say its just a "usable object" that accepts both AI and player

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But the point of the "smart" in smart objects came from the fact that they had logic to inform the agent (sims agent) how to use the object itself

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 4:29 PM

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Yeah, but I think the claiming system would be nice for both players and AIs so I can sit on a smart bench and the AIs won't sit on that spot

misty wharf Jun 9, 2022, 4:30 PM

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I guess it depends on how your game works

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For example if you have a button which triggers an animation to play that presses it or something

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that could be the same for both player and AI in theory

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 4:30 PM

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I was just wondering how would a player use a smart object that's all because I can't find the Player Behavior thingy :P

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and the quick start doesn't include a player section atm

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 4:33 PM

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keen crow After tinkering with smart objects a bit I think they are pretty ai independent....

Does a player trigger the Gameplay Behavior as well?

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 4:40 PM

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haughty edge Does a player trigger the Gameplay Behavior as well?

Not exactly. I haven't implemented it for the player yet but the way it works for AI seems to be controller independent. There I call the UGameplayBehaviorManager method which starts my gameplay behavior. And the gameplay behavior just gets a component from the pawn (1 abstract and 2 derived component classes with virtual methods) and calls a method to start the montage

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this code is mostly based on the epic's BTTask_FindAndUseSmartObject

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 4:44 PM

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I see, I should look into that, thanks!

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another weird question, can a smart object move during runtime?

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 4:55 PM

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haughty edge another weird question, can a smart object move during runtime?

I'm inclined to say no, not out of the box at least. you'd have to implement adjustment of interactor position to stay at the smart object slot location. and I believe the way you'd do it be different for an NPC and the player character since GameplayBehaviors don't tick and they are not even directly connected to smart objects. So for AI you'd have to use MoveTo task and for the player... idk, perhaps interpolate the character's location to the slot. This is one thing I haven't figured out yet

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 4:58 PM

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Yeah, I think it might cause issues for the spatial query, but then I would like a vehicle to be a smart object of some sort as well

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 4:58 PM

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hmm maybe you can attach the character itself to the car

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 5:01 PM

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Yeah, usually you'd warp the character to a starting location relative to the car in car-space

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same as you'd do for a door

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 5:01 PM

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Oh I'm talking if a smart object moved, how would the spatial query react to it

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 5:02 PM

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https://tenor.com/view/dreamworks-puss-in-boots-noclue-gif-13303220

Tenor

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 5:02 PM

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haughty edge Oh I'm talking if a smart object moved, how would the spatial query react to it

what do you mean by spatial query? EQS?

opal crest Jun 9, 2022, 5:02 PM

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Yeah, if they are storing an Octree to optimize the query, who knows if it gets updated.

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 5:03 PM

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keen crow what do you mean by spatial query? EQS?

The octree used to find smart objects

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 5:03 PM

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ah, i see. this thing?

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 5:04 PM

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Yeah

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Maybe we can update it manually somehow? Currently not in front of my computer so I'm just talking out loud

keen crow Jun 9, 2022, 5:06 PM

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idk, I'm not doing any big cities yet so I'm using EQSs to find actors for interaction

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is this octree thing something worth to get into?

haughty edge Jun 9, 2022, 5:07 PM

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It's really nice for actors that don't move that's for sure

misty wharf Jun 9, 2022, 5:08 PM

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btw the EQS actors of class generator just uses TActorIterator

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which suggests to me it's quite likely other "find x" functions are also similarly naive in their implementation

umbral stream Jun 9, 2022, 9:27 PM

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How does AI work with world partioning? Is it still able to function if the world is "not loaded" to the player? I'm looking at some kind of sim game but if I'm working with a large terrain I would like to still have units doing stuff in the background

misty wharf Jun 9, 2022, 9:43 PM

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I've not used WP in particular, but if it unloads the actors that are within that partition, then it would also prevent them from doing any logic

umbral stream Jun 9, 2022, 9:45 PM

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Yeah that's what I assumed, I'm wondering what are some common design patterns for simulation games like this - assuming you wanted NPC permanence (and not just AI crowd generated when you get near)

misty wharf Jun 9, 2022, 9:46 PM

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you'd probably use some kind of lighter simulation for the AI when they're not in world

celest python Jun 9, 2022, 10:02 PM

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mass

ocean wren Jun 9, 2022, 10:04 PM

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Definitely mass

umbral stream Jun 9, 2022, 10:11 PM

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mass?

celest python Jun 9, 2022, 10:12 PM

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#mass

raw lichen Jun 10, 2022, 2:33 AM

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Is there any way to ask the navigation system a set of navigable points for a given cost?

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i suppose it might be doable with eqs but that seems inefficient

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 2:34 AM

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You mean path cost of something custom

raw lichen Jun 10, 2022, 2:36 AM

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more like just for the default navigation system, given a set cost what is the set of points I could reach. Like for a turn based strategy system say like divinity or fire emblem

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 2:39 AM

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You can place NavAreas and define costs if I understood your question correctly

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Pathfinding logic will evaluate them and try to select lowest cost

raw lichen Jun 10, 2022, 2:39 AM

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err hmm i think i am doing a bad job explaining lol

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i mean show a preview of what points are navigatable for a given cost

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 2:39 AM

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I'm also not a native speaker, dont blame yourself 😂

raw lichen Jun 10, 2022, 2:40 AM

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im trying to boot up an example in a project i made with my own navigation system a while back 😄

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 2:40 AM

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Ah, I see. Probably that'll require some custom system in C++

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There isnt a straightforward way I think

raw lichen Jun 10, 2022, 2:46 AM

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yeah i think you're right. :X i made this in my own navmesh system in c++ but it's not integrated with unreal's navigation system at all

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unreal's builtin stuff has so many features so i thought id maybe ask if anybody knew anything 😄

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 7:28 AM

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FSMs are already confusing enough even without much nodes 😮‍💨

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What I didnt like most is you have to use delegates literally on every transition node to determine if system should evaluate the next transition. It'd be nice to set evaluation gate open/close at state node class instead

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 9:09 AM

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that would be nice

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what is that fsm variety? is that new vanilla stuff? or is this anim bp, or logic driver, or

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I know there's new state machine stuff but I thought it was just the state tree thingy

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which is not exactly what I'd hoped for

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 9:36 AM

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LogicDriver

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(expensive af)

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 9:57 AM

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I have it

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logic driver is very nice, would love for that sort of thing to go vanilla

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I used it to build a dynamic music system

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 9:59 AM

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celest python What I didnt like most is you have to use delegates literally on every transitio...

how do you cope with this problem 😅

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:03 AM

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well you don't have to set up delegates to make transition rules

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if that's what you mean

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I thought your point was that it'd be nice to move that transition logic into the node class

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actually now that I think of it, you can put the transition logic into the node class iirc

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:06 AM

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From what I can see transitions are being evaled instantly after first tick of state class

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So to prevent them from swtiching to another one you have to disable eval and enable it back when your conditions are ready

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and that means creating transition class for each node class - i.e. if you have a generic move to state you have to listen for move to end delegate and enable evals after that

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:07 AM

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ohhhh

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i think i know what you mean

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let me dig into what i made

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ok so what i did

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is to use Set Can Evaluate to disable states

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which sounds like what you are doing

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:09 AM

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yeah

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:09 AM

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because yes --- it will just fly through it if you dont control for it

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i think i raised this on the logic driver discord

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that it would be nice to have a better way of controlling it

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:10 AM

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mint terrace i think i raised this on the logic driver discord

Oh, nice, did you got any answer after that?

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:10 AM

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mint terrace that it would be nice to have a better way of controlling it

yeah because you have same logic on state machine nodes

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which doesnt make sense to not have same logic on state nodes

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:11 AM

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i guess i was wrong, i didnt raise it

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im too much of a "solve it without asking" guy

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:11 AM

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haha, probably I'll raise it soon then

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:11 AM

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ping me, im in there

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yeah logic driver is so powerful but there is definitely a little bit of a "wait why isnt this just a little bit more open"

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:12 AM

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mint terrace ping me, im in there

I'll do it next week probably, I'm right now using my employers plugin

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:13 AM

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^^ an example music piece

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:14 AM

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nice just_right

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:14 AM

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i was talking in #audio with dannthr about how to move this to metasounds + maybe state trees

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i dont think state trees is the way id want to do it

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but metasounds might be interesting -- i just had to understand how looping worked

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 AM

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surprisingly creating a music manager is way difficult than I imagined at the first glance

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 AM

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the key is delayed triggers

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the hard part though is scheduling, but Quartz has that solved

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 AM

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celest python surprisingly creating a music manager is way difficult than I imagined at the fi...

siliex did some great things on this btw

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and shared his setup on twitter

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 AM

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oh really, interesting

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 AM

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data asset based music manager etc

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with layers

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:16 AM

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just found siliex on there, but no idea where that tweet is

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:17 AM

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uhh, it was a while really

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before march?

