[WIP] Sneaky Doom - New A.I.!

[sycspysycspy]

Yes, an update, thanks mate.

[Josh771]

Alright, I'm going to be attempting a stealth re-write soon. It will probably take some time before all the monsters are upgraded; until then, I may release a version in the next day or two which features only zombiemen. I want to try to implement a new detection system in which the player's stealth level is constantly added to a user variable on monsters that have him in line of sight, i.e. I want monsters to be capable of gradually becoming aware of the player in certain situations. This might lead to behaviors such as them investigating a place where you crossed by just a couple seconds ago, but they don't know exactly where you are.

Hopefully I can design this so that the monsters can also be distracted by thrown objects and can investigate loud gunshots without targeting you immediately. It'll take lots of work and debugging, I'm sure, and I don't even know how much of this is possible, but I'm going to give it a shot. If I'm successful, it'll be all the better a resource for any aspiring MGS/Thief/Splinter Cell modders in the ZDoom community. I really hope we see some highly polished stealth-based mods come out in the near future.

[Josh771]

I've got a little something to show. Still a work in progress, still not exactly what I want. And it's missing some of the features of the full mod.

SD_experimentalAI.pk3 (4.72 MB)

This currently only applies to your basic zombie rifleman. He now detects you gradually based on how much you've exposed yourself (the monster's active sound is occasionally played when he can see you but hasn't started after you yet).

If the monster detects you to a certain degree, he will begin searching around; ideally, I'd have him check where he just saw you and this is the plan for my continuing development. If he detects you even more, he begins attacking (and he's no laughing matter -- I made higher difficulties crank up the damages quite a bit to make up for lack of monster variety).

If you lose him after he's detected you, you may notice a black silhouette of a marine standing nearby. This silhouette represents the last place the monster saw you, and the monster should make a quick dash towards that location and begin searching.

Currently, dying/attacking monsters do not alert their comrades. I intend to get all the Sneaky Doom features reinstated, but for now I thought I'd show you what I'm working on.

EDIT: Just realized how terrible the enemy's senses can be with this new AI. Working on a solution; remember that this is half-baked and probably won't be as nice as the original mod.

[Caligari87]

If you lose him after he's detected you, you may notice a black silhouette of a marine standing nearby. This silhouette represents the last place the monster saw you, and the monster should make a quick dash towards that location and begin searching.

This is a genius idea, reminds me of one of the newer Splinter Cell games.

[Josh771]

Alright, I know it's been awhile, but I think I'm done working on Droplets for a while. It's kinda done, really. I was going through my inbox and saw some handy little sprites silentzora had linked me for Sneaky Doom. So, I'm going to drop the experimental AI rewrite for now and try revamping the arsenal.

I can't put a timeline on this, because I'll take either half or twice as long as any guess, but I will say this: there may indeed be a sniper rifle in Sneaky Doom's future.

[Carbine Dioxide]

Maybe it can replace the rocket launcher?

[Josh771]

Alright, new sprites for the pistol and SMG (previously the MP5) are in! I've also added the very first edition of the sniper rifle! You'll need to bind a Zoom key to use its scope. It currently replaces the rocket launcher. I'm kinda out of it right now so I've got little else to say about it.

Feedback is always welcome; I know many of you have been waiting for this for a while now. Enjoy!

EDIT: Updated sniper rifle with animation for raising and lowering the scope. Probably other minor tweaks that I don't remember or aren't worth mentioning.

[Josh771]

I've rewritten the A.I. for all Sneaky Doom monsters! Currently, all the previously supported monsters should have proper stealth-related A.I. plus the Spectre, which had previously been exempt. I hope to add the Lost Soul to the list of monsters soon.

Monsters are much easier to add to Sneaky Doom now -- especially if they use the same animation patterns as the zombieman, upon which the basic SnDmMonster actor is based. Even monsters that stray from the usual animation pattern of AABBCCDD for walking can simply have a custom actor to inherit from whose Search state uses the appropriate frames of animation. I had to do this for the Archvile/Mancubus (they share an actor) and for the Cacodemon and Pain Elemental.

In other news, the sniper rifle should deal a bit more damage to unaware opponents, which gives it some power over the other weapons that it rather needed. The fist also receives half the critical multiplier of the knife now, so the fist has become less than ideal for sneak attacks on bulkier prey.

[-Ghost-]

Good to see there's a sniper rifle now, and the new SMG is cool too.

I was trying to run this with SmoothDoom's Monsters Only WAD, but I think it overrides SneakyDoom. Is there a way to make them compatible?

[Josh771]

Good to see there's a sniper rifle now, and the new SMG is cool too.

