[COOP] Fix for Bots shooting trough foliage.

[Valmont]

Devs, may I ask if the Ai shooting trough smoke fix that blessed us some months ago will be able to make it into the foliage and trees in regular maps sometime in the future?

That would help tremendously in reducing the permanent "suppression" from bots specially on dense forests and Vietnam maps and would help a great deal in COOP, not having to reduce the bot's shooting distance just to have fair matches.

I know that previously it was stated by the devs that they would look into the possibility if it wasn't too resource intensive then they would implement it the same way it works with smoke but more permanently.

Here are videos of the tech in action, pretty amazing if you ask me!

[Michael Z Freeman]

The AI blocking smoke grenade is in PR now ?! LOL, I did not even know about this and I was advocating to bring this into PR and FH . The bottom video is mine.

There's also a way to simulate suppression of bots by enemy fire.

If I remember correctly, with foliage, the fix is basically the same as with the AI vision blocking smoke grenade. However there are a lot of vegetation models. But I think the change could be made by altering each map with a script or just with a python script that alters the models at run time, although it might be too resource intensive to do it every time the map loads..

[Valmont]

The AI blocking smoke grenade is in PR now ?! LOL, I did not even know about this and I was advocating to bring this into PR and FH . The bottom video is mine.

There's also a way to simulate suppression of bots by enemy fire.

If I remember correctly, with foliage, the fix is basically the same as with the AI vision blocking smoke grenade. However there are a lot of vegetation models. But I think the change could be made by altering each map with a script or just with a python script that alters the models at run time, although it might be too resource intensive to do it every time the map loads..

In a optimistic scenario PR's COOP support would be much improved by adding the following:
1- Bots don't shoot trough foliage. (Hopefully the script/Map Modification can be done)
2- Bots can be suppressed just like human players can. (Albeit differently but still!)
3- A % of bots will stay on its furthest taken flag in defensive positions rather than all of them pushing the next flag.
4- Bots will follow their squad leader (human) orders rather than the "high command Ai".

We already have the "tech" for points 1 (Partially implemented by Arab to the smoke grenades).

And Point 2 conceptualized and demonstrated by Michael Z.

Point 3 seems to already be a thing on some COOP servers out there so perhaps it could be done for all COOP maps.

Point 4: That already happens sometimes... Sometimes as a squad leader my bot subordinates do exactly what I order them to do... other times they just do what the "high command Ai" tells them to do. Would be awesome if when when a Human is on a bot squad as a squad leader then their regular Ai strategic command is disabled in favor of player orders. (Just for that squad of course).

Now it is a matter of some of our cool devs like [R-CON]?Fastjack and [R-CON]?Arab to take this to fruition I guess.

Lets pray for it =)

[Fastjack]

1. The foliage thingy:

The only way we know is to add col.meshes to it. When we do this, the server had to calculate many collisions.
I dont know what happens to the performance.

But i know, you will curse and damn the Devs for implemented and yourself for recommending it in following situations:

1. Your handgrenades bouncing back because of hitting leaf or a flower in the poppyfield.
2. Bots walking in forests and have good cover (umbrella shield) and your mortars or 40mm Mk19's have little effect.
3. Firing AT missile and hitting leaf of a bush and killing friendlies or maybe yourself.
4. Vehicle battles in a mixed open/forest area - vehicles or human players would hide into bushes and use it as armor against handheld weapons.
5. ->[INSERT HERE OTHER PROJECTILE COLLISION ACCIDENTS OR EXPLOITS]<-

2. The suppressing thingy:

That's the newest way to keep bots away from straight running into heavy weapon fire from vehicles or few handheld weapons like GL's, machine guns etc.
If you play coop with other humans, firing into the foliage can also supress the bots and they start dodging and stop firing. If you want you can call it areal counter fire.

3. Can be done in scripting aidefaultstrategies or mapstrategies.


4. Tbh. i only looking for human vs. bots improvements and not for AI/SAI and human interactions. That is to SP'ish. You can play the commander and the bots following your orders.

If you have still idling bots and they requesting new orders but always ignoring new orders the agression factor in the strategies could causing it.

[Arab]

The AI blocking smoke grenade is in PR now ?! LOL, I did not even know about this and I was advocating to bring this into PR and FH . The bottom video is mine.

There's also a way to simulate suppression of bots by enemy fire.

