Gaia Player

[Dragon45]

Just wondering about how exactly to implement it in a map, and what possibilities it opens up. I'm guessing through simple autoassigned Group AI that it could allow for things like

By making each creature a low-poly unit with a basic script:

• Schools of fish (harmless guppies to SW-esque gulpers...)
  Animal herds
  Birds
  Sandworms (zwzsg!)
  Monsters in general

If you could somehow force the unit to forcefire at random points across the map, you could make weather effects by making a "Cloud" or "God" unit that could fire

• thunderbolts (perilous for aircraft)
  Meteors
  Earthquakes (that actually change the ground, thanks to lovely Spring terrain deformation)

If there was a section of map that looked like a volcano, you could have a Gaia unit that could fire groundbounced red projectiles for lava.

Just throwing some ideas out there.

Hopefully this will only lead to more detail in maps :D

[zwzsg]

I hope there are at least two gaia players:
- One allied with every player, for friendly decoration fauna and civilian
- One enemy of every player, for the mean monsters and map traps

I would be heartbroken to see my own troop slaughter innocent birds and deers and villager whenever they see them.

I would be annoyed if my own troop refused to fire on the creeps that attack them.

[Zoombie]

Thats a good idea. See you could add it to maps by just putting in a Gaia(nice) bot and a Gaia(naughty) bot. And if a player says "No way, those animals are dumb!" you can just yank out the nice bot. And if a player hates haveing creeps mauling his units, then you can yank out the naughty bot.

Or, if you mod the server, you can add two tickbox's. Like "Civilans" and "Disasters" or something like that. But it WOULD be odd to see schools of fish wandering the canals of Core Prime. Perhaps a illigaly transported fishys?

[Dragon45]

GAIA units would be map depndent though! So they could add god environment.

or how about evne certain map elements allied with certain factions (for mods) ? Like lets say you created a SW map, and put Bounty Hunters and Jawas on it; the bounty hunters would be on the team allied with all imperial players, and the Jawas woudl be allied with all the Rebel players, and sandworms and creatures would be allied with noone, so they wuld be on a seperate team.


Yay!

[Durandal]

Yay ! More stuff to shoot at ! : D

[AF]

Code: Select all

#define MAX_TEAMS 17     // team index 16 is the GAIA team

Taken from GlobalStuff.h. All it needs si a tie so that when a map is laoded the feature map can hold both feature names and unit names. Simple Unit Sub-AI's should take control after game starts.

[mongus]

yay i want my MTR points!!!

and on topic, is it possible to add bot players by the lua mission scripting?

and is a goal of the lobby to be able to load lua scripts instead of the default "commander" scripts that are generated rigth now?

edit:
buh, i was sure i read it there... added the info to the wiki on this topic, It seems worthy for this, but feel free to edit, whoever rules that part of the wiki.

[Maelstrom]

You dont get MTR points. THis is not an MTR, and you did not add a link to the MTR wiki thing.

Gaia players would be cool. Almost every game has it, and it works really well.

[Dragon45]

My concern with having just the last player GAIA defined is that there wouldnt necessairly be a way for additional flexbility within the GAIA system. See my idea above for some map units allied with one side and other map units allied with another sideand some map units not allied with any side at all. And what happens if a mod/TC has more than 2 sides? It shold be addressed right now before it gets all complex and takes hours and hours and hours oif codign work to change.

[raikitsune]

one more thaing. if you put in civilians for example then what would they do? stand about aimlessly? animals ok can wander but people would kindof need to be set to a certain area and then what happens when stuff starts exploding? do they carry on their aimless path or could you make them run away?

[Pxtl]

See, we're starting to get into what I was talking about earlier - if you have a single, game-defined gaia player you set yourself up for a fall with limitations. Really, you need the map to be able to define as many players as the map needs, and assign an AI and units to each one.

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

I would like having a Gaia player (who coined that term anyway?), i'd like to have critters to shoot at and critters that attack me and all.

It should be fairly easy to implement, but where will birds fly to? will they randomly fly about? what about certain bird would hunt on certain other critters like birds and bunnies?

[AF]

Gaia is a word that's thousands fo years old, it was used just in the same way we named television absed on greek words.

[FizWizz]

GZ is talking about "Gaia"+"Player" as a term, not "Gaia" separately.

[Dragon45]

GZ, pretty much any sort of behavior is specifiable with Group AI. If anyone remembers UScript and the old schools of fish and stuff., they were created in a similar way as these Gaiai players will be created, but far more limited. We have a lot of flexiblity with a (properly) implemented Gaia system. Immersion, here we come...

[jcnossen]

Limited? UnrealScript is anything but limited. The scripting language is really an inspiration for me with building the new unit script system.
With UnrealScript, you could just as well implement a native DLL for the fishes, it has transparent native/scripted classes.

[Dragon45]

UScript is definately powerful, but all i'm saying is that it didnt have the direct C++ artery that we have, you know, being open source and all

[GrOuNd_ZeRo]

But I am not a Unreal player at all, since the very first Unreal I was completely turned away from the unreal franchise, the game looked amazing but the gameplay was the worst, and the player models were...gay...

I have always been a Doom/Quake person, I used QuakeC, modeling MDL, MD2 (not as much) and MD3's.

[PauloMorfeo]

... Gaia player (who coined that term anyway?), ...

There has been discussion about «neutral sides» often. Once, sometime after SJ left the lead developer role, SJ used the term "Gaia player" as something already established. It sticked!
I believe it was him that introduced that term into the public forums so you would have to ask him where he got that from, if you want to dig further.

[AF]

I thought I introduced it? Eitherway this si a term that ahs been sued in other RTS games for years.

Gaia would eb every living thing, I think, another term for ti would eb the lifeforce fo the earth itself or a name for that being.