Custom Monster AI

[lxFirebal69xl]

So, today I finally got an animated model in leadwerks. It looks good and the animations play without a problem. So I thought, "I'll just put the MonsterAI.lua script on him and see what happens". Well what happens is that he does the Idle animation on an infinite loop. And I for the life of me cannot figure out how to fix this.

 

Yes, I've extracted the animations and everything, it's just that I can't wrap my head around this. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

 

Both monsters in this video have the same script unchanged.

I also remember that the Monster AI script needs to have the animation names set in correctly, but I have no clue how to see if they're right or not, I just named the model's animations exactly like the "Crawler" animations and hoped for the best.

 

[cassius]

I don't use lua, but can't you just change the sequence to the one you want

 

Or do you need a one shot animation?

[xtom]

I think even without the animations something should happen. In the script dropdowns is he set to Team Bad? It looks like he might be set to neutral or same as player Good.

[lxFirebal69xl]

I think even without the animations something should happen. In the script dropdowns is he set to Team Bad? It looks like he might be set to neutral or same as player Good.

 

He is in team bad.

 

I don't use lua, but can't you just change the sequence to the one you want

 

Or do you need a one shot animation?

That's not the issue, the issue is that his animations aren't changing because he isn't recognizing the player. In the video, both monsters have the same script, so why do they behave differently?

[shadmar]

mosterai.lua calls animations by name, like "Run", "Idle", "Death" and "Attack"

I think you might have to rename your sequences or edit the script to match the sequences.

[Thirsty Panther]

Have you built a nav mesh?

 

[lxFirebal69xl]

Have you built a nav mesh?

 

If I hadn't, the crawler woulnd't chase me on the video

mosterai.lua calls animations by name, like "Run", "Idle", "Death" and "Attack"

I think you might have to rename your sequences or edit the script to match the sequences.

 

Most of the animations already have that name, check the picture. But the real issue is that NOTHING happens, even if the animations don't play, the monster should chase me, but he doesn't. That's the real issue here.

[macklebee]

Looking at the picture, he has renamed the animations to Run/Idle/Death - but the attack animations are named 'Attack 1' whereas the crawler's attack animations are named like 'Attack1' without the space.

 

Looking at the video, he has built a navmesh or the crawler would have never tracked him down.

 

Animation has nothing to do with navmesh navigating. There are several things that have to be performed to make sure the character can navigate through the scene. So a couple of things that need to be set up:

Character's Physics property tab:

- The Physics Mode needs to be Character Controller.

- The Mass has to be greater than 0.

- Also, make sure the character is pointing the right direction - need to be facing the model's +Z direction. Use the Character Angle to make adjustments if this is not the case. If character is faced the wrong direction, it will chase backwards and sometimes not react until you are behind the character. Without seeing a picture of your Physics tab I can't say which one you didn't do.

 

Other than that, you also have to make sure that the character is actually on the navmesh. Without a screenshot with the navmesh visible, I can't tell but the character is placed close to the edge of the ground box. When a navmesh is built, there will be a deadband around the edges of the ground. If the character is not located in the navmesh then it will not move.

 

And just a comment on the animations shown in that picture: Remove the first animation that you extracted all of the other animations from. This will cut that model's file size by half and its not really needed anymore if you are going to use the extracted named sequences.

[nl2012]

Even doing everthing right the way,in this case like macklebee has written down.

LW (or me)seem to have some problems with rigs differ that from the crawler (bones structure?,mesh binding?, mass settings? after rescaling?)

My problem is the same and i posted some questions too with no replies/solutions so far.

I've tried the characters another engine and they worked just fine.

I spend many hours figuring it out myself.

So i hope my question helps to solve lxFirebal69xl's problem as well.

 

Has anyone succeeded in letting a non crawler character (diffent bones,meshbinding) move animated from point to point over a navmesh, if yes...how? (-:

 

I don't think it can be bone related because an animation is "baked" into a character, and just calling the animation sequence /track/name should does the trick in every engine.

I seems that your/mine chars have a navmesh<<>> custom character issue?

So maybey Josh can help out here.

Hope this helps

[macklebee]

Has anyone succeeded in letting a non crawler character (diffent bones,meshbinding) move animated from point to point over a navmesh, if yes...how? (-:

Yes, repeatedly, by doing the above steps.

 

First you have to narrow down the actual problem. Is it an animation or navigation problem? The default monsterAI script handles both but they are separate issues. If you have done everything as mentioned above then you need to provide the actual character and/or map for people to look at or we are all just guessing at what the issue could be.

[josk]

I have set up a simple scene and apart from needing to set the animatoins correctly and make the model turn the right way it is working fine.

Sorry no time to set up all animations at moment.

 

 

Using monster ai script.

 

Have you ticked the Enabled box?

[lxFirebal69xl]

Allright, I got him running at me correctly, thank Macklebee for the help!

But there's another thing, whenever the monster touches the player the game freezes and I have to terminate it. What's up with that?

[macklebee]

Allright, I got him running at me correctly, thank Macklebee for the help!

But there's another thing, whenever the monster touches the player the game freezes and I have to terminate it. What's up with that?

That is caused by the fact that the script is trying to run the "Attack1" animation and your animation is named "Attack 1". So it doesn't find the animation and just hangs. Also the default script will randomly choose between multiple attacks, so rename all of the attack animations as "Attack1", "Attack2", etc...

 

This updated script that uses the sequence name is a great improvement over the previous one that used the sequence number in my opinion because I think this makes it obvious what animation you are trying to set, but perhaps the default script needs a way to perform a check to see if the animation actually exists prior to setting it.

[lxFirebal69xl]

That is caused by the fact that the script is trying to run the "Attack1" animation and your animation is named "Attack 1". So it doesn't find the animation and just hangs. Also the default script will randomly choose between multiple attacks, so rename all of the attack animations as "Attack1", "Attack2", etc...

 

This updated script that uses the sequence name is a great improvement over the previous one that used the sequence number in my opinion because I think this makes it obvious what animation you are trying to set, but perhaps the default script needs a way to perform a check to see if the animation actually exists prior to setting it.

 

Thank you very much, that fixed it!

[Firebringer4]

On 3/17/2015 at 9:09 PM, macklebee said:

- Also, make sure the character is pointing the right direction - need to be facing the model's +Z direction. Use the Character Angle to make adjustments if this is not the case. If character is faced the wrong direction, it will chase backwards and sometimes not react until you are behind the character. Without seeing a picture of your Physics tab I can't say which one you didn't do.

how do we check this? what line is it at? im having this issue and i fixed everything else.. it just likes moving backwards.. (yes the navmesh works and yes the physics are set right i just need this tid bit of info on this one..)

UPDATE: i figured it out.. some days im pretty sure im blind.. thanks mackle

[Josh]

Awesome job helping everyone!