If I remember correctly, with foliage, the fix is basically the same as with the AI vision blocking smoke grenade. However there are a lot of vegetation models. But I think the change could be made by altering each map with a script or just with a python script that alters the models at run time, although it might be too resource intensive to do it every time the map loads..

Yep, bot fire suppression has been added for a while now for v1.6 It will work with LMG's and AT rockets only.

The smoke grenade collision mesh doesn't work when fired from vehicles yet. Tried getting it to work with mortars back then but bots still can see through the smoke, though that doesn't mean it doesn't work just means the way it's setup for vehicles needs to be changed, and more experimentation done.
This hasn't been solved as of yet in the BF2 Modding community, same with bot fire suppression not working against vehicle guns.

[Valmont]

First, thank you both Fastjack and Arab for your honest responses!

1. The foliage thingy:

The only way we know is to add col.meshes to it. When we do this, the server had to calculate many collisions.
I dont know what happens to the performance.

But i know, you will curse and damn the Devs for implemented and yourself for recommending it in following situations:

1. Your handgrenades bouncing back because of hitting leaf or a flower in the poppyfield.
2. Bots walking in forests and have good cover (umbrella shield) and your mortars or 40mm Mk19's have little effect.
3. Firing AT missile and hitting leaf of a bush and killing friendlies or maybe yourself.
4. Vehicle battles in a mixed open/forest area - vehicles or human players would hide into bushes and use it as armor against handheld weapons.
5. ->[INSERT HERE OTHER PROJECTILE COLLISION ACCIDENTS OR EXPLOITS]<-

2. The suppressing thingy:

That's the newest way to keep bots away from straight running into heavy weapon fire from vehicles or few handheld weapons like GL's, machine guns etc.
If you play coop with other humans, firing into the foliage can also supress the bots and they start dodging and stop firing. If you want you can call it areal counter fire.

3. Can be done in scripting aidefaultstrategies or mapstrategies.


4. Tbh. i only looking for human vs. bots improvements and not for AI/SAI and human interactions. That is to SP'ish. You can play the commander and the bots following your orders.

If you have still idling bots and they requesting new orders but always ignoring new orders the agression factor in the strategies could causing it.

1) I didn't know that the smoke grenade bots fix created a solid invisible object that had all those drawbacks. I thought bullets, grenades and rockets would still pass though it and only made the bots not see though it (like a glass transparent window that would still allow projectile penetration but made the bots not see though it). That is too bad. Perhaps only the biggest bushes and biggest trees could still justify getting the fix but leaving the rest of the foliage alone.

2) So the suppression thingy could be added for a future PR version? Seems like a good fit for high caliber suppressing weapons!

3) Do you thing we can get a few maps/layers with these improved/scripted aidefaultstrategies or mapstrategies? Would be awesome!

4) Imagine one human controlling a bot squad on one side and the same thing on the other, the coop game suddenly becomes a lot more dynamic and PVP like. I've had such games in PR before but as I said it was probably caused by having modded files that totally disabled the "commander high Ai" so the bots accepted all their human squad leaders commands and it was AWESOME!

[Fastjack]

1) I didn't know that the smoke grenade bots fix created a solid invisible object that had all those drawbacks. I thought bullets, grenades and rockets would still pass though it and only made the bots not see though it.

Why Drawbacks?

The grenades are made to block the bots X-RAY vision and stop them from firing it.
Why it should be important that a missile can pass it or not? No bot will use any weapon on a human target in a smoke cloud because he cannot see any target.
What you all want : That bots cannot see any target but starting blind firing into smoke?

Also i meant the foliage (vegetation) collisions. There would be much more foliage collisions as smoke collisions on maps like sareema, ghosttrain, lashkar, kokan etc.


The only drawbacks will caused by humans and not by bots but that alreayd happens since years on Deployment Server and everyone saying it's a legit tactic to use smoke on his vehicle.

[Rabbit]

Or just add maps that remove the crazy amount of bushes.

[Fastjack]

Exactly, not the tree's are the enemy - they are in the bushes

[Valmont]

Why Drawbacks?

