ai patrols in missions (discussion)

[.pablo.]

the unrealistic nature of ai patrols in missions have always bothered me, but i finally wrote down my thoughts when i was beta testing general barron's mission "realistic combat patrol."  the problem, as i saw it, was twofold:

firstly, it looked very unrealistic seeing ai patrols running everywhere in "aware" mode; if you watch any war movie, then you know that soldiers only run when they have made contact with the enemy, and not before.  when on patrols, soldiers walk around.  i thought that it was better to have the ai soldiers walking in "safe" mode, although general barron brought up the point that "no army would ever go on a patrol with their guns on their backs."

my second point had to do with the realism of the ai's reaction time; it's way too fast.  as i said to general barron in one of my posts:

idk about you, but i have often seen ai running full speed perpendicular to my position stop on a dime, turn towards me and aim RIGHT AT ME, fire off a 3-round burst, and kill me from ~150-200 meters, all within a few seconds.  call me crazy, but i think having the ai react a little slower might be both more realistic (being ambushed causes a state of confusion in real people, causing them to react more slowly, but not with ai) and less aggravating.

the fact is that if you have ai patrols running in "aware" mode, it is impossible to determine whether or not they have seen the enemy, because their default behavior is that they have.  that is what "aware" means, it means you are aware that their are enemy soldiers nearby, when in real wars most patrols have no idea that enemies are near until they actually see something suspicious or are attacked outright.

so why am i bringing all of this up?  well, since i had that discussion with general barron in september, i hadn't really thought about the problem that much, until i saw what sanctuary was doing over in the BIS forums.  basically, he made an anim pack that was designed to be as realistic as possible; what made his attempt different, though, was that he was constantly releasing updates with new fixes and ideas.  what this meant was, if you saw something in his pack that you thought could be better, you could suggest it to him.  so i did, and long story short, he was able to get the "patrol" anims that i had wanted into the game.

thus, both my gripes and general barron's gripes were solved in a single addon.  i edited his mission to use ai in "safe" mode, put them in "column" formation as opposed to the default formation, and it looked fantastic.

so, i am writing this to encourage mission makers to experiment with this new development, so that hopefully the realism of ofp missions can continue to increase.  it would be a shame to have these patrol anims out, and still see ai patrols running around in the middle of nowhere as if they are in a hurry somewhere.



here are the links to the forum posts i referenced:

the "realistic combat patrol" beta discussion (middle of the page):
http://www.ofpec.com/yabbse/index.php?board=23;action=display;threadid=15920;start=45

the mission, if you want to play it (requires sebnam2):
http://www.ofpec.com/missions_depot/index.php?ID=901

the BIS forum thread asking sanctuary to make the patrol anims (bottom of the page):
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?s=16c336e85fed1faa542dab270b986114;act=ST;f=4;t=45107;st=15

pictures of the new anims in gen. barron's mission (bottom of the page):
http://www.flashpoint1985.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard311/ikonboard.cgi?s=16c336e85fed1faa542dab270b986114;act=ST;f=54;t=43428;st=195

sanctuary's patrol anims:
http://ofp.gamezone.cz/index.php?showthis=8004

[General Barron]

Hmm... kinda funny how you are talking about talking with me, and then I'm the first one to reply to your post.   Anyway, this is a good discussion to have.

I'm sure I mentioned this to you during beta testing, but I do agree that having patrols in "aware mode" is pretty unrealistic. No army in the world would RUN a 5+ mile patrol (well, if they could, it would be rather impressive). But on the other hand, as you quoted, I think it is even less realistic to have them patrol with their weapons on their backs. If it comes down to a choice between them running or them walking with their weapons on their back, then I would have to choose the former, without hesitation. I wish other mission makers would do the same, but I can understand why they wouldn't.

So, until recently, I've had to just settle with the "lesser of two evils". However, in the last 4 months or so I've learned a heck of a lot about configuring and creating animations. One thing I'm figuring out is how to essentially connect keystrokes with animations; for example, how does OFP know what animation to play when you are standing with a rifle and press the "forward" key? It's all in the animation's config, which means one can add similar animations, or edit the current ones (I've made reloading while moving, for example).