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:17 AM

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ill just ping them when its a more reasonable time

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so what do you think of state trees as an alternative to logic driver though?

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in theory, it should be able to replace it i think

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:19 AM

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It has a different use case

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What it do is basically running state machines under BT's selectors

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And its state machine logic is not powerful as other tools in terms of UX

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:19 AM

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yeah

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but it is a generic state machine system -- could be applied to any number of use cases

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the first time thats been the case in unreal

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i just think that node graphs makes a heck of a lot more sense for a music system imho?

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i dunno

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the UX itself is where im skeptical

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:21 AM

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I think for a music manager state tree would be better

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but if you want to add layers and fadeouts etc.

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selectors probably wont allow you to do that when switching to other composites

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because you dont have any control, it instantly switches

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what you can do is, if statetree allows you to, you can just call fadeout function on audiocomponent on exit

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if selector aborts the state machines

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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i would just consider things like fadeouts to be async tasks in the state tree

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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when I mean layers, its lowering the volume of a specific music and keep playing other one on higher volume. you'll see what I'm talking about with siliex's example

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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as for layers ----- i dont recall if logic driver can support multiple active states with independent transitions

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i think it does

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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it does for pro version

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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no idea if state trees can do that

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:23 AM

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but you dont have to do that in graph

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TMap<FGameplayTag, TArray<USMInstance*>>

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run multiple sm instances and manage their volumes by index

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and sort them to create priority

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:25 AM

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mmm yeah but ideally it could be done in a single state machine with a single graph

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and yeah of course Pro version. Lite is free 🙂

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:25 AM

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but you wouldnt have a selector logic in that case

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fgameplaytags stands for as a workaround there

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:26 AM

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i think by layering we're thinking of slightly different things

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goal for layering on my end would be using independent variables to add independent layers to the same piece of music

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ideally it would all be authored in one graph

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:26 AM

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ah, I see

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:27 AM

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so you could have multiple wave files playing at once

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or whatever

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:27 AM

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yeah logic driver would be the way totally in that case, imo

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 10:27 AM

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i do have some infrastructure for this already but ive not fully tested it

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a notion of "channels"

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ie a main channel for the main piece, with perhaps a "health critical" channel to add some orchestra hits alongside the music if you are about to die, whatever

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one of the fun challenges is not just allocating a new sound component every time you play a new section of audio

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implemented a pool to manage and reuse them

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:37 AM

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Looks well planned

celest python Jun 10, 2022, 10:38 AM

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mint terrace one of the fun challenges is _not_ just allocating a new sound component every t...

yeah 😓

rain otter Jun 10, 2022, 7:02 PM

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hey, I still have not found any tips, how should I start creating an AI which can move on floor, wall, ceiling jumping between them ( like xenomorph movement) . Is there any new plugin maybe in unreal 5 which can help in this ?
Thanks for any help 😉

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 8:47 PM

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well, as far as I know detour/recast can only operate on X/Y (ie the floor, or possibly a ceiling if you using a terrible hack)

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you could build your own navigation system which supports that and insert it into the engine as the default navigation system so that things like AI Move To / behavior tree etc can still work but that would be a lot of work

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im fairly doubtful that modifying detour/recast to support it would be a good idea unless there's already something in there

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 9:05 PM

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interesting related reading and resources for detour/recast and its capabilities: https://github.com/recastnavigation/recastnavigation

GitHub

GitHub - recastnavigation/recastnavigation: Navigation-mesh Toolset...

Navigation-mesh Toolset for Games. Contribute to recastnavigation/recastnavigation development by creating an account on GitHub.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 9:27 PM

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I guess you could lie to recast (flip the axes in the input or something?) but then you'd probably have to make sure that everything involved understood the exact nature of the lie.

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 9:38 PM

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yeah and how would you handle navigating from one surface to another

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cause i thought you could maybe use a custom navigation data (navmesh generator) to feed detour and just put the walls / ceilings in some other unused part of the coordinate space, but then the transitions between surfaces that connect are not going to work

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i guess maybe you could generate links between all of the individual grid cells but ugh

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 9:48 PM

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Yeah, I assume links, because you're going to want to change a bunch of things (like movement mode) at the same time.

mint terrace Jun 10, 2022, 9:52 PM

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yeah true

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it would be rather cool to see that system in action though with a visualization of where the agent is (ie where detour sees it)

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:06 PM

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I'm trying to get my characters to follow a "squad" actor, an invisible marker that determines their general location and their engagement zone.

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Characters are using the "Move To" task in the tree that comes with the engine, set to the squad's location, but they seem to be getting stuck on corners and that causes them to get separated. Any ideas what might be causing this issue?

#

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Squad is the radius sphere just to the right.

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Okay forgot to add, the characters have a slight offset for formations. Its just adding a small x/y offset to the squad's location.

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But even setting the offsets to 0 they still seem to get stuck at places

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:10 PM

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Two things come to mind to look into:

Looking at the navmesh, I'm not sure your agent radius is large enough. See how close it cuts the corner on the nearby wall.
Are you using any sort of Avoidance? RVO has been known to cause actors get stuck outside the navemesh. Detour is better this way.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:11 PM

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Agent for the character or the squad? Or both?

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Squad is 512 though its a floating pawn and changing that value doesn't appear to do anything.
Character is 1, don't recall why I put it so low.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:13 PM

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For the character: It really helps if the agent radius is at least as large as the capsule. Otherwise you get caught on objects due to collision.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:13 PM

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opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:13 PM

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From that angle it seems better?

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:13 PM

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Set the squad to something ridiculously high and its still hugging the wall. Character is 32 and its touching right on the edge of the navmesh.

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In fact the squad's centre doesn't seem to be on the navmesh at all.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 PM

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Characters will frequently hug the very edge of the navmesh. That's often the shortest path.

misty wharf Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 PM

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If they don't get stuck when there's only one of them following the squad actor then it's almost certainly some issue where they get stuck on each other

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 PM

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Good point.

misty wharf Jun 10, 2022, 10:15 PM

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but if they do get stuck when it's just one, the issue is something else

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:16 PM

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Zomg, any way to ensure they don't block each other's paths? I have them not colliding but not sure what to do for the nav agents there.

misty wharf Jun 10, 2022, 10:16 PM

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if they can't collide with each other then it shouldn't make any difference for navigation

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the pathing ignores everything that isn't affecting the navmesh

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:19 PM

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Okay making the nav agent larger seemed to help while offset is zeroed out.

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I'm going to try giving it formations again and see how they handle it.

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My intention is that if they can't path-find to their offset then they should default to the squad's true location.

misty wharf Jun 10, 2022, 10:20 PM

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make sure they're not trying to navigate to a point that's outside the mesh.. that is likely to make them behave strangely :)

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:20 PM

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Either partial path or its returning some huge distance to the squad implying its through a wall or something.

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Aye Zomg that's the plan. If its not a valid location they go to squad.

misty wharf Jun 10, 2022, 10:20 PM

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yep

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project to navmesh might also help

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:21 PM

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Okay judging from the name, that takes a location and puts it to the closest valid point on navmesh?

#

#

That's.... new?

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Task for updating the location is this

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:26 PM

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Might have failed to project?

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:26 PM

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They all ran into the corner too, but a few stayed there like they were stuck.

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Possibly. I can do a print off the return vlaue.

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opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:27 PM

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Create an extent that's larger than 0, 0, 0 too. That basically how far it'll look for a point in the navmesh.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:27 PM

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Got stuck in the tight corridor sooner and they were printing failed.

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Extent is current 8,8,8

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Make larger?

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:28 PM

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Yeah, that's cm;s. Try 50 or 100.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:28 PM

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Would it help to set it to the capsule size for the character? That's 34.

