gameplay-ai

[ocean wren]

And to be honest, outside of defense, the UK doesn't really fund games stuff

[opal crest]

Oh damn. I hate everything about about pitching. It always feels like "good" pitches are about making vague promises. Glad I only see that side from people who need some data/ideas from me.

[hallow flint]

is the process a pain in the ass? how much writing is involved in these grants

[ocean wren]

Yeah, pitching is the pits.. I've got one on Tuesday

[hallow flint]

"pitches are about making vague promises" yes

lol

sad but true

[ocean wren]

Depends on the funds.. smaller grants of like < 30k are relatively painless for the most part

This one on tuesday is for 12k, basically a 5 minute slide deck and a few meetings

[hallow flint]

ohhh nice

so for us

most of them are at like 250k

[ocean wren]

And I got to use DallE to generate the art for the slide deck.. for the funzies

[hallow flint]

they're a few slides, 15+ pages

and a bunch of paper work

[ocean wren]

Yeah, the ones I've been involved with have mostly been in 300k range lately

[hallow flint]

hahaha nice! I should try that

[ocean wren]

last one was 2.8 mill though, but we are only going to get 1 in 100 of those

Or even 1 in 200.. don't know the accept rate right now

I mean I'm kind of one of the few doing defence meetings.. so I get put on all sorts of hopeless bids 🙂

Part of networking as an academic, is realizing that most bids don't get funded, so you have to do a load of them

[hallow flint]

yup

this is the trick

just keep trying until someone bites

lol

the shitty thing is

[ocean wren]

Well organized research groups have paid employees doing that bid prep fulltime

[hallow flint]

sometimes some of opportunities are reserved for certain companies/individuals

so even if your idea is amazing you migth still not win

which sucks

[hallow flint]

we have a few haha

[ocean wren]

Yeah, I was in a defense briefing last week with exactly that feeling..

[hallow flint]

some people that purely focus on writing these bids

[ocean wren]

Yeah, sadly I don't have that.. so some of our bids suffer

Mostly due to lack of time or info or practice for the specific funding body

They all have quirks

[hallow flint]

yup! each agency is very nitpicky about what they want

some are super tech saavy and want all the math formulas

others just care about the end result

[ocean wren]

What stuff they won't fund, or expect match funding for

[hallow flint]

haha

[ocean wren]

What they regard as match funding.. oof 🙂

My fave is the "light touch, just get it done" variety, but thats rare

[hallow flint]

this is crazy to me too right. Like getting funding is already hard enough and then they want someone else to promise to double the fund hahaha

finding one source of funding is hard enough, where you gonna get two

[ocean wren]

Well, most of the time, you can claim staff time as match funding, for some funds at least

[hallow flint]

😮

interesting

[ocean wren]

Which basically means my/our time gets booked on it

[hallow flint]

i wonder if that applies for academia only

for us they expect an actual entity to sign an agreement to provide the funds

[ocean wren]

We get those too.. it depends on who is the funder.. the one in question was an EU fund

which we don't get access to anymore 😦

[hallow flint]

damn :/

have you guys tried applying for Unreal Grants before?

have any experience with those

[ocean wren]

Yeah

[hallow flint]

did you get funded?

[ocean wren]

I've gone for one, but honestly it wasn't strong enough

But the other one was a solid one.. about creating a virtual production mobile to take to schools

[hallow flint]

ohh

that does sound pretty cool

[ocean wren]

Weirdly, the first one I put in, someone else got funding for 🙂

[hallow flint]

interesting, wonder if the timing wasn't right or something

[ocean wren]

The VP mobile got a bit more play than mine, but Epic weren't exactly on fire responsive and the pandemic kind of knocked a lot on the head physical contact wise 🙂

[hallow flint]

ahh what a shame, the idea sounds intriguing

[ocean wren]

Well, all I can say, is that the ones who got the funding, still haven't delivered a project.. I bloody well would have 🙂

[hallow flint]

hahaha

i thought about applying for one, for continuing some work-related reserach but never got around to it

[ocean wren]

I've got a small loss leader commision to do some simulation visualization stuff for a navy training thing

But I was already playing with some of it anyway

Tiny funds, but enough to buy some art at least 🙂

[hallow flint]

how you'd go about getting that commision, they just kinda reached out?

[ocean wren]

A long chain of networking

[hallow flint]

haha

[ocean wren]

This is in fact, to try and get more paying stuff

Honestly, its borderline insulting, but these guys have an in with more people

[hallow flint]

you're hoping it starts of a seed to get more opportunities with them?

clever

[ocean wren]

So we keep everyone sweet and hopefully it pays off down the line

Yeah, its all about that really.. knowing when to not do things and when to speculate a bit

The Uni wants us to chage like 1200 gbp a day 🙂

1200-1400 ish

[hallow flint]

wow, nice rates

lol

how much of that do you actually end ups eeing

[ocean wren]

But not realistic for a lot of things

So as an academic, I'm allowed to do 10 days consultancy and pocket it for myself

[hallow flint]

10 days per month, year?

[ocean wren]

OR, I can do consultancy and split it with the Uni

Or I can give it entirely to them

10 days a year

Yeah, exactly 🙂 aint nobody interested in that!

[hallow flint]

haha how much actual availability do you have given that you have to teach so many classes?

[ocean wren]

For funded grants though, its different

Well, so with grants, we can buy out our time

[hallow flint]

ahh

[ocean wren]

i.e. give the uni money, so they can hire someone to fill the gap (theoretically)

One bid we did recently, I was down for 1-2 days a week on it, for 3 year project

[hallow flint]

Ahh interesting, so there's some flexibility there. That's a nice little perk

[ocean wren]

Well, you have to negotiate it with your boss

[hallow flint]

so this is where having a good manager comes in

[ocean wren]

That said, I doubt any of them would turn down money, political suicide 🙂

[hallow flint]

it's good to learn how it works on the other side of contracting with academic partners

so

[ocean wren]

What they really want, is for us to win like 3 million funding, where PhD students do all of the work, where academic staff get a tiny allocated time for supervisions

[hallow flint]

do you actually get to work on the projects, or do you assign some students to work on them?

[hallow flint]

yup

this is exactly what i was thinking lol

this is sorta how it works for us too

[ocean wren]

Usually students, but I'm more of a hands-on guy 🙂

Plus coming from games, I'm the low guy on the academic totem pole

[hallow flint]

yeah i would want to work on the projects myself

[ocean wren]

so I deal with tiny grants and loads of networking and much of the work myself

aaand a bunch of teaching to boot

[hallow flint]

yeah that blows

[ocean wren]

Not ideal

But the main advantage to academia, is autonomy

My boss has basically 0 idea what I do 🙂

[hallow flint]

loll

that does sound fun, you can have your own direction

[ocean wren]

We had a research presentation week last week.. everyone put up posters of their research.. it was quite telling that mine was all AI generated art and everyone else was like insect killing robots and such 🙂

or self driving farm robots

or.. healthcare robots

Basically, nothing even close to being creative.. apart from a colleague showing off her game 🙂

[hallow flint]

haha, you stood out

interesting

this was all hosted within the university itself?

