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

Hi everyone!

This is just a thought, is anyone there have try to make ”Mounted archery” style creatures?
In my case, I thought as "one creature" and setup one AI to handling two creatures.
Because it is most simple.

Are there any other good solutions for make such type of creatures?
Or is there someone who have tried to make rideable ones?

regards,
Ryuichi

 

Thanks, that's really helpful.

Kudos for your videos too, they are really well done.

I'd love you to try one for flying creatures if you are taking requests.

Quick edit:- I'm also having trouble getting an animation to play backwards. I presumed setting speed to -1 would do it but no success so far. Is it possible? if so what am I missing?

 

Hi,

I am looking for just "character controller for quadrupeds".

In this video

it looks like that you use your solution where you approximate animal shape with sphere and two boxes and it looks fine in it.

I tried a demo on your web and the wolf in it acts horribly. Runs through table, stucks its head in walls etc.
http://www.ice-technologies.de/unity/ICECreatureControl/ICECreatureControlHunterDemo.html

What is current state of this issue?

 

Hi I need help. IN MULTIPLAYER as client, Why creature random tag(Red line) Object in scene and my obj are bug it move to random postision

 

Ah, okay ... but this can not work, because each call to RangedWeaponFire resets the internal automatic counter, so the trigger mechanism basically determines the time for the first shot and not the weapon. That's important to synchronize the weapon system with the desired action, otherwise it could be that your creature or player have to fire a shot, but the weapon system don't react because of its own interval state. But however, you can fix it quickly by inserting an additional method. For this, just open the ICECreatureRangedWeapon script, looking for the RangedWeaponFire method and add following method below.

Code (CSharp):

1.        
2. public virtual void RangedWeaponFireExtented( bool _reset ){
3.             Weapon.Fire( GetTargetTransform(), _reset );
4.  }
5.  

If you want to call the new method also by using the BehaviourEvents, just register RangedWeaponFireExtented as BehaviourEvent within the OnRegisterBehaviourEvents ...

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. protected override void OnRegisterBehaviourEvents()
3.  {
4.            [..]
5.            RegisterBehaviourEvent( "RangedWeaponFireExtented", BehaviourEventParameterType.Boolean );
6.  }
7.  

If you now call RangedWeaponFireExtented (false) permanently within the update, your weapon's interval settings will not be reset and the weapon system will work as desired.

I hope this will fix your issue ...

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Hi Houp, please ignore this demo. It was quickly made two years ago with one of the first releases of ICE and don't reflect the current possibilities. The current version provides an internal Obstacle-Avoidance and Overlap-Prevention System, works optional with Unity's Navigation Mesh, A* Pathfinding or APEX (next version) and supports also Rigidbody and CharacterController physics and movements. So if you don't want it, no creature will passing walls or objects without your permission.

 

Hi warwolf2015, it seems that your creature select this object as target (maybe because of a wrong tag or name). Ensure to specify a suitable Priority for each target and define the desired Selection Range, otherwise, your creatures will be able to select their targets anywhere on your entire terrain.

 

I thought I would share my implementation of a new Behaviour Sequence with everyone here. Using the 1.3.6 code base I have implemented a Weighted Random as a Behaviour Sequence Rule. I find it quite useful and am hoping that icetec will add it to the code base.

Essentially what it does is allow you to assign a weight to a given Behaviour Rule so that when you selected WEIGHTEDRANDOM as a sequence it will compare weights and those with higher weights will execute more often (still random though). Note however that it isn't a fully proper implementation as the same Behavior Rule can't execute twice in a row no matter how highly weighted it is, this is because of the way ice sequences those rules. I am sure there is a way to code around it but for now this implementation is still useful.

First we need to add a new Sequence Type \ICE\ICEWorld\Scripts\Core\Utilities\ice_utilities_types.cs starting on line 409

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. public enum SequenceOrderType
3.     {
4.         CYCLE,
5.         RANDOM,
6.         PINGPONG,
7.         WEIGHTEDRANDOM
8.     }
9.  