Bringing it back to this discussion, in the last few weeks have been planning/working on an expansion of the hand signals addon I made for my aforementioned mission. I'm expanding it to include all sorts of military scripts and animations. One of the two main things I wanted to include was exactly what you are talking about: a good patrol animation, at walking speed, but with the weapon at the ready. I tried to make the animations, it didn't look too good, and I put it aside to work on other things. Low and behold, a couple weeks later, Sanctuary releases an outstanding set of animations that are exactly what I was trying to create.

There is only one problem, however: his is not an addon that you MUST have in order to play a mission made with it. Instead, it is a replacement of the normal BIS weapon on back anims, that you simply apply to your own computer. The only thing a mission maker can do is put his units in "safe" mode, and then hope that the person playing the mission uses Sanctuary's animation replacement pack. Basically, there is no way a mission maker can insure these anims are used in his mission. What would be better is if the mission required an addon that included those patrol animations, properly configured.

That brings it back to exactly what I had hoped to do with my addon-in-progress. Sanctuary just doesn't know how to configure his animations to work like this. Not many people do, I guess, or else I wouldn't have had to figure all this crap out by myself. So my plan is to ask Sanctuary if I can configure his anims to release with my addon, instead of having to create a much shoddier version myself, as I was doing before.

I hope to create an addon that includes things that should be used in almost every mission. The patrol anims are one of the main reasons why that would be the case. The other long-overdue thing I'm working on is a proper foxhole. While unrealistic patrols are my main gripe about the offense, unrealistic fighting positions are my main gripe in the defense. I've included an example of what this proper fighting position should look like (although it is still early in development).


Anyway, I'm not trying to hijack your thread and make it all about me or anything. But I believe you and I share common gripes, which should be the gripes of any realism-minded mission editor out there. The problem is, addonmakers don't seem to care about fixing these "mundane" issues; they would rather focus on making the 1,000,000th new M4, or the flashiest new helo. I guess it is up to mission makers to actually create the fundamental improvements that OFP lacks but sorely needs. Maybe you can help pimp my addon when it comes out.

[nominesine]

The problem is, addonmakers don't seem to care about fixing these "mundane" issues; they would rather focus on making the 1,000,000th new M4, or the flashiest new helo. I guess it is up to mission makers to actually create the fundamental improvements that OFP lacks but sorely needs.

I agree completely. Fixing the bugs and improving average gameplay is to me much more interesting than adding single units and special effects with very little use.

[ACF]

The "NORMAL" speed of units in "AWARE" does seem a little too fast, but a bigger gripe is that "AWARE" units make no attempt to kneel or go prone when stationary. Considering that it's the default stance for your average, editor-placed loon, it's a little annoying. My brain can accept "SAFE" patrols with slung rifles (it is, at least, consistent with the definition), but it's not as forgiving of a landscape full of loons standing at the ready in the for the lack of anything better to do.

So let's give them something to do: for WP'd groups, you can work round it to some extent by forcing the speed to "LIMITED" and by dropping in COMBAT WPs at patrol halts but, yes, more work than you need. The snag comes where you cede control, with a GUARD WP for example, you're left with the choice between guard units moving tactically but tediously or standing around like lemons between swift moves. Need to resurrect my old table of behaviours (with a little 'b') against Behaviours, SpeedModes and UnitPosses, I think.

Separating the function and the fashion again, the root problem is the "AWARE" mode is a messy compromise: speed of movement is closer to "COMBAT" while UnitPos behaviour is more akin to "SAFE". If "AWARE" units could be slowed down and got down at the config level, it would work much better IMHO. Replacement anims could remain a matter of personal taste rather than necessity.

I'm with the mundane minority in general, and with the General on the foxholes issue.  It is ball-aching to think that there must be people out there who could probably do them in their sleep if they wanted to; thanks to him for having the balls to acquire yet more skills and have a go!

[Sanctuary]

So, until recently, I've had to just settle with the "lesser of two evils". However, in the last 4 months or so I've learned a heck of a lot about configuring and creating animations. One thing I'm figuring out is how to essentially connect keystrokes with animations; for example, how does OFP know what animation to play when you are standing with a rifle and press the "forward" key? It's all in the animation's config, which means one can add similar animations, or edit the current ones (I've made reloading while moving, for example).

