Eliot AI - NEXT GENERATION of AI tools [NOW RELEASED]

Hey guys. I am considering using the Eliot AI however I have a few questions:

I am using the ootii motion controller and all of its packs i saw that there is an integration with this so my questions are as follow:

1. How can I make sure that the agent (Eliot) can damage my character
2. How do I affect agents (Eliot ai) with my spells and effects? (is that even possible) (these spells are used using ootiis spell pack

I really hope that this is possible

Thank you in advance

 

Hey guys i am slo getting an error when trying to open the behaviour windows:

 

Looks like some of the textures aren't imported properly or were damaged/moved after importing the project. Try reimporting the package.

You can find instructions for this in the EliotIntegration.pdf document in the root folder. I haven't explored using the ottii's skills but I'm sure that's possible, however will definitely require some modifications to the code.

 

Hello everyone, hope you are doing well! Today I have an announcement for you. As you might have already known, I have been working on a new big update and I have been planning to finish working on it by the middle of July (today). A lot of what I've planned is complete but there are some major things that are yet to be done.

So today I want to share the biggest changes/improvements that are already there. I'll start with the biggest one and it's probably the Utility Node. As many of you may have already heard of, there's this approach called "Utility AI" used to program NPCs for games and I am happy to announce that now you'll be able to make use of it.

(Note that this particular behaviour is for the display purposes only and doesn't make any sense in terms of real logic.)

Next big feature is the ability to mix a finite state machine in the same graph. So now it's going to be a behaviour tree/graph, state machine and utility AI at the same time!

(again, no useful logic here, just for display purposes)

The Agent inspector is made cleaner and there's no need to use all the components at the same time anymore


There are many more subtle changes to share but I don't want this post to get too long.

Also I have two options regarding the deployment atm. The first one is to deploy what is currently there (after some testing and debugging) and to complete the other planned features in the follow-up updates. The second option is to deploy the update after all the changes and tests are done (this is going to take less time strategically but the update is going to be delayed significantly further).

Please, share your thoughts and have a great day!

 

Could this has something to do with the fact that i am using the HDRP?

 

@eliot-ai You mentioned some changes regarding use of Json. I was deep profiling the Tutorial 3 skeleton scene and I see regular spikes of 19ms due to some Json operations. If I duplicate the AI then there will be more spikes and much larger ones. Are you going to address these Json issues? I also see that there is a GC Alloc associated with these spikes of 126.9KB. Will you be reducing or eliminating these allocations? I'd like to give Eliot another try, but the performance and allocations are a killer and make it unusable.

 

Json parsing will be abandoned completely with a single exception of converting the existing behaviours to the new format. All the other operations are going to be done by building the objects directly, without parsing the strings. Some allocation is inevitable since the objects that operate delegates need to be built from the visual representation and it needs to be done for all the agents. Throwing away json should make it a lot faster though.

 

Highly unlikely. It seems to have something to do with the assets which might be damaged or moved. I had an issue once with an asset that cleans the project automatically and it decided that the textures that Eliot uses in the editor are redundant so it deleted them. I had similar errors as a result of that. Simply reimporting the project solved everything.

 

Hello!
I think it is better to receive updates (new features) as soon as possible so that we (the developers) can use new things in our current projects. It will also help reduce the number of rework in the future and allow us to think about new things in advance.

 

I second that. If things might be unstable, you have a bigger amount of people testing things for you and whatnot as well.

 

Hello, do you have a tutorial how the integration with GKC works??? thanks!

 

It is described in the "Eliot Integration" document that comes with the package. You can find it in the rest folder of the asset.

 

did you end up releasing the Utility node? Also, how does that work? I'm assuming the node can lead to many different other nodes based on the decision/weighting in it.

 

I haven't released it yet, but it is a complete feature and it will be included in the next update which I am wrapping up. Utility node works by evaluating the current utility of 2 or more functions and activates the transition associated with the function with the highest utility. The functions are user defined and can be any c# methods that return a float.

