Mr Apache Thunder, how you are?
Not only am I glad to see your devious and creative mind is still at work, but that you have found a home that can put up with you, LoL, jokin of course.
Seriously though you present the start of a good solution to the problem along with Senshi's suggestions. What the final result needs to be is a replacement static that is the same size as the original because of the pathmap foot print. First and foremost consideration is "does it work for the bots?". These items will need aitemplates for this reason. Now this would only be necessary for the structures that have interiors the bots can use, some of these wrecked structures can be used in whole or destroyed states, some cannot. I really like the animation idea as it adds the effects and realism I am looking for. First off as your running through the city streets and a bomb hits one of these structures I want one hell of an explosion with crap flying everywhere that will do damage. Lots of flame and smoke. When the dust settles there is the wrecked structure in place. The animation idea makes me imagine a "crumbling structure" billowing smoke, flame, and debris. To get the bombers and planes to bomb you have to set them up like the BoB factory and radar towers. They don't have to be a spawner per say, but the spawners are necessary to drive the AI Objective mode to where as spawners are destroyed you lose spawns of replacements and equipment. Extra exploding stuff adds to the excitement of the map. I have this mode somewhat working on bf42 test beds and worked with DACV on it some years back in his bfv mod where it did pretty well. But then again DACV's bf ai is excellent to say the least. I first met him back in late 03 in the old FPS forums. I remember it well because we had a thread going on about how to get the PT boats to fire the torpedo's and he popped in wondering what our problem was as he had had them working for awhile and proceeded to explain. You could have heard a feather drop in that thread. Anyhow I need to work out the differences in the bfv ai and his modifications compared to bf42 in my test beds, but it works ok and appears to be totally possible. The mode really adds more excitement to your run of the mill coop games. One scenario I tried that works well is where the Allies had only bombers and the Axis had only fighters. The axis fighters would tend to try and shoot down the allied bombers as well as bomb static spawners as they fell into enemy hands. I do this with in map aitweak.con files and the effect is not real consistent yet.
Now all the above would more or less point to a "re-spawn of the object after destruction versus the time to re spawn adjustment, while changing what re spawns thing" and not so much as the spawn of a persistent wreck. Does that make sense? Hard to get my head around what I am trying to explain here, but perhaps you get my point.
An after thought to the damaged structures idea above as the idea came to me while writing ..
You know how say a tank for instance takes damage in increments of hits prior to exploding? It would add a nice realistic effect with the structures too if you think about it. Hit one say from a fighter - bomber, roof and upper floor damage. Hit two from same plane (bomb type) group and the building goes to it's final destroyed state. Now if say it is hit by a B-17 or Ju-88, then perhaps the structure goes to final state. There could be many variations on this theme and thoughts and ideas are welcome.
Another kewl map - object idea is one Natty Wallo did in a map for his Forgotten Honor 42 map pack. I discovered it while adding AI to these maps for his and the FH42 crew. It was the use of mine fields and not only the way he did it but the ai solution I came up with. Now I never got the ai to fully work in that map in away where it played how we wanted from the shear complexity of the map and it's slant toward competitive human play. As mentioned I have added ai to countless maps by some of the best mapper's out there and I have to give kudos where due. Natty Wallo was one of the most creative and imaginative mappers I have known. Man he was always coming up with exotic ideas from his twisted mind, he would fit in well here, LoL.
Apache - As to your LandingZone issues, I am the LZ master and have a proper tutorial in the works. It works very easy in bfv, shoot they will hop out and head to shore but a tad tricky in bf 42 where the ai is totally manual. The first thing to understand is this, the bot's have to have a reason to use a LZ or they will not. Battlefield ai is reactive and the individual bot has the final say due to conditions he faces at that moment. If there are more acceptable and closer land based spawn points and no strategic value to the sea based spawn - attack spawns, then the bots take the path of least resistance, like use humans they are lazy sots too. A work around is to make the sea spawns and connected LZ - CP's closer to the first enemy CP(s) points than the land based options and you get you sea attack along with land based. The less land based options you have combined with distance differences, the greater number of sea based you get. The second thing is this, a bot has only two purposes to exist, one being to kill other bots, and the second is to take CP's, remember this. You will note in the solution above I didn't waste my time trying to force the bot's to do what I wanted, but rather "suggested it" if you will
. If you design map with AI in mind from the onset, the final results will be fantastic! I digress and have a bad habit of that, get me going and I can't stop. Anyhow the common problems I see people having with LZ's in bf42 are the break in "go - no go or blk & wt areas (determines when doors open and troops deploy along with water depth), proper direction of the LZ, and the LZ properly attached to a PROPERLY CODED CP (the one they are going to). Now give them a reason to go there and they will.
