Universal AI Starter Kit and Oculus Rift

#1 Hello space123321,

In my opinion, the Universal AI Starter Kit is the best and most friendly solution in artificial intelligence for FPS genre games for use in Torque 3D. There are others like TAISK, Game Mechanics Kit, Guide Bot, but are not as user friendly as UAISK, and you should need to have a good programming knowledge for dealing with them.

Furthermore, UAISK has a very good documentation as well.

Regarding to Oculus Rift, sorry I do not know anything about this software, though I know you will need to have good programming skills to get something from it, because it is not for beginners, besides having no documentation on how to use it or how to integrate it with torque. If there is any documentation out there, I do not know about it.

Have fun!

#2 space123321,

I agree with Joao. UAISK is a great product to start with. TJ is really good about support and he's always ready to help. As for Rift... Honestly, when designing for Rift it's all about milliseconds per frame and there are a huge number of things that can effect that. I don't see any issues using UAISK as a product with Rift, however, if you plan on having 100s of AI guys running around, I would probably recommend that each of them have a polygon count of 10 ;-).

That last line does NOT have anything to do with UAISK being good or not, it's about poly count and being able to render a scene under 15 milliseconds. That boils down to efficient modeling and understanding the render and production pipeline. Everything from running Post Process effects to thought cycles (for AI) can have an affect on MSPF. However, I know UAISK is fine with Rift once you learn HOW to optimize a game for Rift. This, like all things takes practice and time.

Ron

#3

Quote:because it is not for beginners, besides having no documentation on how to use it or how to integrate it with torque

Pretty sure the Rift works out-of-the-box after T3D 3.0, thanks to David Wyand and co. And since the UAISK is all scripts, you could just work from the Rift template and not even have to recompile the engine.

#4 Thanks for the feedback so far - sounds like it is what I am looking for coming from a total beginner with no scripting or programming background to fall back on.

In terms of the Rift - yes thanks to the great work of David their is a Rift template to start with. I have testing out Unity and UDK with the Rift, however I am back to Torque as I found it more geared to my needs.

#5 I don't think Rift and UAISK affect one another at all from a code perspective. AI of any sort can start hogging your resources if you don't manage it well. Rift is just stereo rendering, but that's rendering twice for each frame. Any way you look at it you're managing resources - the actual scripts for UAISK don't "conflict" with Rift or anything.

#6 Richard,

I disagree a bit. It's all about compute cycles. AI, rendering etc, all effect how long the computer needs to 'think' between these cycles. So, when working with things like Rift or even LEAP, You have to keep the 'entire picture' if you will, in focus. Rift does double the render time but, other things affect the amount of time that a game engine has to render a scene. Therefore, these 'other things' can and do affect the MSPF. This is just coming from my experience with an older version of both Rift and Leap, and I am by no means an expert. AI can effect things based on the number of times that AI 'thinks' because that function alone takes up compute cycles. you want to really kill a system, throw all that in with non-optimized physics... The only real way around other functions NOT effecting T3D render cycles would be 100% multi-threading per function. Just my opinion.

Ron

Ron

#7 That's what I meant (we just stated it differently) - it's about resource management, where clock cycles are your ultimate resource.

It's a moot point, really - a game with no AI isn't much of a game, so you have to implement it somehow. And multithreading just spreads the workload, you still have to do the work. I wholeheartedly agree that making effective use of multi-core and multi-processor systems would really give T3D a performance boost, but it only expands the bounds - it doesn't eliminate them.

At the final cut you're going to have to try it out and see what your performance looks like - tweak and trim as needed. You can always look at the AI tutorial scripts for comparison - pretty light-weight and it scales unit "think time" based on the unit's distance from game cameras (dumber when no one is around to see them) to save processor time.

#8 One additional question before I pull the trigger on the purchase today. I have several rigged characters with animations in a dae format. How easy of a process is it to import these models to work with UAISK? Again - will this be an issue for a beginner? The video tutorials make it look easy, however I am not sure about custom characters? Thanks again all!

#9 Can someone please explain to me what an AI is?

I know it's important, but. I see this AI in the store, while another place has a Path Finder Bot

http://www.logicking.com/index.php?page=products

that guy has some products I think...are AI (I may be wrong)

I was looking at the Sim Bionic (a reward winning AI that went open source this year)

Would I just need that 1 AI, or are those products on that link also needed?

#10 There is some AI built into the game. I made a Zombie from the player class, then had it chase the player. I added 40 Zombies falling from the sky, all bent on killing the player. So I gave the player a car (Cheetah). Much to my surprise, if a Zombie runs into the car, he jumps inside and starts to joy ride. I was rolling on the floor! But now I have incorporated that into my game. Take a look at the AIPlayer.cs in scripts\server to see some commands you can use.

#11 I have noticed that quite a few things won't work when it comes to rift support with T3D.

Besides stuff like water not working with the rift and a few shaders as well there has been some other stuff that hasn't worked like awesomium just crashes with the rift and a few other things.

Now cause it's AI and it's in script I don't see an issue with it on the rift but it might not work with the gui's it uses (I haven't checked but the screen shot seems to show the gui in game) and that might be an issue.

You can start the game in normal mode and tweak then save the level and then use the rift mode that might be the option but random stuff i've tried to implement from here has crashed torque in rift mode that works fine in non rift mode.

The easiest way would be to ask if the dev could try adding AI using the rift template and see if it crashes or not. That's what I did for Awesomium and sadly it crashes for unknown reasons :(

#12 Melissa: many people define AI different ways. IMO, it boils down to decision making. Provided with a stimulus, how do you respond? That's intelligence, and that's what AI emulates. People then include pathfinding in that, which IMO is more of an AI support function, until you get into really advanced stuff like modifying paths to take stealth, preference, memory, etc. into account.

Other people define it as emulating lifelike behavior. Other people define it as determining an optimal course of action given a situation.

NiN-NiN: if the existing GUIs work with the Rift, I'm fairly confident the UAISK GUI would work the same way. I have no evidence to back that up of course!

#13 It depends in world editor the rift view goes back to normal but still uses the rift sensors to move the view.

If it's gui ontop of the play gui/in game then it won't work the best as you need that gui duplicated for the rift.

You could of course not use the rift and will see the rift stereoscopic display on the monitor and then change the values from there then once saved try it with the rift view.

Is there a video of UAISK? if so then it be easier to answer if it be an issue or not but in general GUI doesn't work in game with rift (The default HUD has to be deleted as it's unsuitable for the rift)