About AI > Conversations

LarryG on 21/8/2015 at 21:17

Does anyone know:

1. What is the flag Don't Block supposed to do?
2. In the Action dropdown there is Become hostile. To just the player? To everyone? Would this be a jump to high alert or is it something else? If an AI becomes hostile what happens to the remaining actions for that AI?
3. Similarly Enable investigate. Since there is no disable investigate, I assume this is for the duration of the conversation once enabled. Without this the actor would not break away from the conversation an investigate when alerted, I assume.
4. About Abort Steps and Abort Conditions, are they enabled, or are they somehow tied to the Alert action which says it isn't enabled? If enabled, do they apply to all actors alert levels? And exactly how does the priority fit in? I would have expected different abort priorities by alert level. But that isn't what is provided, so how does this work, assuming it does?
5. Why is there a SaveConversation flag? The best guess I have is that it has to do with save games made during a conversation, intended to restart the conversation from where it was when the save game was made. If that's not set to True, the conversation is started again from the top. But that's just a guess

R Soul on 21/8/2015 at 21:37

I read an old LGS doc a while ago explainging them. There's a Combat: Non hostile property. 'Become Hostile' just sets the value to 'Never'. Enable investigate sets 'Investigation Style' to 'Normal'.

In each case it may depend on the property being on the concrete, and not inherited from the hierarchy.

It's in DarkAI.doc. That's in a package that came with Tafferpatcher, in the path \Tutorials\Objects.

I wrote about SaveConversation on (http://dromed.whoopdedo.org/dromed/property/ai_saveconverse) this page, but I can't remember were I got the information from. Maybe another LGS doc.

edit: It could have been this: (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27591)

LarryG on 21/8/2015 at 22:32

Thanks. I thought I had (& had read) all the LGS documentation, but DarkAI.doc is new to me. I'll have to download and read it.

Edit: Well that answers those questions and others I didn't even think about yet. To close out this topic, I'll post the relevant section from that doc here.

Quote:

AI Pseudoscripts
A pseudoscript is an ordered set of instructions, with optional additional arguments, that appear in various AI link and property dialogs. Typically, pseudoscripts allow the AI to decide when something is relevant or not, and the designer to specify what to do as a result of that decision. The present UI for Pseudoscripts is crude but functional. At some point it will be overhauled.
Currenly implemented pseudoscript instructions are:

• Nothing: The instruction is skipped. For testing purposes, other instructions can be reset to "Nothing" without losing the argument fields.

• Script message: Sends a message to the scripts attached to the AI. If the script message handler replys "FALSE" the pseudoscript will end.
Argument 1: The message to send
Argument 2: Data placed in the first general data field of the generic script message. May be empty.
Argument 3: Data placed in the first general data field of the generic script message. May be empty.

• Play sound/motion: Plays a speech sound, a motion, or both.
Argument 1: The sound concept to play (see Eric's sound docs). May be empty.
Argument 2: Additional sound tags. May be empty.
Argument 3: Motion tags. (see art\src\mschema)

• Alert (unimplemented): Go to the specified alert level.
Argument 1: The alert level desired.

• Become hostile: Changes the "non-hostility" property to "never." There are no arguments.

• Enable investigate: Changes the "investigation style" property to "Normal" There are no arguments.

• Goto object
Argument 1: The object to go to. Can be either an object name or an integer.
Argument 2: The speed. If the argument is left blank, the AI wil default to "Normal"
Stopped
Very slow
Slow
Normal
Fast
Very fast
Argument 3: Optional motion tags. (see art\src\mschema) (unimplemented)

• Frob object

• Wait: Will delay the next instruction for some specifed amount of time.
Argument 1: The time, in milliseconds, to wait.
Argument 2: Optional motion tags. (see art\src\mschema)

• Mprint: Prints text to the monochrome monitor.
Argument 1: The text to print

• Add/Remove Metaproperty
Argument 1: “Add” or “Remove”
Argument 2: The name of the metaproperty. Can be either an object name or an integer.
Argument 3: (optional) The object(s) to which to add the metaproperty. If empty, defaults to the AI. Can be any valid object list.

• Add Link
Argument 1: The link flavor.
Argument 2: The object(s) to link to. Can be any valid object list.
Argument 3: (optional) The object(s) to link from. If empty, defaults to the AI. Can be any valid object list.

• Remove Link
Argument 1: The link flavor.
Argument 2: The object(s) to link to. Can be any valid object list.
Argument 3: (optional) The object(s) to link from. If empty, defaults to the AI. Can be any valid object list.

• Face: Faces the AI in a particular direction. If angle alone is specified, the AI will face an absolute angle in XY. If object alone is specified, the AI will face the object. If both are specified, the AI will face an angle relative to the facing of the object.
Argument 1: Angle
Argument 2: Object

• Dest. Script Message: If the pseudo script is associated with a link, this command sends a script message to the linked-to object. (toml 09-10-98)
Argument 1: ?
Argument 2: ?
Argument 3: ?

Well not close it out quite yet. There is nothing in DarkAI.doc about Abort conditions and Abort steps, Don't Block, or the SaveConversation. Any more definitive (or speculative if properly marked as such) information on those items would still be welcome.

Xorak on 22/8/2015 at 01:27

The Abort Conditions will abort the conversation when the specified level is reached. The Abort Steps are things you can make the AI do when they are alerted to that level, causing too the rest of the regular conversation steps to be totally aborted.

If for instance though you set a Guard to "(3) High", they will still always attack you instead of doing whatever you set the Abort Steps to be, because their various attack behaviours override the conversation scripts. But if you set the condition to "2 (Moderate)," then if they become alerted to that pre-attack level, they will do the Abort Step when they become moderately alerted.

There's a little more info in this (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1168598#post1168598) thread too. The gist of it is that condition level 3 is pointless, as the AI will always do their more vital behaviours instead.

I just managed to set up a test mission though with a guard's Abort Condition set to 1. Thus in the middle of his conversation, when he heard me jump and make a noise, I had set him up to do a shake arm motion with the Abort Step, so he did that motion first and then proceeded to begin searching for me using his regular search behaviours. I think it's a neat effect now that I see it in action.

LarryG on 22/8/2015 at 03:17

That helps for some of the Abort issues. I surmised that the Abort steps happen when an abort condition + priority is met, but it still isn't clear how priority affects the condition. I read what Shadowspawn said about it not making any sense to set the abort condition to 3. I can see how you might want to set it at level 1 or level 2. But that still begs the question of whether it applies to all Actors all the time, or only the current actor. It also does not address the priorities which can be applied. I wonder if you set the priority field properly whether or not it would have the Abort steps be prioritized over other high priority actions when the AI (s) alert. For example, I would hope that if you set the priority to Absolute, you could use a level 3 alert and have those steps take place before any other level 3 behaviors.

john9818a on 22/8/2015 at 16:30

In the Abort Steps you can specify which actor performs each step just like the conversations do. In the case of Alert level 3 I use an Alert Response instead of the Abort Steps because it will be used whether there is a conversation taking place or not. I'm not sure I would ever want to use Alert level 1 in Abort Conditions because it would be too easy to break a conversation.