Next we need to add our weight randomization function to ICE\ICECreatureControl\Scripts\Core\Objects\ice_CreatureBahavior.cs starting on line 361:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.             else if( RulesOrderType == SequenceOrderType.RANDOM )
3.             {
4.                 _index = UnityEngine.Random.Range( 0, _rules.Count );
5.             }
6.             else if (RulesOrderType == SequenceOrderType.WEIGHTEDRANDOM)
7.             {
8.                 var tweight = 0f;
9.                 for (int i = 0; i < _rules.Count; i++)
10.                 {
11.                     tweight += _rules[i].Weight;
12.                 }
13.                 var r = UnityEngine.Random.Range(0, tweight);
14.                 for (int i = 0; i < _rules.Count; i++)
15.                 {
16.                     if (r < _rules[i].Weight)
17.                     {
18.                         _index = i;
19.                         break;
20.                     }
21.                     r -= _rules[i].Weight;
22.                 }            
23.             }
24.             else
25.             {
26.  

Now we need to add our Weight variable to a BehaviourModeRuleObject so down to line 555 of the same file

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.         public float LengthMin = 0f;
3.         public float LengthMax = 0f;
4.         public float LengthMaximum = 20;
5.        public float Weight = 1f;
6.  

Now finally we need to add Weight to the BehaviourRule editor so we can set it per rule. In ICE\ICECreatureControl\Scripts\Core\Editor\Core\EditorUtilities\ice_creature_editor_behaviour.cs on line 381 we need to make it look like this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.                         if( ICEEditorLayout.ResetButtonSmall( "" ) )
3.                         {
4.                             _rule.LengthMin = 0;
5.                             _rule.LengthMax = 0;
6.                         }
7.                     ICEEditorLayout.EndHorizontal( Info.BEHAVIOUR_LENGTH );
8.                     ICEEditorLayout.BeginHorizontal();
9.                         _rule.Weight = ICEEditorLayout.Slider("Random Weight", "Weight Value for WEIGHTEDRANDOM Sequence Type, relitive to other rules weight value", _rule.Weight, 0.0001f, 0, 100);
10.                     ICEEditorLayout.EndHorizontal();
11.                 EditorGUI.indentLevel--;
12.  

That's it. Pretty simple actually. Hopefully someone finds this useful. Remember the caveat that a given behaviour rule can't execute twice in row no matter what its weight is and you will be fine.

 

Well, I goofed up.
I did an ICE talk tonight at my local Unity User group, and while I did record it, I forgot to actually save the recording.
I was using a different recording software, which did not autosave after recording (which is what I was used too with my previous software)...
However, if you have seen my last streams (the herding mainly), then you will not have missed anything really.

I did show off a Stone Golem that uses Final IK, and has two modes of attacks: a melee attack, and a ranged attack that causes rocks to erupt from the ground.
I also showed a Panther that tries to stalk the player by staying behind the player, and I went over creating a simple Fish using ICE.

I'll see about trying to make a few streams/videos regarding these topics over the next few weeks.
College has started back up, so the streams/videos might be infrequent depending on my work load.

 

Thank you for your answer. Does it support kinematic Rigidbodies?

 

I'm getting some improvements with my flying eagle but there is a little bit of jerkiness because the bird keeps changing height. Not sure why at the moment but if anyone has any idea how to keep the altitude consistent or at least smoothly change that would be great.

 

Both, kinematic and non-kinematic bodies as well.

 

Hi Enoch, thank you for it - works great! I have integrated WEIGHTEDRANDOM as suggested and it will be included in the upcoming version.

 

Hi all,

Anyone who might bump into the issue of flying creatures changing height with a jerky movement I found my problem. I had the movement velocity too high. turned it down to 10 and it is a lot smoother.

 

Hi,
have a weird behavoir. I've set up an enemy to hunt my player as soon as it is inside of a given range. That works well. If the player runs away the enemy is following. If the player is faster than the enemy and the player leaves the selection range of the enemys hunt interaction, the enemy returns to its home location. So far so good.
Now the player goes back to the enemy and reaches again the selection range. I would expect that the enemy is start hunting the player again, but unfortunately it runs away a little bit or it moves around in different directions but not towards the player. Any ideas?
Best
Mic

 

Have you set the enemy hunt interaction as a higher priority than the home location?

 

I would love formations! A rank of musketeers firing on a group of charging enemies.....yes please!

 

Ah, thx. That did the trick. Home location had no priority set.
Best
Mic

 

Thank you for teh input! I tried adding the component to the player's sword but after that it lo longer stays in his hand haha. I'll explore more on the settings.