[ocean wren]

I realized that it wasn't my crowd honestly

Yeah, it was the college of science research showcase

COS has like maths and physics, geography, CS and games, engineering etc

Luckily, the arts show is soon and psychology is also soon.. both of those will be fun

We in games tend to do more with those rather than.. "science"

[hallow flint]

haha

is the science reserach showcase available on the website?

[ocean wren]

Naw, this was in person in our engine shed

[hallow flint]

ahh got ya

[ocean wren]

Basically an old train shed that got turned into a concert venue

Its meant to foster collaborative research

But of course doesn't come anywhere near 🙂 for me at least

[hallow flint]

so its common for some professors to partner up with other professors if their individual research aligns with each other?

[hallow flint]

haha but i assume the art department would love your research

[ocean wren]

Well, usually its more inter-university

[hallow flint]

ahh

[ocean wren]

I'm hoping to do a gallery over summer

I suspect it'll be fairly controversial 🙂

Most large grand funding goes to consortiums of University + businesses

grant funding even

so like 3-5 million

The point is, that the research is funded, then commercialized via the companies

But you might have like a dozen Universities on the project

[hallow flint]

that's very similar to how we go about doing things as well

[ocean wren]

So each gets a cut of that grant funding.. usually for a PhD or two

[hallow flint]

given your research, do game companies every partner up with academia to use some of their ideas?

i haven't heard if that's the case

[ocean wren]

only very rarely

[hallow flint]

I know at least for some of our larger projects, we have used game studios before for building some simple systems

[ocean wren]

games companies are honestly, just not that innovative

I've spoken to a few that dismiss ML outright

So myopic

[hallow flint]

what is this insanity

[ocean wren]

It partly comes from hubris about their own superiority

But also, most games execs are actually quite clueless and often pretty conservative

Its weird

[hallow flint]

[ocean wren]

I've found that people in the fashion sector are waaay more innovative 🙂

[hallow flint]

I was already iffy enough about gaming industry, now im even less convinced to join

[hallow flint]

ai/ml in fashion industry?

[ocean wren]

I think part of it, is just that games doesn't make enough profit to take risks

[hallow flint]

ohhh what are some of the use cases on that industry?

[ocean wren]

yeah, loads of AI/ML in the creative sector in general

So for instance, virtual try-on of clothing

Or generating designs for new cloths

Or doing physics simulation using ML

[hallow flint]

yeah very true, i recall a friend interviewing for EA. And he was clearly told that on (i think FIFA franchise?) he wouldn't get to innovate or create any features, it was just about maintaining what they had for the next sequel lol

[ocean wren]

Or just predicting markets

[hallow flint]

huh, that's a pretty interesting application. I should read up on that

[ocean wren]

I mean, they're all set for the metaverse when it comes along

So imagine the virtual branding stuff you could do with virtual clothing designs

and translating those into real-world clothing sales

Sadly, this will all be tainted with NFT's and the like 😦

[hallow flint]

yeah i hadn't even considered those application,

[ocean wren]

I've got a postgrad student doing a project over summer looking at photogrammetry vs neural radiance fields, because I want to build a clothing scanner to support it 😉

[hallow flint]

what are neural radiance fields?

[ocean wren]

they're a form of ML based graphics

they define the boundary probabilities of a mesh surface

kind of like signed distance fields if you know them?

[hallow flint]

yup

[ocean wren]

one sec.. I'll link a vid

[hallow flint]

im looking at some images for neural radiance fields

[ocean wren]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ2hcC1orc4

[hallow flint]

[ocean wren]

It functions similarly to photogrammetry

[hallow flint]

that's awesome

[ocean wren]

but the representation is fundamentally different

But the point is, you can generate meshes using them 🙂

[hallow flint]

I wonder how much cleanup is necessary to get these game-ready

[ocean wren]

Part of our study is to measure failure cases for photogrammetry vs NeRF

[hallow flint]

very cool, do you guys publish your findings anywhere

[ocean wren]

Depends if the student gets their act together 🙂

[hallow flint]

lmao

[ocean wren]

Hoping to get a postgrad to do an Unreal Engine RL project this summer

one of my better undergrads (the one who did the Unity ML agents project)

[hallow flint]

what kind of policies you're trying to learn?

[ocean wren]

But he might just go get a job

He was looking at GAIL and IL/RL

[hallow flint]

i haven't read the paper on GAIL

[ocean wren]

This was mostly just evaluating the toolset for his undergrad.. seeing if he could figure out how to incorporate demonstrations into the RL approach

[hallow flint]

ahh I see

[ocean wren]

If he decides to do it, we'll likely build an RL agents API similar to the guys at Embark Studios

Run it in the cluster

Kubernetes/Kserve etc

[hallow flint]

What kind of work did Embark Studios do?

[ocean wren]

Lemmie link you the video 🙂

[hallow flint]

ahh is it the agent learning to walk on complex terrain?

[ocean wren]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuftkDxjGT4

Yarp

the robot spidery thingy

near the end of that trailer

Embark are a really interesting studio.. doing mostly PCG AI/ML based content production

[hallow flint]

ohhh yeah i remember this, i had seen the prototype blog post about it but didn't realize it was actually in a game trailer lol

[ocean wren]

Worth looking at their presentations

[hallow flint]

oh yeah im gonna look it up

[ocean wren]

Its basically a bunch of ex-EA R&D guys from SEED

with lots of $$$ 🙂

[hallow flint]

innovation + funding, where do i sign up

[ocean wren]

They did some presentions with Nexon, who I think own them now

[hallow flint]

mayube they are hiring

[ocean wren]

I would expect so

Based in Sweden too? 🙂

[hallow flint]

You know speaking of this GAIL approach, i've been looking at research for buildign more sample efficient models

in my feed i got recommended this

https://jumpstart-rl.github.io/

looked interesting

[ocean wren]

Nice

I'll pass it on 🙂

Although he might have cited it already

it looks familiar 🙂

[hallow flint]

haha wouldn't surprise me

im gonna go have lunch, good talk!

see ya

[ocean wren]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOiNMW8k4T0&list=PL3hM7_RDaHMy-6ctmLBBo1PN0QuI7jIeC&index=1

Knew I heard of it 🙂

probably not the same thing 🙂 hahaha

Take care.. ttyl

[graceful panther]

hey im stuck with something with AI movement, what i want is an ai to chase me fast and slow down when it gets to me and slowly approach me and then if i run away start to chase me fast again

right now the ai is chasing me fast and then it slows down and starts walking towards me but I cant get it to exit/abort that "moveto" task so it never speeds up again
I noticed that if I uncheck "Track Moving Goal" the ai will start to run again but unchecking that also makes the ai walk towards me in increments basically walking to wherever I was when it started the task

I'm trying to get the ai to exit its moveto if I get too far away from it so that I can adjust its speed to make it chase fast again

[misty wharf]

you can use a decorator to check how close it is to its target to abort the node

[graceful panther]

I have a decorator checking for a value thats being changed in an eventick in the ai's eventgraph "DistanceToEnemyActor", the value is being updated on a tick and i've verified its working

it looks like the decorator is only checking after the move task is complete and if i use "track moving goal" then it never completes

[misty wharf]

🤔

That should work

Have you tried using a larger value than 300 just to see?