[..]

There is only one problem, however: his is not an addon that you MUST have in order to play a mission made with it. Instead, it is a replacement of the normal BIS weapon on back anims, that you simply apply to your own computer. The only thing a mission maker can do is put his units in "safe" mode, and then hope that the person playing the mission uses Sanctuary's animation replacement pack. Basically, there is no way a mission maker can insure these anims are used in his mission. What would be better is if the mission required an addon that included those patrol animations, properly configured.

That brings it back to exactly what I had hoped to do with my addon-in-progress. Sanctuary just doesn't know how to configure his animations to work like this. Not many people do, I guess, or else I wouldn't have had to figure all this crap out by myself. So my plan is to ask Sanctuary if I can configure his anims to release with my addon, instead of having to create a much shoddier version myself, as I was doing before.

I hope to create an addon that includes things that should be used in almost every mission. The patrol anims are one of the main reasons why that would be the case. The other long-overdue thing I'm working on is a proper foxhole. While unrealistic patrols are my main gripe about the offense, unrealistic fighting positions are my main gripe in the defense. I've included an example of what this proper fighting position should look like (although it is still early in development).

That is right, it is a problem when you create a mission involving one or more squads in patrol if you count only on my animation pack, as while the users of it will see visually a "credible" behaviour , the users of other Anim.pbo will see the usual "weapon on the back" that is out of place for a patrol, for the realistic reasons you stated.

If you can figure out a solution about your animation addon project, it should solve this problem , as it would allow any kind of users having any kind of Anim.pbo in their Dta folders to see a realistic behaviour for those patrolling squads.
As there are some different other Anim replacement pack that some people can prefer over my pack, it would be "unfair" to force them to use mine if they prefer another one.

Of course as stated in the readme.txt included in my packs, you can use / modify / tweak / improve / delete any of my animations for any need you have , without having to request my permission for it.

Good luck.

[.pablo.]

There is only one problem, however: his is not an addon that you MUST have in order to play a mission made with it. Instead, it is a replacement of the normal BIS weapon on back anims, that you simply apply to your own computer.

right, that is part of the reason that i created this thread; i saw an opportunity for mission designers to greatly increase the realism of their missions, and i felt that it would simply be seen as an "option" and not as a necessary improvement to ofp.

and your point about defensive positions is exactly the same issue; there is a problem in that it is impossible for mission creators to have truly realistic defensive positions, and so many are settling for less than they should: simply placing a bunch of units to stand at a location, without thought to how soldiers would defend that position in a real-world situation.

i think one of the biggest advancements that can still be made to ofp1 is its animations, and how units act (and look) at and between waypoints.  the problem though, as general barron said, is that even if great advancements are made, it may be difficult to get others to try them, let alone adopt them as the standard.

The "NORMAL" speed of units in "AWARE" does seem a little too fast, but a bigger gripe is that "AWARE" units make no attempt to kneel or go prone when stationary. Considering that it's the default stance for your average, editor-placed loon, it's a little annoying. My brain can accept "SAFE" patrols with slung rifles (it is, at least, consistent with the definition), but it's not as forgiving of a landscape full of loons standing at the ready in the for the lack of anything better to do.

actually, sanctuary released animations that replaced the ai's default "aware standing" stance with a crouching stance, which looks amazing in game (i wasn't sure if you were alluding to that or not).  there are pictures of it in the picture-link i posted above.

[Garcia]

Hmm... kinda funny how you are talking about talking with me, and then I'm the first one to reply to your post.   Anyway, this is a good discussion to have.

I'm sure I mentioned this to you during beta testing, but I do agree that having patrols in "aware mode" is pretty unrealistic. No army in the world would RUN a 5+ mile patrol (well, if they could, it would be rather impressive). But on the other hand, as you quoted, I think it is even less realistic to have them patrol with their weapons on their backs. If it comes down to a choice between them running or them walking with their weapons on their back, then I would have to choose the former, without hesitation. I wish other mission makers would do the same, but I can understand why they wouldn't.

