Universal Enhanced AI

[Josh771]

I found a bug.
I was playing The Adventure of Square with your latest(1.1.1) UEA mod in GZDOOM(3.6.0), and the Cannon Jerks attack other enemies for some reason.
Without this mod, Cannon jerks never target and attack other enemies, so this bug is probably caused by this mod.
I took a video of this bug.
https://streamable.com/v8eet

I don't believe that Cannon Jerk was not actually targeting those monsters; this looks like the same bug that was shown to me recently with monsters like the Chaingun Guy and Arachnotron. I'm going to have to see if there is some kind of Actor variable I can clear to stop these "rapid-firing" types of monsters from doing this.

Here's what I believe is technically happening in that video: The Cannon Jerk is just in range of another monster that is seeing you and broadcasting your location to all nearby monsters and creating a group search path for them to come find you. All monsters informed in such a way are given the first node in their search path at the same location as the monster that broadcast your location. So, when the monsters below the bridge area informed the Cannon Jerk of your location, he turned to "investigate" starting at their location.

The problem I need to fix here is really a few problems:
1) - The Cannon Jerk can see you and should have been able to see its target recently enough to ignore these sorts of broadcasts.
2) - The Cannon Jerk (and continuously firing monsters like the Arachnotron) will stay in their firing loops when they are given a search path, so they fire at the path node instead of trying to walk to it. This essentially freezes them in their firing states indefinitely.

I'm going to investigate and see if there is some kind of counter I can clear on these Actors when they have a path goal so that they will stop firing and go back to normal functioning.

EDIT: I'm about to release a potential fix for this problem. So far, I can't replicate the issue since making this one simple change, but it'd be better if I can get more players that have been encountering this sort of issue to test it.

EDIT2: The latest master on the Universal Enhanced AI GitHub has a potential fix implemented. If no one can replicate this issue for a several days or so, I'll make it an official release.

[KarolineDianne]

Heya! I wanted to say I'm adoring this mod, it really makes things a lot more interesting, especially the stealth feature. Used in conjunction with things like the lighting/fog and flashlight effects that come with Ultimate Doomvisor, it can really make for tense situations and scenarios where keeping your light off and sneaking around is the better option.

It was during some fooling around with stealth that I noticed something a bit odd though. The Hell Nobles in my monsterpack weren't making noise or leaving flame trails where they stepped, but only when they were 'searching'. When they were 'chasing', they'd stomp about and leave fire just fine, but they seemed to 'calm down' when they didn't know where I was and were just wandering about trying to find me. One one hand, that's pretty cool, but on the other it's clearly an unintentional bug. I also noticed that they weren't fully animating their walking cycle. They were only stepping with one leg, which leads me to believe something was causing only part of their See state's frames to animate. While it's kinda cool to have such a clear audiovisual difference between 'wandering about' and 'TARGET SIGHTED MUST KILL', I imagine this could break more than simple special effects in other monsters.

For reference, this is the see state of the monster in question:

---

Code: Select all

See:
		TNT1 A 0 A_PlaySound("Knight/Step", 4)
		TNT1 A 0 A_SpawnItemEX("GreenFireEffectFloor", 2, 20, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0)
		BOS3 AA 3 A_Chase
		BOS3 BB 3 A_Chase
		TNT1 A 0 A_PlaySound("Knight/Step", 4)
		TNT1 A 0 A_SpawnItemEX("GreenFireEffectFloor", 2, -20, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0)
		BOS3 CC 3 A_Chase
		BOS3 DD 3 A_Chase
		Loop

[akidd]

thank you for this mod. Nothing can refresh doom more in SP for a lifetime player than being surprised by the AI.

[gramps]

Ahh, so this is where that sneaky thing went.

Might use this as a base to try and coax some guys through some portals if nobody minds. Custom inventory items ftw.

[Rowsol]

Playing with the new guncaster 3.2, gzdoom 3.7.2

[m8f]

Just posting here so this issue doesn't get lost: https://github.com/JRHard771/Universal- ... I/issues/1

Also, there may be a problem with portals: if a monster is firing projectiles at you, and you go through a portal, that monsters starts to shoot at a portal floor. I didn't investigate this, may be unrelated to Universal Enhanced AI.

Besides that, this is a very nice addon: it's nice to see smarter enemies behavior. Thanks for making this and sharing, and keep up the good work!

[MrRumbleRoses]

how does 1 use this mod? if it suppose to be in a wad file thing or what? cause last time i tried it, it didn't seem to do anything

[BoneofMalkav]

how does 1 use this mod? if it suppose to be in a wad file thing or what? cause last time i tried it, it didn't seem to do anything

You can either load the archive it's packaged in like you would with a WAD or PK3/PL7 file or you could load the directory as such.

[Caligari87]

Also, it doesn't do anything super-obvious, just makes monsters a little smarter about how they track you, which you'll probably only see if you're playing "stealthy" for example and know what to look for. There's a sub-menu under the GZDoom options menu, where you can tweak some settings.

Regarding the above error, Josh will probably pop in to fix it sometime in the next couple weeks or so. He's taken another semi-hiatus it seems but checks in periodically.

[mrtaterz]

Here's a link to a fixed version of Universal Enhanced AI, courtesy of myself, since there seems to be a dead link and I'm pretty sure I remember the "latest version" not working correctly on the current version of GZDoom.

[SergeantDiggs]

Here's a link to a fixed version of Universal Enhanced AI, courtesy of myself, since there seems to be a dead link and I'm pretty sure I remember the "latest version" not working correctly on the current version of GZDoom.

Thank you! Downloading now!

[Kneight]

Very fun mod here, and it's awesome to see monsters following you around.

Besides the enemies shooting projectiles at the floor, there's also this other thing about monsters deliberately shooting at other monsters. I'm not talking about infighting, more like, it looks like they aim at the player, but their projectiles head towards other enemies, even their own species. I could take some screenshots of this happening but it's rather seldom. I'm not sure if anyone else experiences this as well (skimmed through the thread so, sorry if I missed it).

[r&r]

Here's a link to a fixed version of Universal Enhanced AI, courtesy of myself, since there seems to be a dead link and I'm pretty sure I remember the "latest version" not working correctly on the current version of GZDoom.

I think this needs to be updated again
as it crashes the latest GZdoom (v4.5.0) randomly

[wildweasel]

I think this needs to be updated again
as it crashes the latest GZdoom (v4.5.0) randomly

Have you got any kind of crash reports or logs that might help?

[kalensar]

I've worked on this mod quite a lot and duct taped it in my other mods. The crash has to do with killing a lot of enemies when you ambush them. One or all of them call for help calls for help right as they all die and then the game crashes from reading a zero address dealing with line 17 in the group.txt file. My fix was to delete the ambush category.