[UPDATED] ICECreatureControl v1.4.0 - creature AI for enemies, animals, monsters, zombies ...

Thanks Pit.. I haven't dug into the demo scenes yet. I need to go through the documentation a little closer. The way you have the tutorial scenes divided out isn't super intuitive to me at a quick glance. Maybe if you also had videos to go along with the tutorial scenes which show how you go about setting ICE up within those use cases, it would be helpful for some of us that are little slower on catching on to stuff or are having problems wrapping our heads around different concepts.

Not sure if that makes sense or not. Or if it would help others. But stuff like that would definitely help me understand things a bit more. Maybe that could be something that is added as you update or add new tutorial scenes?

Thanks again! Loving the potential that ICE is showing.

 

I've been experimenting with this asset, Sticky Stick Stuck with Ice Creature Control. Basically I've got the player, who is controlling the bird, to pick up a beetle which is controlled by Ice, carry it and then drop it down again somewhere else. The beetle continues doing its walking animation while being carried, however doesn't move away from the bird's beak, which is what I had hoped for. The good thing is all this was done with very little setting up, and the only coding required was to disable the Sticky component to drop the beetle. This should work fine if an AI creature picks up another creature as well, although there would need to be an adapter with ICE which allows the Sticky Stick Stuck component to be disabled when the creature is going to drop it. Really hope that gets implemented at some point, since they work fantastically together and much simpler and realistic than using the ICE's inventory system, because it's entirely based on physics. Here is a short demo video:

 

I was wondering, how do you make a predator creature eat food after hunting prey in ICE Creature control.

 

Hi lukamas233,
add an additional interactor rule (act) for cases your predator have killed the prey, define the required selection criteria e.g. selection range <= 3 and advanced selection criteria AND CreatureIsDead IS TRUE and define the desired EATING behaviour – that’s all! Please consider that this rule (act) should have a higher priority than the ATTACK rule (act).

Hope this will be helpful to you but please feel free to contact me whenever you have a question!

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hi Icetec,

I just got this asset a few weeks ago and have just started working with it. I'm liking it so far! I was wondering if it is possible to use this to create a threat-based sort of system. For example, a bear is getting attacked by multiple wolves. Whatever wolf has the highest threat level is the one that the bear will focus its attacks on. Is this kind of scenario possible with ICE?

 

Yeap, you could handle this with the advanced selection critera, similar as already mentioned in the post above. Add your wolf as interactor to your bear and define the interactor rules (e.g. SENSE, HUNT, ATTACK etc.) include the selection ranges and other selection criteria and behaviours as desired. If you want now that the bear will attack the wolf with the highest threat level only you could use the aggressivity value of a wolf to determine its threat level. For this activate the advanced selection criteria and define a new condition (e.g. AND CreatureAggressivity > 50). Now your bear will only select a wolf with if the aggressivity of the wolf its larger than 50. Also you could combine the aggressivity condition with other status value (e.g Health, Power, Stamina etc.) and with AND CreatureIsDead IS FALSE. Also you could copy now this ATTACK rule to define a second ATTACK rule for cases the CreatureAggressivity < 50 e.g. to use a less powerful attack behaviour or something like this. You can define as much rules as you want but make sure to steering the relevance by using a suitable priority for each rule (e.g. ATTACK_OVER_50 should have a higher priority than ATTACK_DEFAULT).
Also you should adapt the aggressivity of your wolfs during the runtime, so each wolf will have an individual aggressivity value. you could do this for example during an attack by modifying the influence values of the used ATTACK behaviour of a wolf.

Hope this will be helpful to you but please feel free to contact me whenever you have a question!

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Thanks for the quick reply! That makes sense. In the example you just gave is there a way to make an API call to directly modify the value of CreatureAggressivity from another script? Could you point me to the correct docs that would show me this? I was looking for it on your website API page, but haven't come across it yet.

 

Yup, you can do:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. ICECreatureControl _creatureControl;
3. //.......
4. //.......
5. //.......
6.  
7. _creatureControl.StatusAddAggressivity = 5f; // or however much you want to add, use a negative value to lower aggressivity.

