An orange in an apple orchard
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| From Game Scores Volume I |
In putting the last touches on Private Airport (kai), I’ve been spending some more time to study how the games Artificial Intelligence works, special thanks to [SAS]_Maj_WIZ for pointing out a more thorough list of developer diagnostics ;). Since this is the closest look I’ve taken at Rainbows AI in about 5 years, and an even closer study of Terrorist and Hostage behaviour, I think it’s only fair to make a journal entry about it.
Here is a summery of my findings, and annotations about theories I’ve maintained for years:
From the standing position, the source of each pawns aim is directly behind the skull, roughly where the head would be if the pawns stood erectly (like a tango). The point of aim, passes directly though eye level. When crouched the point is roughly near to behind the collar bone, and passes through the lower nasal cavity. In prone, it is much the same.
In real life (and any decent shooting game), that aim point should be chained to the weapon in the players hands.
Experiments with ShowFOV and GunDirection, demonstrate that there is no real connection between pawn animations, where the AI is looking, and where the AI is actually aiming; or as I have been saying for years, What You See Is Not Always What You Get. The most humerus moment in my testing, occurred with the Rear Guard “Facing” the rear but covering the elements front. My research shows that even if Rainbow is aiming at the target, they fail to engage terrorists outside their point of view. I.e. in the case of that rear guard, if a tango had walked up behind the element: it would’ve taken a moment for his aim point to realign with his field of view, resulting in the death of 2/3 the Rainbow AI element!
In short, this means that the AI walks around much like a Tank with an independent turret, only the artificial intelligence is riding in the drivers seat, not the gunners. Coincidentally, this is why the game has no real concept of muzzle clearance (as I have also been saying for years).
This may explain some of the more rolling on the floor laughing moments that often occur, when a “How close can you go” opportunity crops up in game. To prove a point, I cornered a tango in a corner and had him empty his magazine into me. Side stepping away and deactivating GOD mode, he was able to fire several rounds point blank into my pawn, before his aim point rotated to my new position – I died once the aim point got to me, not when the animations showed him shooting me.
Also it seems that hostages always seem to aim directly at Rainbow, but luckily the terrorist AI doesn’t notice that (or they would always see us comming).
So far, these tests satisfactory seem to prove that my ~6 years old hypothesis, about the “Tango firing out of his arse” problem being is indeed codified into Raven Shield by design. Between network latency, the (usual) use of unreliable UDP communication methods for multiplayer game play, and the systems divergent means of rendering and applying these actions (seeing, aiming, firing, hitting), suggest that there is no way to solve the aforementioned (annoying) problem without fundamental changes to the way Raven Shield works. Since that is not viable, one can only look at working around the problem; even with more processing power then a Cray XT5 super computer, you also need a very high throughput network link between clients and server, likely to an extend that is unobtainable over the modern internet.
In laymen’s terms, this means no matter how good your computer hardware or internet connection is, the computer will always be able to cheat you. Should that change, most likely it will be so far in the future, we will be dead by then.
On the upside, I do believe that why the game is like this, was probably done in order to give the player more ‘time’ to shoot first (yes, some tangos have very slow reaction times: this appears why). It also appears to explain many of the discrepancies between common online play, single player, and LAN parties. However it is also worth noting, that this may have instead occurred due to limitations of the Unreal Engine (2) or Raven Shields own design and implementation.
Interesting Note: Now that an illegal RvS 1.60 SDK is available on the internet, it may be possible for cheaters to develop a method to take advantage of these problems. Imagine walking up on some one in Adversarial because you think they are looking away, then they shoot you out their arse ;). Luckily the engine has some respectable counter messures to such becoming (more) common.
One of the very few things, that I have ever been able to praise Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield for, is that the Rainbow AI often “Appears” to be covering their sectors, even if they totally suck at room clearing. In fact, their room clearing behaviour suggests that either the AI engine is extremely limited, or the game was made by people who know as much about CQB as the average RvS player, that is: absolutely nothing.
Since there is no connection (see above) between where the character on screen is looking (seeing), and where they are aiming (pointing), this means What You See Is Really Not What You Get. Have you ever seen in Single Player, where Rainbow is looking straight at a tango and gets owned without a shot? This is why. It is also why we can do the same to tangos online.
Terrorist movement is closer to What You See Is What You Get, then Rainbows; IMHO the movement for Rainbow was done to ‘look’ more realistic then it actually is (or the AI programmer sucked even worse then everything thinks). They also seem to have a tendency to remain fixed on hostages with their aimpoint, even while walking around a fair distance away. Ever got first sight on a tango, shot him trice, only to curse at him “Magically” shooting the hostage with barely a twitch? Yeah baby… he had that gun pointed at the hostage, all the while he was looking into your eyes.
