[UPDATED] ICECreatureControl v1.4.0 - creature AI for enemies, animals, monsters, zombies ...

LOL

This is why you are one of my favorite developers!

 

Hi everybody,
here you can find a first version of the ICECreatureTPCAdapter and also the included demo scene. I’ll improve the adapter step-by-step but the main features are ready, so please feel free to give it a trial

​

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/WebGL/ICECreatureTPCAdapterDemo/index.html
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/adapter/ICECreatureTPCAdapter.unitypackage​

Have a nice evening!

Pit

 

oh noes, i need unitz adapter!

 

Hey Pit
Perfect timing! Bought Third Person Controller just this moment and Unity isn´t ready downloading it.
Have ICECreatureControl for more than 2 months, because i think its such an essential asset, just waited to begin with it in 1.1.
I really like the video "ICECreatureControl v1.1 - Setup Wizard", makes beginning so much easier for me and hope for more(tailored to a beginner like me)!

Wish you all the best
Michael

 

Will it work with 2D or are there any plans to make it 2D compatible?

 

DONE

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/webplayer/ICECreatureUnitZAdapterDemo.html
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/adapter/ICECreatureUnitZAdapter.unitypackage​

 

Hi Michael, I hope you will enjoy the work with ICE and whenever you have a question or if you run into a problem please feel free to contact me. And in urgent cases you can contact me also via skype, just send me a short pm.

Have a nice day!

Pit

 

Hi Jeremiasz, ICE is made for 3D worlds but works with each kind of GameObject and dependent to your project you can use it also for 2.5D scenarios or top-down (overhead) games. For pure 2D platformers it is not suitable and I would like to mention that the code is also not optimized for such pure 2D scenarios and maybe also oversized. If you want I could send you an early version of ICE, so you can test whether it’s suitable for your desired project or not. Please just send me a pm if this would be interesting for you.

Have a nice day!

Pit

 

Hi Pit, when you get a minute please don't forget the Energy Bar Toolbar adapter to show the animals' stats (health, stamina, thirst etc). I think it should be super simple to do, but no rush. Thanks!

 

Hi Jon, it's under progress

 

Excellent! Let me know if you need any help

 

Seems the link to download the TCPAdapter is not working all I get is a WinRAR file with another WinRAR file inside that with a folder called archtemp full of meta files

Ok it comes down as a .tar file? instead of a unitypackage? what is this witchcraft ! what do I open the .tar with tried WinRAR and 7-zip?

 

Greetings PIT,

The PUN Adapter throws an error if put into the project. After extracting the adapter into the project it gives this error:

Assets/ICE/ICECreatureControl/Scripts/Adapter/PUN/ICECreatureRegisterPUNAdapter.cs(3,18): error CS0234: The type or namespace name `Utilities' does not exist in the namespace `ICE.Shared'. Are you missing an assembly reference?

To fix it I changed the using statement in IceCreatureRegisterPUNAdapter to:
using ICE.Utilities;

Instead of:
using ICE.Shared.Utilities;

Ok and so now the question - we have a Multiplayer game using PUN and Cloud. I really liked the example you showed for setup on a procedural world. We would love to setup out system like this using the Pooling and spawning from the creature register (our terrain is like Minecraft and we love the idea of spawning enemies around the player as they move in the environment and removing enemies that are out of range, all using the pooling system). What is the PUNAdapter being used for? And also, would it be possible to have an option for spawning/pooling to use an alternative PUN friendly method? If not, totally understandable, if we can get ICE working in our project then it could be some custom stuff we do to make it work well with PUN. Regardless, thanks for the updates so far and any suggestions you may have!

Is there a chance you might share the scene you showed off that is setup for procedural environment?

*Edit*
I also found another error when trying to save Ethans settings. If I hit the Save button, Unity throws this error(part of it anyway):
InvalidOperationException: To be XML serializable, types which inherit from IEnumerable must have an implementation of Add(System.Object) at all levels of their inheritance hierarchy. UnityEngine.Transform does not implement Add(System.Object).
System.Xml.Serialization.TypeData.get_ListItemType ()

Sorry to be a bother. I get around this of course by simply copy and paste the component values for now.

 

Hi Shaun, strange issue ... it's an exported unity package and the download works fine on my system. please try to download the package with another browser. if this is also not working for you I'll provide you a ftp download.