So, until recently, I've had to just settle with the "lesser of two evils". However, in the last 4 months or so I've learned a heck of a lot about configuring and creating animations. One thing I'm figuring out is how to essentially connect keystrokes with animations; for example, how does OFP know what animation to play when you are standing with a rifle and press the "forward" key? It's all in the animation's config, which means one can add similar animations, or edit the current ones (I've made reloading while moving, for example).

Bringing it back to this discussion, in the last few weeks have been planning/working on an expansion of the hand signals addon I made for my aforementioned mission. I'm expanding it to include all sorts of military scripts and animations. One of the two main things I wanted to include was exactly what you are talking about: a good patrol animation, at walking speed, but with the weapon at the ready. I tried to make the animations, it didn't look too good, and I put it aside to work on other things. Low and behold, a couple weeks later, Sanctuary releases an outstanding set of animations that are exactly what I was trying to create.

There is only one problem, however: his is not an addon that you MUST have in order to play a mission made with it. Instead, it is a replacement of the normal BIS weapon on back anims, that you simply apply to your own computer. The only thing a mission maker can do is put his units in "safe" mode, and then hope that the person playing the mission uses Sanctuary's animation replacement pack. Basically, there is no way a mission maker can insure these anims are used in his mission. What would be better is if the mission required an addon that included those patrol animations, properly configured.

That brings it back to exactly what I had hoped to do with my addon-in-progress. Sanctuary just doesn't know how to configure his animations to work like this. Not many people do, I guess, or else I wouldn't have had to figure all this crap out by myself. So my plan is to ask Sanctuary if I can configure his anims to release with my addon, instead of having to create a much shoddier version myself, as I was doing before.

I hope to create an addon that includes things that should be used in almost every mission. The patrol anims are one of the main reasons why that would be the case. The other long-overdue thing I'm working on is a proper foxhole. While unrealistic patrols are my main gripe about the offense, unrealistic fighting positions are my main gripe in the defense. I've included an example of what this proper fighting position should look like (although it is still early in development).


Anyway, I'm not trying to hijack your thread and make it all about me or anything. But I believe you and I share common gripes, which should be the gripes of any realism-minded mission editor out there. The problem is, addonmakers don't seem to care about fixing these "mundane" issues; they would rather focus on making the 1,000,000th new M4, or the flashiest new helo. I guess it is up to mission makers to actually create the fundamental improvements that OFP lacks but sorely needs. Maybe you can help pimp my addon when it comes out.

Well...there is 1 solution that I am using. In my MP mission I've added Sanc Anim to the starting parameter, so the player can choose "Yes" (if he got Sanctuarys anims) and "No" (if he doesn't). In SP missions you could do it the way you did in Realistic Combat Patrol, have that radio pop up or something like that. And if the unit chooses the "Yes I got Sanctuary anims" option, then a script runs that sets the patrols to safe, normal speed and the formation you want etc. If the player is so stupid that he chooses "Yes", but doesn't have the anims, it's his problem, not yours

Anyway, IMO the patrol anim should be overwriting the aware mode. As pablo said, aware is when you are aware of the enemy, though in OFP, combat is when you are aware of the enemy, aware in OFP is when you are aware that there may be enemies in the area, so you got your gun ready, safe is when you are safe and can have your gun on your back. And anyway, why replace the gun on back anim instead of the aware anim? The aware anim is, IMO, useless. It's just like the combat anim, only difference is that the units don't lie down that much (as someone already said). The safe anim can be useful sometimes.

Umm...*cough*...nevermind that...just remembered that we still got the careless anim

[.pablo.]

Well...there is 1 solution that I am using. In my MP mission I've added Sanc Anim to the starting parameter, so the player can choose "Yes" (if he got Sanctuarys anims) and "No" (if he doesn't). In SP missions you could do it the way you did in Realistic Combat Patrol, have that radio pop up or something like that.

that is a really good idea, i hadn't thought of doing that...

[General Barron]

Anyway, IMO the patrol anim should be overwriting the aware mode.

