[Next.. Ambient NPC population]

Couple of vids you might like (both using recast): -

 

My link

 

and

 

http://digestingduck.blogspot.com/2010/08/some-more-movement-progress.html

[First dev video from airport-simulator!]

Nice.

 

Tell us more...

 

How is the transparent GUI done?

 

How are the buildings layout stored? As a grid?

[OOP's I did it again ....]

Just seen the vid with sound on. CLASSIC!

 

PS

 

Just need to swap the spiders out for women in underwear.

[OOP's I did it again ....]

@Franck : Thanks .. yes Recast integration would be good

 

 

I guess if you've seen all my previous posts you'd not be shocked if I agreed strongly with this one.

 

If recast (or any other navmesh/pathfinding) was integrated in everyone would have a really big head start on doing AI. We would then we would start seeing real graphics with moving pictures, instead of lots of nice oil paintings.

 

It's a shame that I'm not a blitz/C++/Lua integration wiz else I'd do it tomorrow. It just needs the right person to find the time and it could be done.

 

Trouble is it's not sexy like all the other graphical fluff...

[OOP's I did it again ....]

Thanks for the explanation. It seems to work really well.

 

Why are you doing blitz and c++?

[OOP's I did it again ....]

Looks really good to me, better than my boring vids!

 

Could you explain a little how things are working and what's going on?

[SSAO, SSDO or NO...]

I think in UDK you could define render/post effect render volumes. ie

You'd define a volume/area where a certain type of PP effect would be implemented. So for your example you'd have an area for SSDO on the outside area of your level and SSAO on the inside bit of your level.

 

I suspect you could do this now with a bit of interaction with the framework and placing markers in the editor.

 

Just an idea...

[Screen-space directional occlusion]

The 50/50 split said it all for me. It really shows the difference.

Nice work.

Thanks Josh.

[Dynamic AI Paths]

I believe a few games use similiar to what you are doing ie character controller points of accessibility/expansion. But they do it offline to build a navmesh from the results.

 

Good example with FO3 and Unreal, however I beleive FO3 was a semi-auto/semi hand drawn navmesh. Unreal/UDK has now abounded waypoint graphs for nav meshes.

 

Check out:-

http://www.ai-blog.net/archives/000152.html

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Chris

[Dynamic AI Paths]

I've tried doing this in the past but I failed. The problems I encounted is: -

 

1) Performance over a long distance

2) Complicated enviroment with dead ends - you'll search down a dead end and have to come back

3) Complicated enviroments with stairs door etc.

 

You said :-

 

Some high-budget games use static node path meshes, which must be a final step in production for each map. I wanted a different approach that didn't require a web of objects hand placed into the world.

 

Hand placing is an old fashioned approach which no current games do.

 

.... Just trying to save you going down blind alleys.

[Next up...]

One thought on scene graph,

 

it would be nice to be able to do

 

ForEachEntityAABB( entityType, AABB... )

 

So you could give AI models or pivot etc a certain entity type and get there list efficiently (as per your previous post about Stalker AI)

[Next up...]

Hi Josh,

 

check out the unity locomotion add on: -

 

 

All the code is downloadable as a zip from the unity web site.

[Moving without foot sliding]

Have you got a link to the unity location system description?

 

I've seen your video - very nice. I did have one question though, why is the physics mesh so out of place relative to the visible mesh?

 

I've come to the conclusion that the physics mesh is next to useless on animation models, it would be better to create some sort of bounding physics volume.

[Moving without foot sliding]

Now I just have to make it account for rotation so instead of rotating your model, you could play X number of frames of a rotation animation to get it to the rotation you would like (mostly useful for smoothly turning >=90 degrees). I should also try pre-calculating and caching the x/z and rotation deltas per frame as I don't know how much overhead is involved with doing two calls to Animate each update per object. Moving it to C/C++ instead of Lua would help a little I'm sure.

 

I've done this before, one thing to look out for is the animation may rotate but you model isn't. This means at the end of the rotation anim you have to rotate the model the correct amount to match the animation otherwise the model will "snap" back the rotation.

[Moving without foot sliding]

Thanks for the comments, you anim system sounds better than mine.

 

 

Anyways I'm really looking forward to what you come up w/ next (especially in the recast integration area). Think I'll start working on IK foot placement for smooth stair/hill climbing next.

 

I'd be interested in how you do this and how this works out, I get a feeling it something that needs to be tackled if you don't want "floating" NPCs. Check out:-

 

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingSkeletalControllers.html

[Week 2]

From the process of doing more high level stuff and demos you might find you want to add features to facilitate what you’re doing.