 

Oh, that's simple. Thanks for the help!

 

Hi Pit.. I'm running into the same problem @jonfinlay was having with AQUAS except with Suimono. Suimono uses its own layers to deal with specific aspects of the system. So I am not sure if I can simply just reassign to the water layer. To be honest, I'd rather not. Would it be possible to add a configuration option so we can tell ICE which layer(s) should be recognized as water? Maybe something similar to what you have done with collision layers? Maybe default to the ICE default of water, but let us add additional water layers into an array. Then any swim, fishing, or water type behaviors could be tested against that layer to know that the apply.

After going through the First Steps page in the FAQ, There really aren't any similar intermediate tutorials and looking at the demo scenes, they have some good stuff but nothing that really relates to what I am looking for. One tutorial that might be useful is a herd creation walk through. For instance a herd of deer. The herd would wander from waypoint to waypoint.. Maybe they would stop and graze at a waypoint. If a non-herd animal came within a "danger zone" around the herd, they might sense and freeze. If it is a carnivore, they would run. If an herbavore, they might graze a minute and then continue. I can picture what I want to do and I liked the example you posted in reply at some point (found it searching thread) about using missions to have the herd follow the alpha kind of thing but then young might be assigned to follow their mothers.. But I'm having problems figuring out how to actually spawn a herd and all of the different roles that herd members might have. So this would definitely be a tutorial that I (and probably anyone wanting to add this type of group behavior) would find useful.

Another one might be animation chains. A graze behavior might include a combination of walk, graze, idle, and maybe other animations. Maybe animation chains is a bad description. Maybe intermediate/advanced behavior building.

Another I would be interested in is the application of the aging functionality you have built into ICE. A walk through of setting that up on a creature would be awesome. Are we able to adjust the model scale as the age increases? The fitness and other aspects that you talk about in the field descriptions sound pretty awesome. If we could also do model growth scaling and maybe also effect the model coloring as the creature ages, that would be great too.

At any rate, just starting to scratch the surface with ICE as I am able. I'm sure I'll have a lot more suggestions and questions as I get to work with it more.

 

Hi Shawn, that’s already implemented in the new version. v1.2 provides you to use custom water layers but for now this info will be less helpful to you, so you could handle this issue with a small code change. Open the ice_CreatureMove.cs script, looking for ‘WaterLayer’ and adapt the property as desired – I know, it’s dirty but a suitable quick-fix to solve this issue directly.

Thanks a lot– that’s great and I’m absolutely willing to follow your suggestion and ideas. Here you’ll find directly a tutorial which shows a basic herd setup, but please consider that the demo scene just provides the basic settings, there are much more possibilities to optimize the scene.

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/WebGL/TutorialHerd/

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/files/examples/TutorialHerdDemoScene.unitypackage


I’ll send more later but I hope this will be helpful for now …

Have a great day!

Pit

 

This kind of thing should probably be up to the individual ICE user to implement.
ICE is primarily just a frame work, from my understanding, and not everyone wants their models to resize/change color when ageing, they may just want to switch out the models all together.

But, this is some what easy to implement, as you just check the creature's age:

Code (CSharp):

1. ICECreatureControl _creatureControl;
2.  
3. if (_creatureControl.StatusAge > <some value>){
4.   // Grow older
5.  
6. }

Then perform the desired operations on the creature, such as increasing the scale, or grabbing its materials and changing the base colors.

 

Not an issue at the moment. Was just reporting/suggesting. Glad to hear it had already been implemented for the upcoming version! Awesome job!

This is perfect! It gives an awesome view of how the different interactions are setup and how the whole herding concept (even though in basic form) works. In taking a quick look, I think I can work from it. The only thing different that I was hoping for was more using random waypoints instead of preset. There is enough here though for me to pick apart and learn from though!

Thanks Pit!!