Every type of AI in the game, demonstrates very poor skills at getting around the maps. I remember when I first started learning about pathing in Unreal Engines, I couldn’t help but think, “We’re still living in a dark age”… and that’s all I will say on that lol.
Hostage behaviour, well, what can I say… what you see is exactly what you get: a stupid slug. On the upside, the terrorists do not show any signs of being aware to hostages; this is why for example, if a Rainbow goes down while escorting, and the hostage becomes a prisoner again, the terrorist may continue walking past. All the fancy stuff about the tangos shooting the hostage, is a mixture of the games rudimentary AI, and things that map designer has programmed.
Since I don’t believe in taking advantage of the map design, or exploiting things I shouldn’t know in real life about the missions, I will not make a closer study of that kind of stuff, nor will I tell others much about it. If you want to figure out how to take even that (ugly) edge over the game, you can go learn how RvS works for yourself. Beat it punk.
I just study the mechanics and psychology of the games AI, you know, the whole know your enemy thing. In actual ops with SAS, I tend to employ more knowledge of human psychological behaviour then how the game was designed. That is both by intention
A tango surrendered and I fired a shot into his head, the round should have impacted his hand (placed on his head). There was a blood puff and a bullet hole in the wall directly behind his head, however the tango survived. Weapon used was an M16A2 at approximately 350-450 unreal units.
This suggests that terrorists have no brains, since the angle means the bullet must have penetrated his skull, and his hand (I pray) being all that slowed the high velocity FMJ round down enough to prevent a kill. Suggesting that any hit box modifiers applied, were for a ‘hand’ (arm) shot rather then a head shot.
N.B. other tests I have done over the years suggest this kind of problem and the ballistics model used, is why sniper rifles may incur a two-shot requirement on tango kills, and the exaggerated effects of JHP/FMJ selection on SWAT 4.
After much abuse and perhaps a weeks kicking, or two thirds of a week in man hours, the first map in my RvS map pack is almost complete. The first one, as one might infer from the title above, is a custom version of the Private Airport. In having to find something reasonable to prefix or suffix the maps with, I chose the simple suffix of ‘(kai)’ for each map, why? Just blame it on an Endless Waltz.
The map has been optimized for Co-Op Mission and Team Adversarial play, but should function as expected in most game types; there is also a tweak for Bomb mode. You would still recognize it as the Private Airport, and I have tried not to destroy the maps excellent flow, merely augment it and revivify the game play. Several areas are in my humble opinion, more realistic, while still reflecting the intended feel of the map. Since there is virtually no one left alive, who is playing Raven Shield off a 32MB or 64MB AGP card, I have also taken the liberty of “Fixing” the portaling a bit, trading the frame rate on your toaster oven, in the hopes of reducing some of the floating guns a wee bit (in so far, as that is actually doable in this fucked up game). I also seem to have fixed one of the most annoying rooms in all of RvS, in that process ;). See, I do know what I have been cussin’ at for all these years :-P. My changes shouldn’t impact anyone who has a computer that could play RvS without extreme abuse in the first place (Yes, it is time to give up on your 4MB 3dfx card and buy a new computer), and shouldn’t effect performance for 96-98% of players.
In architecting the changes for mission mode, the thought that kept running through my mind is “This map is gonna be pure evil”, and if you enjoy doing things Ninja style as much as I do, on top of forceful dynamic fare, one will no doubt enjoy playing the coop mission on ROE: RED and saving the day like a sneaky son of a gun, hehehe. Things have been engineered to offer a more tactical experience to both coop and advers. mode, and I think my Private Airport (kai) will be much better suited for Force on Force Training, not to mention bounding drills.
The changes are numerous, tallying over 25 completed tasks on my RTM, and countless dozens of on-the-fly changes that occurred to my twisted mind during editing phase. Being a methodical type about getting my plans carried out, of course corrections and issue tracking was pushed into my RTM list as needed, instant triage.
I will likely make the map available to a select few for closed door testing, once I’ve finished a bit more private testing on the airport. After that, I would say the map is essentially good to go out the door. There is still an unfinished portion of the map, that is non essential, but to complete it properly, would entail triple the work and completing a subsequently desired feature set. There is also a few other features I would like to add, such as maximizing the sniping opportunities even further, but that can wait until later. The next iteration of the map, will likely contain such changes.