[graceful panther]

if I dont use track moving goal then the blackboard based condition works and is applied

so the value is set and the condtional is working as intended, its just that with track moving goal it doesnt check the condtional again

but without it the ai walks at me in segments to wherever I was at the start of each segment

[misty wharf]

The only difference between having that on or not is what it says - track moving goal or no

if you have it on, and you move somewhere else while it's moving towards you, it will automatically update its move target during the move to match

If you have it off, it will not update. It will move to the location you asked when the move started, and it will finish the task.

[graceful panther]

I'm hoping to not have to choose between the ai tracking movement and being able to abort the the move task

[misty wharf]

none of the options affects your ability to abort it

all tasks can always be aborted

[final loom]

Is there anything I need to get the AIPerception working besides the stimulus on one factor with soght enabled, and sight on a sensing component on another?

[final loom]

I did these and set the stimuli as auto register, but it won't pick it up.

[ocean wren]

I hate python SO MUCH 🙂

[final loom]

Unrelated.

[ocean wren]

Yep

[final loom]

Well. I'm still looking, I did move the AIPerception component to the AI controller instead of the pawn, but that didn't do anything

[hallow flint]

haha let me guess, issues with libraries compatibility because of different versions?

[hallow flint]

what unreal version are you using?

[final loom]

5.02

[hallow flint]

I recall there being a setting where you set the types of actors you wanted to perceive. The options were like neutral, and some others. Is that still in 5.02?

[ocean wren]

Nah, just general hatred. I guess mostly just having to read people's shitty python code that is almost always half assed.

[hallow flint]

as part of the aiperception settings

[hallow flint]

hahaha, it does lend itself to that

[final loom]

I don't think so. I will double check

[hallow flint]

im checking right now too

[final loom]

I would think the stimulus component would be enough though

[hallow flint]

it's this stuff here

I recall there being something weird where you had to enable all of them in order to get detection due to some blueprint limitation. But i think that's been fixed

I don't recall where you specify where your actor is an enemy/neutral/friendly, maybe someone else knows

[opal crest]

In 4.27 you still have to Detect Neutrals at least.

[hallow flint]

really?

i thought i read in the patchnotes that they had changed that, maybe it was for 5.0

[final loom]

Good catch. Thank you.

[opal crest]

That would definitely make trying out Perception easier, if they aren't going to expose team attitudes to Blueprint.

If you want to enable team based perception, this thread has a good intro: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-use-the-ai-perception-teams/120837/2

[final loom]

Well. Maybe in the future, I was trying to get it just print something if it detects the player, which it did, spamming it and thus lagging it I believe. But the main point is I have it working now

[hallow flint]

nice 👍

[final loom]

Yeah. I'm working on something for a GameJam entry.

[slim temple]

can anyone help me out with ai in behaviour trees

basically i need it so when its chasing the player (which is what ive done) it plays from a walking to a running animation i have and it speeds up. The idle/walking and random locations work fine. just that

[hallow flint]

This sound like you just need to configure the movement component of your AI

Try checking out the acceleration of the movement component

[slim temple]

this is what i mave rn

have*

when he chases the player i basically want it to play the running animation instead and speed up

but when hes not chasing, to go back to roaming

[opal crest]

Agree with Josue, you probably want to use two things: a) the Movement component of your pawn/character to control accelleration/max speed, and b) your AnimBP to control blending from your walk anim to your run anim based on velocity.

[slim temple]

i see yes. the first way ive done that but it has multiple animations so it will stay at that max speed of 150 (which is what i set it too)

and also with the 2nd way, when i add the running to the animation blueprint, what do i do then?

this is my animation blueprint

[hallow flint]

I'd suggest maybe simply making a new BT_Task where you re-assign the movement speed of your character

[slim temple]

this is the other part of it

btw, i am new to game making and i want to learn so sorry for being so dumb 🙂

[opal crest]

That looks pretty reasonable (I'm not super good at Animation BP's, honestly).

[slim temple]

i was thinking of that, but im unsure how to do it

[opal crest]

But you're using the tools I would: getting speed from the movement controller, and using a blendspace to determine the animation.

[slim temple]

ik how to make a new task but like im unsure how to do the speed and animation wise

[slim temple]

seen as im new these words are so confusing 🤣

[hallow flint]

you won't have to touch the animation

[opal crest]

I was where you are 18 months ago 🙂

[hallow flint]

if the animation blueprint is implemented correctly, it'll adjust by itself

you just have to update the movement speed and the rest will take care of itself

[slim temple]

im very lost ahaha

[slim temple]

it should be

[opal crest]

So does you character never show the running animation?

[slim temple]

could you explain how i would make a new task updating the movement speed and adding it to my behaviour tree 🙂

[slim temple]

not at the moment

[opal crest]

If that's the case, you will just need to make sure your max speed is fast enough to show the run state.

[slim temple]

if i add "play animation" then select the animation BP it goes.. weird

it plays half of the walking and half of the running and moves slowley

ahaha

[hallow flint]

you can modify 'Speed' in your animation blueprint to test out and make sure the animation actually runs

[hallow flint]

the one in this image

[slim temple]

where can i turn up the speed again?

[opal crest]

Bottom right, where it says speed.

[slim temple]

i move it and it dont move?

like it just stays on 0

[hallow flint]

try manually typing 600 on there?

[slim temple]

goes back to 0

[hallow flint]

uhh

in the editor right?

like you're not hitting play or anything

[slim temple]

on here?

bottom right

[hallow flint]

also for the behavior tree task

just do something like this

[slim temple]

and then attach it to the chasing sequence?

[hallow flint]

yes

alo

[slim temple]

oki 🙂

[hallow flint]

when you make that variable NewSpeed

[slim temple]

ill try that too

[hallow flint]

make sure you make it InstanceEditable

[slim temple]

oki

[slim temple]

but idk why the speed wont change

[hallow flint]

then in your behavior tree just make sure you set the value to something else, like 150

[slim temple]

oki 🙂

ill try that

[slim temple]

shall i put receieve ai

or just receive

[hallow flint]

just receieve

[slim temple]

oki

[final loom]

I wonder how much better AIPerception is performance wise to what I jury-rigged in Unity for AI,

In that I made a box trigger, rotated it 45 degrees, centered it to their eyes, and did a linecast on tick for whenever something was in the box that should be registered as seen

[slim temple]

uh

somethings defo wrong

idk what is tho

[opal crest]

Sight Perception isn't doing all that much different from that. It's just smart about deciding when to retest vision.

[hallow flint]

i've done that too, just with a rectangle instead lmao

[slim temple]

@hallow flint

[final loom]

Well. I wonder how fast AIPerception is compared to that.