 

Sorry Tethys, my fault ... the ICECreaturePUNAdapter was made for 1.0 and is not updated up to now, I'll do this within the next days ... but the adapter is also not realy required for using ICE within a multiplayer environment, the only thing you need is to add the networkview to your creatures and to handle the spawning by yourself (the adapter will handle the spawning with the integrated pool management). I'll provide you an example as soon as the adapter is up-to-date, also I'll publish the procedural world example asap ...

because of the saving error it seams that I have forget an [XmlIgnore] for a transform. I'll check this promptly and will provide an update.

 

Hi thanks,

Have sorted it out had to rename it from .tar to .unitypackage don't know why it was doing that but all sorted now

 

Loving This system! , one thing I cant figure out is I have two AI setup and attacking each other they will also attack me if I happen to get to close, now when one of the AI wins the battle the others death animation plays and he is as dead as a dodo, This is where my problem is the winning AI then continues to attack the dead AI when it should really just go about its wandering around and look badass cause it won ;-)

Any Ideas ?

 

Hi Pit,

First of all, thank you for building this wonderful system I think I start to get the hang of it (a little)
I'm using it in combination with UFPS, but just now run into 2 small problems which I can't seem to fix.
1 - In the UFPS Demo everything works, but when I setup my own creature (with navmesh/mecanim) it does attack the player, but I cannot kill the creature (health does go down a little bit), while the troll really dies after a couple of shots.
2 - How could I make the creature wait and play an eat animation when reaching a certain waypoint.
I tried making the waypoint an interactor, or in mission -. waypoint ad an extra behaviour to that specific waypoint.
It works, in the way that the creature stops and eats, but the creature never resumes his patrol

Hope you can guide me in the right direction

 

There should be a command in the API, or you could link it to another behavior to resume? Adding a condition might also be required.

 

You need to add an interactor condition, to check whether the target is dead, if it is then it will go about its business. This would be under your attack interactor.

 

Thanks for the quick reply I made a new behaviour and linked it to my WAITANDEAT behaviour but no desired result. It does go to the linked behaviour, but apparently the conditions of the waypoint where the eat animation should play are still valid, the creature goes back into eating mode. Is there a way to set a new target after a certain time?

I found the fix for my UFPS creature health problem, I had overlooked the STATUS -> Vital Indicators -> Damage multiplier.
Adjusted the value to one, and now my creature can die

 

Hi Gr33nIguana,
great that you could solve the attack issue. In addtion to your solution I would like to mention that it could be also helpful to increase the default UFPS damage or to activate the ADVANCED flag of the creature damage settings to override the default UFPS damage with your own influence settings.

Here also the answer to your second issue. If you are using the Patrol Mission you can deactivate the TRANSIT flag so that your creature will do a break before walking to the next waypoint. In this case you can use the ‘Duration Of Stay’ slider to define the length of the break and you can define the behaviour your creature have to use during the break. You can define such a break for all waypoints or individual for each waypoint by activate the ‘Custom Behaviour’ flag. But your solution with the interactor is also suitable, just use the advanced target selection criteria settings to restrict the selection (e.g. increasing a status value during the BREAK behaviour, use this value as selection criteria and decrease it during the patrol behaviour)

I hope this will be helpful to you.

Have a nice day!
Pit

 

Hi Shaun,
Julian is absolutely right. There are several ways to handle this by using the advanced Target Selection Criteria of the Interactor rule. Activate the ADVANCED flag of your ATTACK rule and ADD a new condition group with an AND operator. Now select ‘CreatureIsDead’ (must be false) or ‘CreatureFitness’ (must be larger 0). In both cases your predator creature will attack the prey only if it’s alive. In addition to this you could define a further rule for cases your prey creature is dead and your predator should loot or eat it.

I hope this will be helpful to you.

Have a nice day!
Pit

 

Btw. the PUN and Energy Bar adapters are nearly finish. I will publish both adapters here within the next 36h ...

 

Hi Pit,

The answer is more then helpful, not only does it work, I have learned a bit more about several settings as well.
Really thanks a lot
I deactivated TRANSIT, load in my behaviour and it works instantly.
Will try the interactor solution as well.

You also have a very nice day!