Yeah, I meant these drawbacks for the foliage implementation:

1. The foliage thingy:
But i know, you will curse and damn the Devs for implemented and yourself for recommending it in following situations:

1. Your handgrenades bouncing back because of hitting leaf or a flower in the poppyfield.
2. Bots walking in forests and have good cover (umbrella shield) and your mortars or 40mm Mk19's have little effect.
3. Firing AT missile and hitting leaf of a bush and killing friendlies or maybe yourself.
4. Vehicle battles in a mixed open/forest area - vehicles or human players would hide into bushes and use it as armor against handheld weapons.
5. ->[INSERT HERE OTHER PROJECTILE COLLISION ACCIDENTS OR EXPLOITS]<-

I just mentioned the grenade fix because it is the same technique that would be used for a hypothetical foliage fix... right?

Removing the excessive foliage and bushes on coop maps suggested by Rabbit is also not a bad idea and would have the added benefit of increased performance

[Fastjack]

The main problem with vegetation is that the maps are design for Deployment and not for Coop.
Deployment need cover or hiding options for infantry but bots ignoring visual obstacles like bushes.

It depends on the mappers, how friendly they creates the maps for coop.
For excample some coop vehicles like to drive on roads but many roads are only painted and not created with splines so the ai don't know where the roads are on the map.

[SemlerPDX]

...
I just mentioned the grenade fix because it is the same technique that would be used for a hypothetical foliage fix... right? ...

No offense intended at all, but this was due to you misunderstanding the mechanic behind the grenade fix, right? That it is not as viable to be referred to as already having the "tech" to implement a bot vs. foliage fix. Things on a conceptual level need to jive with those on a technical level, and that's why it's hard to attempt to suggest practical methods for achieving feature requests coming in from the outside.

So awesome that you are not incredulous as some players have been in the past when suggesting things. The feedback is no doubt invaluable, and input on what players would like, but actually getting into the nitty-gritty of it would require us to be on the same level as those like FastJack, Arab, etc. with regards to understanding the technical matters at hand.

Only then could we hope to understand the digital engineering problems at hand and how to work within the language of this engine to implement concepts.

The idea of an invisible solid object attached to a cloud of smoke as a means to achieve the concept of "bot's can't see through smoke" was not suggested by a person with zero knowledge of the technical side of things, it was from the mind of someone who looked at what IS happening with the objects and how collision/bounding boxes work (at least in this game) and worked directly with the code to make it a reality. And admittedly has much work to do to make it consistent across all ways a smoke canister can be fired (mortar/vehicle).


Points that FastJack made are rather important, Happy Birthday FastJack!!! and they show how any idea will have it's limits, and must be carefully evaluated for potential exploits or unintentional problems.

When working to make something as time-tested cool as PR better, first you must make sure you don't make it any worse. When it comes to COOP, that is a very fine balance, just as it is in Deployment.

[Valmont]

Happy birthday FastJack! I hope you are having a good time surrounded by your loved ones...

Also I completely agree with you SemlerPDX and again please forgive any mistakes I make due to my lack of inside knowledge of the workarounds and the engine and PR itself.

I am also a modder myself so I understand that sacrifices must be made and that balance and stability are always top priorities for any team.

BF2 and PR's community have gone a long way since its humble beginnings and no matter which new COOP features we might get in the future what has been done and added to PR already represents an astounding achievement and far more than anyone would have expected just a few years ago.

I cannot praise this team and whole PR/BF2 community enough really. The only words that I can come up with is just unrepeatable!

Can't wait for our dev's cleaver ways of improving COOP gameplay in the future!

[Fastjack]

Happy birthday FastJack! I hope you are having a good time surrounded by your loved ones...

Surrounded?? SIEGED !!!! But Thank you Sebastian.

Believe me, there are much space for improvements.

The biggest thing that MUST be overhauled are the temperature values and StrategicStrength values of the ai.

That's the base before adding mapstrategies.
There exist some old 1942 ai codes and working in BF2 ai.

About Supression effect - Credits also for you, we all dont really listened to you 2 years ago
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/showth ... p?t=146046

Idea #1: Label the bullets on coop as a vehicle/grenade making the bots believe bullets are vehicles/grenades so when you shoot at the bots they will run away just like they do when a vehicle is about to hit them or grenade is about to explode.

Why you not directly said add isThrown 1 and Explosionradius to the ai.template?

I think i missunderstood or completly missed your Idea #1. Damn, 2 years gone without it.

[Valmont]

Surrounded?? SIEGED !!!! But Thank you Sebastian.

Believe me, there are much space for improvements.

The biggest thing that MUST be overhauled are the temperature values and StrategicStrength values of the ai.

That's the base before adding mapstrategies.
There exist some old 1942 ai codes and working in BF2 ai.

