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

I think "grab" and "carry" behaviors are quite common to creatures, as least the creatures that I know. If easily implemented (meaning easy for me), I would certainly use them. A hungry predator should attack and kill a prey creature, then oftentimes carry or drag its prey back to its den (home base). My cogent knowledge of these creature behaviors comes from extensive viewing of the "Wild Kratts."

 

Hi Pit,

I'm new to ICE and trying to use it to create a "Flying" creature.

I'm looking in "Body Orientation"'s help notes and it mentions flying... but nothing I've done has achieved any kind of vertical speed. I've got the creature set as GLIDER and have settings for roll and pitch in the "Essentials" tab as well as "Behaviors" but I seem to be missing something.

How does one go about setting a creature to fly around the scene instead of walk? Is this in the documentation somewhere that I'm just missing? Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

I completely agree with you. I want to request @icetec to that function officially.

Of course we can create that as original behavior, but very tricky and it easily might be cause of bug, and also could be compatibility problem with future update.( because of my low programming skill.) It needed additional special marker/sensor to control them, too.

Also I want to request ride/ride off function too. I think it could be able to using same logic/method.

PS,

I think, it need well thought to ensure maintainability. IK is needed to prepare complete solution for above mentioned function. But also I know it not part of job for ICE.
So the solution should be without IK, but it have to allowed integrate with IK solution.

 

ICE does have pickups - I could see this being used for picking up a corpse because on die a body can be swapped with another GO and that GO could have the pickup item on it. Haven't done this before but the tools might already be there to do this to a degree. A moving AI though, maybe not so much heh.

 

Hello guys!

I just want to say that this asset is awesome!
And to make it look really good when your "Monsters" is attacking, make a animation layer and avatarmask! So the lower body is still moving and the upper body does the attacking, thats how you make your enemys not slide! =)

peace out yall!

 

We're having some performance issues right now with ICE and I'm looking for some optimization options. My project is in VR. Sitting in my outdoor environment with birds and butterflies buzzing about I get a solid 89 fps. However, adding one ICE creature knocks the fps down from 89 to 59! Wow, huge hit! Sometimes it's as low as 53 fps which obviously wont work for VR. If I look away from any ICE agents and back at the sky, I can get my 89 fps back. However, as soon as I look at some ICE agents wandering about, boom I get the drop in FPS.

Any ideas or tickboxes I can hit to improve the performance? I don't have any missions on right now and no interactors - just a wolf wandering about using TAG for home and setting it to wander with the position offset trick. Enabling missions and doing herd behavior doesn't seem to effect it anymore, either way, whether its simple wander or more sophisticated behavior, either way there is the big hit in FPS. Not using Navmesh either, just doing ground check for a layer as the terrain is procedurally generated.

 

How many creatures are visible at the same time on your level ? You could tweak parameters like culling, it will deactivate creatures when the player is too far.
You can't have hundred models with animations running at the same time in Unity, you must optimise like plugin culling option and use some LOD if you have it for creatures.

You mean for soldiers or something like that ? Most creatures does not attack and slide at the same time or it's a specific animation instead.

 

Nope, a monster.. a big fat guy.. moves quite slowly.. so If I have it like I had before I could just walk backwards without having hit me a single time like forever because he stops, then attack, then walk again, then stops, and attacks.. and so on... and thats quite lame... So I made him walk , and attack and walk and attack.. but then after the attack I realized that damn he slides because ICE started moving him right away (wich I wanted) and made it look just not 22th century gaming... So thats when I remembered avatarmasks and animation layers...

so now when I have attack on a upperbody avatarmask, he walk, attack and walk (no slides because the attack animation dosent interupt the walk) ..

 

zenGarden said: ↑
How many creatures are visible at the same time on your level ? You could tweak parameters like culling, it will deactivate creatures when the player is too far.
You can't have hundred models with animations running at the same time in Unity, you must optimise like plugin culling option and use some LOD if you have it for creatures.

How do I use the culling?

 

1 - Thats why I mentioned in the post when I add just 1 ICE agent, boom (though I realize I said agents multiple times which probably was confusing - I've tried with 1 up to 8). I'm not that much of a noob to not understand culling and limitations on poly counts heh. I've also put a blank material on the mesh to make sure it wasn't a texture or a material, as well as tried on 2 different creatures (a deer and a wolf, both low poly).