 

Check the swords "Runtime Behavior" and make sure "Use Hierarchy Management" is disabled.
Took me forever to find this little tick box.

 

Hiya there, I am trying to implement water avoidance to absolutely no avail. First, I tried using a custom layer avoidance on my Suimono water surface, and my boars just kept walking straight into the water. Then I setup a large plane right above the water's surface with a collider, and then added the layer"Water" on it while selecting the avoid water option in the creature. No success. I'm starting to wonder if this feature is functional at all? Has anyone been able to implement it successfully? I'm at a loss on what do do next to get the ball going. I'm considering adding on a navmesh, but I don't have any idea how hard it will be to get the CreatureControl to work well with it.

As a side note, it would be AWESOME to simply he able to set a certain terrain height below which it would be impossible for the creatures to move.

Any idea from the dev or the community would be welcome, really enjoying working with the asset otherwise!

 

Have you tried adding the Water layer to the Obstacle Avoidance layers?

 

Yes, I have added it to the Obstacle Avoidance layers. I also set the Water Handling from default to custom with the water layer and other layers as well. I really thought that by using the plane with an obstacle tag above the water I would fix it (even if it would have been somewhat of a hack). But the boars just keep planning their paths along the terrain over the water. I'm starting to wonder at this point about the prerequisites on making obstacles; I guess they can't be planes with colliders. This is really annoying, as I have been working on this for hours with no valid solution in sight. Thanks for your feedback though, it was a good guess

We're working on a demo, and I thought using this tool would buy us some time. But presently, I'm wondering if we would be better served with a pathfinding solution, so at least we could create the illusion of proper animal behaviour without all of the guess work. I'm not afraid to code, and try to debug what's going on but that would be kind of missing the point.

 

Seems that this is the only active forum. Will send an email to the developper, see what happens. Any pointers welcome! Has anyone been able to successfully implement water avoidance?

 

Hi Jeff,
just add your water layer also to the ground layers, because the water avoidance will be handled in the same routine as the ground handling (btw. this will be changed in future versions). Also ensure that your water surface will be detectable for a raycast beam and in cases you are using a trigger-collider you need to adapt the 'Ground Trigger Interaction' in the CreatureRegister, because the sensoria of ICE creatures will ignore trigger-colliders by default.

​

I hope this will fix your issue but fell free to contact me whenever you have further questions or run into a problem with ICE. Btw. in urgent cases you can contact me also via skype (see ICE about menu).

Have a great day!
Pit

 

Thanks for that Pit! Will be eager to find out if and how it works on your side

 

Hi Jeff, please let me know how my answer above works for you with a Suimono water surface ...

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Ok this seems to have worked. Just to make sure I covered all angles, I added both ground and water layers to ground handling and water handling. Thanks, it's awesome to see my little boars happily wondering about the ocean shore... but wait.... they keep on staying near the beach... all the new destinations they set to themselves seem to be along the edge of the water.... is this intended behavior, or is there something you could recommend on my side to make them behave and reset their destinations more evenly around their home point?

Thanks again for taking the time to answer, I really love working with this tool and the fact that you will be continuing to support and develop for it makes it even more exciting!

 

Hi,
Seems that slope limits in Raycast ground handling are not working properly. The creature is moving towards the target regardless on how steep (upwards) is the terrain between creature and the target.

 

I see. Is this something that could be fixed by tweaking the slope angle limit or are you saying that it's a bug in the current version that cannot be avoided?

 

Ok, removing the slope angle limitations seems to have somewhat improved this, but they still remain on one side of the island near the beach instead of using the whole radius from the home point. Any other suggestions? Thanks for the help!

 

Hi,
I'm not able to change home location target object as well. See attached image.

 

Pit, please see this video. As you can see, the rabbit, which has a wide movement range, will keep resetting his destination position along the shoreline once it hits it. Water avoidance does work better for ponds of water contained within the movement radius, but shorelines seem to be a problem.

 

Hey and thanks for the great asset by far. I bought ICE today, and i know that Ultimate Survival integration is coming in US 0.2, anyways i was able to find some 1.3.7 integration files from your page and started to wonder, if there is anyhow possibility / way to get ICE integrated with US with those files, and if so, could i get littlebit assist to do that, since im fairly new in developing, any help will be appreciated!

 

Hey guys, made a short video of some experimentation I have done with ICE:

ICE Mechs!

