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I was just thinking about something after I played a FPSC Game a few minutes ago...
How come that the enemies cant shoot when they are running? I mean, the only thing You have to do to kill the enemies is to fool them to run after You and then, Yes shoot a little bit and then they are dead?! Are there anyone execept Me that think the enemys are to easy to fool and kill???
I think they are... (Even if the AI is mutch better today than the EA!!!)

No its Not a Bug at all.

It has often been standard procedure in some game engines that enemies have to stop at idle before they switch to shoot animation.

FPSC is no different in this respect to most other indie engines using standard default AI routines.

This is normally in engines where there is no advanced procedures to allow anything else to happen.

i.e. in most indie engines enemies can only carry out one animation set at any one time thus they have to stop walking or running before they can start shooting.

Default advanced animation capabilities for AI's where they can do more than one thing at a time - say for example straffe sideways and actually load a weapon or shoot at the player whilst on the move without stopping - "I have only seen available in separate purchased AI plugins which extend an idie engines AI capability".

I have never myself seen such a capability by default provided in any indie engine that I have used.

Advanced AI providing for multiple animations/behaviours being carried out at one time is not normally within the realms of provision of indie engine developers.

There are and have been some quite good AI plugins available for indie engines as said as purchased plugins and it is a possibility that such could be developed by You, Me or anyone else that wishes to put in the considerable effort and hard work required in along term development of such.

There are a lot of calls for improved AI in FPSC but its a little unrealistic to expect TGC to provide an advanced system by default to meet with all the requests. This would require considerable R&D and would be an expensive undertaking in many ways. Such a provision I would think could only be considered for a premier product and at the moment I am not sure that FPSC fits such a description in TGC's product range. Users should not expect to see Advanced AI system in a product like FPSC at its current pricing structure - I doubt that its realistic unless it could be done by incorporating AI developed for DBPro or vice versa - which is the most obvious reason for incorparating elements perhaps of DarkAI into FPSC.

If that does not happen any extension to the AI script commands and action set may be helpful in end users advancement of their own in game AI behaviours including multiple behaviours or mutiple animations at once. (users could animate such themselves but good AI for control of such is a little more complicated than just that)

It does not really matter what the end user thinks or wants - TGC will have a plan and FPSC no doubt will advance or not within its parameters.

One things for sure you wont have much influence upon it and are unlikely to know about it until TGC are good and ready.

Quite obviously it goes without saying - or asking that as a whole throughout the indie engine world - everyone would like to see better AI in their particular game engine - most have little or almost non at all - in that respect FPSC fares better than many.

Would we like to see FPSC and other TGC products have the best AI - of course we would and so would TGC I would not mind betting. The reality however is that an advanced level of AI features has continued to elude almost all indie engine users and may still do so for some time yet.

I am sure that we will see improvements to FPSC AI in line with any general overall improvements over time.

Some of the requests though for rather more advanced levels of AI feature sets may be a bit unrealistic unless the day ever comes when TGC might consider releasing or developing Version "FPSC Pro" and charge us for it accordingly.

I have seen it in amateur DBP games, so I am very sure that this wourld be quite easy to implement. I mean everytime the enemy makes a move, You can shoot Him/Her without problems, becouse You know that the enemys cant shoot when they are walking/moving/running... The enemy is only dangerous when standing still! I think this is something that has to change! Today I wourld say that the AI works very well when You are far away from the enemy! But when You are close to the enemy and You are using shootclose.fpi the AI isnt doing its JOB! Personly I have to say it is quite boring when when the enemys cant shoot when they are moving/walking/running...
Not many bullets that miss the enemy when shooting. Make it harder TGC!!!

If you are the man then why don't you make the enemies shoot and move at the same time?
If you use the right AI script when you shoot at the enemy the enemy will move and make it harder for you to shoot it.
If it was that easy to implement then TGC probably would have done it in V1.
If you use certain AI scripts or make your own you can nullify the effect of the stop and then shoot animation effect.
Place an enemy entity and keep changing the AI script you are using until you get what you want.
Some AI scripts do not involve shooting at all and some have the enemy reloading before he shoots at you.
What I do is place an enemy entity where I want it and adjust the script until I can get it to do what I want and continue to do this on an enemy by enemy basis.
Another point I have to make is that FPSC is not DBP and the two products function differently at points.
And animation is a whole other pain.
It is a fact that AI rates pretty low on the list of things that anyone making a game engine worries about.They have to worry about graphics,sound,physics,etc.
I would love to have better AI too.We all would.There are more important things I would rather see in an update/upgrade though.

