Improvments on EntityMoveHelper & Pathfinding

[twoDarkMessiah]

The problem that has bothered me and other people most with the game is the insufficient pathfinding.

As a player, you can use Frames to build yourself onto the roof of a house in seconds, the AI then takes ages to get to the player. The EnityMoveHelper does not find a path which ends in the non-targeted "Destroy Area" AI task. Also, the AI is not able to follow the player over narrow paths over which one would have to jump. 

 

Several functions within the EntityMoveHelper would need to be adapted. For example, zombies should destroy blocks and walls on puropse to build ramps which they can take to get near the player.

 

Is there any work currently being done at all on such topics, or do someone know a ref with more information about it?

 

 

Edited December 7, 2022 by twoDarkMessiah (see edit history)

[Roland]

53 minutes ago, twoDarkMessiah said:

The problem that has bothered me and other people most with the game is the insufficient pathfinding.

As a player, you can use Frames to build yourself onto the roof of a house in seconds, the AI then takes ages to get to the player. The EnityMoveHelper does not find a path which ends in the non-targeted "Destroy Area" AI task. Also, the AI is not able to follow the player over narrow paths over which one would have to jump. 

 

Several functions within the EntityMoveHelper would need to be adapted. For example, zombies should destroy blocks and walls on puropse to build ramps which they can take to get near the player.

 

Is there any work currently being done at all on such topics, or do someone know a ref with more information about it?

 

 

 

The zombies used to have long paths and perfect memory and so behaved a lot more like what you are describing you want. The problem was that with the ability to see such long and complex pathways to the player it was too easy to unnaturally control them. Step on block A and the zombies would follow the path that led to the player. Hop to block B and the zombies would change their path backtracking until they could pick up the new path. Hop back and forth to keep the zombies dancing to your tune and all because of long path knowledge. Another problem with long path knowledge is that once your base had a breach all the zombies from everywhere would go straight to this one place and instead of having zombies surrounding your base and attacking from several different points, they would always go to just one point. This was seen as dissatisfying as well as super easy to exploit. This was basically A17 zombie behavior in the purity of zombies that "act like engineers" and "know better than I do how to get up to where I am." 

 

Over the course of A18 - A20 the pathway distance was shortened and zombies were given variable "tenaciousness" to follow the paths that they could see with some going all the way and others dropping into area destruction mode. There have been other adjustments but they have all been made in the opposite direction you are asking them to go so it is very unlikely that you will get that with zombies.

 

Bandits may be another matter. They should be able to follow long paths, jump up to ladders, walk on narrow ledges, etc that the player character can and so they should provide more of the type of assault on your defenses that you are craving. The behavior of creating ramps and destroying blocks to make a new path to the player also seems like it would be a better fit intelligence-wise for the bandits instead of the zombies.

 

Work is always being done and I'm sure zombie AI will be tweaked again after bandit AI is finalized so that there will seem a clear difference between the two mobs in the perceptions of the players. At the least, it probably won't be hard to copy and past AI code onto zombies from bandits if you want your zombies to be relentless terminating flesh robots of destruction with a hive mind that allows them to intuitively know all the ways to get to your brains.

 

Or you can boot up A17 and try it now.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

I think the chances of them avoiding a certain path and choosing the straight line to the player should be increased some. It's still a bit too easy to bait them. It is much better than A17 though for sure.

 

And they do seem to try and beat stairs into walls and stuff when possible, but some deco blocks and other things appear to break this pretty easily from what I've seen. But if they better about spreading out and taking out foundations more, this wouldn't matter much. They wouldn't have to come up to you, they'd bring you down to them. Lol.