[slim temple]

so now its not playing the walking but only running

and at the normal speed

[hallow flint]

it's definitely not updating the speed

[final loom]

Deciding when to retest I guess is the difference

[slim temple]

yeah

[hallow flint]

show me how you set it up in your btttask

click on the node

[hallow flint]

yeah i think for my jam i might just attach something to my AI's face to act as perception, i dont need anything fancy lol

[hallow flint]

you forgot to check off the 'Success' mark

[slim temple]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

shoot i did

hold up

[hallow flint]

haha

[slim temple]

nope

still nothing

its the same

[hallow flint]

show me your blendspace

for running

[slim temple]

1st one is idle

then walking

then theres running

[hallow flint]

wait

that doesn't look right

[slim temple]

uh oh what have i done

aha

[hallow flint]

you see the little running rhombus

that you have near the center?

the one for running

should be allll the way to the right

[slim temple]

OH

WAIT

SHOOT

and walking and idle are fine?

[hallow flint]

im not sure where they are placed

but

idle should be all the way to the left

walking should be in the center

running all the way to the right

[slim temple]

ok

so

we fixed that

sorta

the walking is now mixed with idle LOL and when he spots me he dont speed up and dont run

im sending video now

he seems to be walking slightly faster

just slightly

[hallow flint]

i think i may know the issue. the snippet of code i sent you for speeding up may be wrong

[hallow flint]

try increasing the speed to like 900 and make sure it works?

[slim temple]

ok ill try putting the "new speed" up to 900

na it still the same

[hallow flint]

okay let me check something

[slim temple]

oki

also if i put the walking like dot thing on the animation BS then the walking works just fine

like its not "mixed" with idle then

[hallow flint]

yeah putting it in the right place smooths out the animations

[slim temple]

wait

dont quote me on this

but i feel like the issue is

i have a feeling he isnt actually chasing me

[hallow flint]

This should work

It should be re-usable for any AI too

[slim temple]

wait

NO

I THINK

IT MIGHT

OF WORKED

[hallow flint]

[slim temple]

but

🤣

the only issue now

well i say "only"

but he doesnt return to the normal speed and back to roaming/walking after seeing me

[hallow flint]

are you calling the setmovespeed btttask on both branches of your tree?

[slim temple]

ohh the "change speed"

task

[hallow flint]

yeah that one

[slim temple]

what i just maade

oh so just call it there and change that new speed?

[hallow flint]

yup

to make it walk again

[slim temple]

idk the default speed

uh

[hallow flint]

if you don't it'll just stick with what it had before

150 i think you said?

[slim temple]

i think

it works i think

when i close the doors tho he just starts running to the other side where the door is open 🤣

[hallow flint]

yeah he's just pathfinding around the obstacle

[slim temple]

any way to just like, prevent that? like when he gets blocked he goes back to roaming

so when the door is closed he just returns back to roaming

[hallow flint]

uhhh probably with some aiperception

like the stuff that @final loom was just asking about

or are you already using that?

[slim temple]

um

i dont think so?

im sure ill find a fix soon

while im here rn, is anyone any good with jumpscares when the ai touches you it plays the jumpscare? with behaviour trees

[final loom]

What way? Like an image over the screen, or an animation?

[slim temple]

and thank you so much @hallow flint for your help you are and all of you are amazing

[slim temple]

animation

which i probs can create using ue4 but how would i do it with behaviour trees

just basically when the ai is chasing you, if he touches you it plays the jumpscare

[final loom]

Probably set a bool in an animation blueprint and have it set back to false after the animation is done playing

[slim temple]

how would i do that? 🙂

sorry for being dumb with this

im just new

[final loom]

Well.

You'd need a reference to your animBP in your AI's class, or controller, somewhere it would need to store the reference

[slim temple]

how would i like reference it

[final loom]

Well. What I do is create a var to the type of anim BP, then get anim instance on begin play, cast it to said type of anim BP, and voila! There's your reference.

[slim temple]

wait what :😭

create a var to the type of animation bp?

[final loom]

Yeah, for your class of animation BP

[final loom]

Thanks again Josue for helping me with that issue. Would have been a while if I noticed what you said, if at all.

I recall getting stuck similarly to that before, but forgot what the fix was.

[hallow flint]

Ahh you could create a sub-tree off of your chasing branch. That basically checks for distance between your ai and the player character. If it reaches a distance of let's say 150-300 then you just run a playAnimation task. I think that should be it

[hallow flint]

no problem, glad you got it working

[final loom]

The most important part anyways

[charred lava]

My EQS test which filters out items doesn't do the test for every item. I assume it has something to do with performance? That the test is to heavy and gets discarded after a certain point? Is there a resource to read about it or can someone guide me on what to look at for that?

[misty wharf]

That isn't a thing

If the item is filtered out by another test earlier on, then the rest of them might not run for it I guess, but perf cost doesn't affect it because that could produce extremely unpredictable results

it's timesliced, so a slow test just means it will not be able to run further tests on that particular frame

[celest python]

i dont get it why the delegates name is "onqueryfinished" if it has a "processing" member as enum

[misty wharf]

It's possible that the same delegate type is used for multiple different events

Maybe it makes more sense on others

[celest python]

member variable name is OnQueryFinished in UEQSInstance

and only get called once, with one of the enum members

does not get updated

bad naming

[misty wharf]

Yeah but that's not the delegate type

[celest python]

wouldnt it make more sense to name it as OnQueryStatusUpdated or something?

[misty wharf]

Not if it's called only when the query finishes

[celest python]

But if it's finished, why it is Processing?

[misty wharf]

Hmm yeah looks like it has its own delegate type so my theory is wrong 🤔

    FORCEINLINE bool IsFinished() const { return Status != EEnvQueryStatus::Processing; }
    FORCEINLINE bool IsAborted() const { return Status == EEnvQueryStatus::Aborted; }
    FORCEINLINE bool IsSuccsessful() const { return Status == EEnvQueryStatus::Success; }
    FORCEINLINE void MarkAsMissingParam() { Status = EEnvQueryStatus::MissingParam; }
    FORCEINLINE void MarkAsAborted() { Status = EEnvQueryStatus::Aborted; }
    FORCEINLINE void MarkAsFailed() { Status = EEnvQueryStatus::Failed; }
    FORCEINLINE void MarkAsFinishedWithoutIssues() { Status = EEnvQueryStatus::Success; }
    FORCEINLINE void MarkAsOwnerLost() { Status = EEnvQueryStatus::OwnerLost; }

This explains it a bit better I think

Not sure why the finished status is called "processing", but it would appear so

But yeah looks like if the query is aborted or fails the status is different

[misty wharf]

You shouldn't crosspost your questions unless you're not getting answers, because I think this was now answered in #cpp

[polar furnace]

sure sry

[slim temple]

Can I ask. How could I do that😭

[slim temple]

@hallow flint

l

[hallow flint]

So you should probably make a decorator that simply checks the distance between your AI and your player

[slim temple]

uh

ik what a decorator is but how//where should i create it

[hallow flint]

Check them out here

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/BehaviorTrees/BehaviorTreeNodeReference/BehaviorTreeNodeReferenceDecorators/

[slim temple]

so add another decorator on my chasing branch on the tree?

with that being a blackboard decorator?

how would i make it so it checks the distance between the player?

