F.A.Q. & TESTING - WHY ZOMBIES WON'T ATTACK A.I. BANDITS & SURVIVORS

[DayZ_SP]

I figured it out... Sort of...







I manually spawned in Survivors with no weapons using a specific unit type and the Zombies were attacking THEM first before they even noticed me!

It's pretty funny because with the correct factions / sides (DaiyZ 1.7.4.4+), the unarmed Survivors are programmed to flee from the enemy. That's what the last screencap is - LOL!

But this is proof of concept that it COULD be done if somebody tried hard enough.

Now, I have to figure out how to make the game NOT do something when the AI are attacked... Actually, I have to figure out how to get the AI to receive damage on top of the other thing I am trying to avoid since everything is linked the way I did it.

More on this tomorrow...

[yourampage]

is this a dream ive always wanted this to happen yesss! well hope u can get this sorted out your a legend

[DayZ_SP]

UPDATE:

I have some bad news to report, everybody

This method (described below) isn't going to work and I should have known this already, but it never occurred to me until I actually tried it out in-game.

To get Zombies to attack AI, I simply designated them as "player" since the Zombies are coded to attack the player. They attack the AI, but it is YOU (the human player) who takes damage because you are the same designation as the AI. There are no separate systems in one client to process damage individually for each AI unit.

In other words, the game looks for "player" and just assumes anything/anybody that is designated "player" is a human player and therefore, can take damage from the Zombie attacks. In my extensive tests, the AI were attacked by the Zombies, but it was me (human player!) who took all the damage until I passed out and died... Even though not a single Zombie physically attacked my avatar!

This is why this method won't work in SP, unfortunately.

It works in MP because everybody is assigned a unique ID with their "player" status and also because there are multiple clients connected for every "player" instead of just one client in SP. It is the individual clients that handle the damage per player. This is why if your friends are attacked, only they take damage and you don't even though you are both "players" according to the game/server.

Is there a way around this?

Not at the current time.

I attempted to alter some of the Zombie code itself... But it's just not going to work because while the method I used was no doubt flawed, the proper method would be to code different event handlers for the different units in SP e.g. Player, Survivor and Bandit, but this is way above my skill level and not really worth it, IMO.

Also, from a game stand point, it doesn't make much sense to go to all this trouble because we would also have to add in "auto-medic" functions to the AI if they do get hurt by the Zombies just like human players do. Otherwise, they would just bleed out after a few hits.

There are auto-heal scripts for ArmA 2 on the net, but that is for vanilla ArmA 2, and not DayZ that has everything upside down and twisted five times past Tuesday to get it to work the way Rocket wanted it to. So, this option is out.

Bottom Line:

We are going to have to settle for limited AI in terms of their current functionality.

They are basically robotic bodyguards that can eliminate a lot of potential threats, but that is all they can do. They can't eat, drink, heal themselves, etc. That's not actually bad considering this leaves the human player to do all of those things and that is a core part of what DayZ is all about: Survival.

[Above]

Tbh, what the AI can do now is way more than I'd ever ask for. I'm super happy with our current state. :D

[yourampage]

owe well i like how it is now thanks for trying though

[Nekokaburi]

I'm still curious how exactly you defined the AI as a player. While whatever you did won't help you with your SP efforts, it would certainly help me with MP. This is one of the last few puzzle pieces to reach my goals for dayz, and I just don't have the talent to figure it out, apparently.

[Raz]

I would really like to see how you got the zombies to attack the AI Bandits and Survivors and vice versa.

[Above]

Raz wrote

I would really like to see how you got the zombies to attack the AI Bandits and Survivors and vice versa.

DayZ_SP changed the sides on zombies AI around. This would make the zombies attack AI, but wouldn't work properly since the game is coded to have 1 player, so you would still take all the damage. (This is written here somewhere).

[Raz]

Thanks Above.

[nekokaburi]

That covers the vice versa, getting ai to attack zombies, but doesn't actually make zombies attack non-players. His hint was that it involved the unit itself he spawned as ai, something to make the game think they're another player, and that makes the zombies attack. He also said that its no good for sp, because there is only the one player, but it would work fine for mp, and that's where I want to use it. I just can't figure out what he did exactly.