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Or is that a different unit?

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:28 PM

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That should be the same unit.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:29 PM

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Okay I'll try that.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:29 PM

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I'd base it on how far your formation can offset. (assuming your squad marker stays on the mesh)

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You can also just use your original fallback moveto -> the squad marker.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:30 PM

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Nah still catching on the wall.

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Though with that project I suppose I could use the fail state and it move to the squad marker true instead?

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That should work for my original intention?

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:31 PM

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That's probably not perfect, but it sounds like it would keep them in bounds.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:32 PM

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Okay along the straight path, they'd hit the wall and then instead of stopping they'd just push to the middle of the formation.

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Not a great look but it works and this environment is just stress testing at this point.

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But they're still getting stuck on the corners and not moving at all.

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Gonna try widening the extent some more.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:33 PM

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That is probably collision. For prototyping you could turn off wall->pawn collision.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:33 PM

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Possibly. Would that not cause them to walk through it?

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:33 PM

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No, they'll stay on the navmesh.

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But then check things, like "is my skeletal mesh colliding" and "is my skeletal mesh sticking out of the capsule"

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:34 PM

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Good point. They are A-posing so they're likely catching.

opal crest Jun 10, 2022, 10:34 PM

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It's often some fussy collision detail like that.

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 10:36 PM

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Just realised I should probably be using a project to navigation even in the failstate right?

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So if it can't get to its offset, it will first check that the squad is valid position before trying.

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Because it does seem like its getting stuck while the squad is right up on the edge of the navmesh.

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Still getting caught on the corner. First projection is the offset, second is squad location.

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I'll do collision stuff.

worldly flame Jun 10, 2022, 11:43 PM

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is there a way to debug AI's path to target? The AI is seems to be going around the target instead of straight to the target half the time

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 11:48 PM

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That's what I'm working through now. If I recall there's no way to really draw a debug "path" like you would with seeing the navmesh though.

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If you use the "Find Path to Location Synchronously" node however you should be able to pull off the navigation path object from that.

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Then you can select the path-points. Style of debugging there is up to you, draw raytraces, decals, splines, whatever.

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Actually sort of wondering why I never bothered to use linetrace for that purpose.

worldly flame Jun 10, 2022, 11:51 PM

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let me try that 🤔

tardy wolf Jun 10, 2022, 11:51 PM

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Excuse the spaghetti but

#

#

Path start is actor location, path end is the destination. Ignore the "set formation" its not relevant here.

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Its somewhat bundled with the movement mechanic too but basically

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It calculates the path in the first screenshot then tries to loop through moving to each point in that path in the second screenshot.

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The "Create Nav Path" just clears and redraws the path based on how many nodes through the path it is.

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Actually I'll try to write up a nicer looking one.

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@worldly flame still need help with a linetrace solution? Just made something that works (though it runs on the ground)

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worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:00 AM

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oh nice

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let me try it out

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thank you!

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:01 AM

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Basically it uses that same "Find Path to Location" thing before. The path it gives out has an array of all points on it.

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Then draws linetrace between each.

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Seems to loop because the final point connects back to the first. It will probably register as colliding though.

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Anyways @opal crest I have... some kind of progress if you're still here?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:09 AM

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I'm around 🙂

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:09 AM

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I've managed to force the characters to "follow" the squad location... sort of. But I've run into another snag.

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I'm using particles to display what their current destination is and

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:09 AM

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tardy wolf Seems to loop because the final point connects back to the first. It will probab...

hmm... line is drawn fine but it doesnt follow that path 😂

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:10 AM

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Also hid the wall they were getting stuck on. Still physically there just not rendered. Anyways.

#

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...there's navmesh inside the wall?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:10 AM

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@worldly flame For debugging paths, you can also get the current path from the AI controller on tick, and draw debug points. That'll be the actual path that the controller should be following.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:10 AM

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Which would explain why they sometimes will walk on the wrong side of it despite the path cost meant to be super high.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:11 AM

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opal crest <@290382559001575424> For debugging paths, you can also get the current path fro...

Huh, didn't realise you could get the nav path directly like that. Might be a better shout especially if you're doing linetraces.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:11 AM

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tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:12 AM

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Would that be the same object that gets returned from the Pathfind to Location node?

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because damn this might be much easier

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:12 AM

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That I'm not sure of.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:12 AM

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I'll take a look

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Anyways I'm getting sidetracked. Why is there navmesh inside the walls?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:13 AM

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There often is.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:13 AM

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😦

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:13 AM

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It just usually doesn't matter, since it's not reachable.

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You can test if the point you get from projecting is reachable.

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:14 AM

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tardy wolf Anyways I'm getting sidetracked. *Why is there navmesh inside the walls?*

yea if collisions are there around the wall then it shouldnt matter

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:14 AM

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Aye but I think the problem here is that they're trying to reach it, and the closest point they can get to is on the wrong side of said wall.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:14 AM

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Yeah, that sounds right.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:14 AM

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Any solution to that?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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You're getting these points by projecting, so you could test if the point is reachable from the current location of the actor, and if not try a fallback point?

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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opal crest

would this be the right approach?

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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opal crest

@worldly flame this returns the same thing I suggested before, use this instead.

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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because i dont see any path 🤔

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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Uh, no idea what the "enable debug drawing" thing is.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:17 AM

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Ooh, I've never seen that node before. I'm not sure.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:18 AM

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Looks like an AI task for behaviour tree?

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I think you can put the solution Epigraph gave directly onto the pawn.

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I'm testing it now.

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:18 AM

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how do you get the vector out of this navigation data?

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:19 AM

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Drag off and "path points"

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:19 AM

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oh

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nice

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:19 AM

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Same as what I said for the Find Path node. Both return the same object.

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Should be that though I've not run it yet

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Wait one while I watch my CPU cry

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:20 AM

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Apologies for the mess. This is some spagjetti from a project where I am doing this 🙂

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:20 AM

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hoookay that's a lot of errors. Ignore my code.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:21 AM

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This just draws the points, the other lines are feeding a spline that I'm keeping up to date with the current path (which can also be nice for visualizing)

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:21 AM

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Apparently "get current path" is returning null. Weird.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:22 AM

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opal crest You're getting these points by projecting, so you could test if the point is rea...

That's kind of what I was trying in the first place? Its the fallback that's somehow trying to get into the wall I think.

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No wait

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The first projection is sometimes working as intended and sometimes projecting into the wall which is why they sometimes walk down the wrong side.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:23 AM

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Exactly.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:23 AM

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The fallback is the squad's true position.

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But because the projection is valid, its not getting to that fallback.

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How can I test the path distance from the offset to the true position?

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That isn't just a vector distance check?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:24 AM

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Your current path should have a length.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:24 AM

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Since that would probably not factor in navigation.

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Is that not the number of points in the path's array?

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:25 AM

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Sorry, there's a way to get the path length (which is the length in units of the path, not number of points).

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:25 AM

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I think that's what I'm after.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:25 AM

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Nodes don't always line up with C++ API's so I'm googling a bit here 🙂

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:25 AM

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Alright, I appreciate it.

worldly flame Jun 11, 2022, 12:27 AM

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tardy wolf Apparently "get current path" is returning null. Weird.

you are right.. its coming as null 🤔

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:27 AM

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Yeah I didn't understand that either, sorry.

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I'd probably just use the Find Path node on tick but I have noooo idea how bad that would be for performance. Guess if its for debugging you can probably accept that loss though.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:28 AM

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GetPathLength on a NavigationPath object will retun what you need.

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Super bad 🙂

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Find Path Synchronously isn't that bad, I wouldn't do it on tons of actors.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:30 AM

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~~I really want my game to push how many characters can be on at once~~

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But also I'm struggling with making meta humans not be too highly detailed.

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:35 AM

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😄

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 12:35 AM

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Yeah they're still trying to get inside the wall.

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Its only when the squad gets to the very end and the inside of the wall stops being a valid point for them to run towards that they turn about.

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They really like this wall 🤔

opal crest Jun 11, 2022, 12:44 AM

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In BP, I think the only way to test if a point is reachable is FindPathToLocationSynchronously. If "Is Partial" return true, it couldn't find a way there.

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You could then use GetRandomReachablePointInRadius, to get a valid, random target location.