 

After using the profiler it still isn't clear what is causing this drop in FPS. I get the awful eroneus VR message that is completely useless (because VR throws this same error for anything that slows it down, which doesn't point to the problem) VR.WaitForGPU. Turning ICE off also gets rid of the VR.WaitForGPU wonkiness and FPS goes back to normal. :/ I am getting some lag with garbage collection on the Physics.Raycast for the ground check but it seems minimal. It could have something to do with distance to camera checks. I have noticed in Terrain Shaders that do texture replacement at a distance, therefore are always doing a distance to camera check, cause this drop in FPS as well.

 

@icetec - Check your Skype!

 

It must be some issue on your side, i run the plugin with 30 creatures without any noticeable frame rate drop.

It's on your creature prefab, on Essentials-> Tuntime Options

 

With VR? This is an essential detail, it isn't minor. Its why I have asked, been in this thread since day 1 and use this asset on my other game as well.

 

Check to see if you have duplicate lighting or cameras, I've made the mistake before where too many directional lights dropped the frame rate down.

 

My framerate only drops when I enable ICE creature control and spawn in a creature. No ICE, no problem. I have even turned off shadow casting for moving creatures to optimize. I have the flock asset working in the scene fine with butterflies and birds landing on dynamic landing spots as they spawn in, no FPS drop whatsoever. I've been at it for a minute on optimizing outdoor environments for VR. I think I might be able to write a guide when I'm done heh.

 

It's a non VR test scene. The issue must be about some related VR stuff if you have so big frame rate drops.

 

Yes I believe this to be the case as well. I'm hoping there will be someone else using this in VR who might have some insight, or maybe Pit. I've tweaked so many things to try to squeeze some more performance out of it. Also worth noting, even if I don't spawn in a creature, if ICE creature register is on I loose FPS. I'm leaning towards the position tracking of the camera but still cant confirm for sure. I know that RTP, MegaSplat and any other terrain shader with distance replace also causes this drop in FPS in VR scenes on terrain.

 

You should ask to @icetec
Perhaps it can be something related to cameras calculations.

 

Oh booya I just found the issue. By turning off the ICE Creature Player script on my VR rig I have eliminated the problem it seems. Maybe this speaks to the position tracking issue I have had with other assets, not sure. I have re-enabled the deer and I am sitting on my terrain with 89 fps.

 

Im in the same boat as you with ICE performance and VR.
One thing I noticed is that if in play mode you select any npc with the ice creature control on it in the scene view, fps easily drops by 20-30fps. Then goes back up when you unselect.
May be specific for my case, or may have something to do with the debug and info settings.

 

Interesting. I had the degug script on my wolf, removed it and he stopped impacting performance as well. I kind of expected that one though. I now have 2 different creatures on the terrain without impacting performance but besides removing the Player script on my VR rig I also set the orientation type to default instead of quadruped. Since removing the Player script and adding the deer back in has not impacted performance, Im going through with a fine attention to detail to make sure every creatures ground checks, home wandering method, avoidance, is all the same as the one creature that doesn't impact performance.

 

Hello,

is there something new about the upcoming ICE Creature 1.4 or about having some presets or selectable templates (like hermivore, carnivore, Monster, neutral npc maybe) or something to have an easier start with ICE Creatures?

Thanks!

 

Hi Tethys, here some additional background infos about potential performance issues with ICE and some tips to fix them. I hope this will be helpful to you!

The costs of ICE are heavily dependent on the used components and settings, so you can realize very large herds if you keep the configuration as simple as possible, but you will get more and more problems when you try to run a large number of creatures with complex meshes, states and settings and/or multiple additional components. The basic challenge is to achieve the maximum result with minimal effort, which means: less is more!

During the runtime, ICE creatures are always repeat the same processes: perception, evaluation and reaction.

Perception and Evaluation bundle all processes for decision-making. This sequence is executed in a co-routine and can be controlled by the reaction time, so this part is not executed in every frame update. Depending on the number and complexity of the used targets, the reaction time can be increased to improve the performance, but careful, if the reaction time is too high, the creature can't react properly anymore to quick situation changes.

In addition, the actual reaction determines the behaviour on the basis of the previous decision making and controls animations and movement sequences as well as further behavioural functions. During the reaction, especially the analysis of the surrounding environment can be performance critical. Depending on the settings, ICE creatures can use several optional procedures to determine and adjust their position and orientation. Usually raycasts are used for this, whose basic values can be adapted. If such optional raycast features are enabled and especially if their values are too extreme (e.g. an extremely small angle to detect obstacles or slopes, etc.), it can be that many raycast calls are unnecessary, but nevertheless increase the load per frame. Therefore, it is recommended to check the necessity as well as the custom settings and to adapt all values to the given scenario.