For now, I’m content to move onto the last leg of testing the map, and to get started on my ‘next’ one, mauhauhauahauhauha!!!!!
It was a nice double that quickly turned into a massive battle, going up from last to match leader in the first couple minutes… couldn’t be racking up frags any faster if I had a nuke: I actually had greater then 2:1 K2D ratio. It’s like no matter what the other players did, BAM I was right on’em, often being involved in 3 to 8 way melees.
Ended up neck in neck with another match leader at the end, and cinched it at like the last blink of an eye by scoring like 6 frags in near perfect succession, winning the game!
Loaded up the next map and was having like the best freaking roll of my life, bodies dropping left and right. There’s something uniquely satisfying about using my SAS skills to counter the other match leaders “Mad skillz”, with great effect no less. Again neck in neck for the lead and looking like the end of this match is gonna flop in the bag in a sec…. when I got called off to clean up someone elses disgusting mess. Worse then that, because of QLs scoring system, not only does that mean I was forced to forfeit everything earned during that pwntacular frag fest, it negatively impacts my reputation for the quit.
And so, family induced as only it could ever be, ends one of the best game nights of my miserable little life. There must be some bastard in the universe, who can take a perverse pleasure in that. Odds are we’re related.
I’ve been sitting here a while, mostly stiring the thoughts around, my brains always been a stew pot. Mostly I’ve been looking back over my times in SAS. I can still see all the people I’ve known, the names are pages long now. My thoughts have gotten me to the point of hysterical tears, but I actually do feel a hell of a lot better… if a bit out of character. That’s the difference between the man and the machine.
The amount of time I’ve putted in, the era I joined up, the distance I place, helps me to look at things and see the truths there. It gives me a way of seeing things no other member I’ve met understands, because either they are to close, or to blind. That’s something that’s always separated me from my peers, past and present.
I came to SAS during a golden era, one hard fought for under Randoms command. Either it was SAS’s second or first golden era, perhaps even third, I’m to young to know that. The first great war I witnessed came during Heims period as commanding officer, it nearly destroyed SAS, and it helped push the “Good ol’days” into the history books, where us old farts and the aging farts still remember them. I saw the first and only Dishonorable Discharge (DD) in SAS history, and almost the entire clan either walk out or die of a broken heart; those who didn’t agree with James getting booted, and those that were so hurt at what the incident cost us. Most of my best friends in SAS drifted off into nothing, to damaged by it to participate as they once did, but caring to much for SAS to harm her by dropping out on the spot. It was a bloody mess, one I spent collecting information and dispersing it to the other members, trying to help them keep the faith. Darkest days I ever did see, even if my for bearers saw much worse.
Out of that train wreck, was the world my generation came of age in. We took to the trenches and worked like everyone else high and low did, SAS quickly recovered, and we pressed forward one foot after the other. I’ve seen the people we help mold come and go, both in good and bad alike, I’ve seen it all. In many ways, I feel that Rasa, Myself, and Rouge, were to young for the job set before us, but it’s boots we and our peers had to fill in order to survive. Through that is where cancer developed, and anyone who saw those days will agree, except those to close to the matter to see the wider scope of what happened. Dave and Rasas training sessions are really what built SWAT 4 from a passing fancy to a serious element of SAS life, and where the sins of our fathers first came into sight.
When I was young, I had the feeling of being groomed to be a Sergeant, watched over if you will.Whether I was or not, it’s with that same nature that I watched over the generations after me. Hexen is and has (sadly) remained, the only one to hit Trp to remind me, of me. The same sort of dedication, that drive to train, and so on, it made him one of the best. Miles was a little sap that grew on me, from someone I merely looked after, to being an incredibly dear friend, a teammate, and someone I consider a brother. When a young punk named Lazkostriker came along, he too became one of the important subjects my generation had a hand in, and one of the best instructors in SAS history, even better then Rasa. We helped shape what those members became, intentionally and unintentionally, and I had felt among them, is where our replacements would come from, but alas, not only did we out live the monsters (in both positive and negative senses of the word) that we helped to create, I have also outlived the others in my generation.
Through the people we helped bring into the SAS, lead to the wars that followed what we saw, and instilled a lingering cancer that was hard to remove. It’s that single thing, that I feel with the greatest remorse, because I was a part of it. Some might hold Rasa (whom I still consider a brother) responsible, but I hold us responsible, our generation. We’re the ones that made the curse or sat idly by when we should have acted. Members that followed, grew up waiting to receive the mark of a beast without even knowing it, even I hadn’t realized it until the line in the sand was years back. The generations that learned from mine, would go on to be some of the hardest working members in SAS history, as well as some of our worst…no ones a saint.