 

Having some issues with pooling and initiating AIs to game, these two referances seem to spike performance it alot.

public static class CoresPool and :
public static BehaviourCore GetCore

Is there any way to improve this? Tried alot but with no luck

 

Hi psych77. I believe the reason for the spikes is parsing the json string to tokenise it and then build proper behaviour objects. I have improved it in the new version by getting rid of that extra json layer. The spikes should go down.

 

Hello!
I want to share my decision on how to transfer damage to my character (agent/Inert).
1. The delegate and event added to the Resources.cs script:

        public delegate void OnDamageHandlers(int value);

        public event OnDamageHandlers DamageTaken;

2. Added an event call to the method "public void Damage(int value)" to the Resources.cs script:

DamageTaken?.Invoke(value);

3. In my own script (PlayerController) I added method:

public void DamageToPlayer(int power) {....myCurrentHP -= power;....}

4. In my own script, I subscribe to an event this way (in method Start):

GetComponent<Agent>().Resources.DamageTaken += DamageToPlayer;

Eliot, please add such a solution to your Resources.cs class - this will allow all developers to process the damage of the main character from the eliot agents in their code. And with subsequent updates, we don’t need to add similar lines to your code.

ps. When is planned an update? I setup 2 enemy npc characters (agent), and 23 other characters need to be set up. Given the separation of the agent component into separate blocks - will I need to reconfigure the characters?
pps. sorry for my English ).

 

Thanks for sharing. I am planning to replace the resources component entirely and make it generic. So that one can add any number of different resources and affect them in a variety of ways. I will add delegates to it. BUT I will not include the new resources component into the following update. Otherwise it would take too long to complete the update. It has taken a lot of time already and of course, I want to share the complete piece of work as soon as possible. It is nearly complete. I had to redo many things from scratch so it isn't stable yet and I won't share an unstable version. The components will mostly stay the same, except for the perception which now just has a few more features like 2d raycasting and seeing without raycasting at all (based on distance). Therefore updating your agents shouldn't take too much effort.

 

@eliot-ai Are you going to beta test the new version or just release it to the store when you've tested it more? How close would you say you are?

 

Features to complete:
- ability to reuse Agent object upon death instead of destroying it and instatiating a new one
- update Unit Factory
- backward compatibility
- build the library for the new type of nodes (Utility)
- integrations with third party assets
I am beta testing it right now but it's a closed beta. It's not ready to get published yet. Also I'll have to update the manual and make new tutorials but I'll make that after making the beta public.

 

Hey man! You've probably heard it a couple of times already, but it'd be great if you'd have a discord server. Would also be a great way of users of Eliot AI to help each other solve issues that doesn't necessarily require you so you can focus more on developing the asset.

Aside from that, I am personally having some issues regarding mecanim animations where it just loops the Idle animation. I am not exactly sure how to shoot the trigger to change animation states in the animator.

Either way, been having quite some fun with the asset. Thanks for your work.

 

Hi SOSolacex! I will make the discord server as soon as I'm done working on the update. In case you're wondering about its progress, all the features are implemented and I am testing it out actively.
Regarding the animations issue, you got to set up the transitions between the animation states so that they get activated when the triggers get shot. I suggest you start with this short tutorial from Unity. It features a transition based on float parameter but a trigger one is very similar, it should be easy to figure out the way to use that as well.

 

I heard that you add utility ai. Do you intend to add demos like the Sims using Utility AI? I hope it contains simple actions like eating, sleeping, working and playing.

 

The next update that'll feature utility AI will be considered beta because I still need to add a few planned features like procedural attributes, like hunger etc. When that's ready, I'll make an example project with that. Probably I'll record making that and will make a tutorial out of it as well. By the way, I am planning to move the example project from the package to a discord channel.

 

Is there a node or action or something to give a dynamic waypoint at run time? Like eg. 5 meters behind target?