 

btw. in addtion to the above-described solution you can also expand such a break behaviour by using a DETOUR move (behaviour rule -> movements -> DETOUR (popup). Here you can define a static position your creature can visit during its break (e.g. a check-point aside the normal patrol route or a door your creature have to check) and if you define more than one behaviour rule for the break (e.g. an IDLE rule and a DETOUR rule) with a random order type, you can randomize the behaviour during the break. Also you can activate the FAVOURED flag to hold the rule according the defined conditions. Save your existing behaviour settings and play with the values

 

When I enable DETOUR in my WAITANDEAT behaviour, the creature tries to go to the given position, but also tries to go to the last waypoint, ending up walking back and forward
Do I need a new behaviour, for example MOVETODETOUR with a walkcycle and DETOUR enabled, then link my WAITANDEAT to the new behaviour?

Another question, related to my WAITANDEAT, is it possible to make the creature react to a bullit hit.
So when doing his patol, or eating at certain a waypoint, when I shoot the creature, while it does not see me, it will go to the last position of the player.
Or can I change the player detection range on bullit impact?

 

Just wanted to chime in and mentioned that I have spent a good amount of time over the last 2 days learning the new ICE and getting it to work in our game. This AI system is freakin brilliant! Once you learn the basics and start adapting it for your specific situation you realize as a game dev that there is just SO MUCH POTENTIAL. We already are going to now move over to UniStorm (replacing Time Of Day in our game) because of the adapter and all the extra situations we can now setup with our creatures, all with a few clicks and a little setup time. We now have enemies spawning on our procedural terrain. Ethan is even looking for his blue balls and putting them back in his container... all in a dynamic environment.

It takes time to learn ICE - it is a complex system that is super powerful and worth SOOOO much more than the actual asking price. Really looking forward to wrapping up on our implementation on this for our project, and am enjoying working with this product and watching things come alive. Everytime we get something new to work it's happy dance time over here. In the following week we will be working on getting RPG kit and iCode to work nice with ICE so that players can give and receive damage.

FYI we are using Mecanim in our project and have discovered the correct way for us to use it. It works great, we simply changed to Advanced for animation and use our parameters that are setup in the animator controller. Bada boom bada bing and our monsters were good to go!

 

just favour the behaviour, so that your creature will hold the behaviour until the detour is complete (e.g. detour position reached) ...

to react to a hit you can define the desired hit collision in the environment section, specify here also a behaviour for the hit (e.g. BULLIT_HIT) - now your creature will react to your bullit hit. To use this hit as trigger for an interaction between your creature and player, you could add an addtional condition e.g. 'OR OwnBehaviour == BULLIT_HIT' so that your creature will hunting your player when the other conditions are given (e.g. player is visible etc) OR when the OwnBehaviour is BULLIT_HIT ... an example for this you will find in the ICECreatureUFPSAdapter demo

 

This thread is so confusing to me these days. lol How much of the discussion is ICE and how much is UFPS's features with ICE? I wonder if there is a way to differentiate between the two? Pit, do you have a separate forum somewhere?

 

Mr Pit,

You are the best
All works nice and smooth now, for as far that I have used it in the past few days ICE is the best AI solution I have tried.

@Teila A seperate UFPS and ICE forum would be great, keeps the main forum clean and bundles the scattered info in one place

 

Hi Teila, don't worry 97% is ICE ... 3% the ICECreatureUFPSAdapter, a small bridge script which comes with ICE to handle the damage of UFPS based player, so the main topic isn't UFPS but rather how to interact with 3rd party products But you are right, seperate threads would be helpful to keep track of the core product and essential information. I'll arrage this within the next days.

btw. there was already a forum (currently hidden) with seperate threads on the http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com homepage, I'll activate this again and here you can find also a bug tracker (http://www.ice-technologies.de/mantis/login_page.php)

 

Dear customers, to keep track of the core product and its essential issues I have set up separate forums for specific interests, so it’s easier to you to find the desired information without skimming over the complete forum replies. Please feel free to visit the new forums and open your own threads of interests.

Wish list - the best place for suggestions, desired features and adapter requests ...
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/forum/wish-list/

Additional Support Fora:
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/

ICECreatureRegister
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/forum/register/

ICECreatureControl:
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/forum/core/

3rd Party Adapter:
http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/forum/adapter/

There are more forums and threads for specific interests, so please feel free to visit the main page of the forum (http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/forums/) for further informations.