[Above]

nekokaburi wrote

That covers the vice versa, getting ai to attack zombies, but doesn't actually make zombies attack non-players. His hint was that it involved the unit itself he spawned as ai, something to make the game think they're another player, and that makes the zombies attack. He also said that its no good for sp, because there is only the one player, but it would work fine for mp, and that's where I want to use it. I just can't figure out what he did exactly.

What exacly are you doing on your MP mission? I might be able to help abit. But I don't get the concept since zeds attack everyone already. Or, are you adding AI to your MP mission?

[nekokaburi]

That's exactly it, I'm trying to add ai to a modified "normal" dayz server, and have them interact with the zombies as players do. (specifically shoot at and get eaten by)

[Above]

nekokaburi wrote

That's exactly it, I'm trying to add ai to a modified "normal" dayz server, and have them interact with the zombies as players do. (specifically shoot at and get eaten by)

Alright, then I know. I think those changes are made in the dayz_code. And/or the other DayZ files, wich will make it hard to edit for a server, because you'd have to have people download the modded files. (This is what I THINK). I'm not 100% sure how he changed AI etc.

[steve silent]

ok guys im looking at this from teh editor point of view in arma...

DAYZ_SP you mentioned that you put the survivor AI as player.... have you tried PLAYABLE..

as with most sp  missions in arma you can change to another character because he is classed as playable, in arma when they have this they are pretty much a player but AI..

i play around in editor a lot trying to figure out and work on a movie short and i use playable a lot

[Nekokaburi]

tried a sleep 30; setplayable this; in a unit's init, that didn't help any. zombies still didn't aggro on the ai. Tried player = "play cdg" as in the typical survivor slots, and that simply made them disappear, and become selectable as a player slot.

This is such a tease, being told it can be done for MP, but not how. (Or at least not with enough info to figure it out myself.) Almost at the point of offering a bounty for working instructions on getting the zeds to attack npcs.

[Haleks]

Why do you guys want to have Zeds chasing AI's? They won't even be able to hurt them, unless you build up specific event handlers, wich is going to be CPU consuming for online game.

Nekokaburi wrote

This is such a tease, being told it can be done for MP, but not how.

Well having Zeds chasing an AI is possible, but the real problem is to have them actually wound them.
The way damages are dealt is meant to affect the player, with a very specific health system - system that doesn't apply to AI units (unless you create some scripts to emulate that feature for each AI unit, wich means you'll have to do the same about the healing abilities; in other words, as said DayZ SP, you'll have to set up a whole new wound&heal system to replace the one from Arma, heavy work ahead)... Otherwise, did you try to mess up with their classname in the DayZ code?

[Nekokaburi]

Honestly, I've been modifying the crap out of a server for a while now, trying to create the ideal zombie experience for my friends and I, and since there's only likely to be 5 of us playing at any given time at the very most, I wanted to create the feeling that the world was a little more populated with some npcs. But if the npcs can stand in a crowded room full of zombies and fire a full inventory of mk48 ammo without aggroing a thing, it kind of breaks that feeling. The alternative is having my version of dayz up for public download, but the files themselves add up to 1.5GB when zipped up. That isn't a problem for the people I'm building this server to play on with, as I can hand them a thumb drive with the files (and have, several times, so we could test it). But the other issue with making it public (well, two if you count not asking mod authors for permission to modify/redistribute) is hackers and dupers. I've already been on a few custom servers that require a fair bit of downloading and jumping through hoops, and they've all had problems with those people. And since I don't have a lot of skill with this stuff yet, the easiest way to get some of my customizations working was to disable BE entirely.

Right now I'm experimenting with the Undead Mod by Einherj. Those zombies will attack npcs (and even zombify them), but getting them to spawn either via DayZ's methods, or in a similar fashion is proving difficult at best.

[Shrykull]

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[Ray]

Why not do it he easy way and spawn it in.

[RAHRAH]

Just a thought. But could there be something in the code for the dayz smoke grenades that would help with npc agro?