About Supression effect - Credits also for you, we all dont really listened to you 2 years ago
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/showth ... p?t=146046

Why you not directly said add isThrown 1 and Explosionradius to the ai.template?

I think i missunderstood or completly missed your Idea #1. Damn, 2 years gone without it.

Even I forgot about that suggestion years ago! Good find! I think I was smarter back then!

About isThrown 1 and Explosionradius to the ai.template
Hey, I don't speak your language just yet, but I am learning!

Can't wait to experience the fixed temperature values and StrategicStrength values and after that the more realistic mapstrategies...

Perhaps PR's coop will be the envy of the industry in all these amazing features get implemented!

[Arab]

One solution can be loading a custom staticobject.con like staticobject_sp.con with the respective vegetation like bushes disabled.

A simple solution would be finding and replacing any word with bushes with rem to disable them, but then would need to be tested as it would affect the map visually.

Another solution would be to test if adding an aiTemplate to each vegetation with aiTemplate.addType ITVegetation or aiTemplate.addType ITObstructedView would work seeing as they are BF1942 commands. No guarantees that they will work, but an idea to try:
http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/ ... tants.html

[Fastjack]

That can be easier done by only adding NotinAI in the main staticobjects.con to some bushes.
Like the Bug on Ramiel by removing one wall will cause that all other GROUPED walls also dissapear. That was my fault. I wasn't aware about that fact.

My apologies.

On the other side this method is nice if you want to replace some walls with the destroyed versions "gaps" to get some unnavmeshable areas navmeshed for coop and also not getting hard lightmap issues. Muttrah have some spots where you can do it.

Adding NotinAI to the object in the main staticobjects.con and adding a secondary staticobjects.con for coop layers to replace the removed object.


The really main problem with firing through foliage is that the bots are so accurate with their weapons because of the Terminator ai deviations. Increasing the botskill have impact of those settings. Our server runs with a botskill of over 0.9. Deviations settings are halfed for bots and when i remember correctly, the bots IGNORING any deviation value (deactivated) on botskill 1.0.

PR's ironsight ai is better as scoped ai. Explains the botsbehaviour of turning around in 0.01 milisecs and teleporting you to the blackscreen with non-scoped weapons.

@Arab
Another improvement would be to remove the field dressing from botkits or remove the delaytoUse from the field dressings. Better would be to remove it. It would look weird in a firefight when 8 bots drop their bandage to heal a friendly unit.

[Arab]

That can be easier done by only adding NotinAI in the main staticobjects.con to some bushes.
Like the Bug on Ramiel by removing one wall will cause that all other GROUPED walls also dissapear. That was my fault. I wasn't aware about that fact.

My apologies.

On the other side this method is nice if you want to replace some walls with the destroyed versions "gaps" to get some unnavmeshable areas navmeshed for coop and also not getting hard lightmap issues. Muttrah have some spots where you can do it.

Adding NotinAI to the object in the main staticobjects.con and adding a secondary staticobjects.con for coop layers to replace the removed object.


The really main problem with firing through foliage is that the bots are so accurate with their weapons because of the Terminator ai deviations. Increasing the botskill have impact of those settings. Our server runs with a botskill of over 0.9. Deviations settings are halfed for bots and when i remember correctly, the bots IGNORING any deviation value (deactivated) on botskill 1.0.

PR's ironsight ai is better as scoped ai. Explains the botsbehaviour of turning around in 0.01 milisecs and teleporting you to the blackscreen with non-scoped weapons.

@Arab
Another improvement would be to remove the field dressing from botkits or remove the delaytoUse from the field dressings. Better would be to remove it. It would look weird in a firefight when 8 bots drop their bandage to heal a friendly unit.

Great Yeah I remember the notInAI line now.
Only thing to do is make a copy of the lines considering it may be replaced by the BF2Editor or by mistake and put it in a .txt/.inc etc file as a reference (Both in the level and outside of the level)

Can't remove field dressing because it will remove it for normal players too.
Bots don't use it as the medikit_ai assigned to it has been commented out.
They can't seem to drop a field dressing on their feet due to limitations (They might be able to do it considering mines can be dropped with limitations, but I haven't seen anything working so far), but they can be coded to use the medikit_sp self-heal code, but limited to only work once and then it can't be used (25 HP - No regeneration but can be rearmed with ammo)

This'll mean all players in coop will be able to self-heal without dropping a field dressing more akin to Squad.
Not worth the inconsistency imo.