It would take 3 wars to ride us of such things, one batch at a time. I still know people that grew up in that slop of a situation, but survived it without becoming tainted by their surroundings; they are the ones I’ll have to trust, not to make our mistakes over again. Many of the others that came up through that mess were not so lucky, and fell into one trap or another. They are all gone now, along with some good souls, and some who could have been spared if they had come aboard during better days. It’s been my place to see what becomes of members, my honour to see them come full circle, and like wise, my pains and joys to watch what marks they would leave behind for others. That’s why this last and final war has taken so much out of me, because it proves that we were the real failures, not our commanders. If GCHQ has truly failed at anything during all my years of membership, it was in trying to lead stray hearts to water rather then shoot the horses early on. Honestly, I wonder if my generation never happened, would 3 out of 4 of the world wars in SAS have ever happened?
I’m tired of seeing good people brought into an uncertin future, all to often it hurts once the dice has stopped rolling. It’s the life of a phoenix, of death and rebirth from the ashes. Whatever successes my generation achieved, whatever positive influences we’ve made, none of it can outweigh the mistakes we made, and the mistakes we helped influence. That’s the legacy I’ve seen extinguished. I don’t know if it was just our inexperience at being NCOs that help breed what kind of members we became, or if it’s just our true selves coming out bit by bit. But I know this, the generations who will fold the next ones to come, are much better prepared then we were, and that is the comfort I find there.
SAS is now poised to become better then it has been, there’s no more wars to fight, no more dark cloud over head, and I pray, there never will be again. My crystal ball says in a few years, members will come aboard in golden days the way my generation did, GOD willing, they will be a success should they ever be forced into the ground we had to uphold.
Generation means different things to different people, for me, it is groups of people: who entered and spent their times as Recruit and Trooper together along much the same time frames. My generation was Rasa, Myself, and Leon, with Rouge and Mandolore coming into the picture just in time to be apart of it, or one very close to it. Rouge and Mando were mostly trained by those that trained the rest of us, but we were Troopers at the time, so it may be fair to call them the generation after us.. Leon and Mando on the other hand, lacked the activity to have any real positive or negative impact compared to the rest of us old war horses. I have seen a great many generation of recruit come and go.
I hope that GOD will smile upon SASs future, and forever shield the new wave from racking up the things I’ve seen. Sure, I’ve been in the trenches, an integral part of SAS, it’s something I committed to early on. We are always gonna need people who can do that, I just hope they do a better job then we did.
Spidey01, Warrant Officer Class One, Special Air Service 22nd Elite Virtual Regiment; 2005-2010 and beyond.
Doing better today, much more stable, but on the downside, have also felt utterly mindless half the day… like the engines running but no ones behind the wheel. Ok, so I’ve got a few cracks in the crockpot, ain’t the first time :-P.
In a rather interesting twist, normally I would play games to take a ‘break’ for programming tasks that require long periods of concentration: good choices being most things Id Tech or Unreal Engine based. Tonight, I instead found myself playing Chess to build up towards concentration, lol.
Well, as stupid as that sounds, it works :-S.
After searching through the ports tree for suitable software, I cam across a program called eboard, that can be easily mated both with chess engines and servers. Not as spectacular as some of the chess apps I’ve encountered, in fact, I think there’s a graphics heavy one on my cd rack somewhere… but who wants to see if it works under WINE! eboard is both simple and to the point, and despite the lack of photo-realistic graphics, it does present a very familiar interface. I also installed gnuchess to serve as a sparing partner, since I haven’t really played a game of chess since the early 2000s, when Cyborg, Lioness, and I used to drop into an occasional parlor game in between drops. Perhaps I’ll hit FICS someday, but an automaton will do just fine for the time being.
Having something to analyze intently, helps a bit….
The last bomb finally dropped as I new it must, and my friends turned in their resignation. This is the worst day of my life so far, because the only thing I can think of that could be worse, is becoming an orphan. For me this has just been an utterly breaking and strength erasing event, and I’m sure it’s no triviality for my friend either (but this is still my journal lol). Getting through work felt like doing it with a corkscrew twisting though my stomach.
I drifted off to work with more tics, shakes, and rattles then you can point a stick at, I’ve nearly thrown up about four times, and I’ve had to remind myself, “You don’t fucking cry!”, just to hold it together. As is my custom in times like these, what ever pieces were left, I cast myself back into the forge and let them reshape.
