I forgot to put in the title that I am using the Xbox 360 version of the game.
I've been chipping away some final touches to an Outpost map which I spent a few days creating, only to find there are some really frustrating issues with the A.I which don't appear to have anyway round them at the moment. I appreciate there are going to be a lot of things which the developers haven't added to this feature yet, but I wondered if anyone else has any smart ways around them, or perhaps some insight into them.
Firstly is the A.I's free-roam of the map. Now while I appreciate this is exactly what A.I is supposed to do as it would be pretty robotic otherwise, however I am creating a fairly linear outpost map with different sections, bases and sniper towers etc. I seem to find that not only does the A.I wander away from the position you place them in, but they are wandering all the way over to the other end of the map, so enemies I am placing towards the end of my map are halfway through it by the time you reach that section and there is no one 'guarding' the end section.
I've tried working around this by placing barriers in places which A.I cannot traverse, but then have had the issue where the enemy soldiers get to the barriers and all wander around in that area as a group making them easy pickings for a sneaky grenade. By the time you get to these sections you don't even see the end of the map because you've killed all the enemies before you even reach it.
Another way in which I tried to overcome this was by placing Animation Points directly where the A.I spawns with around 3000 as the duration for the animation. While this worked for a few of them, others further on in the map were just completely bypassing these points as if they didn't exist. Also there seems to be an odd issue when I try to edit the settings for the animation points. Sometimes it will bring up the menu which allows me to choose the duration of the animation and which faction can use it, but most of the time it just brings up a menu saying 'Spawn once', 'Always respawn' and 'Always respawn out of sight'? I don't really see how these are relevant to an animation point or why it seems to change between this and the normal settings menu?
Finally the enemy waves on an Outpost map. Can you only place 1 wave of enemies on these maps? As the 'Reinforcements' wave takes up the place of what would be 'Wave 2' and 'Wave 3' does not trigger until at least 1 person from the previous wave is dead. You cannot seem to change which wave the 'Reinforcements' are set to, and considering the ideal play-through of a map would be without triggering any alarms so you would never see a 3rd wave of enemies. Does anyone know any different?
Any help or information about the above issues would be most appreciated.
I fully agree. I play this on the PC, but you hit the nail right on the head.
I'm making a large outpost mission where you lose if you set off a alarm. But once you find and take out all the alarms. You can go guns blazing killing everyone. However... Enemies always wander off. And it is annoying. Idea on my map is to be very stealthy, you start with nothing. However all the damn enemies keep wandering off from where I placed them. Why can't they put in a option for a npc to be stationary or patroling? That option would do wonders.
My other problem is you can't place modded weapons. I want to place stealthy weapons everywhere. Like a pistol and smg with a silencer, but you can only start with those. the only stealth weapons you can place are the bows and knives. All other weapons are unmodded.
My third problem is not being able to choose what weapons npcs use. What if I want all my enemies using MP5s?
It seems the only control we have over enemy npcs is where they intiatelly start at, and what npc to place. Thats it. I would think if you could choose how the player starts, you should choose how enemies start.
So, I saw someone on Reddit asking if there was a tutorial or some type of guide for the map editor. I was surprised to find nothing online. I did find, however, a map editor manual within the editor. just bring up the menu by pressing options button on ps4 (old start button) while in the editor (I answered this here, rather than Reddit because its the 1st thread I found in Google and I think a lot of people will view this).
Now for the enemy wave problem. The only workaround I came up with at the moment is this: In the map editor manual, you will see a section about Navigation Mesh. Its the area in which players may roam. View this mesh by going to the menu and choose editor settings. Set "Show Nav Mesh" to "character." Ok, so now we can see where the enemy is able to roam. The easiest ways I've found to disrupt this mesh is by placing an impassable object or by editing the terrain.
In my map, I have area1, which contains my 1st wave of enemies. I interrupted the Nav Mesh between area1 and 2 (2 contains the second wave).
If you scroll down in the wave window you can change the trigger so the wave will spawn after a percentage of enemies from the previous wave have been killed. I set mine to 75%
If area1 is far enough away from area2 so that the enemies do not roam close enough to detect the player, then they seem not to wander toward the player, so they wont go all the way to the other side of the map. Furthermore, if you place a sniper on a hill, the mesh should only allow him to roam on top of that hill. Or, you can place debris or useless objects to disrupt the mesh making a zone in which the enemy cannot leave. Keep in mind, enemies cannot cross gaps in the mesh, but the player can.
I hope all this helps as i was getting a bit frustrated with these issues as well. Still not completely satisfied, but hopefully this will inspire some new ideas to make these maps better.
Here are my findings (360).
-- Outpost waves --
Outposts start on Wave 1 and Wave 2 begins the Reinforcements. Waves 3,4 and 5 are to spawn more enemies, however I have not tested if enemies from Wave 2 can call them using the alarms.
-- Wandering AI --
The AI seems to wander to whichever Animation Point is the closest, and in the straightest line according to the AP's arrow. So I got a soldier to walk in a box path by placing AP[idle] at each corner, with their direction facing the next path. If an AP has already been 'targeted' by another AI, it may select a new one. I spent quite a while searching the editor for some kind of path, like an invisible road, for the AI but the AP's are the best I could come up with. Hostages seem to target Enemy AP's, regardless of the "Allies/Enemies/Both" setting.
Enemies on vehicles will only approach the player or alarm zone if they can see the player, so spawn them nearby trees, bushes, behind a waterfall, or on a ledge. You can spawn them where ever you like, but these places would avoid 'pop-in'.
The vehicles cannot target Animation Points, and it is unclear if the enemies spawned in would if you ran away.
-- --
Be thankful we even have these options! FC3 removed vehicles and custom weapons from MP maps. With custom MP completely removed, it's a miracle FC4 even has a map editor at all actually![]()
Another solution could be to add an ANIMATION POINT called "Guard" at the points where you want the stationary enemies to stay.Originally Posted by jondoe111111 Go to original post
The Far Cry map editor is amazing. I love being able to finally create single- and multi-player maps.
There are some things that could absolutely be improved, like setting up pre-determined paths for thise times it would be useful, but with good use of the tools that are already there, and a bit of ingenuity and training, you can create workaround to most problems.
For instance, enemies can climb climbable ledges, but they never use rope hooks to climb grappling ledges. Segmenting a large area and placing wave 2 and 3 etc in areas where wave 1 cannot traverse is one way of having a continual gameplay experience while still managing memory assigned to AI. Placing fences and boxes that the player can climb but that restricts area movement of the NPCs.
One thing that I found a bit annoying, is that there is (currently?) no way of making outposts spawn waves unless an alarm is triggered. I would love to be able to spawn a wave without triggering the alarm, but additionally have the alarm there as a way of trigger mission failure.
I am personally working on a base where enemy waves spawn outside of it when a certain amount of NPCs are killed. I try to set up enemies and the level in such a way that stealth is rewarded, and that guns blazing is mostly "punished" by a bunch of enemies coming down on them.
I am working on trying to funnel the wave 2 and 3 in such a way that they enter the base and take up positions, but if the player is careful with hiding bodies etc, then the new guards will start patrolling as normal.
Hope you find solutions to your challenges![]()
Yea i think they dropped the ball on fc4 fc3 was and is messed up but things worked a little better i for one was glad you couldnt add ai and stuff because you would get stupid maps like made now where people put tons of bad guys and or animals and you some buildings that dont touch the ground just crap fc2 has by far the best mp lobby and the best most creative maps made hands down fc5 is just going to be stupid no editor you in a zoo killing animals thats it