Assets used:
Sci-Fi Effects by FORGE3D
Mech Constructor: Light & Medium by Slava Z
Weapon System by Hardworker Studio (Rachan N.)

I can do a live stream/video on how I setup one of the Mechs if enough people have an interest in it.

 

Hey JFR,
I would recommend a nice free screen recording software, OBS (Open Broadcast Software) that will make your screen capturing a little easier.


Can you show where the home is for the rabbit, as well as the wander range set for them?
Enable detailed gizmos in the ICE Debug script on the rabbit, and it will be the yellow circle.

I think the issue is that where the Rabbit wants to go is on the other side, or within the body of water, and since it is set to avoid water, it runs along the shore.

The best option is to have the random position range not include quite so much of the water.
If you want the Rabbits to wander all over the map, then create a series of Waypoints, and enable the rabbit's patrol mission and assign the Waypoints.

The other option is to setup a navmesh that does not include the water. However, currently ICE's navmesh pathfinding causes sliding issues with its creatures (they keep trying to move to the exact move position and ignore the stopping distance), so until Pit fixes this I do not recommend it UNLESS you use the A* Pathfinding Project, which does not have the sliding issues.

 

Has anyone been able to create good character melee combat with this?

I decided to scratch my AI and buy this yesterday to save time.
But now I am wondering if a combat system similar to lets say Darksouls is possible with this? Where enemies may strafe around the player, attack, backup, strafe around the character some more.

 

@TonanBora Hey, thanks for the link to OBS.. it was late and I got a bit lazy there Here is the screenshot (thx for the enhanced Gizmos tip!).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6j2eno1lgy9xol/Creature Control rabbit home.PNG?dl=0

I will follow your advice for patrols across the island by setting multiple waypoints while reducing the areas on each one. Thanks for the feedback!

 

Hi mikeNspired

I think, TonanBora's tutorial at youtube is best way to start this asset, because official tutorial videos are outdated.
He introducing how to make some primal melee combat style creatures from scratch in video.



Darksouls style is not impossible I think, but you have to a lot of work to do that.

Sad to say, ICE is overkill for you mentioned purpose, because this is not focused on "Battle system".
This asset is suitable for let NPC to live lively. It would let them reaction to situations they suffering---thirsty? hungry? too cold? too hot? is chased from enemy? Any situation you can let them reaction to solve problems.

First of all, you have to construct/plan "Main Battle system", and customize this AI for fit your purpose.

For example, you can let NPC to behind attack using ICE. But if you want to apply duplicated damage when raid succeeded, you have to set up like that. Because initially there are no such system.

Let enjoy this asset with us!

regards.
Ryuichi.

 

Does ICE work with BOTH in-place animations and animations with root motion (to minimize foot sliding)? I have a lot of animations that use root motion and was wondering if it was possible to use these with ICE. Thank you.

 

Yes it does!
However, make sure you have root motion turning animations so your characters/creatures can turn.
If this is not an option, I highly suggest investing in an IK solver like Final IK to fix the foot sliding issue.

From my experience Final IK works out of the box alongside ICE, with no integration needed.

 

Hey Pit I have been using Ultimate Survival a bit and love the building and some of the other aspects it has. I had mentioned to the Dev of Ultimate Survival that Ice would go really well with his stuff and he said that ICE will have intergration in the future. I am fine with waiting because I have come to love ICE but just saw this from the US forums. [link deleted]

Have you already done the intergration for this and if so what do I have to do to get it working? I have had a little success trying to get it working on my own but some of the things do not work for me that used to.

Also I know Ultimate Survival does plan to redo their first person player to be more like UFPS. My dream set up would be UFPS damage system and Player ,1st and third. I would like to keep UFPS movable platforms, surfaces, and destructable stuff. Ice Ai and all the greatness it brings as far as in depth statistics for creatures and control, and ultimate survival building, crafting, storage, and UI. Is this possible? Like I said I am fine waiting for Ultimate survival to get a few patches in and see what kind of First and third person it brings but I would love to be able to have my 3 favorite assets work together.