When a AI. Attacks, is there a message or something to tap into easy? Im assuming there is a health component you can put on things to receive the damage? Such as the player, doors,
Ect. Whats type of actions are in the playmaker integration (anyone have a screenshot?). How do AI detect their targets? Is it by tag or components? With having the team setting im guessing components that define identity?

In one of the videos, it has a bool for can dodge. Is the dodging a calculated action or a animation that the AI plays? On AI receiving damage is there a option to play a hit animation? Videos just show push back. Is there a action for random event? Such as skeleton is going to attack, maybe he will attack will melee attack 1, or maybe he will attack with melee attack 2?

Oh and, the spawn i. Waypoint thing, shown in video, mass spawning... in run time, is it set up that the spawn is disabled until you call it to spawn? Such as the player is close enough.

 

Anyone?

 

There's no node for that but you can do that with a few nodes together or you can create your own node. Getting behind the target would require some additional set up but here's an example of keeping the same distance from a target:

There's a resources component that has health and energy and it works together with motion and animation components.

It is basically what you need to get your player or another AI implemented with PlayMaker interact with Eliot agents.

Agents have perception and they see all the objects that have Unit component on them. Perception works by casting rays but in the new version a range perception will also be available. Teams define relationships between agents or objects. E.g. different teams are enemies, same team is friends. However you can set up friendly teams.

Dodging is calculated.

Yes

You can use probability on the transitions to achieve that

It is set to spawn all the time, but it's a good idea for the future updates

 

Right On Thanks

 

I cant seem to get projectiles to work right, It shoots, all good. but the accuracy of the shot is horrendous. probably some little thing im missing.... the missiles arc upwards and slowly coming down and go about 100 units away, when the target is like 10 feet away. Nm i figured most of it out, still is there a way to control the accuracy at all? Like if a gun shoots for example, a noise system for bullet projection?

 

So playing with eliot, my initial thoughts, seems like a toy version of node canvas or behavior designer. Which granted eliot isn't as powerful, but behavior designer and node canvas do more than just ai, but after playing with it, Elliot is a pretty powerful little system. It doesn't have the ease as a system like emerald ai, but its very flexible, so thats a huge benefit. Its still fairly easy to set up though. The thing that i really find is done very well, is the behavior editor. Its very simplified, easy to read easy to do, yet powerful. Its actual fun designing AI with it. Being a younger AI system for unity it lacks some of the advance nodes that would be great to have in the future. Id love to seem some tactical nodes like, target position off set. To have ai be able to attack from behind, or flank. And a node to evaluate the number of enemies in close vicinity. Able to send messages to allies (which can be done with skills mind you). A option to configure the stats and number of stats would be cool. Being able to view the AIs graph during play time would be nice for debugging. Having the set the animator up manually is nice, little more work, but it adds a whole level of variety and flexibility. The message system used to apply damage i love, makes it very versatile. And i from what ive played with, a reliable system. Which is awesome. Overall, i think eliot is a really good AI system.
So i hope to see some advanced nodes in the future, tactical, mainly.

 

The concept of the ai inventory is pretty cool. Is there a way to have the AI pick a better weapon, for the situation? Like melee vs ranged? AoE if there is a larger number of enemies nearby.

 

The noise on projectiles, just to add a touch of controllable randomness. If i tell a AI to shoot right now, he is very accurate. Would be nice to see the bullets veer off to the left right up or down just a little, each bullet. Giving the projectile a “spread”. I believe there is a plan to change perception to a range style instead of the raycast, which is great, recast can be costly on cpu. And in reality right now the veiw is only really functional if the terrain is flat.

 

idk, running profile on AI the highest cost, by far, is the raycasting. from what I see. but idk. don't get me wrong, its fun creating AI with this system no doubt, probably one of my favorites at the moment. im just hoping to see some... enhancements. optimization is a big thing for like, everyone. so options are great, when a AI is instantiated, there is a major FPS drop, on the method of Agent Start. but I believe that has already been notified and plans are in place I believe? for the noise, its a small easy option to add. the best part of this AI system, is how flexible it is, and how versatile it is. skipping over little things like noise on the projectile may seem little, insignificant, can be added by anyone. but its those little things, that would take this AI well beyond others. imo.

