chevalier
Wed, 8th Sep '04, 5:10pm
Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
What's the latest word on the WW series? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=352923&post=3137618&forum=70&highlight=)
<hr><hr>Q: Is it recommended to go ahead and play WW, or wait until the remastered version is completed?<hr>I had heard that it was dead all together. I hope not, I liked it!<hr>You heard wrong, thankfully
NPC Pathfinding with PCs no in the Area (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380352&post=3138166&forum=47&highlight=)
As soon as the PC leaves the area, the AI time for all creatures in the areas is greatly reduced. Compex pathfinding operations will fail, often with a "AI Time overflow message", which means that the MoveToPoint command on the creature took more time than available on the timeslice for low priority creatures. You can override this behavior by using SetAILevel, however I do not recommend it, it's wasted CPU time since nobody sees it anyway. I'd rather have the creature teleport from waypoint to waypoint instead of walking while nobody is in the area. Especially the WalkWaypoint script could be cheaper if someone patched it to teleport if no PC is in the area instead of trying to pathfind (ActionMoveTo) and most likely fail.
To give you an idea how the whole AI time thing works and why it is a bad idea to have a lot of creatures run higher AI than they should, the system is built like this (simplified) <SNIPPED>
if t reaches 0 before all objects have been looped and all commands been run, you get a AI TIME OVERFLOW message for that object. This also explains why the AI time overflow usually seems to appear on random objects, because the object that's triggering is not necessarily the object that ate up the AI time, it just happened to be the first object that didn't have time left to run it's pending actions this AI cycle. As soon as those messages appear, you know that the stuff you are doing in the game takes up more CPU time each AIFrame than the game allows for AI.
More:
<hr>The way I worked around this a couple years ago in my waypoint code (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/scripts/data/1030091601453.shtml) (which I would recommend taking a look at in a few days, after I upload the update that I'm working on) is using ActionForceMoveToObject. The last parameter of ActionForceMoveToObject specifies a "timeout" -- i.e. after that amount of time, if the NPC still hasn't reached its destination, then it's simply jumped there. I make a check to see if there is a PC in the same area as the NPC. If there is, I use a 60 second timeout. If there's no PC in the area, I use only 20 seconds. I suppose you could just use ActionMoveToObject if a PC is in the area, but I'm paranoid--I'd rather ensure that the NPC will definitely make it to his next waypoint, rather than ensure that a PC will never see the NPC "jump".<hr>This will still eat up time for pathfinding, and actually quite a bit as it's retrying to pathfind until timeout happens. For something you can't really see, this is a bit luxury one could say.
Poisoning weapons (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380232&post=3138538&forum=77&highlight=)
<hr>I know, but I rather thought of it from a customizing viewpoint.<hr>The poison itself is dependend on the tag of the poison vial you are using. It's a scripted system and server operators/module creators can add new poisons fairly easily.
X2_S_PM_Special_Item (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380471&post=3138766&forum=47&highlight=)
<hr>Is there a way to modify the summons that some of the other classes have as well?<hr>No, pale master only
[ September 08, 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: chevalier ]
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
What's the latest word on the WW series? (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=352923&post=3137618&forum=70&highlight=)
<hr><hr>Q: Is it recommended to go ahead and play WW, or wait until the remastered version is completed?<hr>I had heard that it was dead all together. I hope not, I liked it!<hr>You heard wrong, thankfully
NPC Pathfinding with PCs no in the Area (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380352&post=3138166&forum=47&highlight=)
As soon as the PC leaves the area, the AI time for all creatures in the areas is greatly reduced. Compex pathfinding operations will fail, often with a "AI Time overflow message", which means that the MoveToPoint command on the creature took more time than available on the timeslice for low priority creatures. You can override this behavior by using SetAILevel, however I do not recommend it, it's wasted CPU time since nobody sees it anyway. I'd rather have the creature teleport from waypoint to waypoint instead of walking while nobody is in the area. Especially the WalkWaypoint script could be cheaper if someone patched it to teleport if no PC is in the area instead of trying to pathfind (ActionMoveTo) and most likely fail.
To give you an idea how the whole AI time thing works and why it is a bad idea to have a lot of creatures run higher AI than they should, the system is built like this (simplified) <SNIPPED>
if t reaches 0 before all objects have been looped and all commands been run, you get a AI TIME OVERFLOW message for that object. This also explains why the AI time overflow usually seems to appear on random objects, because the object that's triggering is not necessarily the object that ate up the AI time, it just happened to be the first object that didn't have time left to run it's pending actions this AI cycle. As soon as those messages appear, you know that the stuff you are doing in the game takes up more CPU time each AIFrame than the game allows for AI.
More:
<hr>The way I worked around this a couple years ago in my waypoint code (http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/scripts/data/1030091601453.shtml) (which I would recommend taking a look at in a few days, after I upload the update that I'm working on) is using ActionForceMoveToObject. The last parameter of ActionForceMoveToObject specifies a "timeout" -- i.e. after that amount of time, if the NPC still hasn't reached its destination, then it's simply jumped there. I make a check to see if there is a PC in the same area as the NPC. If there is, I use a 60 second timeout. If there's no PC in the area, I use only 20 seconds. I suppose you could just use ActionMoveToObject if a PC is in the area, but I'm paranoid--I'd rather ensure that the NPC will definitely make it to his next waypoint, rather than ensure that a PC will never see the NPC "jump".<hr>This will still eat up time for pathfinding, and actually quite a bit as it's retrying to pathfind until timeout happens. For something you can't really see, this is a bit luxury one could say.
Poisoning weapons (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380232&post=3138538&forum=77&highlight=)
<hr>I know, but I rather thought of it from a customizing viewpoint.<hr>The poison itself is dependend on the tag of the poison vial you are using. It's a scripted system and server operators/module creators can add new poisons fairly easily.
X2_S_PM_Special_Item (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=380471&post=3138766&forum=47&highlight=)
<hr>Is there a way to modify the summons that some of the other classes have as well?<hr>No, pale master only
[ September 08, 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: chevalier ]