 

Hey I've been trying too to get ICE work with US, got it somehow, but things like snap (building), muzzle fires, some (most of the sounds) and stuff i figure all time by experimenting doesn't work properly yet. Haven't had time to tweak too much yet, and im still fairly beginner what comes to that. I just did normal "Identify supported assets" and deleted CC_ICE from my Project settings -> Player -> Scripting Define symbols, and it cleared my last 2 errors i had. Still some things doesn't work like those work as standalone. If you have discord, join Ultimat Survival discord found in their forum and let's try to solve this together! Would be great to get this work.

I also tried couple times by replacing those 1.3.6 ice files from github 1.3.7 files, in new empty projects where i only have ice and ultimate survival assets imported, but didn't manage it to get working yet. Hope we get solution / bit help to sort this out, im just beginning developing and only thing i atm do is play with ultimate survival and 2 days ago i got ICE and been simulating different natural situations while learning through some great tutorials provided by community users!

EDIT: I might have finally got it work after 2-3 days of fighting with asset combinations. Last problem which fixed building snap, sounds and muzzles was that when i assigned my character to ice creature system it made a dublicate of it on top of the existing one in scene when i hitted play. i disabled POOL in creature register and it does spawn where my player is now. Not sure if my home spawn thing work yet properly.

So i simply made empty project -> made scene with ice wizard, set up my base scene objects from ultimate survival -> Identify supported Assets -> after that i had to disable Pool option from creature manager to avoid dublicate spawning for my player. Also disabled ICE_CC scripting define symbol.

 

Yup, the red cylinders you see are where the rabbits want to move, but they can't since that would take them into the water, so they pick the closest point along the shore line, and since it looks like 60% of their wander area is water, they will be much more likely to try to move into the water than a point on the land.

Let me know how the patrol works out for you!

 

Hey guys, thanks for posting in here about the Water avoidance and how you sorted it. I was running into this issue as well and now I know that it had to be added to the ground layers, thanks for the tip PIT.

Hey, BTW, I think I still may have an issue (can't check it for a couple days stuck on another project at the moment). Previously I tried to use water avoidance without luck, BUT, my water is generated procedurally at run time, made of voxels and has NO COLLIDERS. For water detection we have some methods that check the volume of the voxel and whether or not we are inside a specific one (in this case water). Is it a correct assumption that water avoidance in ICE will never work with my setup if I don't have colliders on the bodies of water? Is there a creative workaround already available inside ICE? Thanks in advance for any ideas anyone may have!

 

Could you not use trigger boxes on the water blocks?
One thing you could try, is tagging the water as "Water", and then set up an avoid/escape interactor to force creatures to move away from things with the Water tag when they are within a specified distance to the water object.

 

Hey thanks for that info I'll have to mess with it tomorrow after work. Yes some of the sounds and small things like that is what was happening to me as well so I will def try it the way you described. Now if you could figure out how to use UFPS with them both I would Love ya forever ! Wish I knew more about c# or as smart as some of these guys around here are. Seems like I almost have my perfect set up but never get it all lol. I've come a long ways with it and I'm sure one day I will look back and be able to do this stuff a lot easier. Till that day, books and youtube tutorials will be in my daily regiment.
Cheers!

 

I have never played DarkSouls so I'm not sure how it looks but I was able to achieve some very cool melee as well as Avoidance from my NPC on my other project. As the NPC would run towards you I enabled a onhit animation and had the npc react by altering his path to my player. He would run left, right, and zig zag, as well as try to circle around behind my player when he came close. All the while, doing jump attacks and drop kicks thanks to mixamo. IT made for a very realistic and very tough fight than even my seasoned pro FPS game playing son had difficulty killing. So far I dont put anything past what can be acomp[lished with ICE. Hope it works out for ya!

 

Hi Sorrowthief, I have already started to play with US, just to integrate the damage handling, which should be already included in the next minor update. But ICE and US offer so much more possibilities, so I'm now eagerly waiting for the US update to combine other features

btw. In addition to the US, uMMORPG (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/51212) is another asset that will be supported by ICE. I will try to provide also a first integration for this package with the next update.

Have a great day!

Pit

 

Indeed. With solid setting, ICE responds well and it is far easier than programing from scratch nor than create huge node trees even if ICE have a little steep learning curve.

What I wanted to say that we need some plan to do that because ICE is not plug and play solution. We can make a lot of type of AIs but we must understand what we going to make(of course it is same that creating games).
In other words, ICE is not simplified for creating human like battle system AI. we have to teach AIs to how they react for each situations.