For bots being stationary @Valmont, I have an experimental vehicle code that allows bots to stay stationary using the stand LCVP animation from WW2 Beta and with the prevented exit vBF2 code, allows you to setup ambushes and allow mappers to spawn AI-only spawns in capture points. No vehicle model is used, and the bot can do a 360 around although the legs don't move when rotation left and right.

It's experimental as in there's technically 2 seats which is required otherwise the game crashes. I think I know the issue and i'll work on it again later.
Currently focusing on v1.6.

[Fastjack]

@Arab:

Add duck from the bipod code.

In my tests with your chair and stand pco i noticed that sometimes a 2nd bot will spawn in because i used a mapper placed spawnpoint. Adding a ai-only spawnpoint to the object itself would be the best i think.

There exist a codeline (objectTemplate.disableSpawnPointsOnEnter bool).
Can this codeline disable the added ai-spawnpoint doesn't matter if 1 or more pco's are empty? I noticed this codeline first few days ago (i'm totaly blind) and the new pc isn't ready yet for the Editor.

Other Question is would a bot spawn in if the object isn't close to the navmesh?? I never saw bots spawning on me when i'm flying a transhelo. Would it be enough when the entry point is close to the navmesh??

Or, and i got this idea by writing this post, for what stands ITUnmanned???
Could help this to tell the bot it's an unmanned pco and he will not use it?

I'm thinking, i wipe the whole OS from the new one (totally unhappy/ PR runs fine, Squad runs like a charm never expected BUT my LOL … so laggy)

Or i use my old shitty one for modding tasks.

[Arab]

@Arab:

Add duck from the bipod code.

In my tests with your chair and stand pco i noticed that sometimes a 2nd bot will spawn in because i used a mapper placed spawnpoint. Adding a ai-only spawnpoint to the object itself would be the best i think.

There exist a codeline (objectTemplate.disableSpawnPointsOnEnter bool).
Can this codeline disable the added ai-spawnpoint doesn't matter if 1 or more pco's are empty? I noticed this codeline first few days ago (i'm totaly blind) and the new pc isn't ready yet for the Editor.

Other Question is would a bot spawn in if the object isn't close to the navmesh?? I never saw bots spawning on me when i'm flying a transhelo. Would it be enough when the entry point is close to the navmesh??

Or, and i got this idea by writing this post, for what stands ITUnmanned???
Could help this to tell the bot it's an unmanned pco and he will not use it?

I'm thinking, i wipe the whole OS from the new one (totally unhappy/ PR runs fine, Squad runs like a charm never expected BUT my LOL … so laggy)

Or i use my old shitty one for modding tasks.

Ducking while on the chair would be funny

For objectTemplate.disableSpawnPointsOnEnter, I assume that if it's occupied in any seat, it will disable the spawnpoint.
http://bfmods.com/mdt/scripting/ObjectT ... Enter.html

"0 = normal spawn point behavior, people can still spawn there even when the vehicle occupied.

1 = on, the spawn point is disabled when someone gets into the vehicle. This is used on the submarines so that people don't spawn end up swimming on the surface in the middle of nowhere and and having to suicide."

Not clue about what can make bots likely to spawn in a seat. I guess increase the temperature of the vehicle seat ai? Maybe related to temperature level of CP if that exists?

ITUnmanned hasn't been tested. These afaik are BF1942 codes but if they exist in the same file as where the strings are, it may or may not work depending if the hardcoded logic is the same in Refractor 2.

ITNoTemperature may work. I've discovered that ObjectTemplate.notUsedByAI 1 doesn't work as intended, or may work in a different way, but an AiTemplate with ITNoTemperature makes players ignore the vehicle. I've updated the command post AI with this because it was engineered back when Commander Tent PCO was setup as a seat. Also removed ITBiological.

Tested that out by assigning the deployables_command_post_ai on a test PCO and it crashed after selecting deploy - because it's not setup the same way as the commander seat even though there is 0 temperature, bots still entered.

Assigning the test PCO with a custom AI with ITNoTemperature and IT didn't cause a crash when pressing deploy.

Good resource about IT types (BF1942 but may still work in BF2):
https://classic-battlefield-modding.fan ... field_1942

Also another good read by DICE Tobias Karlsson (BF1942, BF2 Lead AI Programmer) on BF AI:
http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/ ... topic=6624