Bots / Path and everything what we need to know?

[Spaehling]

Hello,

since a few Days iam fighting with the Bots. The doing at some point a good job. But at the moment iam complete confused, cause there some many options for and Bots running some kind of ****.

i would love to have and complete explanation for Bots, Path, Rallynodes and Covernodes.

lets start step by step:

Covernodes Properties:
There we have slots for: Allies/Axis Support Attack/Defense Objective
My Questions: How long stays a bot on kind of that setup on a cover node?
This would be really usefull to know, for setting it up correct.
And how to setup this, with multiple Rep-index for 16,32,64 Player Setup?

Covernodes:
What does means is there any kind of tutorial about it?:
Axis/Allies Atackers/Defend Neutral/Good/Bad
Axis/Allies Support Neutral/Good/Bad

Did Bots react on that? Or for what, is it for?

Rallynodes:
Rally Area Size - What means that exactly and where i can detected what small - to xlarge makes for differences?

Weight:
Does it mean, if i have 3 Rallynodes.

1. 0.5
2. 0.75
3. 1

It's sure that for 3. the Priority ist most. But means 1. = 100% and they definitely dont go to the others or is there still a chance, that they go there too?

Capzones:
With all the priority Stuff for the others, how much does Priority Count here? Did the bots get confused, when they have lower priority on Obj-A but more rallynodes or Covernodes on Obj-B.

And how much bots reacts on what kind of Priority?

Iam sure i confused my self tooo much, with thinking about lots of it. thats the reason for the thread here ^^. it would be cool, if someone could helped me out. and iam sure its maybe interessting for other people too.

greetz Sp

 

[PsychoPigeon]

I would like to know this also

 

[[TW]Swag]

Alright, you caught me on the right day I suppose.. How does cover work in RO2/RS and what do all those things mean?

Covernodes Properties:
There we have slots for: Allies/Axis Support Attack/Defense Objective
My Questions: How long stays a bot on kind of that setup on a cover node?
This would be really usefull to know, for setting it up correct.
And how to setup this, with multiple Rep-index for 16,32,64 Player Setup?

Allies/Axis Support Bots will stay in position, generally, until either they die or the majority of the team (human) is in the capzone of the linked IndexID

To differentiate between different player loads, set up additional Objective that are particularly tuned for that player load. This makes linking IndexIDs between different loads much easier.

Covernodes:
What does means is there any kind of tutorial about it?:
Axis/Allies Atackers/Defend Neutral/Good/Bad
Axis/Allies Support Neutral/Good/Bad

The Attacker/Defend Neutral/Good/Bad settings are general settings to let the bot "know" where there are Good locations to either attack or defend from. These setting are so the LD can differentiate between poor locations and good locations to either attack or defend from. The actual locations are, obviously, based on the configuration of the game space that has been created.

All locations are, by default, set to Neutral which means that when all cover nodes are set to Neutral a bot is under fire it will attempt to move to a covernode marked either good or neutral for either attack or defending then attempt to engage enemies from there. Locations that are marked Bad will not be used unless there are NO good or neutral locations available when a bot is under fire. Locations that are marked Good will be desirable for use by the bots; however, if you only set one locations as Good (attack, for example)then all AI attacking will attempt to use that one covernode. The idea is to spread out good locations with good covernode markup so that the AI will use it. A suggestion is not give all good locations to the bots but to give the *BEST* locations to humans as the presumption is that humans will be playing the map and as a LD you wouldn't want all the good spots clogged up with AI.

The Support Neutral/Good/Bad setting, based on the above are locations that are good for supporting. The following roles are "support" roles from a BOT perspective:

Sniper/Marksman
Machine Gunner
Rifleman

From the locations that the LD defines for these the BOTS will occupy the covernode and shoot at enemies. As stated above, the bots will generally occupy this position until the majority of the human team has entered the linked objective volume.

*NOTE: if you put a position for, say, a machine gunner that is on the same relative elevation of a travel path for the same team, that bot *WILL* gun down it's own team, no questions asked, if it sees an enemy down range. Be very careful to not set up a automated griefing system.

Rallynodes:
Rally Area Size - What means that exactly and where i can detected what small - to xlarge makes for differences?

Weight:
Does it mean, if i have 3 Rallynodes.

1. 0.5
2. 0.75
3. 1

RallyNodes fairly straight forward as soon as you understand what will happen under the hood.

Weight: The likelihood that this RallyNode will be added to a valid selection list (explained below)
bPauseAtRally [TRUE/FALSE]: does the Bot stop at the rallynode for a moment. This is generally so you can group up bots
bSupportsInfantry [TRUE/FALSE]: used by Infantry?
bSupportsVehicle [TRUE/FALSE]: used by vehicle? RallyAreaSize MUST be extra large
ValidLocationsForPawns: Auto populated, do not touch
MinDistBetweenValidLocations: How the engine spreads out locations within the radius of the RallyNode
MaxValidLocationsForPawns: the maximum number of locations within the radius of the RallyNode
bCacheValidLocationsForPawns [TRUE/FALSE]: caching the valid locations is a performance enhancement by answering questions early so that bots don't have to sort it out at run time. At this point I cannot think of a reason why one would want to turn it off
RadiusScaleForCachedLocations: This will scale the size of the area in which valid locations are found. Increase this value if the Bots are hanging up on a particular RallyNode because they cannot find a valid location (1 = 100%)
RallyAreaSize: See chart below (expressed in Unreal Units)

• RallySize_Small=125.f
• RallySize_Medium=250.f
• RallySize_Large=500.f
• RallySize_XLarge=1000.f

WEIGHT: This value is used to modify how likely a particular rallynode will be added to a valid selection list.

