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a Panic Room; for heated story maps
Tweet Topic Started: Jun 29 2007, 09:49 PM (585 Views)
admiralhowdy Jun 29 2007, 09:49 PM Post #1
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One thing you don't want to do when making a story map is to have any obstacles that interfere with the enemy AI approaching the Player. Any non-navigable obstacle, when encountered, will make the AI "turn stupid," i.e., they stop the chase, suddenly can't aim for sh** if they even fire at all, and usually just watch you helplessly until you plug them in the face (see the "Making a Civilian" topic). However, if you need the action to cool down for a while on an otherwise obstacle-free map, you can make a Panic Room to intentionally "bring the stupid". Just put a barricade or other obstacle to the AI in front of a single-block wide dead-end. You can walk past the obstacle into the dead end (rotation of the obstacle may matter, depending upon the tile set), but all the AI currently hunting you will "turn stupid" as soon as you pass the obstacle. To prevent abuse of it, you could make it accessible only once through Logic use or some other means (Panic Room reached = Panic Counter increases by 1 and reset Panic Room reached; Panic Counter reaches 2 = mission failure). Also, with some thought, a mechanism for it could be contrived into the story (a message displayed saying "Allied forces have fired the Confusion Ray from orbit," maybe "EMP discharged" for pursuing robot AI).

Got the idea while refining Outpost 13; had a bunch of my AI turning stupid unintentionally, until I rooted out the offending obstacle and removed it. Also, found that an obstacle that prevents AI from accessing a turret gun will also "bring the stupid" en masse; see "civilian" topic again for more information about AI around turret-guns.
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Shady Jun 30 2007, 02:03 PM Post #2
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that sounds cool but for me story maps are confusing and hard to make. so good luck making it :good:
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admiralhowdy Jun 30 2007, 05:10 PM Post #3
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I know, most people don't bother making them. There's no story section here and probably never will be now that the community is so small with the game being dead and all. I'll be putting up a story map soon in the latest work section so maybe you can try it, it will have minimal logic and shouldn't be confusing to make at all, except for the glitch parts for some people.
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Spetsnaz Jun 30 2007, 05:18 PM Post #4
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I thought that your idea sounded cool so if you it still looks interesting when you post it I might make it.
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admiralhowdy Jun 30 2007, 05:27 PM Post #5
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Hehe, it probably won't look like much due to overall symmetry and smallness, but playing the beta version absolutely rocks imo; I'm tweaking everything to perfection and its becoming a well-oiled machine. Wish I could make movies, because I don't think the raw floorplan will do it justice.
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Spetsnaz Jul 1 2007, 02:36 AM Post #6
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bah i will still probably look at it.
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admiralhowdy Jul 22 2007, 12:08 AM Post #7
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Hey, this works in Assault (and other multiplayer modes too), but the bots don't get stupid, they just patiently wait on you to exit the "safe room" and then they resume the chasing/firing. You can use the room to place weapons you don't want bots to pick up, but that live players can access...

EDIT 8/16/07
So, I put a panic room in my LandaDaLost assault (it's the room with the cat, you need to be undisturbed when driving the cat). I drove the cat out of the panic room to see where the dinos were, and one was waiting patiently in mid air, where he was in mid-jump down from a ledge when I had entered the panic room. It was freaky. When I left the panic room with my character, time started back up for the bots and he finally came down to the ground :lol:

EDIT 9/22/07
There are special cases where a "panic room" should best not be used in assault (other "multiplayer" modes too, probably; see "Dynamic Duo?" in Latest Work). While normally all waiting bots will resume the chase when the player exits the panic room, there is a proximity glitch that causes multiple bots (2+) to freeze if they are waiting for you to exit the "panic room" while in close proximity to one another... for example, if the multiple bots are standing on top of 1 respawning gun while they wait for you to exit, they will freeze; or, if they can see you within the panic room and happen to get too close to one another while they are shooting/dodging, they will also freeze (if the player is within their direct line of sight, the bots will still shoot/dodge even though the player is inside the panic room). This type of freezing problem with bots is generally remedied by giving the multiplayer bots a "backdoor" into the panic room... this will ensure that they do not freeze, but... they will not wait, either. They will start on the trek to get into that back door... So make it a long one. If you are having bot recovery problems (assaullt/multiplayer), you can essentially transform what was initially a panic room into a shortcut to health/armor/powerup/weapon that the bots can't take, with a backdoor that they won't take, unless you are in there.
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