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Feels a bit hacky.

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 1:11 AM

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@opal crest Is Partial seems to have worked perfectly.

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At least from my testing so far.

ocean wren Jun 11, 2022, 4:24 AM

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Quick suggestion for you Cy, turn off collision for your guys, it causes a world of pain, instead use steering forces to keep them apart (if you're using DetourCrowd it should do it already)

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Makes it easier to get them through doors if they can't block each other, then you just have to clean up edge cases where they're passing through each other

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 4:10 PM

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2 questions:

I have a game I am creating where you are a store manager and are able to hire stockers to stock the shelves for you. I got the stocker system working however I want it to be better. As of right now, when there is no shelf to stock, the AI will just roam around getting a random point near it, however, I would like it so that the stocker is rather patrolling in front of the shelves so that the AI isn't just aimlessly wandering into the checkout lanes or leaving the store.

Also, in the game there is a placement system that I will be adding stuff to in the future (Ex: walls, flooring, etc). How would I go about testing something that relies on this placement system so that I don't have to keep manually placing the items every time I want to test something?

misty wharf Jun 11, 2022, 4:43 PM

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for the first one just have them check if there's no valid task and assign them to patrol the shelves or something

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for the second part, it's a bit of a more complex thing, but you can build your system so that in addition to placing them at runtime, you can allow placing them during level editing

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this way you can have a level where the item you want to test is already placed and set up in the way you need it, and you just load it and play it to test it

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 4:46 PM

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misty wharf for the first one just have them check if there's no valid task and assign them ...

I wonder if I can use EQS to test for the nearest shelf, make sure that the line trace isn't going through an area I don't want it to (Ex: registers), then just get the point from the shelf.

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 4:46 PM

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misty wharf for the second part, it's a bit of a more complex thing, but you can build your ...

Do you know of some tutorial that explains this?

misty wharf Jun 11, 2022, 4:47 PM

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Possibly, you could also have the registers and other non-desirable areas have a different navigation area type which would be more expensive to navigate through, so the nav system would naturally avoid going through them unless it has to

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and no I don't think there's really any tutorials for it but it's not that complicated to do

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for example if you have a box that you can place, you would spawn the box actor and put it into the location the player is pointing at (or something along those lines)

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so since you have the box actor you just put it into the level yourself

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my video rental store simulator game has a system like that

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although as a player the building system is slightly more complicated, as you place down a placeholder, attach parts to it, and then you get the finished object - but the placeholder just destroys itself when all parts are in place, and spawns the finished object actor

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so if I want to test something I simply place the finished object directly into a level

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 4:53 PM

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I see. Luckily I made a function in my plot manager BP so that I can a function to spawn the plots so I know where the grid is. I'll have to take a look at that. Thanks

misty wharf Jun 11, 2022, 4:57 PM

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If it's difficult to allow placing them you can also just do it through level BP

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although generally you'd want to avoid using level BPs, I think it should be ok if you're making something which is just for testing purposes

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 4:59 PM

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misty wharf although generally you'd want to avoid using level BPs, I think it should be ok ...

True. The nice thing is that my placement system just uses generic snapping system that just snaps every 50 UE units. So I can just set that in the level editor when I go to place the items there.

ocean wren Jun 11, 2022, 6:41 PM

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If you're placing things on a grid, then why not use the grid based pathfinder or write your own? then you can add stuff into the pathfinder to suggest places for the AI to go, stuff like influence map data on "last visited" values etc.

ocean wren Jun 11, 2022, 7:08 PM

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Don't limit yourself to whatever Epic gives you

cobalt palm Jun 11, 2022, 7:09 PM

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Ill have to take a look at that

tardy wolf Jun 11, 2022, 7:25 PM

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ocean wren Makes it easier to get them through doors if they can't block each other, then y...

Collision is off, I think the main issue was trying to get the pathfinding to go to the right place because it was trying to get inside walls or on the wrong side of them.

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Related question; what exactly determines the "cost" of a path? I know for A* its distance and you can determine some areas to be "more expensive", but assuming no special ground is crossed and its a straight line what would the relationship between straight distance and path cost be?

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Mostly just asking because I think I have a solution for them wandering off to the wrong side of a wall.

{
  // Unit has wall between it and squad
}

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I know its probably going to have its own issues doing that, say if there's more expensive terrain in the squad's formation (partially over water or something) then it'll always say its more expensive but still.

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Point is, if there's a wall between their offset in the formation and the squad's true position then that pathing cost should be significantly higher?

ocean wren Jun 11, 2022, 8:32 PM

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Why don't you just raycast from your squad target location to get your offset locations? there's a navmeshraycast you can use that will stop at the edge of the navmesh

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If you're getting offsets through walls, you should be raycasting to them

flint trail Jun 12, 2022, 1:03 AM

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hmm.. Somehow navigation invokers don't work in my project :/

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I followed this https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/NavigationSystem/UsingNavigationInvokers/

Using Navigation Invokers

This guide shows how to use Navigation Invokers.

pure trench Jun 12, 2022, 1:37 AM

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Stupid question: how dumb of an idea is it (performance-wise) to have an AI's routines run in regular blueprint as opposed to using a behavior tree, if I want the behaviors to run at a specific timing?

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 1:45 AM

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its an unnecessary work to save nanoseconds from CPU time

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BT are extremely optimized and default nodes written in C++

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for example normal AI Move To node in BP is a latent task and more expensive than BT's move to node

pure trench Jun 12, 2022, 1:47 AM

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Hmm. Okay. Mostly I'm just looking for a (convenient) way for the BT to call functions on a particular blueprint without needing to use an interface for it.

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 1:47 AM

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dont use interfaces anyway

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they are very popular among BP users but its an abuse of interfaces most of the time

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just have a base class for your characters, use inheritance intelligently and cast to your characters in BT tasks

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its also fine to create character-specific nodes in BT

pure trench Jun 12, 2022, 1:49 AM

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Noted.

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Guess I'll just do it the way I know I should, then, lol. Thanks for the info.

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 1:49 AM

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Np blobthumbsup

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 4:01 AM

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flint trail I followed this https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/...

oh I might be able to help if you are still working on it.

First, make sure Generate Nav Only Around Invokers is turned on in project settings
Make sure you have a Nav Invoker component on the actor you want
Make sure your generation range is set on the nav invoker component
Set Navmesh Generation to Dynamic

flint trail Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 AM

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thanks

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I figured what the issue was

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 AM

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by the way the player component automatically is a nav invoker if I remember correctly

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nice

flint trail Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 AM

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I didn't have nav mesh volume

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 AM

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yeah that's a gotcha

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you still need a nav mesh bounds volume in the area you want nav

flint trail Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 AM

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somehow I thought when using invokers, volume is not needed

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 4:03 AM

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I am looking for how to skip that but so far it is unavoidable

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also be aware of navigating large distances where the nav is not yet generated, it should mostly work but it can be a bit weird sometimes

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works best for nav that happens within the radius that you ask it to generate

flint trail Jun 12, 2022, 4:05 AM

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aye, thanks

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:18 AM

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@mint terrace I think I managed to love the idea LogicDriver only allows you to determine transitions inside transition nodes without letting state decide on something

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Though the fact it doesnt generate properties on the nodes when I create them in C++ triggers my OCD severely 😂

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:20 AM

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celest python <@138013505545568256> I think I managed to love the idea LogicDriver only allows...

With a generic delegate you can open/close the evaluation setting and you can set that in node

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For example when playing a root motion animation you call SetAllowTransitionClassEvals(false); and it can not switch to another state

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SetAllowTransitionClassEvals(false); calls some generic delegate you created in base abstract classes and your custom transition class listens to it

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but when you are just lurking around etc you can set it to true, so it's basically going to become something you can decide if behavior is interruptable at any state or not

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and.. if you like to confuse yourself enough you can also add tags into system and create states inside states 😂 like transition classes and only eval while specific tag(s) are added or not

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:26 AM

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celest python Though the fact it doesnt generate properties on the nodes when I create them in...

this is just state nodes right? is there a trick to exposing C++ UPROPERTY in there?