 

Public discord would be great. Like I said, its a beautiful AI system, its young. And i don't doubt it will advance far.

 

Hi, my AI needs to open doors, is there a way to do this or will I need to code my own solution? Thanks

 

There's a few approaches to doors, mainly depending on what you use for pathfinding.
With Unity Navigation you can bake your Navmesh with the doors open and then use NavMeshObstacles to determine which areas are closed or open. You could then have the Navmesh uncarved/obstructed at the doorway (So the pathfinding instructs the agent to move through) and have a mesh door closed with a collider( so the agent cannot accidentally pass through early). Before using an overlapping trigger collider to pause the navAgent movement, play a animation opening the door, reenable the agent to continue through. If you have the area carved or obstructed the Agent will treat a possible doorway as being unpassable and look for another open/unlocked path to the destination.
This older Unity tutorial covers this kind of approach;

The majority of the logic surrounding doors/gateways relates to the path-finding engine you're using with Eliot and sadly there aren't any examples of how to do this in the package at the moment. I will mention this to the lead dev when i get a chance and see if he's interested in adding a simple Unity NavAgent door example in future updates

I can see there is a reasonable demand for some more demos of AI related things like this, so it would certainly be worth expanding on a bit more to improve the value of this Asset.

 

having a skill called “open doors”. With a range of like 2. Would technically work. The problem would be in separation of teams. Perception has noway to Seperate the type of teams.

 

So I am back again...
I can't seem to get a simple prefab NPC to follow waypoints. I stripped it down to the simplest setup.
Animator with Speed and Turning floats. An idle and a walking with transition > 0 walk < .5 idle
The behavior with 1 node Entry->WalkAroundWaypoints.
Unit Factory I left as all default EXCEPT dropped down to mecanim, added the controller, added the waypointgroup and behavior.
All he does is idle....Video of the issue and my settings.

 

if you turn off the rootmotion (just under the mecanimsetting) does it work?

 

No.. thoguht of that, that is why I turned it on.
I noticed in the animator on play it sets my Speed to -0.08 and turn to -2.5 !!
changed it to 1 and hit play, still changes it back to negative....

 

Personally i would turn rootmotion off for now, if the AI wants to turn and if there isnt a animation set up, it might give you issues.

Also, turn off. “Has exit time” in animator

 

ISSUE: Elliot AI Waypoint changes not working (Following the waypoint tutorial where you can change the behavior every time a player hits a waypoint).

Solution: So basically I went into the code and realized that the waypoints in the code (In the code file Motion.cs inside of the CurrentWaypoint() function) is not returning the correct _curWaypointIndex. Thus when trying to run anything with waypoint changes, it simply returns the last index value only. To fix this I finally figured it out by adding the following code to the NavMeshMotionEngine.cs script at approx. around line 440 (Inside of the IF statement). Here is the BEFORE and AFTER so you know where to look:

Code (CSharp):

1. // BEFORE:
2.                 if (!randomly && _agent.Waypoints && _agent.ApplyChangesOnWaypoints && _motion.CurrentWaypoint().MakeChangesToAgent)
3.                 {
4.                     _agent.SetWaypointChanges(_motion.CurrentWaypoint());
5.                 }
6.  

Code (CSharp):

1. // AFTER:
2.                 if (!randomly && _agent.Waypoints && _agent.ApplyChangesOnWaypoints && _motion.CurrentWaypoint().MakeChangesToAgent)
3.                 {
4.                     // NAV - Academy of Games added this line: Create a temp way point to store the waypoint that player is going to and then set the waypoint changes accordingly
5.                     Waypoint tempWaypoint = _agent.Waypoints[_curWaypointIndex - 1];
6.                     _agent.SetWaypointChanges(tempWaypoint);// _motion.CurrentWaypoint());
7.                 }
8.  