Have a nice day!

Pit

 

Hi everybody, here you can find an update of the ICECreatureAStarAdapter ...
icecreaturecontrol.com/files/adapter/ICECreatureAstarAdapter.unitypackage

see also: http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/f...taradapter-a-pathfinding-project-integration/

Have a nice day!
Pit

 

Pit you did a great, great thing with TPC integration. More people will get ICE now for sure

 

@icetec , was the UFPS adapter repaired ( Advanced Influnces overriding problem,) yet ?
That caused we could not create a Headshot function.
thank you

 

Hi Pit, wondering if you are still considering birds and fish? If you add birds, will they be able to walk on the ground as well as fly? I want to add some shore birds that I have already and want them to walk around my shores and swamps..but also fly.

Thanks!

 

Hello Pit!
I was messing with ICE, and came across something I am not sure how to accomplish.
I have an animal that has both a standing attack, and a running attack, and I would like the animal to be able to perform these attacks based on if it is moving or not.

How would I go about doing this?
Do I add a rule to the attack behavior, or do I need to add a completely new behavior?

 

Hi TonanBora,
you will need a seperate behaviour, but it's easy to realize ...

Open the interaction settings and add your prey creature as a new interactor for your predator. Start now with the interactor rule for the HUNTING behaviour (e.g. the predator have to hunt the prey while it is within a distance of 30 m, set the PRIORITY for this interaction to 60 and make sure that your predator runs faster than the prey). Add now an additional rule which will be active when the prey will be within a distance of 5-7m, set the PRIORITY of 65 and define your RUNNING_ATTACK behaviour. At last add a third interactor rule, set its PRIORITY to 70 and its selection range to 2 m (this value should be suitable to the defined stopping distance, otherwise your predator will stop without reaching this range) and define here the STANDING_ATTACK.

Now your predator will start HUNTING while the prey is within a range of 30m, start its RUNNING_ATTACK while the prey is within a range of 5m and runs the STANDING_ATTACK if the prey is within 2m. Make sure that the movements of each rule are suitable to the given actions e.g. to set the forward velocity of the STANDING_ATTACK to zero, but NOT the angular velocity, so that the predator will face the prey during the attack (change the Viewing Direction to CENTER to force this).

In addition to this you can improve the rules by using the advanced selection critera (e.g. define a new condition for each interactor rule and choose CreatureIsDead is FALSE, so that the predator will hunting and attack the prey only while it is alive. Here you could define now a further rule for EATING or LOOT the prey when CreatureIsDead is TRUE.

One point could be a little bit tricky! If your prey is fleeing, while your predator is within the STANDING_ATTACK, your predator will switch automatically back to the RUNNING_ATTACK which is basically okay, but such a permanent switch between two behaviours could be aesthetically a disaster, because no creature can change its behaviour and movements within milliseconds. To cover this you should favour both attack behaviours for 0.25-0.5f seconds (but at least suitable to the transition time which is required to fade the animations). A favoured behaviour rule will block all other rules and targets as long as the defined conditions are not fulfilled, which is extremely helpful to avoid unnecessary behaviour changes.

I hope this will be helpful to you but please feel free to contact me whenever you have a questions or runs into a problem with ICE.

Have a nice day!

Best wishes, Pit

 

It's on the way I'll send you the update asap!

 

Hi Teila, that's absolutely understood. Swimming, diving or flying will be additional options for each kind of creature, so birds will be defined as bipeds which can fly but also landing and walking around and mammals can swim and dive and if you want also fly (e.g. a humanoid creature with technical equipment or super forces). Fishes, seahorses and jellyfishes etc. will have its own body orientation type, but currently I’m still looking to implement all these new features in a smart way.

 

Great! Is that something that will come soon? Like in the next few months? I hate to ask that...sorry. lol

 

yes of course, this will be available within the next major update - maybe not perfect but implemented and ready to use

 

Not sure what I am doing wrong, but I can't get my animals to perform leisure activities.
They keep wandering about even though I have the update position set to Reached, and Timer.