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:27 AM

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sadly there isnt any

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:27 AM

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Paaatrriiicckkk

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:27 AM

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from what I can see from source code it only gathers BP properties

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no idea why, but some Kismet compilation is happening

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probably its related

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:29 AM

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celest python <@138013505545568256> I think I managed to love the idea LogicDriver only allows...

but why do you suddenly love this

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specifically the only part

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:29 AM

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When parallel nodes and different transition classes and conduits come into play they are actually useful

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You can allow switching to a specific state node but disable to another one

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total control

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:30 AM

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i guess you just mean you dont miss defining transition logic on the state node

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which is fair

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:30 AM

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yeah, only issue is using delegates to do that feels so unstructural in terms of design

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it requires at least two delegates

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root motion, or running GAS ability etc. calls a delegate to state node

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then state node calls the delegate to transition class

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then it allows evals etc.

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https://tenor.com/view/occhi-spaghetti-pasta-weird-eye-gif-16832047

Tenor

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:32 AM

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do you need to use delegates because the decision to allow transition is async?

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this override lets you control it synchronously at least

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:33 AM

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no, not because of that

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its because node class can not access to its transitors directly

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:33 AM

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even though i actually didnt use this transition class for anything except for checking its type at runtime

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:33 AM

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since it can vary, it might not even exist etc.

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so transition classes has to listen for delegates of states

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they can both access next and previous nodes

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i.e. where they come from and which node they are pointing to

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:37 AM

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i see

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a state (node class) can access its available transitions, but its true they cannot access the state transition that is selected

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for my use cases i just used the transition types themselves to determine to enable/disable them

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thats what Early Transition is doing---

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oh also the one from Any State there

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normally i disable all transitions because the state node isnt done playing out yet

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but i leave the Early Transitions available

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the "fiya" ~~nodes~~ transitions there

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i love that we are not in #audio just because we came upon this discussion here in #gameplay-ai

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tbf logic driver is super useful to ai devs

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and making a music system in it is probably not necessary

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and also your use case is AI

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 8:42 AM

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early transition allows you to run both of the nodes?

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 8:52 AM

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early transition doesnt run any nodes

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theres a current state, and then i just control the flood gates on what transitions can happen

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its not going to be useful for your use case

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just reflecting on what ive figured out in logic driver i guess

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in my case transitions still do not mean that the music suddenly changes

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thats simply because im scheduling the actual change via quartz

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i enable transitions based on what the upcoming quartz scheduler interval is going to be

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early transitions can be Beat or Bar

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i always enable Beat but i only enable Bar in the preceding beat before the end of a Bar

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if its not an early transition, it is only enabled when we approach the end of the scheduled audio file

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which is what the state nodes represent

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i mean i guess the same sort of logic could be applied to any kind of asynchronous action, but i dont think its very scalable

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:04 AM

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ah, I see now

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sorry btw my connection has issues since a few days

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I cant react quickly 😄

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:07 AM

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mint terrace and making a music system in it is probably not necessary

only thing I wouldnt do in LogicDriver is a quest and dialogue system

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while FlowGraph exists and free, its completely unnecessary and more work

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:08 AM

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I wrote a web app for dialogs

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I load them from json at runtime

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siliex has a dialog system I want to check out

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nice part about the way I did it is that dialogs are fully authorable without the editor

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:09 AM

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I'm working on a special dialogue system too

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Based on Valve's AI driven dialogue GDC

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But it's one of the most difficult things I tried to implement so far

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Querying, sorting, finding bazillions of criterions and contexes etc

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:10 AM

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yeah dialogs are hard

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obsidian has a gdc talk about their system

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it's insightful

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:10 AM

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the Unity game?

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:10 AM

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the studio

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:11 AM

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in my case my dialogues are more like barks, and they depend on the criterion count sorting

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:11 AM

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https://youtu.be/oRHl2PLKwfY

YouTube

GDC

Technical Tools for Authoring Branching Dialogue

In this 2019 GDC session, Obsidian Entertainment's Carrie Patel & David Szymczyk discuss how narrative designers and game writers can get the most use out of conversation editors and how tools programmers can design software that allows for robust conversation design.

Register for the all-digital GDC 2021: https://gdconf.com/passes-prices?_mc=s...

▶ Play video

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:12 AM

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i.e. you send Event.CharacterSawShadow and tons of params like Time=Night, Who=James, Ammo=LessThan30, HasNearbyAllies=true etc. and if Event.CharacterSawShadow has a dialogue binded to it with more params its being selected. So dialogue becomes more contextual with more params

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:13 AM

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so it's not so much conversation as conditional response

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:14 AM

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yeah, its basically like Lyra's message system but system tries to find the dialogue relevant with event tag you sent with the most params

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:15 AM

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conditional selection of dialog trees is super core to a good dynamic conversation system

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but if you can get by without it being per dialog node then things get a fair bit easier

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:17 AM

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there isn't any nodes actually in bark based systems

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mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:18 AM

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yeah that matches what I was thinking

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more like a rules engine with a data asset per rule

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with some text and a sound file

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:18 AM

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yeah, exactly

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when you say rules engine they actually have an engine inside the shipped game

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evaluates all of these things

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and provides a script (dialogue, animation, ai task etc.) in runtime

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I'm trying to make a minimalistic version of it, by using tags and two FNames only. TMap<FName (who), TMap<FName (map), FCriterionQuery>>

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FCriteironQuery is basically an fgameplay tag and holds all the relevant params but only drawback is you cant calculate anything

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:20 AM

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would it not be way better to have structs

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not nested tmap

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:21 AM

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using maps helps to partition the lookup

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if event is relevant with a specific character you end up just searching its data

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rather than querying every characters possible dialogues

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and some dialogues only happen at specific maps

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2nd map helps on that

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and FCriterionQuery is all possible generic dialogue options + map specific options

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:22 AM

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ok I guess for the main character bark set and customization per map, that makes sense

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and then under that, put the rest of your conditionals

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:23 AM

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celest python FCriteironQuery is basically an fgameplay tag and holds all the relevant params ...

valve is able to calculate params like health < 30 && ammo > 5 etc but doing that in UE requires some nuts 😅 because you either have to access reflection properties which adds... 0.002ms for each call and considering you can have 5k properties.. or you access blackboard which is actually pretty much same since its also a map and casts anonymous data to given type

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so I found a silly workaround by just sorting gameplay tags by parents

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event.gotdamaged.insomearea.withsomefriendsnearby.haslowammoetc.

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tag with most parent wins and its dialogue get executed

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but it reduces the contextual dialogue efficiency

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:25 AM

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0.002ms the first time you need to check something

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you can cache that

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unless you have 5000 params the query can check

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:26 AM

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I'm trying to find an efficient way for that

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you basically loop all FProperties in your UClass* and map them to do the caching operation

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:27 AM

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either gather everything into fast storage and check the queries against that or make a cache map

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:27 AM

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what is a fast storage?

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:28 AM

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I just mean do the reflection exactly once and then evaluate the bark options against the stored results of the reflection

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:28 AM

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ah, I see

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:28 AM

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or, do the reflection on demand if the query calls for it

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and cache the result, so that any other query that needs to check that value can reuse it

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 9:29 AM

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gotcha, thanks

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that was insightful

mint terrace Jun 12, 2022, 9:30 AM

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web dev gonna cache ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 10:31 AM

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WEB DEV!!!!!??? outrage! 🙂

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this is NOT AI 🙂

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I think an AI is producing all these web dev tech stacks though, there are so many of them

misty wharf Jun 12, 2022, 10:42 AM

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We have a browser based wysiwyg design tool and it would be interesting to see if we could use AI to do basic designs in it

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but nobody really has the time or expertise to try it

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 10:57 AM

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Aye, there's definitely fertile ground in looking at ML based tool automation

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Got a funding pitch event on tuesday for that.. ML based PCG stuff for UE

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Hopefully get some small funds to work on it

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Also got a couple book chapters to write before the end of summer and a demonstrator to produce for satellite visualization

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Busy times 🙂

celest python Jun 12, 2022, 11:00 AM

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celest python With a generic delegate you can open/close the evaluation setting and you can se...

