Marleys Ghost

Have you tried adjusting any of the settings?

What about the Viper Scout script in the SDK?

Thanks Mack, the next part will be (in my opinion) the most complex task, that is to inbed the firing FSM's of "Can Fire", "Fire Rate", "Ammo Level ==> Reload", "Burst Fire", "Single Fire", "Sustained Fire" ect. plus of course the visuals. So a new project will be setup with just a single NPC for that. Plus of course grenades! can't not have grenades, I should be able to convert over my Grenade/Explosion routines from my 3rd Person Movement & Animation Control Rig. http://www.leadwerks...ntrol-rig-test/ Still lots to do but after about 7-8 hours work, its slowly coming together, but this is merely a side project that's helping me get to grips with c++, which I will be using for LE 2.5x with EKI One.

Result of the current stage reached in the integration. More Info: Blog Entry: http://www.leadwerks...dark-ai-part-3/

I thought I'd spend a little more time on this integration, using the laptop whilst watching the Olympics. The next phase was to automate the routines for NPC update and compacting the code routines. Ultimately, the idea is that after the scene is loaded, it will be parsed and flagged Dark AI objects, NPC's, Paths and Zones will be set up automatically via information taken from the relative lua scripts. Paths and Zones will be later, collision objects are done, so I was working on how to go about NPC's using this method. As some may have noticed I am using the FPSC Model Pack 53 characters. I converted about 5 or 6 characters to Leadwerks format and all the weapons for this exercise. I will eventually convert them all but I hand "prune" the bones of the rig and that takes longer than I want to spend at any one time on this side project. The FSM is still very basic but the first goal was to derive a current Animation state with each of those states having sub-FSM's to dictate the current behaviour based on the previous state and internal and external inputs. The framework is in place for the animation state which is derived by performing Boolean logic on returned values and strings from the Dark AI runtime and some stubs are in place nested inside for some basic behavioural sub-FSM's. First though I want to able to set up the scene and then place all the Dark AI objects, NPC's, Paths and Zones directly in the editor and then use the load routines to set all that up in an automagic way inside the application. The collisional objects were easy and are done with some simple tick box flagging functionality added to their property scripts. The NPC's a little more in depth , due mainly to the large amount of usable settings! lol. But I wanted to be able to place the model and then assign it some basic attributes to be read on load, this included what weapon to attach. So that was the basic NPC property script setup (wasn't that painful anyway). So using the test scene from Leadwerks 2.5x + DarkBasic's Dark AI [Part 2], and placing a few enemies and some friendly's to look after the player, this is the result of the current stage reached in the integration.

@ChrisV: Must have been, if I managed it

Thanks Flexman, not sure its awesome work though lol. I spent another couple of hours on the intergration today after the cycling finished (now THAT was awesome work by team GB!), heres the result: Blog entry: http://www.leadwerks...dark-ai-part-2/

After the first hour and a half I spent on this little exercise, I followed it up with another couple of hours. The basic integration now has an animation FSM. All still pretty crude and basic but a template to build on at some later date. The NPC's Entity script controls the models animation routines and gun attachment, the c++ application interfaces with the Dark AI library, and then uses messaging to communicate with the NPC Entity via lua script. Again this was just more experimentation and practice for me using c++ to build up techniques that will be beneficial later. Special thanks to Pixel Perfect for pointing out the error in my ways with regard to text strings in c++. Anyway this is the result, I just threw in some values for speed and animation blending off the top of my head just to test the FSM functionality, it will need those tweaking, thats for sure. I'd have posted some pictures, but I seem to only have 7k of space left in the blog section, not sure why, as it was over 200MB last time I did an entry here and not just a link to an entry on my off site blog.

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/4380-my-3rd-person-character-controller/page__st__20#entry39059

Not forgetting to fix the linker errors and conflicts from other libs and then writing the data Interface functions to get both LE and DAI working together, along with the collision building routines for the scene and a "few" other things, before drawing up the FSM's. If only it was as simple as just including the header file and pointing the linker to the .lib, it might have only taken me 20 mins instead of a full hour and a half lol No idea, I have little interest in LE3, but I can't see why the same intergration would not be possible.

To answer the PM I got, and save anymore, R.T.F.M.= Read The F****** Manual Just an FYI.

I dont think its on the wiki index, hard to tell amongst all the new commands like CheapKarelaPills() and EnhanceYour beautyByWearingJoeRodeoDiamond () .. I think the index needs an enima. http://www.leadwerks.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:AllPages

Have you tried .... searching the forum for "CreateDecal" or even just "Decal"?