[hallow flint]

Yeah so add it to your chasing thing

The logic for distance is just something like

(AiWorldLocation - playerLocation).Lenght

Subtract the the location of both of them, then get the magnitude (length) and then check if your AI is basically on top of your character

So a value like distance < 300 might tell you that he's basically on top of you

Or alternatively you could check if your AI is colliding with your player

[slim temple]

yes thats what is probs better

cuz he would actually be in your face then before jumpscaring you

how would i make it so it checks if the ai is colliding with the player

sorry if your busy

but ive added the decorator

idk if its the right one

[misty wharf]

@ocean wren maybe interesting for you https://twitter.com/halllo/status/1536682463422038016

Manuel Naujoks (@halllo)

EU AI Act #WeAreDevs

Twitter · Jun 14, 2022, 12:10 PM

[celest python]

Basically "lets not become China" act?

[slim temple]

guys

how do i make it so the behaviour tree doesnt start for a certain amount of time

so i can have them on the stage area for a certain amount of time

ive tried using the "wait" but it will just repeat the wait which isnt what i want

like is it possible to make it a "one time" wati

wait*

@hallow flint

sorry for tagging so much

[hallow flint]

So I wouldn't do it like this. I'd remove it from that sequence node and add an additional sequence node.

There you'd add this new decorates

To switch between chasing player or scaring player

[hallow flint]

Dark pattern AI, I don't think I've ever heard of that

[hallow flint]

Why don't you add a delay on begin play before you actually call the behavior tree

[slim temple]

where would that be again

[slim temple]

i dont think its ever "called"?

[slim temple]

like this? @hallow flint

[keen crow]

Can smart object claim handle be reused? I'm implementing a behavior when the player can start a dialogue with an NPC and I want the NPC to keep the claim on a smart object slot it's currently interacting with. So I stop the gameplay behavior without calling USmartObjectSubsystem::Release, but after the dialogue is over and the BT execution gets back to the task with USmartObjectSubsystem::Use with the claim that I stored for NPC, it fails and logs

 Ensure condition failed: SlotState.GetState() == ESmartObjectSlotState::Claimed [File:D:\build\++UE5\Sync\Engine\Plugins\Runtime\SmartObjects\Source\SmartObjectsModule\Private\SmartObjectSubsystem.cpp] [Line: 471] 
Error        LogOutputDevice           Should have been claimed first: Object:845242607 Slot:6 User:1

It seems that the slot changes its state to occupied so is the only way to keep the slot for the NPC is to release the slot and immediately claim it again?

[slim temple]

im sooooooooooooooo lost

D:

[polar furnace]

hey folks is pawn effect on nav mesh?

the with deer wanna go to that bush

but can't cause body block from another deer

how can i fix this?

[misty wharf]

try using crowd or rvo avoidance

[polar furnace]

what is this?

[misty wharf]

options in character movement component

google ue4 crowd avoidance or ue4 rvo avoidance and you'll probably find some more info

they are two different systems which behave slightly differently from each other so you may want to try both to see which works better for you

[polar furnace]

oo thanks

[slim temple]

@hallow flint when you have time could you give me a hand with the jumpscares? 🙂 i have tried but im just really lost

[polar furnace]

Navigation Invokers is better or nav mesh ?

in performance

and i wanna use for realtime build

[hallow flint]

well navmesh are baked offline, so they should be faster

it entirely depends on your use case

[hallow flint]

sure, it might be later im at work

[slim temple]

np bro

🙂

just @ me or dm me when you are free 🙂

[ocean wren]

Thanks, although the UK isn't in the EU anymore, so we can basically turn into an AI slave market anytime.

[polar furnace]

offline ?!

what do u mean

[ocean wren]

navmeshes can be precomputed or dynamic

I think he means the former

god my head is like mush 🙂

video meetings are... 🤪

[hallow flint]

When you place down a nav mesh it does all the calculations to determine what is traversable or not, all before the game is running, offline

[hallow flint]

hahaha

how did your pitch go

[misty wharf]

Need to make a deepfake of yourself paying attention to a meeting so you can stream that into the meeting while you do other stuff

[hallow flint]

haha clever

i just

dont turn on the camera

[misty wharf]

yeah same lol

[ocean wren]

It was a bit crazy.. I've got a ton of follow-ups now

[hallow flint]

that's great, hopefully it leads to

[ocean wren]

I'd say it was a success though, plenty of companies wanting to colab

Now we have to do some meetings to determine which partners we want to work with

And catch up with those we missed today

I think its fair to say, that lots of creative companies are interested in generative ML for their projects

[hallow flint]

nice! the tables have turned

now they are coming to you

lol

[ocean wren]

Yeah, it was a bit crazy to be honest, like speed dating for VR companies 🙂

one after another for 3 hours

[hallow flint]

[ocean wren]

well, 2 hours 45.. still, my head hurts 🙂

[hallow flint]

Was this at the university or some sort of events where people look for opportunities to fund?

[ocean wren]

latter

they've got some small pots (12k gbp) to give out

[hallow flint]

ahh i see, very cool. Will this fund the mocap lab you were mentioning?

[ocean wren]

apparently the UK MOD just got a 1.2bn boost 🙂

naah, mocap lab is already funded

robotics dudes got funding for that

[hallow flint]

crazy

everyone getting a piece of the pie, maybe you'll get some of that too

MOD needs their sims

[ocean wren]

I'd settle for bus fare at this point 🙂

[hallow flint]

LOL

[ocean wren]

They were all really impressed with my slide deck

which was basically just tons of AI generated images 🙂

[hallow flint]

did you point out the dall-e generated art?

hahaha

nice

[ocean wren]

yeah, literally just spammed loads of DallE in there

it allows people to visualize

I used the images to complement the text on the slide.. so one sentense per slide, with at least 1 image per slide too

[hallow flint]

i requested access to DALL-E yesterday, hopefully i can get it

lol

[ocean wren]

sentence even

Check out MidJourney

[hallow flint]

what kind of images you generate?

[ocean wren]

get on the MJ beta

Basically just random art that represented the points.. graphs, machines etc 🙂

https://labs.openai.com/s/LzdO6E2qCx5Js0PjJw7Z1dtl

One I did today as a demo 🙂

[hallow flint]

thanks for the heads up! just applied to beta

[hallow flint]

wow

that looks so good

[ocean wren]

I kinda prefer this style:

https://labs.openai.com/s/cRxhfm1hR4bWNtBmVRfHF0Zo

[wide kraken]

Oh, hey Phil!

[ocean wren]

Hey!