No one would not want a better AI system.

A wide ranging system of AI behaviours which actually in reality works well without error is without doubt a major undertaking to incorporate or develop - make no mistake about that. Its much harder to realise than suggested.

Its beyond the scope of reality for this product currently.

A good system would provide for many things to provide for realistic human type behaviours and apparent decision making - so for example :

If a player is on top of a building in a city looking down on a street and an enemy is below close to the building the player can or should be able to accurately target that enemy. The enemy however in order to target the player needs to be able to look upwards and point shoot upwards at an acute angle in order to target the player. Such behaviour requires appropriate animation set to be included and also call to instructions in script.

Given such requirements an advanced AI system would certainly require a major increase to the number of animation sets for FPSC enemies to accommodate a wide rage of scenarios.

Just as an example one might require additions for such things as run/shoot, run/shoot left, run/shoot right, run/shoot up, run/shoot down.

You can multiply this by a massive order of magnitude almost indefinately : for eaxample adding : crouch/ reload, crouch/walk forward, crouch/walk forward/shoot

Similar for many other behaviours with regard to attacking in particular. For example in behaviours for : straffe, hide, run away, jump, roll over/sideways and so on.

Such animation behaviours together with a large increase in script complexity and size that is required to support such behaviours and additionally inclusion possibly of improved, pathfinding, collision and object avoidance and recognition requires that an engine be extremely efficient in handling large volumes of complex data relating to the AI decision making process and more. Without such engine efficiency an advanced AI system will grind it to a halt.

FPSC does not currently have the capability to handle advanced and complex AI systems.

Improvements I am sure can and will be made but they will need to be inline with FPSC development as a whole.

Debating the AI issue will not make it happen.

You are sure to see some progression in this area beffitting a product of the standing of FPSC so you will just have to wait and see what any udate and beyond brings and try and extend the AI yourself wherever possible.

With just an improved, more flexible command set the end users could make improvements themselves by extending of the default AI scripts and possibly in some instances adding their own animations.

In one respect Mr. Love may be correct in suggesting that for instance that a small number of simple (perhaps not so) combined animation sets to provide for say walk/shoot, run/shoot may be possible for TGC to consider implimenting and which might not be too much of a burden for FPSC to handle if the update provides some improvement to the engine efficiency in the handling of AI enemies, thus adding to the realism and as suggested making them both appear more human, intelligent and harder to kill if required.

As I said previously you can ask for and debate it from now until eternity. Better AI has been asked for continually scince FPSC launch and before.

You will only get it if TGC see fit to incorporate it and so you have no option to wait.

Theres really not much point in asking further as its on the list with everything else - TGC wont miss it - though they may just not do anything about it and its very unlikely that anyones opinion here at this forum is going to influence any decision by TGC in the slightest.

I have a level where the enemy is on the roof of a building and if you don't kill him quick enough he will jump off the building and go medieval on you.However,if I were on the building and the enemy was on the ground the enemy would have a hard time shooting me.
It would be nice if the AI acted more realistically.
There are other things I am more worried about but you won't hear me complain if TGC does some impovements in AI.

Long story short, the AI in FPSCreator sucks.

It would be much better if in Version 2 the enemies would use Dark AI.

No, the long story short isnt that the AI sucks. Its that there isnt an animation for shooting and running at the same time.

(The AI isnt anygood like, but this time its an amination thing)

Maybe You shourld take a look at the reason? The reason that the AI "Sucks" is that Lee plays to mutch of The Sims and to little of Half Life... Jk

What I have found out is that many (FPS) games use different kind of tricks to handle complicated animation/AI events.

For example in Half Life / Counter-Strike, and especially in multiplayer the character models act as a 2 separated parts. While animation of walking/running for legs plays when character/player moves, upperbody simply follows them and plays it's own animation or acts depending on player's actions.
In these games there's usually only 2 aiming/shooting "positions" for models, one where it's aiming up and other where it's aiming down. The engine then calculates where the character/player is aiming, and this way "creates" the desired animation. If character for example aims a bit left and center, this pose is calculated and created by "mixing" the 2 end poses.

By mixing these two tricks, the model "split" in 2 and "calculated" poses, games like CS allow such things as movement and shooting, even for AI NPCs. If such mechanics could be imported into FPSC, along with some new scripts to handle 'em, users could save alot of time. ---or not. I'm still waiting for Dark AI addon/patch/whatever.