Hey zoom, I wonder what do you think about this

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TL;DR state machines allowing only transition classes to decide on the flow of the SM

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 12:31 PM

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Thats the usual pattern.. generally you have enter/update/exit and the update allows transitions. I can see an implementation where you have a conditional base class that allows transitions by returning true and you update your logic and then check all transitions

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Not sure how the plugin you're using does it, but traditional state machines have some logic in the update that checks if the transformation should occur

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The reason why that's such a pain, is that as the number states goes up, the transitions become exponentially more.. so you need to partition, usually using heirarchy

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BT's came about so you can avoid explicit transitions

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 2:44 PM

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ocean wren Got a funding pitch event on tuesday for that.. ML based PCG stuff for UE

Oh this sounds interesting, what you pitching or is it all hush hush

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 3:03 PM

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A few months back there was a nice conference where several studios and researchers presented ai/ml based methods for various tasks

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All in the domain of game development

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https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/event/aiandgaming2021/speakers-abstracts/

Microsoft Research

Alyssa Hughes

AI and Gaming Research Summit - Microsoft Research

Engage, Learn, and Share at the Microsoft AI and Gaming Research Summit 2021. We invite you to a Microsoft in Virtual Event to join researchers and practitioners from academia, game studios, Gaming and Xbox at Microsoft, and Microsoft Research to engage and share ideas about how AI and machine learning is transforming the landscape of gaming.

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There was some cool stuff, where the researcher created ai assistants for asset placement in level design tasks

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A lot of PCG stuff I've seen has mostly been done with tools like Houdini, I assume you're doing something else?

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 3:28 PM

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help i can no longer acces these options cause the drop down doesnt exist?

misty wharf Jun 12, 2022, 3:33 PM

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Your senses config array is empty

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 3:53 PM

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oh...

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is it supposted to flicker like that when the ai sees me?

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 3:57 PM

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It's not flickering it's just executing that branch in your BT over and over. Remember that BTs are being constantly evaluated based on the specified rate, if you want it to not flick as much considering slowing down the tick rate of the BT or adding a delay node after your moveTo if your intention is for the AI to wait before going through the tree again and thinking of its next move

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 3:58 PM

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i mean it found the player it should move to but it wont move

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ill try the delay on move to

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and after

misty wharf Jun 12, 2022, 3:59 PM

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it'll do that when the move fails or completes immediately, since it has nothing else to do after it

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if you pause you can use the stepping function in the BT editor to see where the execution goes

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:00 PM

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what if the ai is too close to the player thats why it cant move?

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so it counts as a succes

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i have the radius set to 100 is that much lol

misty wharf Jun 12, 2022, 4:00 PM

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If it's supposed to move to the player then most likely that would immediately just cause the move to succeed

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100 unreal units is 100 cm, so 1 meter

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:01 PM

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granite pewter what if the ai is too close to the player thats why it cant move?

I was gonna say this too lol

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:01 PM

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nope thats not the case

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loweing it to 1 same thing

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 PM

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Try printing out the vector it's trying to move to

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See if it's actually updating like you think it is

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:02 PM

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the timer nodes didnt work

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ai still wont move to player

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print vector good idea

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:03 PM

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Show how you're assigning the blackboard key for the position it should move to

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:03 PM

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ill print character vector in red and ai move to vector in purple

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or smth

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um how can i print the blackboard vector value?

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:05 PM

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Just print the output of your RandomLocation

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Right where you showed that screenshot

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Make sure that's updating

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:06 PM

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hmmmm

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it seems the vecor doesnt update on character hmm

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:08 PM

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Did you set the property of that Vector struct to editable like shown here

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https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-to-set-blackboard-value-in-task/371956

Unreal Engine Forums

How to set Blackboard Value in Task

Hey, I’m having trouble with my behavior tree. I have a task, calculating an index (interger) and I want to store this int for further actions in my blackboard. I have no problem saving blackboard values from any other blueprint, because I just need to call “Set Value as int” and parse a String with the exact variable name. But from the blac...

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:09 PM

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yes i did

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:10 PM

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Hmmm I usually rely on the other method of assigning blackboard values, where you specify the string name of your blackboard variable

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:11 PM

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i cant set my vectors values in details tab

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i wanna set this value to expose on spawn but i cant cause i dont have the fkn details tab

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and it says its enabled but its clearly lying

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hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:12 PM

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Lmao

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:12 PM

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granite pewter and it says its enabled but its clearly lying

Lying unreal

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I haven't tested this in ue5 yet, maybe someone else knows?

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:13 PM

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nah ue5 ui is so inconvenient and annoying to work with

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so many extra clicks needed

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shame

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:14 PM

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But if you want this to work try.

Getblackboard->setvalueasVector, and type in "Vector" on the keyName input

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Should probably change that variable name to something else though, it might get confusing

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Call it playerLocation or something

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:17 PM

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i cant have 2 vectors

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what would fix my issue is just having a player charcater vector loaction

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but no i can only set 1 vector

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why wont it let me be spesific?

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:17 PM

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granite pewter i cant have 2 vectors

In the blackboard? You should be able to specify multiple ones

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:18 PM

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well yea it allows me do it there but not in the blueprint editor

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how am i gonna set vector 2 when it only has set vecotor value its like setting all of them or smth

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its jsut so stupid i cannot set induvidual values in the blurprint

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let me set difrent vectors reeeeee

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:21 PM

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pepe_ree

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let me open up unreal real quick

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this is how i do it

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So this also works

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but you said your details panel isn't showing up peepoShrug

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:40 PM

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wstill same bug :<

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:40 PM

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wait, that didn't work, the ai is still not moving?

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:41 PM

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um could it be my casting isnt working?

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:42 PM

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Did you try printing out GetActorLocation and making sure that changes while your character is moving inthe world?

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:42 PM

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it only updates once ai sees me or unsees me

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:43 PM

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Try get player pawn instead of getplayercontroller on your second image

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 4:43 PM

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hm yes casting good now its updating constantly

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but ai still no moves

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ok i manged to make it move

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just had to change from vector to player

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 4:46 PM

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granite pewter wstill same bug :<

that doesn't make any sense, the key you were using is 'Vector' not 'Player'

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peepoThink

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oh nvm, i see that on find_Player, you're setting the output key to player

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got it

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 5:02 PM

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i made another vector called player

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yes thanks for helping me troubleshot this

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:02 PM

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no problem 👍

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 5:08 PM

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what would be the easiest way to set a timer for lost sight? i need to make smth that makes ai keep following me for a second even if it loses line of sight

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:20 PM

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I believe that's already available as part of the AI_Sense stuff

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max Age should be the param you're looking for setting the time before an AI stops searching you when out of range

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playing with the values on there should get you what you need

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And try out some of the AI debuggign tools to make sure the behavior is expected as you play with the different values

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https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/AIDebugging/

AI Debugging

Describes the different ways in which you can debug your AI with the AI Debugging Tools.

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:23 PM

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hallow flint A lot of PCG stuff I've seen has mostly been done with tools like Houdini, I ass...

Yeah, I'm doing some of it based on models trained on films, the point being to explore the space of co-creative PCG a bit

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Essentially, we use ML to build a model of the world, then use that to populate it

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But do it in a way that allows for "prompts" for editing

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I've been inspired recently by a lot of the NLP based generative art

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:24 PM

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do you have to fine tune the model for the given world that you are generating, or is there some sort of existing model that takes as input some video and generates some output that you can use

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ohhh

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NLP

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prompt-based generation?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:25 PM

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We train on a bunch of movies.. or rather, on the output of pre-trained models on a bunch of movies (Movienet dataset but expanded)

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So this project is to explore a bit the idea of prompts for the immersive space

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i.e. we might need voice guided generation

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or image guided (select an image similar to what you like)

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:26 PM

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ocean wren We train on a bunch of movies.. or rather, on the output of pre-trained models o...

im not too familiar with these kind of models, what architecture are being used for this?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:26 PM

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But also, the idea of keeping some things and generating only partial scenes is a key thing

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:26 PM

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transformers, CNNs?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:27 PM

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its actually whats called an ensemble model.. so we use a load of off-the-shelf models to output specialist data, then accumulate that using a graph neural network

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:27 PM

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huh

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that's pretty cool

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:27 PM

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specifically a spatio-temporal graph neural network

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:27 PM

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what's the actual output of these models?

