Quote: Also how would one make Ai hurl grenades?

Quote: --- Original message by: ally


use this and adjust the a.i so that they don't spam the grenades.....


TUTORIAL ON SETTING AND ADJUSTING A.I.
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Quote: --- Original message by: Gamma927
File > New > Actor Variant.

Starting from the top...

Actor Definition: Direct this to the .actor tag that you wish to use. The .actor tag contributes a lot towards the way the AI acts. For example, the maximum distance that the AI can see is specified in the .actor tag, as well as guarding parameters, duck behind cover chance, etc.

Unit: Set the type of unit. Don't forget to browse to the unit itself. This is the biped that you will use.

Major Variant: This is the actor variant that contains the major variant. For example, in grunt minors, the grunt major variant is specified here.

Movement Switching: Essentially specifies whether the AI just runs, or crouches and runs.

Weapon: The weapon that the AI uses. Self explanatory.

Maximum Firing Distance: The maximum distance that the AI can shoot at. For assault rifles, I average around 8. For battle rifles and marksman rifles, I use around 16. For sniper rifles, I go for 40 or so.

Rate of fire: How fast you want the weapon to fire. If you want the AI to fire fully automatic, leave it at 0. If you want to fire semi-auto, one round every 2 seconds, you'll do a little math. One round every 2 seconds is 0.5 rounds per second, so you would use 0.5 here.

Projectile Error: How accurate you want the AI to be.

Gonna skip the next three because I never touch them. You can copy the values from another AI.

Death Fire Wildly Chance: The chance of firing randomly when the actor dies.

Death Fire Wildly Time: The time you spend firing wildly after you die. Firing wildly isn't necessary, but it's a nice touch for flood and grunts when they die. More of an aesthetic feel than one of a gameplay changing feel.

Desired Combat Range: This is a biggy. This sets how close the AI goes towards its target to fire. For sniper rifle AI, you want to stay far away. The end value also should be less than the maximum firing distance, so that it doesn't try to stay further away than it can. So for a sniper rifle AI, I'd normally leave it to pretty long ranged; around 30 - 40. For assault rifle AI, I keep it tight; 5 - 8. For shotgun AI, they're most effective at close range, so you'd leave it at 2 - 5. Note that the AI will TRY to get within this range, but if the maximum firing distance is greater than the end, it will fire at you if it isn't capable of entering this range.

The next two are aesthetic modifiers, to set the gun offset. I'm not going to dabble into this.

Target Tracking: On a scale of 0 to 1, it sets how well the AI tracks its target.

Target Leading: On a scale of 0 to 1, it sets how well the AI leads its target. Please don't set target tracking and target leading to 1, and be like "z0mg mai AI r so l33t cuz they r raep teh enemiz 10/10 tiemz".

Weapon Damage Modifier: Sets how effective the damage is with the certain weapon when the AI is using it. For example, if you have a rocket launcher AI, and you set the thing to 0.01, it'd only do 0.001 of the damage of a rocket launcher, which is around 300. So, you'd only take 3 damage from a direct hit, instead of 300.

Damage per second: Leave it at 0 to use the weapon's default. This is basically how much damage the AI does with the weapon towards its target per second.

For most of Burst Geometry, I'm only going to cover the important parts. Not enough time to go indepth.

Burst Duration: How long each burst lasts. So if you have a machine gunner AI, who fires for ten seconds at a time, set it to 10. If you have a pistol crewman, who fires one shot every few seconds, set it to that fraction of time.

Burst Separation: How long the AI waits between each burst.

Special Damage Modifier: A damage modifier for the special case firing. We'll go into this later.

Firing Patterns should be self explanatory. Overall, it just modifies your firing length and speed when berserking, moving, and acquiring a new target.

Special Case Firing Properties: This is a biggy.

Special Fire Mode:
Overcharge: This is for weapons that are capable of charging (Plasma Pistol, Spartan Laser).
Secondary Trigger: This is for weapons with a secondary trigger (Assault Rifle with Grenade Launcher, Battle Rifle with Masterkey Shotgun).

Special Fire Situation:
Enemy Visible: When the AI sees an enemy
Enemy Out Of Sight: When the enemy takes cover, or is hiding
Strafing: When the enemy is in sight, and moving back and forth. Like those noobs in bloodgulch.

Special Fire Chance: The chance of using the special fire property.

Special Fire Delay: How long you must wait before using the special fire again.

Berserking and Meleeing should be self explanatory. Berserking is basically when the AI goes crazy, like when elites pause firing to roar at you.

Grenades: Most of the grenade parameters are self explanatory. I'll cover the important ones.

Grenade Velocity: This number must be a positive whole number in order to get the AI to throw. When you extract an actor variant, this normally isn't a positive whole number. You'd use around 9 to 10 for marines and grunts, and around 12 for elites.

Grenade Ranges: Similar to Desired Combat Range

Collateral Damage Radius: The AI won't throw the grenade if there's a friendly unit within this distance of the planned grenade throw.

Grenade Chance: How likely the AI are to throw grenades.

Grenade Check Time: How often the AI check whether or not to throw grenades.

Encounter Grenade Timeout: How often the AI must wait between grenade throws. This goes for all actors in an encounter. So if (list_get (ai_actors encounter) 0) throws a grenade, (list_get (ai_actors encounter) 1) cannot throw a grenade until the timer has gone up.

Items: Basically the stuff the AI drops when he dies.

Equipment: Not necessary, leave blank if you don't want him to drop anything. Otherwise, specify the equipment that you wish the AI to drop (health packs, overshields).

Grenade Count: Number of grenades that the AI drops when he dies.

Don't drop grenades chance: How likely the AI is to NOT drop a grenade when he dies.

Drop weapon loaded: Fraction of the ammo loaded into the weapon that the AI drops. So if you had 0.2 - 0.4 for a MA5B Assault Rifle, which has a clip of 60, he'd drop the weapon with 12 - 24 rounds loaded.

Drop weapon ammo: This is the amount of ammo stored in the weapon. This doesn't use a fraction system; rather, it uses an actual ammo count.

The last few values should be self explanatory / unnecessary.

Change Colors: This is for variants with color changes. If you set it to pink, for example, for a spartan AI using the multiplayer spartan biped, the AI would be pink.