11 Dias a Ixtlan: Dia 8

Dia Ocho: Sentience

Today was spent in VS2010, Beyond Compare, Torsion and Notepad+. I added two AI implementations to the level, and had to do the code/script mods to Torque to get them to work.

Added

'BotLove': Gibby's Alien vs. Mech mod of Steven Acaster's FPS/Recast resource
Modded: aiPlayer.cs
Added: AiMecha.cpp/h/cs

Merged SENTIENCE build 194 from HNGamers' Team Foundation server
Modded: Vehicle and Player classes
Added: Beast, Flyer, Vtol and Wheeled AI source and scripts

Background

SENTIENCE is an AI add-on I've been working on with Sean Rice over at HNGamers. Back in 2009, I'd built a TGE version of TolTech that was a bizarre mix of TGE/AFX/FGE/UIASK and Zod's MultiGame kit. It had tanks, planes, choppers, APCs and Marines playing with characters reasonably well, and three of the 5 gametypes were solid, though the scoreboard never quite ran. I also did a total conversion of FGE that used UAISK,AFX-enhanced weapons and cel shading to give it a 'DragonBallZ' look. Sean had helped getting some of the AI source code together, and when he asked me to help on his 'Battle Royale' expansion I joined in. Three+ versions of Torque later, it's grown from a mod of FGE into it's own complete system, setup to be extensible and modular, allowing you to use a wide range of models as a bot. I was close to having a demo-ready version this Fall, but Sean has urged me to make it even simpler and more high-level, which I'm doing, especially after the framerate experiences I'm having with my level challenge. The version I've installed supports beasts, flyers, spaceships, hovers, vtol and wheeled vehicles. After the merge process was far enough along, I finally opened up the level and added/positioned the AI spawn markers and path waypoints I needed. I seem to have a code issue with my 'stitched' terrain and Walkabout, but given that it's a two-week old feature I'm adding, it integrated with my system quite gracefully. The mere addition of the assets I needed to test AI with seemed to hit my framerate however, and again after compressing the textures and pruning any unneeded assets got it back into the '50s. Just for Daniel Buckmaster, here's a vid of me checking my framerate in the level:






As I turn a corner, a mech ambushes me from behind a stand of Oak trees. He's crudely using the coverplates, [I think] despite the solid red-lines I'm getting in Torsion. What you don't see are twelve dragons, twelve alien drones and eight Mechs duking it out in the sky. Even with my crude, rude and resource-intensive AI bashing about, I ran the level full-throttle in a Cheetah with framerates averaging in the low 50s. I got even better turboing a jet through the canyons, in the high '60s, low '70s depending on how much AI I had running. I went back and captured the dogfight that erupts in the level shortly after you spawn:






More team funtionality for the bots and the level itself coming, stay tuned...

Tiempo Perdido

Day 9