 

Good thoughts... I'll play around with the idea later. Nothing that I need at the moment but figured I'd better ask while I was thinking about it... lol

 

Hi Pit,

first of all thank you for that Asset it's realy great.But I run into one little issue maybe I miss some thing or you have some Idea. I set up a spider when I'm near to it it's chasin' me and then attacks everything works great so far.NNow i have set in my Scene some Cocoons my plan now was when i hit the Spider to 75 % health she is running to the cocoon and play some eating animation works great.But now I get stuck is there any way that I can influence now the Health I see a lot of Influences but no health so that when she is eating she gets some health back and then attack me again.

Regards
Deangelo

 

Hi Deangelo, thank you so much for your commendatory words and I hope you’ll always enjoy the work with ICE.

Health or rather Health, Power and Stamina (while using the advanced status settings) are calculated values (e.g. Damage) and can’t be adapt directly, but while using the basic status, Health will be the opposite value of Damage, so increasing the damage to 75% will reduce the health to 25% and increasing the damage to 100% will reduce the health to 0% and kill your creature. Here Health is homologous to the Fitness value.

The advanced status works similar but the essential vital sign will be the Fitness value, based on Health, Power and Stamina, which will be affected by several influence values (e.g. Damage) according to their associated multipliers. You can adapt the weight of a specific influence value by using its multiplier (e.g. if you adapt the DamageMultiplier for Health to zero the damage will not affect the health and if you set it to 0.5f, a damage of 100% will reduce the health to 50% only etc.).

This allows you to define complex life-forms with variable vital interests (e.g. an elephant could be immune to external damage but could react extremely sensitive to stress while a rabbit could be killed with a single shoot etc.).

To fix your issue now you should set the DamageMultiplier of Health to 1, so increasing the damage will reduce the Heath.

I hope this will be helpful to you so far but please feel free to contact me whenever you have a question or if you run into a problem with ICE and in urgent cases you can contact me also via skype.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Ah now i got it i can change the influences that they fitting my needs so when i change one Influence the animal or Npc can be stronger or weaker.For example I create some Zombie where I play around with the Hunger influence when he patrols he gets hungry and when a corpse is near him and a certain amount of hunger is reached he is going to the corpse and eat.So now i can make a setup for my spider that after she has eating the cocoon she is getting more aggressive or makin' more damage or taking less damage.Thats nice but i think a closer look to all the influences and I get it to work probably.

Thx for your help and your ideas

Regards
Deangelo

 

Hello Pit,
for realizing my avian creatures I'm waiting eagerly for V1.2 - Since my last question 4 weeks are gone, can you give a rough estimate if publishing V1.2 will take some more weeks or even some month?

 

@icetec Hey Pit,

Is it possible to have ranged attacks (projectiles). I have a archer I want to attack my player. I'm pretty good using ICE now but never tried the projectile set up before. If it's not possible yet, can you add this feature in the next version?

 

any idea when the update is coming, I bought ICE, but waiting for the Apex Path update. Thanks,

 

Hi BPollux, I’m currently still testing and finishing v1.2. I’m sorry for that and I’m fully aware that the community is waiting eagerly for the new release, but as already mentioned, large parts of ICE was rewritten and based now on the new ICEWorld framework, also the update contains numerous reforms and innovations and I have to make sure that everything works as expected and bug free as well. I’ll provide the beta for interested customers as soon as I’m sure that these conditions are fulfilled and I’ll try to publish the official update by the end of August but at the latest middle of September. I’m sorry for the delay but no one would have a benefit by publishing and using an unready release, therefore I would like to thank you for your understanding and patience and I’m sure the update will convince you and compensate the waiting time.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hi Jacky, v1.2 comes with an improved damage handling which supports - among other things – explosives, melee and ranged weapons, but apart from that you could handle ranged attacks also with the current version e.g. by increasing the selection range and checking the behaviour of your archer creature by using the advanced selection criteria or you could add the arrow of your archer as target, so your creature will react to the arrow directly or you could use the collision detection of the environment section ...

 

Yes, absolutely much better to wait and give realistic dates and have a bug-free version than to rush it. Terrain Composer 2 feels like a "rushed-job", it appears to be littered with bugs and the developer is constantly putting back release dates. Any extra sales he gains will be lost by negative reviews, which are sure to come. I think you are doing a much better job as it's far more important not to release a bugged-version with unrealistic deadlines, even at the expense of a few sales.

