Awareness and buildings (update 8/2 see p9)

Nihthasu7 wrote:By the way, a disguised gate floor is MANDATORY in your modular interior. Yes, feet sink into the floor and yes, you can see the ground cover poking through, but it's the only floor that consistently lets the creatures do what they're supposed to do. DGing the floor made all the difference.

DGing... unless Maxis makes a patch to fix this, I can see "DGing" becoming a commonly used term around these parts

Just a quick note: Although many have been focusing on the interior problems, all these problems can occur when near the exterior of buildings too.

If you build a building on a large square base, then the extent of the base will determine the size of the bounding box. So putting NPCs on the square base puts them inside the bounding box. Sinking the buidling into the ground does not solve the problem -- it doesn't change the geometry of the bounding box. Similarly, if the building consists of a cluster of smaller buildings, then the bonding box encloses all the buildings. So putting NPCs between the buildings, puts them inside the bounding box too.

So this might explain the problems people have with outdoor combats.

Also keep in mind, that the awareness bounding box only affect some actions. It won't affect your ability to talk to the NPCs or give them items.

This is all great info! Maybe now I can go back and repair my bounty hunter and dungeon adventures!

DVDMaster wrote:Just a quick note: Although many have been focusing on the interior problems, all these problems can occur when near the exterior of buildings too.

If you build a building on a large square base, then the extent of the base will determine the size of the bounding box. So putting NPCs on the square base puts them inside the bounding box. Sinking the buidling into the ground does not solve the problem -- it doesn't change the geometry of the bounding box. Similarly, if the building consists of a cluster of smaller buildings, then the bonding box encloses all the buildings. So putting NPCs between the buildings, puts them inside the bounding box too.

So this might explain the problems people have with outdoor combats.

Also keep in mind, that the awareness bounding box only affect some actions. It won't affect your ability to talk to the NPCs or give them items.

Yup. If you make a block of buildings to fill out the skyline, you won't be able to effectively fight between the individual buildings on that block. Again it comes down to knowing where your brawls and other targeted interactions are going to take place and creating a modular set for that locale.

Grimbot wrote:This is all great info! Maybe now I can go back and repair my bounty hunter and dungeon adventures!

YES please do

You have some great dungeon stuff. Shame if you weren't able to use it.

So flat normal floors will not allow the AI to behave consistently? Even if it is raised off the ground a ways? I did some minor tests with raised flat floors and didn't seem to have a problem... just as long as the ai stayed on the object surface and didn't transition.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 07/14/2009 20:32:31

So flat normal floors will not allow the AI to behave consistently? Even if it is raised off the ground a ways? I did some minor tests with raised flat floors and didn't seem to have a problem... just as long as the ai stayed on the object surface and didn't transition.

My test adventure shows that a regular floor will work (in a modular walled room), but not as dependably as a DG floor. And in Optorc DC I have both in one of the rooms. They trade off during the crucial goal.

One issue aside from awareness is that aggressive monsters will attack buildings they are standing on. At least ones with ranged attacks will. By changing the AI I was able to get monsters to attack a character in the same space.

Tairon96 has found that how the building is edited in the building editor affects how captains walk on it.

Here is his original post:

Tairon96 wrote:Subject changed from:
"Collision detection glitch! Invisible steps??"
to
"Maxis Team read this! Floor bounding boxes faulty! Causer of problems detected! Tip for GA-creators!"

I was edited yesterday a great interior property made by codyr2391. But problem I found was there seems to be an invisible barrier my test captain could only pass in one direction

In the video you can see, my captain is bounched back as if there is a force field wall (There is none!). So I had to rip codyr2391's bridge apart to use it... Now I just experienced the the problem with an object I was editing today, too!

And I found an explanation for the yesterday's problem. Look here:

My captain (this time my real one) was stumbling between to wall sections. Fortunately he can jump - my test captain can't because I want check if all regions are reachable. So my real captain jumped and after several tries he managed to jump over the invisible obstacle. It looks like there is the complete section higher than you can see - my captain walks in midair!

Before I started today editing this wall section there were now such problems. I used a lot of <shift> and <ctrl> movements for editing. Is this causing these problems???

Is there any one out there who has experinced this problem, too?

And the result of his investigations:

Tairon96 wrote:Here are the videos:

(They are my first commented videos on YouTube It was not so easy

First video: How to not edit your floor object!

And the second video: How to avoid this bug!

And the third video shows Iraultza87's perimeter wall I have edited for my adventure. Now there are no invisible steps between the wall sections. Do you want to join for a walk?

Can this please be stickied? It would save me having to search it everytime someone has this problem, because I just refer them here.

Just dig myself through this thread. It explains alot. Thanks.
Two questions though:
Are this axis aligned bounding boxes or oriented bounding boxes?
Is there a cheat to render the bounding boxes for debugging?

vladi wrote:Just dig myself through this thread. It explains alot. Thanks.
Two questions though:
Are this axis aligned bounding boxes or oriented bounding boxes?
Is there a cheat to render the bounding boxes for debugging?

As far as I can tell, when you rotate the object on the planet, the bounding box rotates. I've not done any testing of rotating the object in the building editor to see what happens to the bounding box.

I can't find any cheat for rendering the bounding box. The "blockmode" cheat only renders blocks for the creatures.

I have put the info on the first page so it is easier for people to find it. If you don't ever want to forget where this thread is go to the bottom of the thread page and click bookmark it, and then it will appear in the "My Bookmarks" section which you can get to by clicking on the link at the top of the page. There are already to many stickies on the GA page for me to sticky this, but its great what you guys have found out!

Regards

SMLightning

You know SML there are at least two stickies that dont need stickied :

Why do you make adventures
What kind of adventures will you make

personnaly i think those should be removed and this thread and another should be stickied

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 07/19/2009 11:49:55

Since you seem to be the master, DVD, I have a question:

In my latest mission, i built the floor, roof, and each of the walls separately (I used the same part over and over for the walls). I put a guy in there, not 5 feet away from me, and he still wouldn't attack. I could go up to him, push him, and he would still only stand there, growling and threatening me. Only after i started attacking him did he attack me back.

Is this just a problem with my game? Or should all the walls be made together?

@AndrewBot

Doesn't the threaten behavior insinuate that the creature is aware of you?