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a full-on 3d world?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:28 PM

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its a scene graph description

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that then gets parsed into the 3D world

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:28 PM

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ocean wren specifically a spatio-temporal graph neural network

what's the temporal aspect here?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:28 PM

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basically the GNN predicts the probability of specific graph node expansions

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the temporal stuff comes as movies change scene information over time.. characters enter shot and leave etc

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:29 PM

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do the nodes serve as object entities (chairs, walls, decoration) etc?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:29 PM

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so we model the difference in scene over time

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:29 PM

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ocean wren the temporal stuff comes as movies change scene information over time.. characte...

got ya

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:29 PM

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yeah, basically, nodes are objects and edges are relations, like "on top of" or "loves"

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:29 PM

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huh

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that is a pretty neat idea

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very cool

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:30 PM

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so we have this sort of high-level description of scenes by assembling it from dozens of pre-existing specialist models

#

and then learn on that

#

of course one limitation currently for this approach, is that some of the pre-trained models aren't great, especially on films which are outside of their training set

#

So we aggregate predictions across a range of similar models to help a bit

#

i.e. get N number of models to predict the same thing, aggregate their predictions

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:31 PM

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are you guys going to have to some additonal labeling or data collection for the pre-trained models?

#

i don't even know how movie datasets are annotated lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

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no, most of that is just pretrained stuff.. you can download the movienet dataset and see examples in action

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

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i would hope it's not on a per-frame annotation of what objects are in a given frame haha

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

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yeah, thats exactly it

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

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ocean wren no, most of that is just pretrained stuff.. you can download the movienet datase...

yeah i think i will just to take a look lol

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

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ocean wren yeah, thats exactly it

holy shit

#

lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:32 PM

#

a sparse graph of changes for per-frame predictions

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the key is that most of the time the graph won't change, so we only store changes and then have "keyframe" graphs every N steps to help

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bit like video

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:33 PM

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ocean wren i.e. get N number of models to predict the same thing, aggregate their predictio...

ohhh so this should give you a higher confidence or the actual prediction before feeding it to the GNN

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So this approach seems very computational heavy to train, you guys have some sort of training cluster or using cloud services to do this kind of training

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:33 PM

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Well, one limitation for existing models, is that they only sample the video every 5 seconds or something.. you would never catch the really subtle timing stuff

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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ocean wren Well, one limitation for existing models, is that they only sample the video eve...

ahhh i see

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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Yeah, I'm doing a lot of it in a kubernetes cluster

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, I'm doing a lot of it in a kubernetes cluster

locally hosted or cloud?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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cloud

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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have you gotten any results or still training?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:34 PM

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well, technically, its a mix

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its all in-progress right now

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I'm actually going for funding so I can buy another PC to actually work on 🙂 all mine are busy 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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hahaha

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that's awesome

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what industry are you in if you don't mind me asking

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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I work as a senior lecturer at a university

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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US-based?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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UK

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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ahh okay

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:35 PM

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University of Lincoln

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:36 PM

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i'm in defense, we do a lot of ai/ml for different applications

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:36 PM

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Yeah, I'm literally surrounded by defense guys 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:36 PM

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is your research mostly focused on PCG?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:36 PM

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We are smack in the middle of most of the UK's air defence command

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drones and the like

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:36 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, I'm literally surrounded by defense guys 🙂

haha I bet, we always work with professors

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:37 PM

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No, my research is more on behaviour understanding and generation

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:37 PM

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Ahh got ya, things related to Explainable AI. I assume you do some RL stuff too?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:38 PM

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Having my students make a simulation to train drone ML next semester.. seemed like a fun thing

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:38 PM

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ocean wren Having my students make a simulation to train drone ML next semester.. seemed li...

oh yeah, you using airsim?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:38 PM

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Yeah, RL, imitation learning

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:38 PM

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that's awesome

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:39 PM

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Not sure yet.. I've played with airsim, but to be honest the drone isn't really the important bit.. this is a graphics class for postgrad students

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so I'll probably just mockup a drone for them

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:39 PM

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Ahh got ya, airsim had some nice example for training RL agents using stable-baselines3 which makes it very easy to just try out different algos and change up reward function for different behavior

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:39 PM

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the point is to get them to explore the code/graphics for optimizing a crowd.. but from the top down 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:40 PM

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ocean wren the point is to get them to explore the code/graphics for optimizing a crowd.. b...

ahh we're talking about swarm behaviors?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:40 PM

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Yeah, I have a student who just finished a Unity based RL project.. turns out their ML agents codebase isn't great

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:40 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, I have a student who just finished a Unity based RL project.. turns out th...

ahh that's a shame, i was going to look into ML Agents

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:41 PM

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Not sure I'm able to say why.. but its a defense requirement 🙂

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And it seemed cool

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:41 PM

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ahh got ya

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lol

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i understand

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:42 PM

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You can imagine though, drones.. crowds 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:42 PM

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yeah nodders60fps

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lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:42 PM

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Some interesting little specific features they wanted

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Should make for a great assessment for MSc graphics guys

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So they can explore the mass, control rigs, shaders etc.

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We should have the mocap space up and running by then.. should be fun!

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:43 PM

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yeah that's pretty cool, what is the class you teach called?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:43 PM

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I teach a bunch.. mostly graphics, pcg and game programming

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but also cloud, big data etc. more CS stuff

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:45 PM

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yeah that's a lot of topics, cool stuff

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:45 PM

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Way too much this last year, covering for other people.. it damn well better be less next year 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:45 PM

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haha

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were you teaching remotely?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:46 PM

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But my main thing is basically programming tech stuff, ML, AI, Cloud, Unreal etcf.

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No, most of it is face-to-face again now

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only one I did mostly remote is cloud.. because its cloud 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:46 PM

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haha

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:46 PM

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ocean wren But my main thing is basically programming tech stuff, ML, AI, Cloud, Unreal etc...

I do a lot of the same except the Cloud stuff

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except i don't teach im just a research engineer lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:47 PM

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Yeah, cloud and defense probably hard to get together 🙂

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Yeah, I kind of wish I'd gone the research engineer path myself these days

#

so much cool tech to play with

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Way too much politics in academia for me

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:47 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, cloud and defense probably hard to get together 🙂

well microsoft is saying their azure platform is the way to go for that lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:48 PM

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Yeah, we teach mostly agnostic, but I do rely on azure

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:48 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, I kind of wish I'd gone the research engineer path myself these days

never too late right lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:48 PM

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But if I were in defense, I'd focus on on-prem 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:48 PM

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what's on-prem?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:49 PM

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I really need to find somewhere to work for where they have an unlimited supply of GPU's 🙂

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on-prem = on premisis, basically onsite 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:49 PM

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ocean wren I really need to find somewhere to work for where they have an unlimited supply ...

those FAANG companies have near-infinte compute resources lol

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 5:49 PM

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Hah, write a crypto-based grant ... profit?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:50 PM

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Yeah, I was talking with people trying to build an open source Imagen/DallE2 copy

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:50 PM

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im from a small company so a big issue is have enough training data, but FAANG companies suffer from the opposite, too much data hahaha

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:50 PM

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I mean, that training is not a joke.. 300k gpu hours?

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:50 PM

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ocean wren I mean, that training is not a joke.. 300k gpu hours?

i know, it's insanity

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:50 PM

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yeah, new image/text pair datasets are 5 billion images big 🙂

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But goddam if these diffusion models haven't given me a real kick to get this video stuff to the same level 🙂

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Our cluster is teeny tiny compared though 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:52 PM

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does the university give funding for the compute resources you're using or did you kinda just have to slowly build to what you have through grants?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:52 PM

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If you're struggling for training data, synthetic is the way to go 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:52 PM

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oh yeah we heavily rely on synthetic data

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lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:52 PM

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I've had to cobble it together with tiny grants here and there

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:53 PM

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ocean wren I've had to cobble it together with tiny grants here and there

peepoYikes , that sucks

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you should get some of the defense guys to give you funds

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:53 PM

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Frustrating because I'm surrounded by agri-robotics guys 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:53 PM

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lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:53 PM

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Yeah, I'd love that, but without a large research group, its difficult to secure

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:54 PM

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so idk how it works in the UK

#

but for us

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we've had professor give presentations at our companies

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professor that want to partner up and get some of that peepoMoneyRain

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:54 PM

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And the worst part is that there are SO many projects we could do, but a lot of my colleagues are very much against the defense sector collaborations

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:54 PM

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kinda share their research and we go 'hey we could use some of that!'

