[RELEASED] Emerald AI 3.2 (New Sound Detection) - The Ultimate Universal AAA Quality AI Solution

Hey everyone,

We have changed websites and updated our email address. This is to help better support us and our customers.

Check out our new site here: http://www.blackhorizonstudios.com/

To view our updated contact information, see our contact section of our new website here: http://www.blackhorizonstudios.com/contact/

We have also updated our publisher website and contract information on the Asset Store.

If you'd like to leave suggestions or feedback on ways we can improve our website or products, just comment here or email us via our feedback email.

 

Just in case you missed our last status update, regarding Emerald, here's what we've done.

Updated ETA
Everything is looking great with Emerald 1.2. However, we have had some occasional snags that push our submission date back. This is why we tend to refrain from posting ETAs because, as developers, we can't always predict them. We always get them resolved, but they require time. It is our job to provide our customers with improved functionality and new features. With Emerald 1.2 we have done just that. We want a flawless bug free AI system. For that to happen, every portion of the system must be tested, thoroughly. I'd say it's safe to say that it shouldn't be too much longer until we submit Emerald 1.2, but we won't give an exact ETA. We can assure everyone it'll be worth the wait and we appreciate everyone's patience with the Emerald 1.2 update.


Performance and Clarification about Animal and NPC
To help with some clarification with the Animal and NPC portion of the system, we will explain. Emerald 1.2's animals will function the way they did with Emerald 1.1, with the addition of the improved editor, features, bug fixes, and improvements. NPC and Animals are separated using the Editor. The code from these 2 categories don't even run unless one or the other is selected. So, if your AI was set to Animal, none of the code for the NPC would be running in the script. This is to help ease the concerns of anyone thinking that extra features means less efficient. In fact, Emerald 1.2 performs better than Emerald 1.1 even with all the extra features we have added.


New System Included with Emerald 1.3
To show our appreciation, we will also be including a free copy of our new system with the Emerald 1.3 update. This new system will be a dynamic Animal/NPC spawner. We are currently taking feature requests for this. If you have questions regarding the details, just comment here.


Example Loot System
We will be including a simple example loot system with Emerald 1.2.


Improved Fleeing Algorithm
With that being said, we have a quick new video demonstrating Emerald 1.2's new fleeing algorithm. Animals, and NPCs, will no longer get stuck or generate waypoints they can't access. AI will continuously generate waypoints away from the target that is chasing them. AI will also no longer get stuck. Emerald can detect when an AI sets a waypoint that's inaccessible or will get them stuck and regenerate a new one.

Improved Animal AI Functionality
The Animal portion of Emerald has also been improved. The Alpha of a herd or pack will now better lead their group better and more intelligently than before. Part of this is due to the improved fleeing algorithm and dynamic waypoint generation.


Turn Animation Support
We have also added support for turning animation, as requested. This feature is completely optional. Turning animations will play when a an AI needs to take a turn that's sharper than ~60°. This also applies when an AI is attacking and chasing its opponent. The results are much better than they were with the Emerald 1.1.


Improved Player Weapon and Health System
We have been working on improving the player weapon and health system. The player weapon system now supports multiple hit and attack sounds. We have also added hit delays and receiving hit delays to help better match animations from the player and other AI. We will also be including a health and stamina system with bars for the new FPS system like below, minus the hand and weapon. UFPS was used below.


Improved Fighting Algorithm for both Animals and NPC
Emerald 1.2 has also improved the way AI fight. AI will generate new targets, within range, after their current target has died. We will be demonstrating the below with a videos also, but here's some screenshots for now.


We tested this with Guard AIs set to defensive. These guards guarded their area until the attackers were all dead.



A Defensive AI attacking a player after they were hit by them. Defensive AI can generate targets to their attackers if they are attacked first.

 

Breeding Options
We have added Breeding Options to the Editor for Emerald 1.2. The Breeding Options allow you to control everything breeding related for that specific animal. As for right now, only Passive Animal Types are supported. We will be adding support for all animals, including dynamic breeding for wandering animals, with Emerald 1.3.




The Breeding System Explained

The above video is from a few months ago, but it shows the Breeding System in action.

Emerald will support 4 animals that can be bred on a probability chart of Common 50%, Uncommon 35%, Rare 10%, and Super Rare 5%. Animals must be "breed compatible". This is done by having the same Breed Type. The times set in the video are set to 5 seconds form baby to adult and a 5 second breed cool down for demonstration purposes. This could be anything desirable from minutes to hours.