Hopes this helps others facing this issue and hope it can be updated in a future update

Nav
Unity Live Help Expert
Academy of Games (www.AcademyOfGames.com)

 

Stumbled on this interesting asset. I have few questions in regarding to the customization of AI.

I have seen few videos and read manual in quick, but could not find much about how extendable this asset is.

It's great to have solid built in AI stuff, but AI asset needs to be able to extend it easily to create a custom stuff.

I am talking about custom skills and resources etc.. custom skills as some thing like taking cover. Resources like more than just energy and health. After getting hit, you would want more than just a random value in between min and max. You may want to pass along what attacked you and what other side effects it had. Where are those side effect data are stored and passed along?

There seem to be builtin actions like death, wonder around etc.., can we create our own custom ones? It's got actions like walk, is there source for how walk is done and able to create our own walk skill? (I am not talking about just modifying skill's properties to create a new skill. I want to create entire different set of skill in code)

Also for inventory, I already have my own inventory system, how do we integrate my own to this AI system? Is there video tutorial on how to customize such system?

 

Also, read about the costly raycasting stuff.. Maybe new raycastcommand can help? It apparently can ray cast in asyn...

 

Did anyone made the melee atackto work? Example TDS doesntwork. If I remove guns guys and only let melee ones, nothing happens when they approach the player.
???

 

Hi everyone, I don't know if this has been asked before...
What's the position of Eliot on Unity's ECS/DOTS architecture?
Unity is currently developing a DOTS-based Visual Scripting system, but it will take at least a year until its mature enough.
I bought Eliot, Node and Flow Canvas and also Bolt, and I need to decide to which system I'm going to migrate my previous home-brewed solution. I intend to take advantage of the DOTS architecture. Bolt is not planning of supporting it anytime soon (the dev loves OOP), there is little info about this with node canvas, so... I would really appreciate if anyone could tell me where does Eliot stand.

Thanks a lot!

 

Could someone tell me if there is a way to change the FBX on an Eliot Agent without creating a new agent from scratch with Unit Factory?

 

It's been a year since I bought this asset. There were to be additional things, node, except update with support for other plugins nothing is happening.

 

ANNOUNCEMENT: Hi everyone, hope you are doing great! I’d like to share some news regarding the project. First things first, let me share some of the major features that are coming up.

1. Behaviour trees, Finite State Machines and Utility AI all in one graph! The new tutorials will explain how all of that stuff works.




2. Parameters in the Nodes!



They are inferred directly from the functions so all you have to do is add a parameter in your C# method:



3. Visual debugging in the Play mode!



4. Improved Agent Inspector GUI!



5. 2D Perception!


6. Distance Mode perception!


7. Ability to control the agents using Input!

8. Procedural Resources that are created using template files! No code, just result.



9. Procedural Attributes:



10. Copy-Pasting Nodes in the editor!

11. Unity Events for your procedural resources!



12. Robust Way Points system with Unity Events on different stages!



13. Ability to add your own categories to Behaviour Actions, Conditions and Utility functions!

Overall, now you’ll be able to achieve a better result, faster!

A lot of things had to be changed internally in order to improve the robustness and flexibility of the system. Also, the new version is built with unity 2019.3. Since Unity itself is not fully backwards-compatible, the new Eliot will not be compatible with older Unity versions.

However, I do not want to enforce the update especially for those of you who have your projects up and running already. Switching to the new version might take a bit of time and not all of you are going to need it. Therefore I want to provide a flexible solution. The new version is going to be published as a new asset and those of you who already have purchased Eliot will get a discount for the new version!

Delivering all of this is a big challenge and I know that it would be better if it has been delivered one step at a time but a lot of features have been improved in their core so I want to make sure it all works together and works well.

 

Really? You're alienating your user base just to support 2019? I've had it with assets that keep dropping versions of Unity that are still very widely used. And I clearly wasted my money on another tool that is dumping support for the version of Unity I use. You might want to check the Publisher's Forum where they post statistics on which Unity versions are used by percentage. I am fairly certain that 2019 will be very low on the list.