@Pixel: yeah, I vaguely remember that, Chiblue rings a bell although I could be wrong. It was an interesting exercise but I will be spending my time working with EKI One, Dark AI maybe be a basic and entry level AI solution and with FSM's using its manual mode commands has the potential to be a useful tool, but I will be concentrating on EKI One for my needs.

@Shadmar & Mike: Thanks, it shows some potential.

If you are thinking about using Dark AI as a cheap option for an AI solution and are wondering how to use both LE2.5x and Dark AI together then I suggest the best way to think about how to interface the two, is to think along the lines of how EKI One works, where you have two parallel but identical worlds running at runtime and the interface is the channeling of information between "identical twins" with one twin in the "AI world" and the other in the "Game world", that is what one "twin" is doing in the "AI world" the other is mirroring in the "Game world", the interface merely opens a line of communication between them so they know what each other are up to. The "Game world" is the physical world in which the player interacts, but the "AI world" is merely a "ghost world" that overlays it. Sounds more complex than it really is. Most of the commands for Dark AI relating to collision objects can be used, except the couple that relate specifically to DBobjects and levels. None of the debug commands are of use as they will probably rely on a DX7/DX9 drawing context and not an OpenGL one like LE2.5x. The good news, the other 128 commands should all work via some good interfacing, which will require a good working knowledge of the LE API and a good understanding of what those Dark AI commands actually do. Although there are some automatic behaviours from which information can be retrieved and used in the interfacing to LE, the best option I would think is to create NPC types/classes and use FSM's in conjunction with the Dark AI command set to create behaviours, it gives more control and should allow a higher level of complexity in behaviour. Just remember, you get what you pay for! You can download a demo of Dark AI working in DarkBasic Pro here, should give you some idea of what to expect. Of course, NPC entities (and objects) can all be tied to the integration with lua scripting allowing placeholder placement in the editor, with settings and values passed to the application for each when loading the scene. As I said this was just an hour and half's work, an experiment to see if it could be used. Blog entry: http://www.leadwerks...-dark-ai-daile/ Demo of DAILE WASD to move the player, mouse look, mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Note: There is no physics collision between the player and the obstacles, this is intentional and was used to check the virtual boundaries worked with the NPC's (that is, although the player could pass through them the AI had to plot a course around). NPC1-3 : Freindlys that will follow the player and defend him. NPC4 : Enemy that defends the circled zone when the player enters it. NPC5-6 : Enemies that are set to chase and attack (and search for) the player and his allies. NPC7-15 : Neutrals who will just move about.

I am currently working with EKI One, working through its format and structure, getting to grips with the lua behavioural scripting side and trying to brush up on my c++ skills, actually brushing up on my c++ skills is an overstatement as I don't actually have any to brush up! .. lol, I have also been going through my Blitzmax code and trying to compile all the game mechanic functions and methods into a single .mod, trying to keep things tidy. Whilst going through my **** drive, I mean, my well organised storage drive, I found some DarkBasic/DarkGDK stuff, which included the Dark AI library. I have never really used DarkGDK, although I did start out a few years back with DarkBasic. So I wondered (as you do), could it be utilised in LE2.5? Having never used Dark AI (which came in a bundle, that I have never used either, but it was a bargain lol) I knew that R.T.F.M. would be in order. If it relied solely on DBobjects and inherent DarkBasic functionality then probably not. I spent half an hour looking through the commands, and an hour later had it working in an LE context. So to answer the question, it seems you can. I'd have upped a better quality image but I am told "You can upload up to 7.74K of files " Its all a work in progress, and probably will remain that way as its certainly nowhere near the solution that EKI One is, but as an exercise it wasn't a bad use of a few hours. I will post a demo in the showcase later for those interested. EDIT : Demo posted here : http://www.leadwerks...-ai/#entry45564

If I remember correctly T3D allows ~250 layers for a terrain block by using an 8 bit index for layer storage, I dont know if that includes the detail and bump texturing (I don't think it does), and I don't know if I'd have the need for that many or the patience to paint a terrain with that many lol.

Don't bodies have their origins at the centre, the controllers used to a long time ago, but now have it at the "bottom".

No worries Ken, its the same command I used for NPC AI labels, so I could see what was on their minds lol http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/topic/2538-cameraunproject-entity-labels/

http://www.leadwerks.com/wiki/index.php?title=CameraUnproject

http://support.ekione.com/Integration.html And see Pixels post.

Have you done any research into EKI? at all?

For the crate I uploaded to the asset store it already has a dynamic .phy file ... I even checked yesterday and DL'd it unpacked it and dropped the folder into models in the SDK .. no problems with gravity.