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Developer Discussions: Alpha 17


Roland

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17  

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  1. 1. Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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I have been in that place and it is awesome! also try and find Gracie's house with the mutated corn. another fun place.

 

Haven't found that big manor, but I have found Gracie, lol. I did like having to figure out how to get through the place (I hate destroying anything on first time in a place. That way I get to see how they would like a player to progress through the POI.). Most of these dungeons are pretty cool. You figure it out, and go "oh, that's cool how they did that". Then use that knowledge on the next dungeon.

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Fataal do you think you will ever be able to overcome these manipulations of the AI pathing or is just one of those things.

 

well if you doesnt want to cheat the AI, then just dont do it? i think thats the simpliest way to fix AI. like people whining about underground is too safe, just dont go to bedrock

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Not whining about it, just genuinely interested to know if the AI can/will be tweaked to make these type of exploits be defeat-able.

 

There have always been ways to out smart the pathing , I just wondered if Fataal watches or see this sort of thing and goes "oh I can do this to change that" or just has to shrug and go exploits happen.

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Not whining about it, just genuinely interested to know if the AI can/will be tweaked to make these type of exploits be defeat-able.

 

There have always been ways to out smart the pathing , I just wondered if Fataal watches or see this sort of thing and goes "oh I can do this to change that" or just has to shrug and go exploits happen.

 

That exploit, and most others, can be fixed. It's a matter of time, effort, and system resources.

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Haven't found that big manor, but I have found Gracie, lol. I did like having to figure out how to get through the place (I hate destroying anything on first time in a place. That way I get to see how they would like a player to progress through the POI.). Most of these dungeons are pretty cool. You figure it out, and go "oh, that's cool how they did that". Then use that knowledge on the next dungeon.

 

I think there is a Tier3 quest for Gracie, I have not found that out yet as I am still doing Tier 1 stuff. but a quest at a POI will reset the house/place.

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and then the exploiter finds another and another and.... it does not end.. its the challenge of a programmer and an exploiter. :)

 

It depends on how you define exploit. Some people here on the forum think that a funnel is an exploit. If zombies can't get through 3 blocks thick walls of concrete in short time I'm sure someone will say 3 blocks thick walls are an exploit.

 

I believe the AI can be improved far enough that normal players will never encounter anything that they would call an exploit.

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You know, I'm liking we can craft our own worlds like Navezgane. We can even start with a picture and generate a world based on that.

Just need to have a way to tell it to generate the roads, POIs, and biomes for us.

Right now it is find image.

Edit and save image as TGA.

Generate world. (auto from image)

Smooth world (smoothworldall command)

paint roads (manual)

place POIs (manual)

place water (manual)

paint biomes (manual)

 

Need commands to take the smoothed world and auto generate roads, POIs, and water. So it could go swa, genroads, genpois, genwater, genbiomes. :)

 

Guppy did a video about working with the editor to have it generate those files, but it was beyond my comprehension. guessing you already sub to his youtube channel

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Dont think so bud...the one i went through was found in desert biome. Here is a video that has that one and a few others with underground areas. Doing this from phone...hopefully it works.

 

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Fataal do you think you will ever be able to overcome these manipulations of the AI pathing or is just one of those things.

You're way overthinking how smart zombies should be. They are mindless creatures that in any movie or TV show would walk straight into spikes, traps, or just fall off cliffs. Now yes I do agree that this is a game and that should result in some sort of a challenge but as a zombie fan I would like them to remain stupid. Now if and when they add bandits, then that's when you make them smart in avoiding those things. So now you can enjoy the best of both worlds.

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To my thinking bgriffin1217, that's part of the problem their a bit too smart by continuing to go back round and up the ramp, IMO they should do the ramp, fall then instead of re pathing round should be pounding on the spikes and wall below trying to smash up to the player, slowly piling up towards the player, rather than running round in an eternal death loop.

 

Based on previous comments from Fataal and players I wonder what he thought of how easy the AI is now fooled and what if anything was the next step.

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I think if they increased the weight of a node in the path every time a zombie crossed over it without that zombie eventually getting in range to swing at the player, eventually the AI would choose a different path (or switch to "DESTROY...ALL THE BLOCKS!" mode).

 

This is overly simplistic, but one way to do this could be:

 

1) Calculate a path using existing node weights, flagging any required jumping

2) Traverse path, checking distance to the player at each tick

3) If distance at tick x+1 is farther (especially in the vertical plane, indicating a drop) than at tick x, and the zombie never made an attack on a player, increase the node weight of the last non-jumping node in the path

4) Repeat at 1

 

Eventually, the node weight of the block the zombies are jumping from becomes so high that paths using it are not selected.

 

Overly-simplistic, and I don't mean this as a serious "you guys should totally do this because I'm sure you never thought of it" suggestion. I'm just thinking out loud I guess. I did a project with similar issues in grad school and it was my favorite school project eva. Did not end up in that part of the comp sci business unfortunately.

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Thing is you can never ever beat every single exploit. Someone will find something clever and beat any ai.

 

Personally, I think it's fine now, works better than a16 was for sure.

 

I'd rather see more time invested in hordes coming from several directions instead of one, and eliminating some of the wonky behaviour, like kneeling down and repeatedly banging their heads on a railing.

 

While that's hysterical to see the first time, it does look bad after the 50th time.

 

I think there are also still land claim/bedroll spawn issues, and I know there are some really important things faatal has on his plate as well as ai that I'd rather see completed before worrying about people making ai exploits.

 

Faatal could work on AI for another full year, and someone would still find a way to beat the system.... ...and smart players SHOULD be able to win in some fashion.

 

....if you can't win, what's the sense in playing?

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Many of the AI exploits could be alleviated by assigning different AI scripts to different zombie types. The businessman zombie for example, could have a more complex AI pathing while the fat zombie could have a simple b-line path towards target. Mixing it up could be key.

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Based on previous comments from Fataal and players I wonder what he thought of how easy the AI is now fooled and what if anything was the next step.

 

The first theoretical exploit was posted shortly after the system was confirmed to be an A* algorithm, they're pretty predictable.

 

The crux of the matter appears to be that the pathing algorithm is 2D while the world is 3D.

 

Getting A* to path in a 3D environment while maintaining frame-rate is going to be difficult.

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Many of the AI exploits could be alleviated by assigning different AI scripts to different zombie types. The businessman zombie for example, could have a more complex AI pathing while the fat zombie could have a simple b-line path towards target. Mixing it up could be key.

 

I agree with this. Different and/or randomized behaviours would turn exploits into tactics. It would make an "exploit" be an efficient base design, but it would still force the player to account for zombies not following the set path and have to add defences to other parts of the base that might be attacked.

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