This is the best tutorial I've located thus far:
http://www.dougoberndorf.com/pathanime1.pdf
here's what it looks like, in action: http://screencast.com/t/SHfZ7BDhJ
Thanks for this, Alan! Hopefully we can continue pushing and eventually start working in the actual level. Until then, at least we'll be prepared!
With a little coordination, maybe I can send the level your way and at the end of the day, you can send it back my way so we can work on meshes some more.
My team is currently grouping everything so we can select a group and turn it off if in the viewports if it isnt crucial and need to be seen, such as player start points, working lights, etc.. This would hold true for AI pathing.
Let me know what you think.
—Joe
We definitely need to make sure we have the level design finalized before adding too many paths and bots. It would be awful to have a building extended or something and destroy a patrol path!
Sorry I haven't updated in a bit. I'm working on making the AI routines interrupt if the bot sees the player. This is turning out to be a bit more challenging than I had imagined.
Here's some ideas for the, let me know what you think. I think this includes what you're currently working on.
The bots patrol predetermined routes or stand guard outside specific points. They don't attack unless they have line of sight. Once the player enters the observatory or picks up the statuette, all bots go hostile towards the player and seek them out. Can we have a trigger that does this?
Can we also have a trigger where the player crosses a specific point and the bots go friendly? This would be used for the return to Takkan's room route. Once the player enters the room, the mission is complete and the player wins.
Does anyone know how to lower the strength of attacks from the AI? The AI being too strong and powerful is my only concern for turning all the bots against the player at once.
—JMo
Absolutely - we can make all guards aggressive and seeking the player out. I've already done something similar.
And, since we can do that, we can also have them go friendly at a certain point.
The only way I know of lowering the strength for the AI is to make custom weapons. For instance, maybe we want some melee only guys? Maybe we want some guys that use a gun similar to the sniper rifle, but instead it shoots really weak bullets. I think this is doable.
If we wanted to try to do custom weaponry, this would be a tutorial for it:
http://www.ut40k.planetunreal.gamespy.com/unreal-Dateien/ut3tuts/UT3_Weapon_tutorial_1.htm
We could easily enough reskin the sniper rifle or the pistol, I think?
Worth considering, imo.
Yes! This would make it a little more realistic. Our hero needs to be slightly advantaged over the guards. She has magic!
The melee guards would be great for the initial cornering of the player in the observatory. Imagine the player enters through those stairs at the bottom of the observatory. The player walks over the statuette and the door to the way they came in slams shut. Next, melee guards enter through the other door (maybe 4 or 5 guards). The player fights through those weaker, lesser armed guards (maybe melee equipped as well, finds a shotgun style weapon in the top floor of the main building and starts blasting through the rest of the melee guards in the building. The player exits the building to find herself being shot by sniper rifles and pistols.
Just some random thoughts. If this can be done, great! Let's get it approved. Also, have you figured out how to make the guards follow a path rather than free roam?
I did find this tutorial on how to copy/paste kismet from level to level. Not sure if this helps. I was hoping it would work for our case between file sharing.
—JMo
I think we've got the path process down, which is what the main guards in the street will be doing. We just lack the level at the moment. As I stated before, I wouldn't want us to lay down all of these patrols, only to have to pick them up and move them as the buildings keep coming in. Path nodes are physically laid in the level, like player start points.
We already planned on having the statue trigger the main event (which would be the spawning of more hostile, roaming/seeking bots.) I think closing the door shouldn't be too hard to tack on there (granted the statue is far enough away from the door to prevent undesirable glitches.) Bots can spawn and run in from the other room at that rate.
I'm confused about the whole gun thing, in relation to the story and GDD, but as Alan mentions, we can do things with the weapons. Besides approval, we'd have the ask the art team about reskinning a gun. That's yet another texture that will need to be created.
I'm also really glad to hear about your findings. Copying and pasting Kismet will be spectacular! We can work out things like AI behavior externally and assign it to bots in the actual level.
We're overall trying to figure out what we can do to synthesize the different parts of the level at this point. We mainly need to figure out how to handle the production pipeline, especially if we will be restricted to using one file (if merging or importing level elements from other files is not an option.) This was an issue brought up Sunday night. I'm not 100% clear what we're doing yet, but I've asked the Tech Team to start researching our options and see what Unreal can do for us.
I should have at least a bit of info scratched up by tonight, granted my portfolio work (for the 9th quarter submission) doesn't become a mountain instead of a molehill. That's what's holding me back at the moment. I'm otherwise fighting through the whole being sick thing with cold medicine, coffee, and determination.
I also think we should just have the level end when the conditions are met (the Observatory event went off) and the player returns to Takkan's house. We could put a trigger in the doorway. The player doesn't need to continue wandering around after clearing the level, after all.
The reskinning could be done by simply creating a new weapon and changing its properties to something weaker, I'm guessing. I truly dont see a need to add more to the Art Teams schedule.
—JMo
Oh, I see. I thought you meant re-skinning as in re-texturing the model.