[REQ] NPCs

[Guest]

It's a simple question to what is probably a monstrously complex undertaking: Is there any chance that computer-controlled characters (AKA bots, NPCs, etc.) can be created? They'd not have to be too complex to make me happy...

- Random walking and driving around.

- Running away from danger. Perhaps a chance that they'll fight back.

- Being removed once they get too far away from players, so that CPU and bandwidth isn't wasted.

Just... Something to make servers feel less empty, and to provide vehicles (to be stolen) in a better way than just spawning them out of thin air.

[Silentlink]

AFAIK it's not possible as of yet?

[XetaQuake]

its possible i think!

see here: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=EvZMkOjpJYQ

this is for samp! i think in MTA:DM its alot better to realize

i dont mean walking NPCs, but cars

[Nissandrifter]

There just objects being moved

[Guest]

If those moving objects were actual cars you could steal and get run over by, I think that'd be a great first step towards filling the empty streets with the traffic you'd expect to find in a city. It'd prolly be a good idea to make sure any mod that had NPCs had a server-configurable "population" option to control how many there were.

[Quest]

I have been trying to think of a appropriate way of doing this myself. Obiviously you can set elememtVelocity and such. But I don't think it would look smoth going around corners. And with the velocity check the location and if it gets close to a turning point slow it down. But I don't know how much work it would be just to do one car. Sounds like quite the task.

[Mr.Hankey]

hm... i think a big problem would be the synchronisation of the bots. If you try to make it serverside i think it will eat up the server resources because it has to move about 20 objects and calculate the rotation/velocity for them for each player on the server and if you make it client-side i think it simply wouldnt be synced in any way...

[XetaQuake]

or its client-side but it starts on all clients on the same time, so its simultaneously

and every 2 minutes (or so) the server will check that's the vehicles on all clients is on the same way...

anything like this, this would keep up the server power, i think

[DSC-L|Gr00vE[Ger]]

... but then you have the problems that the players on the server have different internet connections and than the others must perhaps wait for someone with a 1000 connection or so^^ -.- for example i´ve got dsl 16000 and a nice pc but there are soo many people out there which have a single core with 2 ghz and dsl 1000 or something like that bullshit...

[XetaQuake]

hehe

no, the cars are moving client-side! the internet is only to check every 2 minutes (or so) if the vehicles on the same way, and this should a little internet load factor

but yes, the bigest problem is the lag, but this should be solved with a cleverly anti-lag-system

this is my scripting idea, and no, have absolutely NO idea who want to make this

[Guest]

How about only synching when a car is turning around a corner, and letting clients do the work for when they're driving straight? But of course, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, so feel free to ignore this comment.

[capitanazop]

if can use streaming.

[DSC-L|Gr00vE[Ger]]

How about only synching when a car is turning around a corner, and letting clients do the work for when they're driving straight? But of course, I don't have any idea what I'm talking about, so feel free to ignore this comment.

but the cars are often driving around a corner and there would be the problem with the lagging again...^^

[Quest]

I think this will probably have to be done by a third party program. Or I would prefer, the MTA team design it. These guys know the engine inside and out and are very talented. Not to mention, I am not a person to use third party programs to get the bots working. I just don't think it would be too easy to use LUA, you would probably need to make a program have the bot 'connect' to the server and treat it like an actual player.

[Guest]

Yea, if it was a native feature of MTA it would be better than any 3rd-party addon, but I figure they're already busy enough and have prolly already considered it (and I assume it's already been requested a hundred times... right?). However, it's not impossible for a 3rd-party bot to act in a believable manner, have you ever seen RCbot for Half-Life 1? I've stuck a few of those bots in Sven Coop and followed them as they played the normal HL1 story maps. They were clumsy at jumping puzzles, but otherwise were capable of beating most every level by themselves (for instance, they couldn't figure out the puzzle to kill Nihilanth).

Of course, I know that modding for different games is usually a very different matter (RCbot wasn't a Lua script, but a replacement .dll file), but I'm saying that 3rd party bots don't have to be crap by definition.

[Quest]

I agree that the third party bots don't have to be crap. I just feel that they will function much better as a native. Anyway, I have seen bots in several games that are third party. But the bots took places of Player Characters, and I am not a fan of losing player slots.

[Guest]

I agree, that bots like that wouldn't be too great unless either used to temporarily populate an empty server, or else were very good.

[Atti]

What do you think of this:

http://development.mtasa.com/index.php? ... _functions

Could we expect NPCs in the near future?

[Mr.Hankey]

OMG that looks really promising!!!!

[Woovie]

But... It's client ? As in they are client side, not synced in the server ?

[Mr.Hankey]

What do you think of this:

http://development.mtasa.com/index.php? ... _functions

Could we expect NPCs in the near future?

Click the link again

That looks awesome doesn't it? =)

I think that answers your question Atti