I was trying to run this with SmoothDoom's Monsters Only WAD, but I think it overrides SneakyDoom. Is there a way to make them compatible?

Yikes. Yes, I'm sure there is. But I'm presently unwilling to go through the work that might take. In fact, I'm not so sure I'm done playing with monster A.I., and I'd rather not have to keep Smooth Doom compatibility up-to-date if I'm going to be making any changes anytime soon.

But if I get to a point where I feel there's nothing more I can really do with the A.I., I might look into that. For now, just understand that any mod that changes anything more than the monsters' sprites themselves is pretty much guaranteed to break Sneaky Doom. The stealth part of the monsters' A.I. is built into their Decorate as well as ACS; if I could somehow move it entirely to ACS, then ... well, then you could just plug in Sneaky Doom and turn any mod into a stealthy one. That would be amazing. Not quite feasible, I don't think.

[-Ghost-]

Yeah, no problem, I just wasn't sure if they'd conflict when I first tried it. I've been playing through Corrupted Techbase with the latest version and the AI is good so far. I actually had some tense moments trying to sneak past a trio of cacodemons since all I had was the pistol. Will you be adding more weapons? I'm not really sure what else could be added, to be honest, aside from maybe some kind of IED or mine you could set up and lure monsters into.

[Josh771]

Will you be adding more weapons? I'm not really sure what else could be added, to be honest, aside from maybe some kind of IED or mine you could set up and lure monsters into.

Actually, I do have sprites for a silenced carbine and a silenced alpha rifle, but I'm beginning to feel like that would just be more of the same. I like your thoughts on an IED, though, since Sneaky Doom has a lot of wandering monsters that would be ideal targets for planted explosives. Maybe I should try to get some remote mines and proximity mines together; that would really help give the player an edge, although it would certainly make any nearby monsters very much aware that something is wrong.

Glad to hear the new AI is giving you some tense moments. They are quieter now, can notice smaller movements, and some creatures have better senses than others. Luckily, the cacodemon -- like the zombieman -- only has a sensory acuity of 1. Imps, mancubi, and hell knights all have a sensory acuity of 2 (meaning twice as sensitive), whereas the baron has one of 3 -- hard to get past. The way the A.I. is designed right now, you can change literally one little number in a monster's definition to change how well he senses you.

[-Ghost-]

Yeah, it could be a good risk/reward weapon, where it'll drop almost anything, but it's gonna alert everything in the room plus a good chunk of the level or something. The carbine is a good idea, you could make the SMG more for dealing with weak enemies and the carbine with less ammo but higher damage for the big ones. Do the weapons currently have different sound values on firing, or are they all silent? The carbine could be a little louder too to be more of a tradeoff.

This is mostly an aesthetic thing, but it'd nice for the silenced weapons to make more different sounds to differentiate them a little better. They all have the same silenced sound at the moment, though the sniper would probably be a bit louder, and the SMG a bit higher pitched.

[Freaklore1]

Finally a freakin flashlight just like the one i was looking for,with no battery consumption and can be used separately with weapons mods or custom maps with dark locations,and it can be used even with a weapon equiped,also it isnt that crappy slightly brighten room effect that some other flashlights mods have.

[Josh771]

The carbine is a good idea, you could make the SMG more for dealing with weak enemies and the carbine with less ammo but higher damage for the big ones. Do the weapons currently have different sound values on firing, or are they all silent? The carbine could be a little louder too to be more of a tradeoff.

I suppose it could make a decent backbone for the stealth arsenal. It could deal middling damage with a decent rate of fire and slightly more common ammo than the sniper rifle.

I think I've got all the weapons currently using the same radius for their monster alerts. To be honest, the sniper rifle should be the quietest and wimpiest weapon in the player's arsenal if it actually fired .22LR ammunition. But this mod is far from realistic; heh, I shouldn't even try. Yeah, I'll mess around with making the different weapons have different sound attenuation.

This is mostly an aesthetic thing, but it'd nice for the silenced weapons to make more different sounds to differentiate them a little better. They all have the same silenced sound at the moment, though the sniper would probably be a bit louder, and the SMG a bit higher pitched.

I'd love to have separate firing and reloading sounds (heck, reloading animations would be nice) for all the weapons, sure. I'd prefer more of a "click" or "tat" firing sound than the current "thwip" sound -- except perhaps for the pistol. I might ask around in the Resources subforum or just snoop about the internet for sound bites.

Finally a freakin flashlight just like the one i was looking for,with no battery consumption and can be used separately with weapons mods or custom maps with dark locations,and it can be used even with a weapon equiped,also it isnt that crappy slightly brighten room effect that some other flashlights mods have.

Glad to be of service.