To identify a potential lack of performance, you can temporarily disable the advanced motion and pathfinding settings in the essential settings. These settings contains the most performance-critical functions, but you can disable all of them separate ones to check their impacts to the performance.

Here are some other typical factors that could also affect the performance:

• Animator Controller with extreme complex states and/or transitions structures.

Keep the Animator Controller as clean as possible; remove obsolete parameter, states and transitions.​

• Non-kinematic Rigidbodies (because of the additional calculation of physical forces)

Use kinematic Rigidbodies whenever physical forces are not really required.​

• NavMeshAgents and or other additional pathfinding components.

NavMeshAgents are basically okay, but I need to optimize the handling, especially to avoid unnecessary path calculations that are based on fast position changes, course corrections and unreachable positions.​

• Models with complex and/or dirty Meshes

Especially in close-ups of complex models load peaks can be occur due to the rendering of details. In addition to that a creature often also needs to react faster and more intensively to a closer target (e.g. ATTACK or DEFEND behaviour) and this increased agility in combination with the rendering process can increase the load even more. A typical scenario is the close interaction between a first-person character and a creature, in such cases it is important that the creature's mesh can be rendered smoothly in detail and that the interaction with the player is not overloaded by unessential features.​

• Disable Debug Components

Depending to the given debug settings, the several debug features will run a lot of loops to collect and visualize any kind of data (e.g. potential targets, positions, behaviours etc.)​

I hope this will be helpful to fix potential performance issues. During the development I always try to optimize critical procedures and functions and I'm testing all functions with a larger number of creatures and with at least 30 fps and since I work here on an older laptop only, there should actually be no insuperable performance problems with the use on common devices.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Navmesh is almost essential and the most reliable.
I made a system where it switches between navmesh or simple move forward when there is not obstacle, the best is you can use Navmesh Raycast that has a lower cost than Physics Raycast to detect obstacles
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AI.NavMeshAgent.Raycast.html

 

Awesome Pit, thanks for the response and tips. You just confirmed my suspicions, which was there was probably an impact on performance due to the Advanced Motion and Pathfinding settings, in addition to the player tracking via the Play script. We obviously dont use Navmesh since its a procedural environment but we are using ground checks, raycasts and obstacle avoidance, water avoidance etc. And as you may well know, VR is it's own beast with a whole set of new problems that we try to avoid. Your always so helpful to your customers, thanks again man! I like your comment about less is more, its what we are trying to do as well. Keeping it simple, small herds of deer and the occasional small pack of wolves that pounce on them.

 

I'm also working on a VR project and getting the exact same significant frame drop when using just one NPC.
- I don't have a have a Player script on my VR rig and am using NavMeshAgent for Motion Control, with a kinematic rigidbody on the NPC as it has a collider component.

Significantly, the frame rate returns to normal (60+fps) when the agent arrives at its destination and enters the Rendevous behaviour (idle). As soon as it begins moving again the frames drop again (down to only 30fps max).

I've tried different Motion Control options as suggested by Pit, I've disabled debug. I know the mesh/material are fine as when using another version of the prefab (with my own AI script on it) I get no frame drop.

I've stripped the NPC gameObject to an absolute minimum; no trigger, no rigidbody, no navmeshAgent, just using Internal for Motion Control. With the home target disabled the frame rate is normal. As soon as I enable the Home target gameObject the NPC begins to move and I'm down to 35fps.

I've done enough VR development to know that Tethys is right when he says that it has its own set of problems, but this is just weird and to me it feels like an IceCreature problem. Not a VR one.

 

Ok, false alarm.... and a bit of a schoolboy error on my part.

The problem I had was that I'd pinned the NPC's inspector so that it was always being rendered in the editor.

There's a noticeable frame rate drop when an IceCreature NPC is selected (I guess the gizmos in the Scene view take a toll, even without debugging on) but doubly so when it's inspector is also showing. That's just the downside of such a fully featured custom inspector.

 

Hello, looking for some help please,

I'm looking for advice on a status bar for my creature, can I use an event to trigger a status change like a weapon hit in the status bar, if so what event should I use ?. I have the bar, I have a creature that reacts to hits but cant work out how to update the status/health. Or is there a simpler way of doing this ?
Thanks
M

 

Hi there!
So, the asset store says ICE is "Multiplayer Ready". Could you elaborate on what this means? I'm using UNET instead of PUN for networking. Are there specific ways I should go about syncing my characters while also utilizing ICE's functionality to make the networking as smooth as butter?