I wonder if MJ has run out of GPU hours yet 🙂

[hallow flint]

interesting, you can set the actual style with the last few words in the prompts

[hallow flint]

okay now how can i generate a 3d model from this haha

[ocean wren]

Yeah, prompt engineering is the new creative discipline

[misty wharf]

I saw some people on twitter posting analysis on why Dall-E Mini is going viral currently more than Dall-E 2.0

They were talking about all kinds of points

but... I mean... the only reason is that you can use Dall-E Mini right now

and you can't do that with Dall-E 2.0

:P

[hallow flint]

haha i was thinking the same thing

[ocean wren]

Well, yeah, you can access it freely, or run it locally

[hallow flint]

one is publicly available, one isn't haha

[ocean wren]

Better to use Disco Diffusion or something to be honest.. I don't think DallE-mini is a good example

DE2 is just so much better

oh btw.. DE2 generates tiling textures really nicely 🙂

lemmie find an example

I was generating space goats for a fictional game jam game yesterday 🙂 one sec..

I mean, in the realm of "shit I'd never be able to do" space goat art is up there..

[hallow flint]

Wow

[opal crest]

There's also a certain 'trashy' quality to Mini that I think helps it go viral.

[ocean wren]

Sorry for spamming..

Mini is just messed up enough that it kind of undermines the concept 🙂

[opal crest]

Mini faces are Cronenbergian horrors 🙂

[hallow flint]

Meeting, gotta go

[ocean wren]

part of the problem is that it doesn't have the text guided upscalars of DE2

ttyl

[wide kraken]

Hey all!
Apologize for a broad question, but I'm not sure where to start digging for best results.

I want to create a real-time "simulation", which involves significant numbers of AI-driven actors. The usual "live ecosystem" dream, you know.
And have it more of an honest sim, than smoke&mirrors approach usually taken in games.
So I have broad question, and a small specific one:

1. Any recommendations on proven approaches to handle large number of AI computations? Maybe well-known examples with documented info (like articles and GDC talks) to learn from? I'd assume games like Mount&Blade, or large-scale tactics/RTS games, have solved these issues at least partially.

2. If I want to include an option to fast-forward the time in Unreal, up to x10. Can that mess up the computations? If there are 500-1000 agents in the sim. Would it impact the performance significantly? Wondering if it's something I should think about in advance, when designing the architecture of the project and AIs.

[ocean wren]

Have you looked at the new Mass system from UE5?

there's a channel now.. #mass

also, check out the citysample projects on the UE marketplace

[wide kraken]

Nope, I'm clueless about that. I barely did some BTs in UE4, and that was all AI I did for many years 😅

[ocean wren]

In that case, go to the marketplace and download the citysample project

take a look 🙂

[wide kraken]

I will research Mass, thanks for the headsup.
And also it now occurs to me that I've been coding in Blueprints only up until now, and for this project...it might now work, performance-wise 😅

[ocean wren]

for the time fast forward thing.. what do you want it to look like? does it have to be a sort of scrubbing thing like a video editor?

i.e. go back/forward in time

[hallow flint]

Oh check this out too: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022411/Massive-Crowd-on-Assassin-s

[ocean wren]

Yeah, ubi are basically the masters of this stuff.. done loads of GDC videos on it

[wide kraken]

Just a typical game speed-up. So the player can set it to fast speed and observe stuff changing fast, while still in real-time (no cuts).
Actually I don't need interaction to happen with the sim at high speed. Can be that you set pause, place stuff, unpause. Cheesy, but probably saves me from lot of headache.

[ocean wren]

there's a time dilation value you might be able to use for that

I think its "SetRelativeTimeDilation" or something

pretty sure the slowmo command uses that same system

[wide kraken]

Yeah, I think that was what I used on a city-builder project few years ago. I was wondering if it can break in edge cases like mine, with ton of AI computations happening

[ocean wren]

Well, you'd probably have to profile the high speed version to make sure the AI isn't killing your budget

But I don't think there's any real reason it wouldn't just work

mind you, haven't tried 🙂

I might add that to my crowd assignment actually.. its a nice feature 🙂

[wide kraken]

After discovering how values break at big enough distance from zero coord, I trust Unreal to break where I least expect it 👌 😆

[ocean wren]

making my students create a crowd sim for drone training as their MSc graphics class 🙂

[misty wharf]

This is unfortunately just a general thing that breaks in all game engines that handle coordinates as float values and most of them do - UE5 fixes it tho

[ocean wren]

they use doubles in UE5 now, so that shouldn't be the case anymore

[wide kraken]

Yeah, not intended as a stab at any particular engine, more like a commentary of "there are times where things we expect to just work, actually break"

[ocean wren]

well, they use a different numerical precision, I don't know if its actually doubles or some fixed point thing

[misty wharf]

yep

[misty wharf]

pretty sure it's doubles yeah

[ocean wren]

kind of makes sense, must have been a hellish change to test though 😦

All your unit tests would break 🙂

[wide kraken]

Calling it now: after I read all of that material and look up examples, will probably end up going from hundreds of agents in the sim, to a couple dozen, half of which are always asleep anyway 👌

[ocean wren]

you have learnt the way of Unreal 🙂

[misty wharf]

I think all my npc's still run CMC when they are dead bodies which is probably not great

Need to change it so it turns off CMC and just makes them physics props I think :p

[ocean wren]

good plan

[hallow flint]

Oh and here's an unreal engine implementation of this system

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/world-director-npc-pro-now-with-multiplayer

i don't have it but i've read the description and it seems to be based on this ubisoft system

here's a cheaper version of this same thing: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/world-director-npc

Also i'm pretty sure there's some sort of limit in terms of how high you scan set TimeiDilation

i've tried increasing it before but unless my eyes tricked it, it seemed capped

and you'll definitely get issues with the physics

i think the physics engine might be your bottleneck?

[wide kraken]

What if, hear me out.. I set up the default game speed at TimeDilation of 0.2 or so? Just with fast movement values on anything 😆 So that the x10 speed is not actually TD=10, but something like TD=2 😆

Oh man, I haven't even started doing the thing, and already am designing crutches. This is gonna be fun.

[hallow flint]

loll does this not have to be seen at runtime?

[wide kraken]

It does. But it's abstract 3d figurines (like RimWorld, just in 3D static meshes..or like chess pawns, if you will), so...

[hallow flint]

ahh got ya

you could also make your own simplified movementComponent with some basic collision checks using geometry and linetraces. And you could accelerate your timedilation by a lot more

[ocean wren]

I'd say mass was the answer, depending on your representation and animation etc.

[wide kraken]

Yeah, I've noted it and the matrix city for research

[opal crest]

I think a lot of it is going to depend on how much your sim can tolerate large timesteps, which will depend on how you write your update functions.

I have a gameclock implementation in my RTS learning project, and I definitely chased out bugs when I went from 1s/s to 1000s/s.

[wide kraken]

As I started to realize the scope and had reality checks, I've set up this sort of "challenge ladder" to climb:

1. Plants AI. Conway would be proud.
2. Simple animals (think Spore game, stage1).
3. Social animals. Pack interactions, some behaviors like hunt-packs or task distribution within packs, etc.