Under the hood it works like this:

A BOT spawns into the world. A trace is performed to find all RallyNodes between where the Bot is and the objective space. All the RallyNode that are for the other team are dropped. Then, the Weight variable is used to figure out if the RallyNode is entered into a valid selection list. RallyNodes with value >= 1 will be added to the valid selection list. Any RallyNode with a value <1 will be randomly selected based on the weight. Any RallyNode that "wins" the random selection gets added to the valid selection list. From this valid selection list, the bot will select a rallynode (or maybe not) then navigate to that RallyNode prior to heading to the objective.

Capzones:
With all the priority Stuff for the others, how much does Priority Count here? Did the bots get confused, when they have lower priority on Obj-A but more rallynodes or Covernodes on Obj-B.

Priority on the Objectives is very important and is meant to compliment the cover system. I've gone over this a couple times in other posts as to how it works but for the sake of completion I will go over it one more time.

Lets say you have 3 objectives in your map and the AXIS are DEFENDING. The following table describes how to set up the Priority:

Objective 1:
AxisPriority = 0
AlliedPriority = 2

Objective 2:
AxisPriority = 1
AlliedPriority = 1

Objective 3:

AxisPriority = 2
AlliedPriority = 0

A messed up priority will confuse the bots, just out of hand. The reason it increases for defenders is that you want the the bots to go to the initially most important objective first. The reason it decreased for attackers is that they are attempting to get to the lowest order objective since it's the highest priority (Zero being the highest priority)

 

[Spaehling]

okay a big WOW to swag from my side a big thank you, i try to implement it to all my maps. i try to get everything, but iam sure there gonna be 1-2 more questions when i get through this, but i try without ^^.

and sorry for asking the priority stuff. you made me an bad
conscience, cause you need to tell it so often

 

[nymets1104]

What would be the cause for this build error?
"RallyNode_26 has no cached valid locations for pawns, please rebuild cover"

One would assume this means there are no valid cover nodes within the rallynode area, but in this case I have several valid cover nodes set to importance levels for the attackers and I still get this error. Anyone have some insight?

 

[Spaehling]

What would be the cause for this build error?
"RallyNode_26 has no cached valid locations for pawns, please rebuild cover"

One would assume this means there are no valid cover nodes within the rallynode area, but in this case I have several valid cover nodes set to importance levels for the attackers and I still get this error. Anyone have some insight?

hm i had this also before. but there where so many things, you can keep an eye on you forget sometimes stuff.

what you always can do, is deleting the rallynode and create a new one. maybe that helps. otherwise i could imagine that maybe something with the path pylon is wrong. but iam not sure, if the problem has then something to do with covernodes and rallynodes.

maybe you could post a screenshot of the area (btw. if you press P in your viewport you can see the both pathes), where the rallynodes makes trouble. otherwise ignore it, until you are finished with your map. maybe the problems solve it self once. keep focusing on polishing your map and test it in multiplayer if possible.

 

[nymets1104]

hm i had this also before. but there where so many things, you can keep an eye on you forget sometimes stuff.

what you always can do, is deleting the rallynode and create a new one. maybe that helps. otherwise i could imagine that maybe something with the path pylon is wrong. but iam not sure, if the problem has then something to do with covernodes and rallynodes.

maybe you could post a screenshot of the area (btw. if you press P in your viewport you can see the both pathes), where the rallynodes makes trouble. otherwise ignore it, until you are finished with your map. maybe the problems solve it self once. keep focusing on polishing your map and test it in multiplayer if possible.

Thank You! What I did was add additional cover nodes near the rally point like a short brick wall and then rebuild cover. In some cases this wokred, others it did not. So a "fix" I found was to increase the rallynodes size from the default Medium to either Large or Xtra Large. In almost every case this helped clear this error. I am still waiting to play a few rounds with bots and see how it works.

 

[Twrecks]

Make sure your Rally Node is listed in one of your objective's advanced properties. You have to fill it in manually, they reside just above the auto-populated cover node list if memory serves me right.

 

[G_Sajer]

This information is really valuable. IMHO if there is ANYTHING a mapper could use to make things really exiting and unique, it is a full understanding of bot and objective behavioral tools. I don't really know anything about the sdk, but I used to build tactical maps for SPWAW. If there is ANY way to control pathing, seeking cover, and most importantly, shifting spawn points based on an enemy location trigger, I could make a laundry list of brilliant things that could be done with maps based on these items alone. Imagine something like this: One side captures an objective. They begin to move toward the next one. But their new presence in the area has cause an enemy spawn point to manifest itself in a gully not 50 yards away --on the flank! Now the recent victors must repel the flank activity before moving on. Similar things could be done to defenders if they regained a lost objective. I have no idea if this level of control is possible, but imagine if it was.

 

[nymets1104]

Would it cause problems if opposing team rally nodes are close to eachother? I have a couple small caps zones where the rally nodes are very close. The defending team doesn't seem to get in them very well