There the Spidey01 we all know, nearly died of his pain and grief in this matter. Very close he came to being replaced by a very different creature, one cold and remorseless like a machine: I looked for the first time in my life, at taking a path, where I don’t know whether it threads along the side of light or darkness… willing to become an archangel or a knight of hell itself, a pure devil even, if it should need be, ready to destroy anyone in the future who would dare rise to damage SAS, to become a monster if it should need be, something that would make Wiz at his best or worse, look like a limp noodle, for the sake of ensuring that never another war grace these shores. Whatever the cost might be in doing it, whether it would mean welding Souledge or Soulcalibur, that it would be done just the same. In short, take any and every action necessary to ensure that things like the past two weeks, would never be needed again. I pondered over this course that lay ahead, describing it in my mind, in a sort of disturbing and epic form of poetry that can only exist in ones mind, just what I would be committing myself to. In thinking through that new beings description, what its name would become in place of Spidey01, and what my personal emblem would be in such… I found myself staring back at me through that emblem.
The death of Spidey01 and the rise of an avenging monster would have been the legacy, that Rouge, Valroe, Noer, Medic, Scout, and Ambu left behind, the price of their resolvability; it would also have been committing the first petty act of my life. Looking and questioning my reasons for such a choice of path, deeper at it’s heart, I found the thought that, “I never want to feel like this again”, more then SASs interests was to be found. That creature is so different then myself, that it would’ve warranted changing my name to reflect becoming a different person – an incident like something out of the old testament. Part of my soul cried out, “I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive”, and that nothing will ever kill that tiny silver of goodness in me.
So who emerged from those soul searching fires?
A sharper more refined image then before, but still Spidey01… not the demon that beckoned. Today’s the closest I’ve ever come, to losing who I am. My name on the net, is incredibly personal, and is an identity that reflects me to the core…. it nearly died, really. Yet as surely as I have rejected darkness and evil all my life, I reject that idea…. of being a devil, even for my own reasons. Spidey01 still lives for what ever I’m worth, and I’m here to stay. Light or dark, right or wrong, I’ll not abide by either, I’ll just raise a flaming Spatha in one hand and a great axe in the other, and leave the suit of armour behind. Perhaps such a beast is really what SAS needs to ensure that the next golden age remains one for us as a group, but I am nether machine nor monster, only a man, and I will not yield my humanity. Whether that’s for anything, anyone, or even myself, I’m a man not fucking machine.
As for you, my galvanized friend, you want a heart. You don’t know how lucky you are not to have one. Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
For better or worse, I have one.
Today has been marred both with bad and good news, I reckon the bad, will be the last shell I need watch dropped, but the good, effectively ensures the future. So, I guess ’tis time to cast the reel, and hope to enjoy the coming age.
Darn, youth is so wasted on the young :-P.
Things have finally settled a bit, this is perhaps the closest to a proper day off yet: played Raven Shield for a few hours on the [SAS] Proving Grounds, took a break for chores and followed that up with some Quake Live, then went back to the [SAS] Proving Grounds for a couple hours. Then a few rounds of Clan Arena in QL before dinner.
I don’t play much Clan Arena in Quake Live, because it is rarely my `style` in the public servers; maybe more formal matches might be better. CA games basically amount to a round based last team standing form of competition, where everyone starts out with a Mega Health, and virtually all standarded weapons, plus plenty of ammunition; the catch of course being, there are NO power ups, no health kits, no extra ammo. You best have rocket launcher skills as well ^_^. Managed to get in a few good team games, before ending up in a mixture of 2vs2 / 1vs2 games, giving great chance to practice weapons selection and application. I also learned of a spot on one of my training maps, where you can rocket jump over (or camp on top of) a wall. One cool feature of Clan Arena mode, is you can rocket jump freely without taking any damage; it lends itself to a very fast, furious, and high octane form of combat. Although, it often becomes a crazy melee.
For lighting things up a bit, Charles Dickens Great Expectations, and Wanted. The former redefines the expression (from the more modern vernacular), of “Gee, what a small world! While the latter, is a gritty but enjoyable action flick, with some very nice fight scenes—that kid is to fighting ability, what a Terminator is to durability.
A day behind schedule, but I’ve also taken the time to burn a SMGL disk, that I’ll likely setup on my desktop, and experiment with porting code to x86_64, as well as playing Quake Live under Linux. Sourcemage is a GNU/Linux distro, that I actually found when Googling for some git operation lead me to their wiki; it also looks like a distro on par with my tastes. I was smiling the other night, when I read a section header in the install docs, about knowing thy `compiler`, until I realized it said `computer`, and my glasses really needed a cleaning lol.