 

THanks Pit

 

I just got around to trying the ICECreatureTPCAdapter found at the following location:

http://www.icecreaturecontrol.com/icecreaturetpcadapter/

With recent updates to Opsive's TPC, the adapter is not working. I get the following error:

Code (CSharp):

1. Assets/ICE/ICECreatureControl/Scripts/Adapter/TPC/ICECreatureTPCAdapter.cs(209,41): error CS0506: `ICE.Creatures.Adapter.ICECreatureTPCAdapter.Damage(float, UnityEngine.Vector3, UnityEngine.Vector3, float, UnityEngine.GameObject)': cannot override inherited member `Opsive.ThirdPersonController.Health.Damage(float, UnityEngine.Vector3, UnityEngine.Vector3, float, UnityEngine.GameObject)' because it is not marked virtual, abstract or override
2.  

If you remove the override keyword then it compiles. The Damage method is now just a public method in TPC.

 

This month to wait for the update or not?

 

Hi mate, I'm getting this error when i try to save Status components on my creatures; I read that it was fixed in an update, I'm on 1.1.18, is this fixed already??
InvalidOperationException: To be XML serializable, types which inherit from IEnumerable must have an implementation of Add(System.Object) at all levels of their inheritance hierarchy. UnityEngine.Transform does not implement Add(System.Object).

Is there something i can do to hack around it? thankyou!

 

I'm new to this forum, and trying to find a question that I may have asked, would take awhile.. Plus I seen a few that asked and where not answered ..I bought ICE knowing only because it was adding Apex Path... Since I been using Apex Path... I would never expect you to release this if it was NOT finished nor should anyone else..But I personally was asking to see if it was worth waiting to add in our current game , but if the release is to far off, then we would wait for a future game..Since you said it was not going to be for a month..and yes things go wrong, so I tend to say about 2 months off from now..We can't wait that long, so I will be back, in our next game, and then give ICE a whirl.. for our next game, so thanks for the update!!

 

Hi errandfox, this issue based on an missing [XmlIgnore] within the ice_CreatureInventory.cs and is already fixed in v1.2 but for now you could fix it by insert [XmlIgnore] in line 193 above 'publicTransform SlotTransform'.

Here the complete fixed block:

Code (CSharp):

1.      
2.         private Transform m_SlotTransform = null;
3.         [XmlIgnore]
4.         public Transform SlotTransform{
5.             get{
6.  
7.                 if( m_Owner == null || SlotName.Trim() == "" )
8.                     m_SlotTransform = null;
9.                 else if( m_SlotTransform == null || m_SlotTransform.name != SlotName || ! Application.isPlaying )
10.                     m_SlotTransform = ICE.Utilities.SystemTools.FindChildByName( SlotName, m_Owner.transform );
11.  
12.                 return m_SlotTransform;
13.  
14.             }
15.         }
16.  

Hope this will be helpful to you so far.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

This month to wait for the update or not?

 

I really appreciate this, you have to be the best developer I've come across on the asset store so far, obviously care about your product! thankyou!

 

Hi recon0303, I'm sorry for that but as already mentioned, I'll provide the adapter for Apex Path as soon as v1.2 is finish. I have already done some tests to see how to realize the integration but to do it correctly I'll need the time also there are other adapters and/or adapter updates requested which are not less important (e.g. UFPS multiplayer, PUN) and I'm absolutely willing to support all requested assets to simplify the integration of 3rd Party products but for all that please consider that the core product is ICECreatureControl, all the additional adapters are for free, optional and not obligatory required. As above mentioned, I'm absolutely willing to support all requested assets and I'll do my best to provide the named adapters as soon as possible but please understand that this will need time to do it correctly and especially without to neglect the core product.

I’ll provide the beta of v1.2 for interested customers as soon as possible and will inform you as soon as there are news about the Apex adapter. I know, my anwser is less helpful to you and will not fix your issue but I hope you will be appreciative of this and the update will convince you and compensate your waiting time.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hi Alex, as above-mentioned I'm still testing and finishing v1.2. I’ll provide the beta for interested customers as soon as possible and will try to publish the official update by the end of August but at the latest middle of September.