 

Hi TonanBora, to define a simple leisure behaviour for a target, simply add further behaviour rules for your desired LEISURE behaviour mode (e.g. add different graze, working or idle animations but also 1-2 walk and/or run animations, so the creature can reach its next waypoint), define the desired play-length for each rule and adapt the desired order type (CYCLE, RANDOM). Define now the Random Positioning Range in which your creature should do its LEISURE activities and mark update on activate, reached and if you want also the timer – that’s all! Your creature will run now these rules as long as it is inside the given positioning range and the LEISURE behaviour mode or rather the target is active. Your creature will walking/running around, stopping to do something and mill around again. Play here also with different movement options, to find the best and natural movement for each rule.

Here you can test several movements ...

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/webplayer/TutorialMoveExamples.html​

... and you can find this tutorial scene also in the tutorial folder of your ICE package.

Please contact me again if you have further questions.

Have a nice day!

Pit

 

Okay, got them to kind of work, but when they travel to the outpost, they stop right when they enter the radius of the outpost, they don't continue to location they picked:


EDIT:
Also, I have set up some babies that will follow a mother around, however, it selects which ever mother is closest and changing its mother if another gets closer.

How would I go about restricting it so that the babies only have a single mother, and only follow that mother?
All creatures are spawned in, and I would like babies to pick a mother creature when first spawned, and that mother never changes unless she dies.

If I need to code for this, I am okay with that, I just need to know what code bits I need to access.

 

Hi TonanBora,
I have prepared a small video which shows the setup from scratch without using the setup wizard, I hope this will be helpful to you.

​

For your 'mother and child' issue you have to prepare several mothers and childs, so that each mother will be unique and explicit detectable for its child, otherwise a child will automatically select and follow the nearest mother (which could be each mother). I know that this manual solution is unhandy in cases of dozens of automatically spawned families and therefore I'll find a way to handle this more appropriate. Bassically you could handle this with a small additional script which overrides the target of a child or you could implement your custom code in the ReactComplete() method of the derivated ICECreatureControl class, which is already prepared for custom code.

Code (CSharp):

1.        
2.         public override void ReactComplete()
3.         {
4.             GameObject _unique_mother = null; // your desired mother
5.  
6.             // overrides the escort target
7.             Creature.Missions.Escort.Target.OverrideTargetGameObject( _unique_mother );
8.  
9.             // sets the active target for the next move
10.             Creature.SetActiveTarget( Creature.Missions.Escort.Target );
11.  
12.             // overrides the behaviour for the next move
13.             Creature.Behaviour.SetBehaviourModeByKey( "BEST_BEHAVIOUR_FOR_THE CHILD" );
14.         }

But apart from that I'll find and implement a smart and integrated sollution for this ...

Have a nice day!

Best regards, Pit

 

Thanks Pit!
Your script and video did indeed help me quite a bit.
I guess I need to make sure that the leisure behavior includes some form of movement.
So, I would include my leisure activities, such as grazing and resting, in the Rendezvous behavior then, right?

I also see what it is I need to do for my child and parent issue thanks to your script.
I don't even have to inherit from ICECreatureControl, I just need to access the control for the baby.

While messing with the Environment script, I noticed that Month was getting calculated in the same way as Minutes, Day was getting calculated in the same way as Seconds and Year the same as Hour.

Could you not just return DayTotal for Day, and then create MonthTotal and YearTotal variables and have them calculated like you did for DayTotal?

 

I've been able to semi-replicate fish and birds, the only limitation is that they will only fly or swim in the horizontal position. However the effect is still good and you can easily set them up like this and then when Birds and Fish are officially supported add the new function, which I believe is just a case a of adding Vertical Speed and Angle to the Movement settings. The fish and birds still react to the player/other AI controlled creature even if it is at a different height. Escort behaviours still work, for example I've got bird to fly around the player, but without its height changing. To do this:

Make sure pooling ground check is switched off, and Ground Check for the creature is set to none, and deactivate Handle Gravity.

 

Hey Pit, when I use the inventory system it automatically rotates the item so it faces the Z axis. The item is a dead fish which I want to face in a specific direction which I have set up in the prefab. Is there any way to fix this? Thanks

Secondly, I was hoping to use the inventory system for the player, what should I use as the Home prefab if it's for the player? Or better to not use one?