I never thought about that, but actually, I'd agree with you 100% on this one, if it were possible (which I'm not sure if it is). Especially since units in OFP automatically go into "combat" mode when they see the enemy; so the game engine would automatically make this work great. Problem with "careless" mode is that the AI will NEVER go out of it on their own, no matter how many enemies they see, so it doesn't work well as a replacement for the "current" safe mode.

[Garcia]

Hmm...I know 1 problem with replacing the aware anims with these anims...how would it look on human players? with the safe mode you can choose yourself when to "put" yourself to safe mode, by taking the gun on your back. But is there really any way putting yourself to aware mode? Do human players go into aware mode automaticly whenever there ain't any enemies around?

[ryankaplan]

i don't think human players ever go into aware mode, if you look carefully they'll always have their gun on their shoulders when standing (like ai in danger mode), although i think the running animation is the same for both aware and  danger mode. I really like and recommmend sanchuary's patrol animations but one thing i didn't like about it was how the animation just played faster when you pressed the "sprint" key on safe mode.

[Sanctuary]

one thing i didn't like about it was how the animation just played faster when you pressed the "sprint" key on safe mode.

I made this "faster" animation to simulate the real life "forced" walk behaviour , when soldiers are on patrol and must accelerate their walk without losing their actual walking stance.

i don't really know the exact word in english langage of this kind of military walk, sorry but maybe you will see what i try to say about "forced" walk.

[.pablo.]

I know 1 problem with replacing the aware anims with these anims...how would it look on human players? with the safe mode you can choose yourself when to "put" yourself to safe mode, by taking the gun on your back. But is there really any way putting yourself to aware mode? Do human players go into aware mode automaticly whenever there ain't any enemies around?

thats a another good point; the reason safe mode is perfect for the patrol anims is because its something that can be used for ai patrols, but doesn't need to necessarily affect a human player.

one thing i didn't like about it was how the animation just played faster when you pressed the "sprint" key on safe mode.

i had the same reaction until i thought about what it would look like if you had them jogging in safe mode instead.  consider normal ofp: an ai following its leader in safe mode alternates between walking and jogging, which i don't think would look too good, because they do it a lot.  with the patrol anims though, it is often hard to tell when they are "jogging" or not, because they do it for so small a time period (only when they're trying to catch up to their leader).

to be honest, the one thing that still annoys me is that although ai can be forced to move realistically with patrol anims, there is still nothing stopping a human squad leader from running his squad across the island.  i dream about some kind of "energy level" in ofp, kind of like the one that already exists (breathing hard), but more important; it wouldn't just go down from sprinting, but also from jogging and being in combat, and wouldn't just effect your accuracy and ability to sprint, but could completely drain your ability to move, see, and hear (and whatever other effects tiredness has on a real person).  i dont think it would need to be a mandatory thing, but it would be a nice option for those who wanted a mission to be more realistic.

[Kendo J]

I really like the idea of new anims and have seen the ones done by sanctury however, i understand that if it were an addon it would make trading missions alot easier.

on a slight change of topic.
General barron mentioned foxholes

at the moment i use 4 sandbag walls in an open rectangle slightly in the ground with two guys lying in the middle of them, one a machine gunner and a rifleman with binocs to act as spotter.

but you cannot put a front side sand bag as the AI hate shooting over stuff (i hate this bug), you also cannot put stuff ontop of the sandbags like crates (to act as a roof) as when they get shot they fly up in the air

A foxhole that adds a vehicle action like "get in foxhole as gunner/spotter" would solve these issues.  You would place it like an empty object and can add men via 'this moveingunner foxhole1' or 'this moveincommander foxhole1'. the men get in lying down and the gunner uses his weapon the commander has a waepon or binocs in the foxhole.  it doesn't need super graphics just some sandbags with crates ontop maybe a little cammo netting too. it might not be easy to get the men to use thier own guns so even just putting an M60 or PK as the gun in the addon would be fine, just as if they were on a small tripod.

a real foxhole would be underground but this is impossible so just a low one with guys lying down would suffice

please let me know if you have any succsess and if my suggestions have been noted or are usefull.

I have been asking for this for a while but people tell me it is an old idea and been done, but nothing I have seen has been close to just making one with sandbags (most are too big)