 

Many thanks magique for this info, I'll change it directly and will provide an update of the TPC adapter on the homepage.

 

[QUOTE = "Icetec, должность: 2732317, член: 792623"] Привет Алекс, как и вышеупомянутый я до сих пор тестирования и заканчивая v1.2. Я буду предоставлять бета для заинтересованных клиентов как можно скорее и будет пытаться опубликовать официальное обновление до конца августа, но не позднее середины сентября. [/ QUOTE]
Please let me know as I can provide the beta. we are at the end of August I want to put the game on sale. But we have a couple of problems with the asset.

 

Hi Alex, I'll provide you access to the v1.2 sources as soon as possible (the new sources will be available via GitHub, so it will be also possible to implement quick changes and modifications if required) and if you want let's do a skype session again to fix your current issues (maybe on saturday?).

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Yes , that would be cool ! BUT best of Skype after the beta ))

 

Perfect, thanks a lot for the reprieve But apart from that, please feel free to contact me whenever you have a question.

 

How would I set ICE to use Final IK with my animals?? final ik works with a regular character controller, but i'm getting mixed up with the rigidbody/gravity settings in ICE i think. final ik is using a rigidbody with capsule colliders, and gravity on. i did see an advanced option in behavior settings but i dont believe that would affect the final IK system - it didn't work in any case. Has anyone set it up before with Final IK?

 

Hi, I am testing Ice with TC2, and have noticed that the animals are walking off the terrain, even with the ground check set to raycast. Is there anything I could try to fix this? I'm not sure if the problem is with TC2 or with ICE. Cheers.

 

Hi Jon, that's correct ... your creatures are able to handle waypoints/paths outside of the given terrain, that's primarily because to bridge loading delays while using streaming worlds, so your creatures can traverse a missing terrain part without get lost in the unlimited deepness of your virtual world but it's also useful for some other reason e.g. a large herd of animals which appears on the horizon or birds which are flying afield or fishes in the ocean etc. Anyway, whenever your creatures can't detect a ground they will hold their last known level but bassically your creatures will stay within the given target selection ranges and waypoints, so make sure that these areas are within the walkable space, also you could use the navigation mesh to bind the creatures (which is also helpful if a creature will be hunted randomized by an other one). In addition to that you could fence your creature e.g. by hills and/or mountains, obstacles or invisible barriers, so that they can't escape and have to stay inside the specified area.

I hope this will be helpful so far but please let me know if the mentioned procedures are not suitbale to fix your issue ...

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hi errandfox, ICE works also well with the regular character controller, just change the Motion Type to CharacterController if required. I have no experience with Final IK but have already combine ICE with runvisions Locomotion and Ootiis Bone Controller and both works well with ICE (btw. have tested the legs only) without any bridge script. The only point which could be helpful to mention is to deactivate the animation section of an walking behaviour, so that there will not be conflicts with the IK controller (that's for example required while using runvisions locomotion) ...

 

Hi folks,

I've created some PlayMaker Actions for Ice Creature Control.
You can download the package from my website:
Free - No Adds or pop-ups
http://roskdproductions.weebly.com/ice-creature-control-playmaker-actions.html

I really enjoyed creating these actions and would be happy to add to or improve them.
Please let me know via the website email any comments/request.

 

Thank for the reply Pitt your fine, take your time, I understand that making these tools/asset take time, our company makes many different ones so we fully understand...I bought this knowing you planned to add Apex Adapter. We can wait, its not a big deal, I just wanted to know a time line, since we have dead lines as well, since it won't be for a bit, which is fine, we can just use in our future game, rather than our current. So not that big if a deal. We just needed a decent timeline was all.. Since we are a company and we have to follow deadlines.

Again, we fully understand and do not expect you to rush, take your time and make a great tool If people rush, it would just be full of bugs and issues..So we never expect people to rush, we do understand.

Thanks for the reply!

 

Hi, I am trying to make a predatory creature hunt a prey animal from a long distance away,
please help.