And that was it, even at number 3 I felt like I'm already past comfort zone and will have plenty to learn and figure out. The scope and difficulty scales like crazy, heh.
But I want to learn more about how these things handles overall, top-down, before I start making sentient weeds in the bottoms-up approach.

[ocean wren]

Epic has a bit of code for a farm style plant growth AI using mass.. there's a stream discussing it and the code is in the engine, but apparently they haven't made an example to show it yet

[wide kraken]

Oh, don't have trouble with the 1-2, I did that in the past somehow. My problems start when it's about group interactions and scaling it into larger numbers / performance. Something I never had to worry about in past projects.

[ocean wren]

think someone did a mass sample for boids style movement.. check out their MassSample project on github

[wide kraken]

that's already so over my head. But also noted for future study, thanks!

This birdoids thing is awesome. Love it

[graceful panther]

has anybody successfully been able to interrupt an ai move task thats using goal tracking? I want my npc to adjust speed based on the distance of my character

[misty wharf]

It might be easier to just have the speed adjust while you're moving tbh

For example via using a service that checks distance and adjusts speed appropriately

[graceful panther]

I literally just got done implementing a service for adjusting the speed and it did work!

[misty wharf]

nice :)

[graceful panther]

Thanks! that does work perfectly!

[slim temple]

hi

@hallow flint you free? 🙂

[hallow flint]

no still at work

[slim temple]

🙂

what time do you finish? 😅

[hallow flint]

like in 3 hours or so

[slim temple]

ooooooooof

whats your job

[slim temple]

hi guys

anyone know why my AI inst moving

isnt*

im using set paths

ive done the behaviour trees right

it just isnt moving

path points im doing

it wont "move to"

can anyone help

[slim temple]

it legit wont move

[slim temple]

@hallow flint idk if you are any good with this, it just stays on ‘findpathpoint’ and doesn’t go on ‘move to’

[mint terrace]

if findpathpoint fails it would not go on to moveto since the parent is Sequence

probably why id guess

youd see this during runtime if you had the particular object set as Debug Object, there'll be a red indicator

[opal crest]

It's also possibly you aren't calling FinishExecute in your FindPathPoint task? Tasks get stuck when that happens.

[hallow flint]

what's the class of chicaAI @slim temple

im wondering if your casting is failing

[mint terrace]

not exactly #gameplay-ai but is there a way to focus the player character pawn* in the gameplay debugger?

eh it probably wont help me since the gameplay debugger doesnt track changes to the controller anyway

[celest python]

click it on the world outliner

Anyone knows how can I debug AI is not moving to a location and after 5 secs pathfollowingcomp returns "Blocked"?

Whatever I do, it ends up on same result

Changed the target goal, changed the map, wrote custom move to node etc.

[mint terrace]

and there's definitely a green path when using navmesh visualization (P) ?

[celest python]

yep

gameplay debugger even shows the next path point to follow

its very close to AI

but its not moving

[mint terrace]

oh maybe check the min agent radius

possibly it is skipping it because the path isnt "wide" enough

[celest python]

ah, tbh I never edited agent settings since I started to UE. Lemme see what they do

[mint terrace]

omg i had no idea it did this, 🎉 you da best

dude this is fantastic

[celest python]

I think both settings are fine 🤔

[mint terrace]

(reads engine code) oh its the "stuck detection"

@celest python try calling SetMoveBlockDetection(false) on AIController and see if that fixes it

if so then i think its finding collisions nearby that block it

obviously youd want to find what is unexpectedly triggering stuck detection rather than remove it long term

never mind, stuck detection is purely "are we not moving when we thought we should"

[celest python]

Yeah, still wanted to give a luck but didnt work

[mint terrace]

so this actor never responds to AI movement or just cant move in a certain situation

[celest python]

At pathfollowingcomponent.cpp line 911, if (bHasNewSample && IsBlocked()) return true after 5 seconds and movement is aborted with blocked tag

until then, pathfollowingcomponent updates the path segments

and thinks its actually moving

but after that statement returns true if understands movement is blocked

[mint terrace]

sounds like the CMC configuration isnt right

root motion or direct?

obviously root motion has tons of gotchas you could be hitting

direct should be fine as long as CMC is set up right

[celest python]

direct

let me try with another pawn then

to see if its CMC's fault or not

[mint terrace]

good idea

i mean, your Walk Speed isnt zero or something?

[celest python]

nope, everything seems correct

[mint terrace]

well if a standard pawn works fine then hmm not sure

[celest python]

hmm, another pawn moves

[mint terrace]

ah ha!

[celest python]

so thats my fault rather than an engine error

thats some progress 🥳

thank you

[mint terrace]

probably one of the CMC settings or something else

let me know what it ends up being

always curious

[celest python]

alright, thanks again

[celest python]

it turns out my CMC subclass was corrupted in BP and I had to recreate it

[mint terrace]

hotreload strikes again

[celest python]

reinstancing

I thought of a few solutions while using LogicDriver. Why people dont create array of structs/classes to define conditions and not have a single transition class? Think like each transition arrow/class has an array of instanced UObjects which checks particular things you define and allow transitions. Also communicating with previous state (the state its coming from) to allow transition evaluations or not. This way you also gain the ability of deciding if your current behavior in the state is interruptable or not.
From what I can see people always created a new transition class of each state they declared and it ended up being so complex and confusing. Unifying required classes and using new classes only to define new behaviors can let developers do their most of the job in the SM graph rather than coding new classes in IDE

Of course for very specific behaviors you end up creating new classes, or for scripted actions but wouldnt those ideas solve most of the things?

I think probably in the old times reflection systems were not that advanced so thats why people ended up creating classes everytime 🤔

[slim temple]

Hi i just seen this message

You still active @hallow flint 😂

[slim temple]

I do have the finish execute

@hallow flint the blueprint class of the AI is a character

And the path point is an actor class

The orange part it stays on and the red part it doesn’t move to

[slim temple]

idk what to do

tried everything

it just wont move

[mint terrace]

can you show FindPathPoint

[slim temple]

the coding for it?