These odds can be tweaked based on each animal. So, for example, if you have a rare animal born, that rare animal can be more likely to have an animal of its color, type, rarity, etc. You will be able to label 4 animals as either Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Super Rare. You will then assign the prefabs for each rarity and Emerald will handle the rest.

This same system can be used in the wild for creating dynamic animals. These animals will also use the Breeding Odds system that can really add to games feeling dynamic.

Breeding doesn't have to be based off rarity or it can be disabled entirely.

The chart below shows an example of the odds system Emerald 1.2 will be using. The colors of these animals, and the rarity, are the same ones used in the video above. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions. Feedback is always appreciated.

Note: Colors are only used to help distinguish the differences between the rarities. These can be anything desirable from crossbreeds to the same type of animal.

 

I think those odds look fine for defaults. Any chance there will be an advanced options where they could be configured based on what type of animal we are breeding. If not currently, maybe something that could be added when you add breeding for all animal types in 1.3?

 

Sure, adding custom odds shouldn't be too hard to squeeze into the 1.2 update.

 

Will this ever go on sale in the Unity asset store (I don't know if it's just random), because it looks really cool but I unfortunately can't afford it at the moment (I'm only 15)...

 

We respect young game developers. So, we gave you a discount. Take a look at your inbox.

 

Emerald Development Update
Today we were able to add customizable odds to the Behavior Options in the Emerald Editor. This allows users to customize the odds for each rarity of animal. The Editor automatically calculates the percentages for each rarity so they never go over 100%. These odds are what controls the odds of each rarity of animals being born. We are nearly finished with Emerald 1.2.

 

PERFECT!

 

Any chance of a 1.2 update discount?
Kinda struggling to persuade my colleague that an AI system is worth €37

 

maybe private msh him and see if he can accept monthly payments, I bought some my expensive assets like this.

 

Black Horizon Studios, I just received the "discounted" item in my inbox...

I cannot thank you enough! Just as I was losing faith in humanity too! But really, this was such a great pleasure to come home to and I'm glad there are people such as yourselves who have the sort of understanding seen very rarely. I am yet to use this but from what I've seen so far, the asset (and the developers) seem amazing!

Thanks again so much!

Ethan

 

I'm glad you like the changes. Thanks for the suggestion.

We don't give discounts out often. It's very rarely we do this. It's usually circumstantial.

I think €37 is totally reasonable for an AI system, especially with the 1.2 update coming out, and the price being kept at €37.

You're welcome and thank you for your gratitude.

Enjoy Emerald AI and be sure to tell us what you think. Feel free to post here or email us if you need any help.

 

So I've been playing around with the asset (rly good so far), but I had a question:
I've been using Blender to create my land and it imports as a game object rather than a terrain is there any way I can use this instead of a terrain to align the animals? Or is there a way to turn the game object into a terrain?
Thanks for any help!

 

Sorry for the bombardment of questions but I am eager to find out more!
I have used the system a bit more and come across a new problem, I think this one will have a simple solution but I can't seem to find out what it is.
Basically when my animal attacks me (it's a mammoth so is quite large) it gets way to close and I would like it to attack me from further away but still cause damage. Any solutions appreciated!

 

As of right now, the Align AI system only works for the Unity terrain.

No worries, feel free to ask as many questions as needed.

You would want to adjust the AI's Stopping Distance. This is what controls how much distance is needed before stopping to attack. Bigger animals tend to need more distance than smaller animals.

 

Thanks for the help The Mammoth works well now! I'll try to find another solution to the alignment problem(like quaternions or something)...

 

When do you plan to make it work for any navmesh? 1.2?

Death animation?

 

You are welcome.

The Align System works with NavMesh. As long as the NavMesh has been generated where the AI currently is, it will align itself with the terrain.

Death animation has already been implemented with Emerald 1.2.

 

Oh, I meant to ask when it will work for custom meshes, on stairs for example? Navmesh can be generated on any surface, not terrain only.

 

For now, the Align System gets the terrain's position and angle using certain terrain API, then applies it to the AI. Custom meshes would technically work as long as the angle of a custom mesh roughly matches the terrain slope of that particular area. So, for example, if you had stairs that went along with the terrain slop. The AI would still align itself according to the slope of the terrain. If the stairs were there, it would appear as if it where aligning itself with the stairs, if that made sense.