And perhaps as a related side question: is ICE deterministic? i.e. If I let ICE run on two computers with the exact same setup, will the outcome be exactly the same?

If there isn't anything built-in or suggested for this, the alternative would be to just turn off ICE on all the client computers, and run some basic position, rotation, and animation syncing scripts on them, but having the characters have at least a general idea of where they're going without needing to send network data every second would be ideal.

Side note, this system is brilliant. Thanks!

 

You could probably do this very well with Final IK. It's a pricey package, but very powerful for this sort of thing.

 

I agree, pickup and drop is a very useful addition. The pickup is ok but the drop feature does not seem to work. The item dropped just seems to be disabled. I'm not sure whether i am going to try and work out the ICE or write my own because I struggling to find where the functions are and support is unfortunately not forthcoming.

It's a real a shame because this asset has great potential to me but without documentation and customer support it loses some of its functionality.

 

ICE has excellent Documentation and stellar support, I'm not sure what your going on about. Pit usually checks in a few times a week and most of what you would need is listed in the documentation or examples. IMO it would take a hell of a lot more time to write a system as robust as this from scratch, rather than use this system and extend for what's missing. Anywho, maybe you missed the link on the Documentation, which would explain your confusion. Regardless, you can find the documentation link here in the description for the asset. Also, in case you missed it, there are some video tutorials on the front page and throughout this thread.

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35364

Good luck!

 

I'm actually wondering a little bit about this as well. I have yet to replace my current AI in our Multiplayer game with ICE because I want to better understand how its being used (we use Photon so are good to go as soon as we sort it). We use ICE on our VR game right now and I love it, but its single player so haven't fooled with the MP stuff yet.

**Future Feature Suggestion**
I'm going to write this right now for meself since its easy enough. A neat feature to add to the creature register for creature spawning, in each creatures setting, could be to add a slot to set the mesh of the creature, then a array list of possible materials for the creature. I have 3 different fawn textures right now so want to have variety, as you would with many different types of creatures. This would be a nice feature to have to easily add to the variety the way we do with setting different scales(in this case a random material from the list). Anywho, easy enough for me to write it for now.

 

Hey guys and @icetec - I'm using footsteps and the effect on Surfaces for the first time and can't seem to get them to trigger. I have set my textures and made sure they all have unique names(I have 5 of them set in rule 1 as I assumed this was ok since I could). I have footsteps checked, 2 sound effects slotted. The volume is set to 1 and I have it routed to my mixer, which I have double checked with other sound effects to make sure the mixer works and isn't the issue. I have also an audio source on the animal and of course an audio listener in the scene. I do not have an character collider or rigidbody on the creatures - simple setup with a capsule collider that surrounds the main part of the body. I have the Body orientation set to Default. Any suggestions are most welcome, thanks!

 

Hi guys!

One of most important thing to know is that Asset Store documentation is too outdated.
Yes, it is completely old manual. It is for the previous versions and have a lot of lack of documents because ICE have huge update among v1.1 to v1.3.

You can find latest manual at his website for ICE.
Crick the Doc button upper right of page, then you can read latest 1.3.6 manual for ICE
Also there are info for latest integration too.
You should check out his website!

 

While I appreciate your comments you should not speak for other peoples experience. please link me where the documentation illustrates usage of drop functionality for example. Also when I send a message to the asset owner I expect a reply within two weeks. you might consider ignoring questions 'stellar support' I do not.

I have a lot of assets to help me create and support in general from asset developers has always been fantastic. This is not the case with ICE i'm afraid. This is the first product that I am going to review low based on unresponsive support and I do not do it lightly because the asset itself has great potential.

It is a real shame but it is only as good as the support given. I will of course amend reviews if simple support like answering questions is given.

 

Pit, has put many hours of work into updates for this asset, I think he is very busy getting a proper experience for you guys, you can review it however you want, but It has great support to me, Pit has always been there, when I ask for help, and If hes not, It is to my Understanding hes coding something new and exciting for ICE Creature Control, we just gotta wait and see, plus there are developers on here who can answer your questions, I really hope Pit brings us something new and exciting for the next ICE Creature Control update,


It is a very valuable asset, and I am glad I use it to create Complex AI, He made this for us, so its easier to code AI without typing a single line of code! What other asset could do that, none other than ICE, it is a great asset and I give it 10/10!

 

Wait, you have 1 issue you can't find in the docs, on a super robust asset that is one of the best AI in the asset store, per the reviews and most peoples experience, and your going to give it a low review? How petty. You can see in this very forum hes usually responsive. Give the guy a break or sort it yourself, its not like what you want to do isn't possible between whats already there and a little bit of mid level programmer knowledge. If someone here in the community doesn't help you sort it he eventually will, this issue shouldn't stop the progress on your project and hardly warrants leaving a negative or low review.