[mint terrace]

yeah- assuming its custom, i didnt see it in the engine source in any case

[slim temple]

ok ill send

there

[mint terrace]

oh honey

[slim temple]

what

aha

[slim temple]

WAIT

[mint terrace]

that would do it

[slim temple]

on the video

i swear he didnt attach it

WAIT

[mint terrace]

if he didnt then hes not making a very good video

[slim temple]

OH MY DAYS

[mint terrace]

this would never work

the white line is the execution line

[slim temple]

ive attached it to set blackboard key

MY DAYS IM SO BLIND AND STUPID

[mint terrace]

its ok

change blindness

[slim temple]

THANK YOU

IT WORKS

sorta

it moves

but

it does the running animation instead of walking

any idea why

[mint terrace]

welp, check your Max Walk Speed on your Character Movement controller, and also check your Animation Blueprint to make sure you're handling that speed the way you want

[slim temple]

what should the max walk speed on the ai contorller be

[mint terrace]

that depends on your animation blueprint 🙂

and... you know

how fast you want it to move

[slim temple]

ok so how do i "change" it

like where do i start

[mint terrace]

if the speed feels about right, then take a look at your animation blueprint. Assuming you even have both a walk and a run animation, you probably would want to modify the blend space that controls whether walk or run is active

there is a zillion ways to do this stuff, im just guessing based on the usual tutorial path

[slim temple]

ok now

so

it plays the walking

but really fast

[mint terrace]

the animation is fast or the movement speed* is fast

[slim temple]

walking is fast

animation is fine

[mint terrace]

so the movement speed is fast

[slim temple]

yes

[mint terrace]

then go to your character's movement component and adjust your Max Walk Speed

[slim temple]

oki

[slim temple]

also when it reaches the point, it stops for a split second and carrys on

so the animation stops

[mint terrace]

btw i swear i have never seen cm/s in this view

maybe its new in ue5 or something

[slim temple]

lol maybe

[mint terrace]

yes well it needs to rerun your other BT tasks and such

[slim temple]

is there a way to add a "delay" between each movement to the point

[mint terrace]

ah yeah you can add delays in behavior tree

if you are trying to remove delays, it depends on what you are trying to do. A common use case is that the blackboard value is changing over time

but the moveto doesnt adjust on its own, it finishes what it started, and then does it again with the new value, but again, doesnt update live

in that case, use Observe Blackboard on the MoveTo

[slim temple]

yeah im trying to add delays between each move tme

time*

[mint terrace]

check out the Wait behavior tree node

[slim temple]

so add a wait here

[mint terrace]

yeah, technically anywhere under the sequence would probably do what you want

[slim temple]

alright

[mint terrace]

remember, it executes them left to right

[slim temple]

ye

oki

ill try

[mint terrace]

glad we were able to unblock you, always sucks to be stuck

[slim temple]

YESSSSSSSSSSSS

thank you

[slim temple]

wdum

[mint terrace]

wdym wdym, seems you were stuck for like... hours on this, now go forth and unreal 🙂

[slim temple]

OHH

ye

i was

thank you so much

now i gotta figure out the jumpscares 🥲

this server is full of legends man

[slim temple]

i was stuck for hours cuz i missed one line 😭

[mint terrace]

it happens

[slim temple]

i just need now for these 2 ai's to be completed before i can move on with the rest is the jumpscares, i need them to collide with the character or if its easier be in a certain distance with the player in order for a jumpscare animation to play

[slim temple]

i can tell 😭

[slim temple]

hey @mint terrace if your still here, do you know how to do this? 🙂

[mint terrace]

thats a little overbroad for a Q&A my friend

[slim temple]

LOL

wdum 🤣

is it possible to make it so when it reaches a curtain path point it changes to running instead of walking?

[celest python]

check 2nd rule on #rules

[pearl verge]

hi, does anyone know what's the proper way to setup a navmesh on a game with (sub)levels that are streamed/loaded at runtime? can't find much online and currently having a lot of problems

[celest python]

<@&213101288538374145>

[slim temple]

what happened

[celest python]

was a spam bot there

[slim temple]

ah

[ocean wren]

Ola!

Whats new all?

[slim temple]

yo

can anyone help me out with the jumpscares? ive tried for a while and i just cant figure out what to do

i want it so when the ai collides with the player is plays the jumpscare animation

[ocean wren]

have you tried writing out in english what you want to happen?

[slim temple]

what

[ocean wren]

usually, I recommend my students to write out the logic in comments first.. then write the code to do it

[slim temple]

uh

[ocean wren]

basically, think through the logic of how you want it to happen

[slim temple]

well yeah? i mean like idk how to code it

like

im new to game design

so

[ocean wren]

ok, so how do you improve to the point where you do know it?

[slim temple]

wdum

learn ik

thats why im asking if anyone could help out

[ocean wren]

Well, what if they don't?

[slim temple]

ive tried youtube

[ocean wren]

you just going to not do something?

[slim temple]

i am still searching yes

[ocean wren]

So try and do one part of it at a time

be methodical in your approach

again, write out the steps somewhere

and make sure you have a good understanding of whats going on at each step before moving on

one important thing, is to learn to debug and verify for yourself

[slim temple]

ik ye

[opal crest]

So I decided to learn how to write a Hierarchical Task Network and Slate at the same time, by jumping feet first into writing a graph editor to create an HTN asset.

Was this a good decision? Well, I'm learned a bunch and a) have a basic planner and b) a node editor has 60% of the right nouns in place. but on the other side, the way Epic writes UI's may drive me mad.

Also, Open pose is pretty neat. The model just barely *fits on my 2080, but with good lighting it's probably good enough for the simple mocap I wanted to do.

[polar furnace]

Hey folks
can create a child of ADetourCrowdAIController?

[misty wharf]

No, it's not exported. Just copy its functionality into your own AI controller, it's extremely simple

[polar furnace]

how?

[misty wharf]

I mean.. look at its code and just do the same thing in your own?

[polar furnace]

can u help me more xd

[polar furnace]

what is this

[misty wharf]

I mean you just need to copy the ObjectInitializer bits into your own controller

You can literally copy the code exactly one to one into a file in your own project

and just rename the class to something else

[polar furnace]

done?

really 😐

[misty wharf]

Yep

That should do it

all the detour controller does is it replaces the default path following component which is what manages pathfinding related movement with a different one

so it doesn't really need anything else

[polar furnace]

thanks

[hallow flint]

Ohhh you gonna open source it anywhere? I haven't dared touch Slate yet haha

I've been curious about how to make a graph editor, you referenced the BT code?

[opal crest]

Once I have something another person can use, lol.

[hallow flint]

Haha I've only replicated the utility AI system I've seen in lectures

And I didn't even use it myself

Lol

[opal crest]

Yeah. I can put it somewhere if you just want to see in progress mess, but yeah, I've used the BT editor, and https://github.com/jinyuliao/GenericGraph/tree/master/Source as references.

Getting a BB editor in looks rough: the existing one is only available by private include, so I am going to have to carefully build my own that doesn't copy the Epic one.

[hallow flint]

Yeah I'd be interested in checking it out

Is this for work or just for funsies

[opal crest]

Just fun. I work in WebDev, this is my hobby programming outlet.

[hallow flint]

Ahh I see, yeah I do game dev for fun but I do occasionally get to do it work for as well lol

[opal crest]

Lucky!

Someday I'll use this stuff in an internal prototyping project, but it's nice to have things to work on just to enjoy.

[opal crest]

DM'd!

[ocean wren]

I'd recommend avoiding the BB stuff as an example.. its kind of terrible

and yeah +1 for doing your own graph editor.. its super fun

just make sure you understance MVC 🙂

[celest python]

I think writing an editor is more difficult than writing a HTN planner 😄

[ocean wren]

hahaha... naaah 🙂

Its actually pretty well designed in terms of architecture for editors

the only thing that pisses me off, is that there's no code to draw arcs and circles in the UI code, or at least there wasn't when I last looked