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:54 PM

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ocean wren And the worst part is that there are SO many projects we could do, but a lot of ...

ohhhhh interesting

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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Grant life is weird compared to corporate. Back when I was a research assistant we'd have years where we were practically duct taping systems together. Then there was the year the prof had us spec a quarter million dollars worth of hardware because if we didn't the money would evaporate.

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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My understanding is that, that decision is up to the given professor, no?

granite pewter Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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hallow flint

max age doesnt seem to delay updat

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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Yeah, we have a regular meeting with defense guys, but there's only a small number of us

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Yeah, definitely a personal thing

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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or can the university say 'no you can't partner with defense'

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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ocean wren Yeah, we have a regular meeting with defense guys, but there's only a small numb...

ohhh i see

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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opal crest Grant life is weird compared to corporate. Back when I was a research assistant...

LOL

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:55 PM

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Well, Lincoln is heavily in with the Navy weirdly, given we're surrounded by air force 🙂

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I'm basically a "I'll work with anyone on stuff that's cool" mindset

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:56 PM

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opal crest Grant life is weird compared to corporate. Back when I was a research assistant...

It's really dumb how those contract work 'use money or lose it'

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:56 PM

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Yeah, I've had that too, basically your budget gets eaten by the Uni if you don't spend it

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so I spent it 🙂

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on VR kit 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:57 PM

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oh peepoYikes

#

we have same issue

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if i dont use the budget company takes it and i won't get any of it lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:57 PM

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Yeah

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We basically get it paid into our academic accounts

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:57 PM

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ocean wren on VR kit 🙂

great investment lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:57 PM

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and it gets hoovered up if we don't spend quickly

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Most of the defence sector is VR based training and simulation to be fair, which is why I like it

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Its really goddam cliquey though.. all the air force guys know each other 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 5:59 PM

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ocean wren Most of the defence sector is VR based training and simulation to be fair, which...

haha that's what i worked on at my previous job

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simulated training for defense personnel

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 5:59 PM

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I keep trying to get my undergrads that its the perfect games job 🙂

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stable and cool tech

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:00 PM

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i know!

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that's what i always tell myself

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:00 PM

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They won't listen 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:00 PM

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whenever i have to use unreal for work

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"im getting paid to make games"

#

lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:00 PM

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They'd rather work as a wage slave for activision or something

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:00 PM

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yeah it's a real shame, i thought about joining the gaming industry

#

but the lower wages and extra work hours made it a no for me lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:01 PM

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Although, to be fair, I had a grad come to me at his graduation last month? and say he got a job doing Unreal sim stuff 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:01 PM

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I like not working extra and getting paid decently lol

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:01 PM

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ocean wren Although, to be fair, I had a grad come to me at his graduation last month? and ...

ohh that's awesome, what industry?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:01 PM

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I'm a games guy by background, but the industry is a bit of a shitshow to be honest

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:01 PM

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unreal is seeing a lot of use in tons of industries nowadays

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:02 PM

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He was doing simulations for automated driving if I recall..

#

Yeah, I keep pushing that narrative "learn games, go and work anywhere"

#

I can point to films, training, defense, simulation, modelling etc

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The skillset is massively valuable

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:03 PM

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right!

#

I know

#

i always tell people

#

instead of writing 'i make games' write 'i build simulation environments'

#

instantly get more eyes on your resume

#

lol

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:03 PM

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Yeah. Work in non-games, spend time working on games as a hobby, and you'll earn more, have more vacation + free time leftover.

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:04 PM

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opal crest Yeah. Work in non-games, spend time working on games as a hobby, and you'll ear...

hi, are you me

#

haha

#

that's exactly what i do

#

lol

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:04 PM

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And hopefully have professional management that don't try and treat you like crap

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:04 PM

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Hah! I think that's a good slice of this discord 🙂

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:05 PM

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Seriously, if there's one thing I've taken away, its that management can have a huge impact, positive or negative. I've worked with some real asshats 🙂

#

Just genuinely clueless, or even semi-evil people who had no right to be managing anyone, never mind seasoned programmers

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:06 PM

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Don't undersestimate good mgmt. I am happily moderately underpaid at my current company because the culture is too good.

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:06 PM

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Yeah, its worth a lot to work with management you trust

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:06 PM

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yeah that's insane, i have been lucky enough to have good managers. i'm not really that many years into the industry but here's to hoping i don't come across a bad one 🤞

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:07 PM

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Well, now that you've had good managers, you'll see the red flags faster than most.

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:07 PM

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haha good point

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:07 PM

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I was in the games industry while it was growing up.. the growing pains were real

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:07 PM

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were you working indy?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:07 PM

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people who were in position because they were there the longest etc..

#

I worked for Team17 on the worms games mostly.. plus a few others before and after

#

So indie company of around 100-200 ish

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:08 PM

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ohh nice!

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:08 PM

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ocean wren people who were in position because they were there the longest etc..

Oh this is the same problem in large defense companies

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:08 PM

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Went from like 40 people, to 200, back to 80, up to 140 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:09 PM

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or sometimes they don't give you the compensation you deserve just because you haven't been there long enough, problems goes both ways

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:09 PM

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ocean wren Went from like 40 people, to 200, back to 80, up to 140 🙂

wow, that's crazy

#

can't imagine the stress of not knowing whether the downsizing would leave you out of a job

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:10 PM

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Yeah, that's an issue in academia too.. often people get blocked from career progression because some boss doesn't like them..

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:10 PM

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Oof. I've been through that. 80 people world wide, up to 1k, back down to 250? Slowly climbing back up after.

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:10 PM

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Well, I once led a workers revolt and demanded we all got sacked as long as our "manager" went too 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:10 PM

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hahaha

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:11 PM

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opal crest Oof. I've been through that. 80 people world wide, up to 1k, back down to 250?...

jeez, at your current place?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:11 PM

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They got rid of the manager in question

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:11 PM

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Yeah.

#

We went public, and that got us a lot of funding, but then we got skewered by some market trends (our margins tanked).

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:12 PM

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They'd put this idiot in charge, who had a PhD in astrophysics.. the git would literally suggest a new game every morning..

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:12 PM

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We found investors that bought the company, took it private and that stopped the bleeding, and gave us time to find new markets.

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:12 PM

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opal crest We went public, and that got us a lot of funding, but then we got skewered by so...

Ooof, funding is a double edged sword isn't it

#

markets demand growth at all costs

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:13 PM

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Yep. We were still generally viable, but when you are public and not growing, you bleed money fast.

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:13 PM

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wow

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:13 PM

#

Well, investors and markets demand returns right? not making %age? you're gone

#

I'm still looking for the Unicorn gig, where I get to work on cool stuff, but don't have idiotic management or funding/accounting guys to deal with 🙂

#

I did a startup a few years back.. that was eye opening

opal crest Jun 12, 2022, 6:15 PM

#

It always seems like you're in that zone from the outside looking in.

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:15 PM

#

ocean wren I did a startup a few years back.. that was eye opening

how so?

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:15 PM

#

We were doing a thing called StoryBricks, which was an AI for storytelling

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:15 PM

#

opal crest It always seems like you're in that zone from the outside looking in.

right? i feel like i get to work on cool stuff but still have to deal with funding issues

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:15 PM

#

Eventually sold the tech to Sony Online Entertainment for Everquest Next

#

But we did a whole bunch of pitches and investor meetings.. so I learnt a ton about what I hate about it all 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:16 PM

#

ocean wren Eventually sold the tech to Sony Online Entertainment for Everquest Next

did that ever get deployed into production? I dont know much about everquest

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

#

Like meeting with investors who had worked at EA and realizing they were treating games like tinned goods 🙂

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

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ocean wren But we did a whole bunch of pitches and investor meetings.. so I learnt a ton ab...

so i work at a small company so i kinda have to procure funding when i get a chance every few months, i don't particularly enjoy this

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

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Nah, Sony shitcanned the whole SOE thing

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

#

i assume it is the same for you when you have to apply for grants

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

#

We sold out just in time I think

#

the CEO went on to be a tech VC etc

hallow flint Jun 12, 2022, 6:17 PM

#

ohh nice timing

ocean wren Jun 12, 2022, 6:18 PM

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Yeah, my grants are tiny because its just me and occasionally a few others

#

So I have to scramble for anything I can get