 

Hi Pit,
I have just bought ICE and looking forwards to working with it.

I'm running into an issue when I try to use a particular set of character/animations.

I followed the tutorial with the caveworm, and all was well. Then I tried to use a different character from the asset store, which has mecanim animations. The issue is that the animations are identified by Ice but they do not change when the character is moving around. The movement does work, but the animations are not working. There seems to be a disconnect between the movement of the character, across the environment. I know it's something I haven't done correctly, but Im a bit lost, I don't know what to look at to fix it.

Do you have any idea on what I am missing or can you point me in a direction?

Thanks,

IPete2

I think I found it, I had a complex transition setup, I changed it to a new Avatar and a new Animator Controller with no transitions, just dropped in a few animations (idle, walk, run) and that seems to make it all just work - so glad I found this tonight...

 

@icetec I'm trying to replicate something. Creature replication (mating) for a sub level quest in my game.

I have a bail of hay I tagged as 'Food' and I'm trying to have my character take it to my farm animals. Now the conditions I will need are

A. My two deer creatures, which are both independently set up in the creature register separately. They will naturally seek each other out on their own, but the condition will need to be Both are within 2m range of each other. (I know how to make them seek their mate, but how to set up a condition check I do not know)

B. And also the Game Object with the tag 'Food' has to be colliding with at least one of my deer while both deers maintain a maximum of 2m of each other. (again, I don't know what condition parameters to use)

C. Both Deer needs to have a fitness level and age of my choosing which I know how to do. What I don't know is how to simulate them "growing" so they will actually get bigger until they reach the desired size (for reproduction purposes). I have no clue. Can the fitness variables even be dynamic?

D. Finally after all conditions are met, a baby deer will spawn at the spawn point of my choosing, and it must grow so it will one day in game time be ready to reproduce as well.

So I need two mature deer, give them food, they make a baby, the baby grows, when its at adult age it can also find its mate and I feed them as well and the story goes on.

If that's not possible, can you please include this in the future version? In the time being I will keep trying to see if I can come up with something, but I'm already kinda stuck on using the conditions.

 

What Jacky_Boy is asking for I would be interested in too please. for the growing part I find that I have been using Unistorms plant growth system with a small script to check for size. many of the conditions like temp, rain and the like are not needed if it is an animal. If you use this asset might be a thought.

Joe...

 

Hi Jacky,
you can realize the mentioned points with the given Interactor and Behaviour settings. Define FOOT objects as Interactor and decrease the hunger within an associated EAT behaviour. Adapt the HungerMultiplier in the status settings to reach the desired effect to your deers fitness, activate also the UseAge flag, so your deers will aging during the runtime. Define the male and female deer as mutual interactors and also the desired copulation behaviour and to spawn the baby, simply define a BIRTH Behaviour for the female deer and add the baby as Effect prefab, so the baby will be spawned as soon as the BIRTH behaviour will be active.

The only tricky point will be a realistic growing process. Of course, to scale the object would be possible and simple to realize with a small script which scales the object according to the given age, but this would not be realistic because a real growing process should consider also the correct proportions of the body parts according to the age (e.g. head and feet of baby creatures) and for this it would be great to morph the mesh and to change the material as well, but to adapt the mesh could force conflicts with the animations, so to implement a perfect solution would be really complex. But the good news is that I have done already some tests with MCS Characters, which change their proportions according to the given status values, so a character will be slim while he is hungry and become smoothly corpulent if he is eating and saturated etc.

A more simple way would be to replace the complete object while a creature reached a defined period of life and this you could already realize with the given version by using the effect feature. Just prepare different versions of a growing deer and define the respectively next version as effect object within a GROWING behaviour of the younger one and run this behaviour while your creature have to grow. To remove the younger version, simple increase the damage values so the creature will die immediately after spawning its next version.

I hope this will be helpful to you.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hello !
I would need some help . How could I refer this : If an NPC/animal dies by Player . So it will be detected the animal died by Player and not by other predator NPC ( I need for this to the XP gaining will be worked only via Player killing)
I appreciate any tips

Thank you guys!