GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[MRKane]

Gidday all,

So I've been mucking around with this for about a week (or more? I've really lost track of time with everything that's happening) and for the life of me I cannot get guards to engage Jo - even when setting their action block to JAL to 0007 (Run to Jo and Attack. They simply crouch and aim. They'll shoot when they've a clear line although my first thought is that I don't have the pathing right.

There's a good set of path nodes, connected in sets, but not paths.

So I'd like to know: How does it work in other levels? I've checked out the path presets and found they had the "Sim Walk Straight To" flag set which wasn't automatically set on import, and that guards tended to be placed between sets, but I've got to be missing something...

Any ideas?

EDIT:
Is there any way to see inside the generic action blocks that ship with the game? There might be some sort of funky answer there [chin scratch emoticon]

EDITEDIT:
Having gone about coming up with a few of my own custom action blocks it'd seem that AI operators will only run to Jo if the path nodes have the "Sims walks straight to" flag set on them. This is probably automatic when putting them into the level manually but might have been missed because I imported via obj. Ok - we're getting somewhere, I shall keep experimenting
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

Last edited by MRKane on Thu Jul 26, 2018 8:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

[Lazlo52]

I said this before, but you were engaged in conversation with Wreck at the time... In the Object Editor, unset both of the "Guard Stays in Place" flags for each guard you add. They're only used in G5 Building to try to keep guards from running to you while you're in the car park area, and are on the dD:Extraction non-roof bodyguards with a custom block so they can still melee. The flags put guards in a really restrictive state, and they even ignore invisibility! I'm gonna bother Sub about the default guard flags; those two have plagued custom missions for years because, I guess, everyone uses the Visual Editor for objects and such.

The built-in action blocks? You can import them from the Action Block editor. The files are under "ActionBlockSamples/" then their respective game. I don't recommend it for PD, though. The two big mains, 0006 and 000C, are a huge mess.

I don't think "Sim Walk Straight To" is meant for every Set pad, only specific circumstances. If it helps things, that's good, but it's not supposed to be on everything.
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Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

Thanks so much for the help, and sorry to double post!

I've been wondering about path settings again as I'm getting crashes with a single guard operating on the 0006 block in a simple path network. Frustratingly I've not a way to troubleshoot this, or a "best practices" written up for myself yet. At least the guard is properly engaging now until he runs around for a bit and the game locks up :/

Frankly I can see why there are fewer PD mods when compared with GE! lol
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

Thanks so much for the help, and sorry to double post! I've been wondering about path settings again as I'm getting crashes with a single guard operating on the 0006 block in a simple path network. Frustratingly I've not a way to troubleshoot this, or a "best practices" written up for myself yet. At least the guard is properly engaging now until he runs around for a bit and the game locks up :/ Frankly I can see why there are fewer PD mods when compared with GE! lol

Outright crashing? Hmmmmm... I've messed with default guards a lot, and I've never...hmmm... Well, I have gotten crashes once, but it was because I fiddled with the path sets too much and had to restore them. But, you, I feel like that shouldn't be an issue, unless you think you're missing some sets in rooms?

Regardless, I have something more concrete for you to try. Do you have sub-actions 0145 and 0146 called at least once in your action blocks? If not, I recommend adding something like this to your level:


Those two sub-actions placed in a 10xx block will help with guard pathing and Counter-Op stuff. The "Leave the Routine" isn't fully necessary, I've gotten away with skipping it for this.
Without the Guard/Simulant initialization, I've had occasional stutter when guards notice Jo. That stutter usually means pathing is taking a long time to process. I've not had it crash for that reason, I think, but you should still use it. Hopefully, this fixes it.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

The curse of starting a new level totally from scratch I guess - I'll give it a crack tomorrow (I can only do this at work you see) and will also try to de-teeth what's going on here.

There'll be a process to make life easier, I've almost got level importing down to an art now (besides one room which is just flat out messed up with every second poly not drawing - have concluded that locking it up and throwing away the key is the solution there lol).

Talking about modifying Guard "skins" - holy crap what a monumental mess of texture work they all are! Nothing like that would ever fly now days, and I'm partially torn between fixing it up and "no, it's just gotta look like a bandit - someone will simply blast it anyway" lol

Stray thought: How many sunglasses can PD have and does it support hats?
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

Stray thought: How many sunglasses can PD have and does it support hats?

Sunglasses, I think, are one pair per head, and every head can have glasses. It's part of the model itself. There's also Jo's HUD piece and Cassandra's necklace, but I don't know how hardcoded they are. That's all I can really say with a bit of certainty.

PD does support hats, but I don't know how much work it takes to add them. You should ask someone who worked on GoldenEye-X.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

As it turns out - no love there. She's still crashing for some reason. Is there a "better" emulator to use for proofing levels as opposed to Project 64? I would be aiming to use this with proper hardware at the end of the day.
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

MRKane wrote:

As it turns out - no love there. She's still crashing for some reason. Is there a "better" emulator to use for proofing levels as opposed to Project 64? I would be aiming to use this with proper hardware at the end of the day.

