Strike at Pegville, help needed Options

[Bensta]

Hey peeps,

I was hopeing there is some helpfull person that could maybe take a look at adding sp to my map for pirates. I'm no expert at adding sp, but i can tell it's going to be tricky as the inf mesh is coming out a complete mess. We're hopeing to get next release (2.5) out soon, and i can see this map delaying it if its left for me to try and sort it out and it would be a shame for it to not have sp added.


heres a few pics of the map to see layout.. http://bfeditor.org/forums/index.php?showt...amp;#entry97034


Cheers,
Bensta

Edit, sorry if i posted in wrong place, guess it should of been in wip... and can't belive this is my first post here

This post has been edited by Bensta: Mar 20 2010, 07:32 AM

[clivewil]

hello Bensta, i think i still have Pirates set up on my navmesh PC from last time, so i'll give it a go.

[Bensta]

You will be my hero if you can i'll have to get the latest patch to you though, and ofcourse the map, i'll upload and send you a link thanks

[sniper77shot]

Looks like a cool map.

[MasterChiefRulZ]

Looks VERY cool. Lots of great atmospherics and custom cool-i-osity.

i think i still have Pirates set up on my navmesh PC from last time, so i'll give it a go.

Y'know, I never downloaded the Pirates mod. How much bot support does it have?

[PiratePlunder]

In the current release, Yarrr 2.1 we have about 8 (cant remember exactly right now) maps with single player. Some notable highlights include Oh me hearties beach, Frylar and Blackbeards Atol.

We've also got a new release coming soon which includes a few more single player maps including Harbor (a pirate remake of the old COD1 map) and this map - Strike at Pegville. We're also hoping to have bot support for an air map we have but the terrain is seemingly making the bots crash a lot.


Most of these maps were navmeshed by the guys here so many thanks to them. I would say that its definitely worth a download (but then I would say that) as its certainly very different from vBF2 and most other mods. We're also currently working with the community to improve the game balance so any comments/suggestions would be taken on board.

[clivewil]

after some weird navmesh-generation quirks i now have a working navmesh for this map. the two narrow rope bridges have been navmeshed but on odd occasions a bot will fall through the gaps so a workaround needs to be found for this. (i'm still looking at solutions, and i may have some suggestions)

in my opinion those bridges are a must-have; if bots only use the middle bridge then gameplay will suffer as a result.



i've also had a couple of bots spawn in the coffins and get stuck; this doesn't surprise me much as i spawned there a few times and got stuck myself. maybe lower the lip of the collision mesh a little or something?

testing for me is difficult because i'm getting a random weapon-related error - the ol' "setInput out of range: PINone" error, and i CTD every time i try to use the deployed cannon so i guess that might be the culprit. i haven't looked far into it right now, i'll leave the debugging up to you gents and i'll just concentrate on the navmesh side of things

[lifeoftheparty21...]

will fall through the gaps

thats not just a bot issue, those gaps are extremely annoying in MP aswell..

[PiratePlunder]

Ah i guess this is another example of the team not having an SP focused dev - when we made that bridge I can assure you that the SP implications didnt once get a thought. So I assume that although the bots use the nav mesh to work out where they go they are still in need of a soldier col to stand on. I can think of two possible solutions:

1 We re-export the bridge with a continuous soldier col, that overcomes the problems in SP but does take out the falling from bridge for players (It was an intentional thing, although perhaps not a good thing?)

2 We re-export the bridge with a continuous soldier col, but not all the way across the width of the bridge. i.e. force the bots to walk at the edges of the bridge with the nav mesh, but leave holes in the centre for players to fall through.

Any other ideas clivewil? Either of those options is a simple fix - just have to dig out the max file.

That field gun issue - i don't think we ever set it up for SP (can't remember if it was the deploying handweapon or the cannon itself that we never got to work so we just don't use that kit in SP maps - i think.

[Bensta]

Thats awesome Clive, As long as you keep moving you don't fall through the bridge but yea i can see it causeing problems for the bots. For the coffins i was going to put and invisable floor just above the coffins, so you stand on, and not in, which should fix that.

[Dnamro]

I have a work around for the bridge with holes problem with bots. If you can create an sp version of the bridge with a continous collision mesh as suggested, you can remove the bridge from the staticobjects and then customize at the gamemode level by adding the specific bridge into the gpo for each game mode. This allows you to use the more challenging bridge in mp and a bot friendly bridge in coop and sp modes.

[clivewil]

If you can create an sp version of the bridge

i found that by moving just 2 combat area coords outwards by 2m i can create a legitimate walkable path from the water to land, which imo would be the better solution - right now i'm still using the old un-watered navmesh, and had a situation in a 1 on 1 game where i was in the water and the bot was on the bridge, spinning because he couldn't get to where i was. if there's a path to the water he will walk towards that, but might probably kill me before he needs to use it - me being unarmed and slow while swimming

Bensta, the two CA points i moved are on the corner of that building that's on a 45 degree angle, so you can walk around that without leaving the CA - as soon as i get a bit more work done on the mesh i'll send you a draft copy of the navmesh/GPO to test with.



coffins now work ok. water now gens as a water material. the map is very bloody dark in spots...

the big building (warehouse) needs meshing inside to alow any kind of challenge - right now bots can only get to the very edge of the CP radius, so humans can sit inside or upstairs and pick them off with impunity. i'll see what i can do, but that is time consuming stuff to do so it might not be included in the test draft i send you

the church CP is un-cappable. this means that bots will never cross the bridges from south to north because the ai traffic is only one way. perhaps you might consider making it cappable but with a very long cap time, so traffic can flow both ways

Plunder, if you're reading this, did you guys change the max angle a soldier can walk (or grip or anything that allows for a steeper climb), or can they only walk the same steepness as a normal BF2 soldier? i need to use the same angle for my navmesh settings

[Bensta]

Ah cool yea i know the bit of combat area you moved, cool that works.

Yea was a little worried of the dark areas, thought it was just my monitor, although lightsettings have changed since your version, but i'll look into it

Yea thats cool with the warehouse, thought that bit would be a pain.

Guess i'd have to test it for the church flag, idea was bots don't come over the bridge, but might be too easy if they don't..?

Think the max slope is set to 30 as it says in ai/aipathfinding.ai, although that sounds alittle low to me..? Map side (mapname/AI/ai.ai) we use 37

This post has been edited by Bensta: Mar 26 2010, 04:26 AM

[PiratePlunder]

Wouldn't have thought that we'd have changed anything. As bensta says, looking at the ai pathfinding file it says maxslope is 30, the same as vBF2. If there's any reason to change that then we can, although from what you are saying it may mess up the former AI navmeshing (or is that only if we were to lower it?)

As you can make the church cp capable in SP and leave uncapable in MP then if it improves the SP it seems a sensible thing to do.

[clivewil]

or is that only if we were to lower it?

it will trim off any angle above whatever i set it to (in ai.ai for the map itself, which overrides the aiPathfinding one) - it's on 38 at the moment

the reason i asked is because it looked like i was walking up a higher slope than was possible in BF2. might have just been an illusion though...