🔒 Locked

Help Needed!

Started by enygmyx Mar 23, 2003 at 5:25 PM 6 replies 650+ views

Original Post

Mar 23, 2003 at 5:25 PM

hi all, i am working on a 3d FPS engine ..... me and my team has almost finished work on rendering and sound components(the engine uses .bsp maps and loads .md2 models, the world is static)...... and now i am working on the AI module ....... what i want to know is what is the method/technique used by QuakeII/Half life or other popular FPS games for pathfinding ...... i now that quakeIII uses the AAS(area Awareness System), abt which there is very little info avilable and from wateva was available i have come to know that it is quite complex so it is not an option ....... i know that in UT the person making the map has to manually place the waypoints and then the engine makes paths for the bots ........ but what is the algo used(A* or sumthin like that??? ) used for generating paths .... I understand the A* algo and i have done quite some beginner level search ........ but still i have quite a few questions for example. wat other methods are available for pathfinding other than methods in which the person amking the map has to manually place the waypoints if i do use a method which involves placing waypoints..... is there a method for automatic waypoint generation. once the waypoints are generated(automatic or manually)wat is the preferable method to generate paths. if A* is used for pathfinding, is placing waypoints the only solution(i am not considering using tiles or other things of that sort) is it better to precalculate the paths or otherwise? and some other things but i guess that this much is enuf for this post. i hope that i have expressed myself clearly any help that is anyway realted to AI in a 3d FPS engine will be greatly appreciated. enygmyx.

Melraidin

Mar 23, 2003 at 5:51 PM

I''m sorry, normally I wouldn''t bother to point out bad spelling, grammar, and formatting. There''s always the possibility that english isn''t someone''s first language.

But in this case, when there''s actually the line:

"i hope that i have expressed myself clearly"

I really have to ask you to try again. Take your text to a word processor, make an effort with the spelling and grammar checkers, then work on formatting. Afterwards please post again.

Ready4Dis

Mar 23, 2003 at 6:04 PM

quote:
Original post by Melraidin
I''m sorry, normally I wouldn''t bother to point out bad spelling, grammar, and formatting. There''s always the possibility that english isn''t someone''s first language.

But in this case, when there''s actually the line:

"i hope that i have expressed myself clearly"

I really have to ask you to try again. Take your text to a word processor, make an effort with the spelling and grammar checkers, then work on formatting. Afterwards please post again.

I beleive what he meant by that sentence, is that he expressed what he was trying to achieve, and how he was thinking about it, in a way in which people could understand, not that his English was 100% correct with no typing errors. I normally don''t respond to people with useless posts, and normally don''t make useless posts that don''t contribute to the original question, but I felt the need to state my opinion on this one. If you noticed, nobodies perfect, take your post for example, I see at LEAST 2 or 3 errors in it, and I merely skimmed through it. Before coming down on somebody about something, make sure your own texts are properly formatted.

Expressing oneself clearly is NOT the same as good grammer. You can have the best grammer in the world and still not get your point across, or you can have the worst grammer, tons of mistakes, and still get your point across clearly. I beleive you are reading into his sentence incorrectly, and wish that you refrain from complaining about others posts, especially when you clearly do not understand the meanings of such simple sentences!

enygmyx

Mar 23, 2003 at 7:19 PM

Thanx Ready4Dis ............. but my questions still remain unanswered.

U4EA

Mar 23, 2003 at 7:20 PM

I would also like to say that nitpicking people''s posts for grammar/spelling mistakes is trolling of the lowest form. The purpose of language is communication, and if you understand what the other person is trying to say .. language has served its purpose.

English just happens to be my fourth language, and I believe I understood the point enygmyx was trying to put forward and what he hoped we could help him out with.

Sorry enygmyx I can''t actually help you out with your problem because of my limited knowledge in the field .. but if you can wait another 3 - 4 months, I''m currently taking a bachelor level course in AI and may be able to help you out

Cheers Ready4Dis

Beer Hunter

Mar 23, 2003 at 7:28 PM

quote:
Original post by U4EA
...if you understand what the other person is trying to say .. language has served its purpose.

...and if you can quickly understand what the other person is trying to say, it''s even better.

enygmyx

Mar 23, 2003 at 8:11 PM

i wud greatly appreciate if the replies to my post wud contain the answers to my questions..............

Extrarius

Mar 23, 2003 at 8:56 PM

There is actually quite a lot of information about the Quake 3 AI system. I''ve seen papers that detail the entire workings of the AI from the generation of areas to the bot finding out which switch opens the door it needs to use.
The Quake 3 Arena Bot (118 pages) - http://www.idsoftware.com/home/jan/q3abotai/Q3ABotAI_15.pdf

I haven''t seen any information about the AI included with other games, but there are a lot of resources about creating custom AI for Half-Life. One such site is Botman''s Bots - http://planethalflife.com/botman/. He hasn''t posted any news for a while, but the site is still full of great information and the forums are somewhat active. Several people creating custom bots (using many different approaches) post there and would be willing to answer any questions you might have.

I would also recomend you check out the book AI Game Programming Wisdom(ISBN: 1584500778). It has a lot of information applicable to FPS-style games, especially if you want your bots to use tactical information.

For a list of links about tactical AI, you can check out William van der Sterren''s great site, http://www.cgf-ai.com. On the Products page, he has posted many papers and presentations he has given, and the Links section is full of sites about related work and awesome resources.

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.