Aligning to custom meshes is something we will most likely add with 1.3. However, we are trying to keep our updates smaller, polished, and more often to avoid what happened with 1.2. We don't want to add too many things to Emerald 1.3, but I don't think it would be too difficult to implement.

 

Emerald 1.2 is Nearly Finished
We have to do some final testing, finish writing the Player Health and Player Weapon Editors (nearly finished), and finish the Example Player System script and editor, then Emerald 1.2 will be submitted.


Emerald Wiki
While Emerald AI is in the submission process, we will be redoing the Wiki site. This will update the Emerald Wiki with all the 1.2 features as well as proper documentation and tutorial video. For an example of how we will be doing the Emerald documentation, see our UniStorm documentation here: http://unistorm-weather-system.wikia.com/wiki/Documentation


Emerald Editor
The last couple of days we finished the serialization of the Emerald Editor allowing for redo, undo, and multi-object editing for every variable in the Emerald Editor. We also added a visual range for the stopping distance with an adjustable color. The Emerald Editor and Emerald System portion are now finished.


Player Weapon Script
The Player Weapon script needed some improvements in both simplicity and functionality. We added some new features such as attack sounds (for any attack sound with a max up to 20 all picked randomly) and attack delay (to help better match custom animations). We also made an editor for the Player Weapon script. This makes it easier to use and understand with the help boxes explaining each and every variable. There is still a little work to be done with it, but it's nearly finished. We plan on categorizing everything into tabs like we did with the Emerald Editor.

 

The new update looks really cool! Great work on the updates!

 

Thank you, we're looking forward to submitting it so everyone can try it out.

 

Hey everyone,

We've added a Report Issue Section to our website. This allows our customers to post any bugs or errors they have related to our products so we can track, manage, and fix them in one convenient location.

http://www.blackhorizonstudios.com/report-an-issue/

 

I really need this AI system, especially after the 1.2 update.

But, I have a massive terrain (8192 size), and I was trying to bake a NavMesh, but it seemed to take an extremely long time? I am constantly editing my terrain as I continue to develop and add 3D models to my massive environment.

I understand that this requires a NavMesh bake, correct? If so, I am extremely concerned that this process may be difficult with the length of the time it takes to bake?

Perhaps there is a setting that speeds this process up? Or maybe my terrain is just too large? I really need this asset, especially for uFPS integration, because other tools like HerdSim work well, but they don't support uFPS integration, which really doesn't bring my environment to life.

I feel bad about constantly asking questions, but these are legitimate concerns I have before I commit to a purchase.
Thanks again.

EDIT - My bake finished after around an hour, so I guess it's not terrible, but I would imagine I would have to complete the entire terrain/game environment before adding Emerald, rather than integrating it on the fly as I finish modelling my terrain.

 

Your new profile image is cool!

 

Do not encourage him, or he continues to waste time on stupid things and do not end up with the update.

 

yeah, its taking longer than expected. So best not to provide ETAs for future updates - but worth getting it right and having to support multiple products must also take time to prioritize. Should be worth the wait though, but hopefully not too much longer to wait

 

Thanks, your new profile image is also cool.

We are working hard to get the update done. I know it has been longer than what we said, but we also gotten everything feature implemented and finished. Right now, we are designing a quick character system and new demo scenes so users can have better examples of how to user Emerald instead of boxes, like our old demo.

A good system requires time. We also could have easily charged for this update, but we don't believe in paid updates. Emerald 1.2 system is near AAA quality. We wanted to make Emerald as flexible, user friendly, and flawless as possible. Some of our time went into designing an easy to user editor. We carefully listened to feedback to get it just right. We also spent time on testing bugs to ensure the release goes as smoothly as possible.

The logo is something that was done (quickly) while the new Emerald Logo was being designed. A new Emerald logo is being designed because Emerald is nearly finished.

 

Having a good and clear user editor is key.. some AI systems I've used just confuse you to the point of insanity (especially when you first start), because you have to work through multiple sections and then sub-sections which can take time to figure it all out. From what I've seen of 1.2 is that its easy to use and understand. So looking forward to it.

 

Yes, don't worry, I was just kidding, I know that there is a lot of work to do.

 

I agree that it may be a lot of work, and that is better to do it right and tested, and be sure it works as expected and with all the features

So take the time you need to do it right, but anyway would like to know if we can expect that it could it be possible that some day of next week could be ready, or could be later?

Thanks

 

Thanks for understanding.