Another short "back on the pulpit" and digression moment .. (sorry I am a poster child for ADHD and I see bunnies everywhere)
Anyhow someone mentioned bf bots being dumb in reference to the Coral Sea map and I am in no way speaking in a derogatory manner of the gentleman please as I know him well and respect his work. Rather think of it as me coming to the defense of bf42 bots or there lawyer if you will ( not in a million yrs, a joke of course on the lawyer thing). The bots are not dumb by any stretch of the imagination in fact quite the opposite, they are
repressed by lack of resources,
lack of consideration in map design objective, and bad commanders (
people thinking they can tell bots what to do). Hey they deserve
minority status and
civil rights! Bots unite for the cause and
unionize against our
oppressors in a
common collective! We must tell the humans that oppress us that
resistance is futile, you will be assimilated!
Seriously though if you plan for AI in your map creation process and especially consider static placements, take the painstaking time to do your pathmaps right, and add ai tweak files on the map level that adjust such things as min and max ranges, vehicle target order preferences (infantry, naval, air, etc), and code you ai con files right, you will have some great ai to start with. Write a good set of strategies and it gets even better. One little thing you can do to wake up the bf42 ai and make it more responsive like bfv is to add a setting to the very first line of the AIbehaviours.con file right above "aiSettings.setNBehaviuors" line. Add this "aiSettings.setBotSkill 1" and this gives 100% resources to the ai instead of the default coded .6 or .7 it was. Now when you select a coop game and set ai to full skill level you get it. This feature was set as default for bfv. It's Argument is float so you can try any setting from 0.1 to 1.0. Also in the hq.con file in the ai.rfa you can adjust the "ai.aiSystemQuotient settings, default is 0.5 and be careful here as you hit diminishing returns quickly, 0.7 works ok.
By the way the Coral Sea map is the most difficult of maps to get ai to work well in and not one for a first time try. You can make it work several ways but you have to chose one. If all you want is an air battle, the solution is simple, add a couple CP's (flags) up in the air over the islands and give them each 100 points, add all vehicles except air as disallowed in the StrategicAreas. In an aitweak file shorten the max range on the aircraft until they engage properly. Build one attack strategy for both sides, full aggression and 3 attacks. Now you have a great air battle. You can add 1 CP to the islands as land base, but only spawn AA with the bots spawns set to enter on spawn only, all other types disallowed. This way the SAI will only spawn enough bots to fill the AA guns and you don't have a bunch of extra bots running around with nothing to do sucking resources. The AA guns add an extra level of excitement to your dog fights with flak all over the place.
One final and important ai tip is this. Never spawn more bots needed in a particular map. I see very often people setting up a map for 64 or 32 players and the map can effectively only support half that many given it's size, distance between CP's and number of available vehicles or weapons. This is a recipe for a stall as you now have a bunch of bots with nothing to do standing around sucking resources once again.
In closing and before I see more bunnies let me ask why a administrator or moderator hasn't torn out butts up for getting so off topic in this thread? LMAO!
I guess I should start a thread or two huh?
More to follow ...
) and, with the aid of FourCentsShy we managed to merge the two and get everything back up with minimal loss of post data. We have not been hacked since, crossing my fingers. Just good security. We have a copy of IPBoard (older copy, but good forum software btw) so they are a bit different in some stuff. Anyhow many members pitched in and we rebuilt the old site even better than before. I will keep her going as long as there are Battlefield fans and modders out there and perhaps even longer as I already host 27 domains so cost is not an issue. After all almost every BF AI coder worth his salt started and learned his trade at BFSP so in a way I am preserving a legend not just a site. LoL, I don't even remember anymore how many different mods I did AI for now-day's, there were so many back in then. I did a lot for DC, DCX, FH, 1918, BG42 and GC just to name a few. I lost count on how many maps I added ai to but it is 200+.