I can't really help you with these. For me, Project 64 1.6 is the fastest emulator that doesn't require much setup for new ROMs. And, I don't really know about making path sets from scratch or what works. If it were me, I'd maybe backup my stuff and try a different layout of path sets. I know the sets can be very fickle...

Well, just to toss something out there...does it only crash when using 0006? Does it still crash when using a custom block to make the guard jog somewhere?
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

I've been going over this in my head as I did get the opportunity to do a few tests with it. Action block wise if I put the guard in an infinite "run to Jo" block it seems to handle things fine, 0006 and 0007 blocks end up with a lockup or crash however.

The map layout has two levels, and the stairs span three rooms to try and control the polycount. The crash doesn't happen if I put a guard downstairs, but if there's a guard upstairs it crashes. I'm wondering if I need to make this "transition" room into one large room (and just take the performance hit). I set the paths up with one node at the start of the stairs, and the other at the bottom. Now this in theory has a path spanning a room with no nodes between. So it goes: Room_01...Room_03 instead of having a node in Room_02 also.

It's a minor hunch to test but I'll give it a crack. In hindsight this entire building setup isn't good for polygon efficiency but I really want to push forward with this thing!

Can we scarestrip paths in the editor yet or is it easier to start fresh again?
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[CrashOveride]

MRKane wrote:

As it turns out - no love there. She's still crashing for some reason. Is there a "better" emulator to use for proofing levels as opposed to Project 64? I would be aiming to use this with proper hardware at the end of the day.

Personally I use 1964, but i also use CEN64 for testing; however PD is not supported by CEN64 yet.
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Playing old, low poly games since 2003

[Wreck]

Just make sure your AI Path Network is all connected correctly, forwards and backwards. That goes for pads and sets. If anything is connected only one way, than there is a very high probability that the game will crash when the guard / Simulant attempts to cross the area in question.

If pad 0016 connects to pad 0021, than 0021 must also connect to 0016.

If set 02 connects to set 04, than 04 must also connect to 02.

The special flags, like Sim Goes Straight To, are useful in certain situations where a Sim is near an edge they could fall off of. It keeps them near the pad, without letting them wander too much. I would suggest checking out a PD map or two to help get a good sense on it. It certainly isn't the funnest or easiest part of the setup process.

[MRKane]

This one was tough, and required a substantial amount of messing around to eventually settle upon a solution to what is a tricky place to setup.

Seeing as a picture paints a thousand words, lets start there before discussing.

Left: split level setup
Right: single level setup


So on the split level setup I've cut the stairwell area lengthwise, but in the single level setup sliced it around the stairs. Paths go through logical areas around the level. It seemed that the issue arose when there was clipping over clipping with a path running over a path in the same room. By breaking the levels up into their own room, and removing paths from the one area that did have "layers" I've seemingly been able to sidestep the issue that I ran into here.

I guess it uses 2D pathfinding on a per-room basis, which while being optimal speed wise does mean that things like this can happen!

Now I will note that this hasn't seen me totally out of the woods with level setup, as having more than one guard present still results in a lockup when any guard sees the player, but other bits and pieces haven't been put in as I've spent all my free time tinkering with the BSP. Hopefully all the hints in this thread will get rid of that last problem.
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[Lazlo52]

I'll add that I've noticed guards work better when there's a pad set in each room. In the Combat Simulator Villa, there's a long two-room hallway with no pads, only a connection running through it. When I was adding single-player guards, they had trouble navigating that hallway. They worked better when I added a pad to both hallway rooms and linked them to the sets.

It didn't give me a crash, but I think it's important to note every navigatable room should have a pad.
_________________

Quote:

22 not happening nerds. forget about it. 23 til the day i die.

[MRKane]

I was wondering about that with this re-design and made sure that there was an over-abundance of pads and correctly linked sets.

I did use the import sets from obj tool that Sub has in the editor - I've tried to check everything to see that it's correct from that and it appears to be. I'll keep tinkering on Monday and see if I can figure a bit more of this out. Odds down there's a collection of things that have to be just so for a level to work.

It's also a crying shame we can't see the debug comments as the Action system hits them - that sort of developer insight would be invaluable!
_________________
No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!

[MRKane]

Whelp, I'm about out of ideas here. I end up with a lockup even with one guard on the 0007 (run up to and attack Jo) block. As a favour to ask: Is anyone willing to have a look at everything here and see if they can figure it out? I've Geometry, clipping, portals, and paths as importable files - I've also got an edited Rom with new textures etc. so I don't know about the best way to distribute all of that.
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No Mr. Bond, I expect you to be re-coded!