Also, last time I checked there is a pickup and drop example in the gather tutorial. I ran the older one but it had the robot or kyle running around, picking up spheres and then dropping the spheres in a bin, and you can see the go and its not just disabled.

 

Exactly what I am saying, It is the best on the asset store, I am lucky I bought it for my games.

 

Hi, i have a problem with the ground handler, when i use a star pathfinding, my creature walk in the air on slopes.

 

How about you mind your own business. My feelings on this asset has nothing to do with you and your responses are tiresome. If I buy something I expect a certain level of customer service. This has not happened. If someone continually ignores your messages and posts after you have paid good money for i product you have every right to complain. You babbling on about your good experience does nothing to change that.

All I expect is replies to questions in a timely manner. Nearly three weeks after somebody says they will get on it ASAP is shockingly bad. People should be made aware that if they want help with this asset they get it from videos other people have made or the docs which are incomplete.

The worst customer service I have experienced on any asset on the store. If I am alone then bully for you.

 

I have had a LOT worse, trust me.

However, I agree that the responses are not timely. Andy has a valid concern. Have you tried emailing Pit? He may respond better to emails. Sometimes the forums "watch" feature is not working well.

 

Hi tuxxmuxx, please make sure that the Ground Handling is properly configured in the Essential Settings and that the internal gravity option is active. Since you do not use an terrain, you have to set the Ground Handling to RAYCAST and to add all layers of walkable surfaces to the list. This should fixed your issue.

 

I have, it was a private message that i am still awaiting a reply from. As you can see from below he seems to answer other concerns but ignores mine. It is slightly infuriating and the last thing I want to do is argue one here. My concern is that if use the system in game. It ships and I have customers to provide service to. Something happens which I need help with this asset and I continue to get ignored what do I do? I then have customers I am responsible for I would not dream of treating them in the same manner.

It is critical for an asset that communication is ongoing imho.

 

Try email. We have no idea what is happening in another person's world and I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

Hello Andy, I'm sorry that you are dissatisfied with the support. I know exactly how important is an excelent assistance and I always try to answer all requests as soon as possible and in urgent cases all customers can contact me also via skype, so I'll try to support them directly whenever I'm online and whenever it's possible to me. Many customers are using this service and I spend many hours assisting them in real-time, but of course also this has its limits.

I really would love to improve the personel support but please understand that I can not be 24 h online, I have to fullfil also other duties and sometimes I also need vacation or a time out.

I am working alone and beside of the development of ICE and all my other duties, the supports needs a large part of my time, especially if I have to reconstruct specific issues of a customer or if customers requests specific demo scenes. Please check the forum, so you'll find a lot of such cases and whenever it's possible to me I do it gladly and mostly also immediately or with a small delay but sometimes it can also takes a bit longer. But as above-mentioned, in urgent cases every customer can contact me also in skype or by email and in such a case I'll try to support him directly.

I hope you can understand it, but now I'll try to find your origin message to anwser your questions.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Thanks for the Pit,

I understand you are busy and I will take onboard as mentioned skype and or emails may be a better way to contact you in future.

I have really critical interactions to my game that I want to use ICE for and I don't want to duplicate functions if i can alter the already provided methods to do what I need. A little assistance with them to point me in the direction is all I need.

I look forward to moving past this and using what I have said a few times in this thread and in messages to you is asset with great potential to me.

Kind regards,

Andy

 

Andy, have you looked at Tonanbora's videos? Maybe they can help you with some of the interactions. He is busy working for me at the moment, but check out the videos and see if they have what you need.

Ryan said he has not yet done a video on that particular feature you want. Sorry.

 

Hello ,
After a long break of using ICE , as I got a basic functioning , wandering and attacking AI working for most of my assets...I took the time to develop other areas of my game , the conversation , inventory , traffic systems etc. So now I have come back to this to start adjusting the AI more towards what I would like to get done .

So I added body parts and have it registering hits etc. and killing my player . But I already have a health system I set up and UI bar . What variable does the ICE system use for player health , so I can call it to my UI and activate my game over/respawn screen? or is there an easier way to do all that thru ICE? I am starting to trim things out and optimize somewhat , while I can , so if there is a better way to do it , or use my current system properly without having it tracking 2 separate health systems...I am using ICE and Playmaker in this project

Any help or suggestions would be amazing