Sometime next week wouldn't be unrealistic. We have Emerald 1.2 in the project that we are submitting to the Asset Store. We are testing every portion of it to ensure everything works and that there are no bugs. After that, we will setup the demo scenes that will be included with the update. These demo scenes will be much better than the ones included with 1.1. This will allow everyone to have a working example of every new feature such as breeding, AI combat, AI guarding, etc.

 

Cool man thanks!

 

Just thinking about if it would be possible for a future update to have an EmeraldAITarget component that can set the tags as opposed to one PlayerHealth script, as this would allow extra flexibility. Also using a similar principle like the UI Button's onClick would allow different scripts to have callbacks after events such as the player taking damage from an AI or the AI taking damage.. Just a few ideas that might help. Definitely gonna pick this up after 1.2 update (I won the asset purchase battle) Still cannot wait for it: looks like an impressive update so far.

 

Thanks, I think these are some great suggestions!

We will be looking for ways to expand the tag system with 1.3. We also have a few ways to expand things. We will talk about them more after the release of 1.2.

 

Quick little status update.

Everything is looking great with Emerald 1.2. We are finishing up the demo examples so our customers have more than just cube examples. Our demo will include example AI (models from one of the Unity demos) that have animations, hit sounds, attack sounds, death sounds, etc. so you can see everything in action.

The new player system allows for collisions all AI. We have also added animations (idle, swing, walk, run), health bar, a stamina system with stamina bar, run system, footsteps, and more.

Everything you see below will be included with the Emerald 1.2 demo scenes (this is just 2 of them). We will have a demo scene covering each feature to help our customers get the most out of Emerald.

Animal Predator Example:
(Combat example complete with animations, particle effects, sound effects, and more)


Animal Breeding Example:
(This will also allow for users to test out the new breeding system. These two AI can breed and spawn babies of different rarities)

 

That looks really cool! I can't wait very much plentiful excitement! Thanks so much for the update and hopefully I will have a small gift showing my gratitude for you soon! Keep up the great work Black Horizon Studios

 

We are nearly finished with our demo examples.

Here's a video showing off the new included Emerald AI Breeding Demo. Everything you see will be included with the update. (This video is for the Emerald 1.2's product page on the Asset Store, but we thought we'd show it off early)

I'm sure many of you know how our Breeding System works. If not, this post explains everything: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/re...s-herds-npcs-more.336521/page-11#post-2502169

 

Hahahahah great choice of animations!!!! Wonderful Job @BHS

 

Submission by the end of this week is looking...likely.

We finished the Player Health Editor.



Here's a video showing off the new included Emerald Animal/NPC Combat Demo (AI's walk animations are used in place of attack animations). Everything you see will be included with the update. (This video is also for the Emerald 1.2's product page on the Asset Store, but we thought we'd show it off early)

 

Great! Hoping to purchase at the weekend, so looking forward to the new features. Keep working hard!!

 

EDIT: We were having some issues but I figured them out, now we just need to play around with slope alignment because it's making animals rotate upwards to the player when attacking for some reason.

Anyway, I've been reading the posts above on Emerald 1.2 and the update sounds amazing! We're planning on adding in farming to on of our first Early Access updates so the breeding mechanic will be perfect for us. We can't wait to play around with the new features!

 

Good to hear you figured it out. Sorry for not being as active on the forums. We have been working like crazy to get this update submitted by the end of this week.

The issue you mentioned regarding the rotations is fixed with Emerald 1.2. If you need a fix sooner, we can tell you what to do to fix it.

 

Here's Emerald's new randomized loot system being demonstrated. This is the exact scene and system included with the update.

We're looking forward to everyone getting to try Emerald 1.2 out.

We will be submitting Emerald 1.2 either today or tomorrow. We will post it here when we have done so.

 

Totally understandable, it sounds like you guys have a ton going on! That would be much appreciated, I about the build the exe for our game to submit to Steam soon but it would be excellent if we could get this fix in. The other issue we're having is with stopping distances- when being chased by an animal, they run to an offset rather than stopping within that distance. For example, if the stopping distance is 3, the animal will run 3 units past the player (through them, pushing them out of the way) before turning to attack, rather than stopping 3 units before the player and attacking. Any suggestions to fix this? It's a pretty crucial issue we're having and I'm not sure what's going on.

 

Brought the asset just waiting on 1.2 update.

 

Great to hear. Thank you for your purchase!

 

Emerald 1.2 has been submitted and is awaiting approval! We thank everyone for their patience and support. We will post all the update notes here when it is accepted.

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