EQ2Follow - choppy heading

[zogzog]

Hello there !


While using eq2bot, i noticed quite fast the "auto follow" function , from the Main tab, uses a choppy heading when following someone. It goes roughly in the good way, but seems to spam the turn left and turn right keys.


Quickly looking through the code, i noticed a part in the main() loop (lines 65-69) :

call Angle_Math ${Math.Rand[360]}
NewPointX:Set[${Math.Calc[${NewPointX} - ${Rise}]}]
NewPointZ:Set[${Math.Calc[${NewPointZ} - ${Run}]}]
face ${NewPointX} ${NewPointZ}

This is the one, for me, responsible for this trouble.

After removing the face command line 69, the auto follow seems to be infinitely smoother.


Didn't want to post in bug report if that 'feature' was intended, hence posting in discussion.

Stay safe,

-zogzog

 

[Pygar]

I believe this was intentional, but not sure it was every fully worked out.

The idea is, you passed two paramaters; one is the range to stay within, and the other how far off the follow target to be. It was an attempt to make bots look less botty, but cause it seems to have a rhythm to the randomness, it doesn't quite work.

I think Ownage was working on a new version for this, but not sure he finished.

 

[zogzog]

Ah, guess i understand the intent of the script then.


I'll try toying around with it if i've got some spare time to get something working better.

 

[chemical77]

Speaking of autofollow, I don't use the follow function from the main tab but rather from the extras area since it seems much smoother.

But I noticed that the last couple of days any toon using the extras follow function makes a wide circle before following the other toon. If I disable it and go to that game window and manually type /follow whoever in the chat, no problems.

Any idea why this might be the case? The following toon tends to get stuck in city type areas where there are tents and mailboxes, etc.

I haven't seen anyone post about the wide ass circle here tho so maybe something I'm doing.

 

[mycroft]

Speaking of autofollow, I don't use the follow function from the main tab but rather from the extras area since it seems much smoother.

But I noticed that the last couple of days any toon using the extras follow function makes a wide circle before following the other toon. If I disable it and go to that game window and manually type /follow whoever in the chat, no problems.

Any idea why this might be the case? The following toon tends to get stuck in city type areas where there are tents and mailboxes, etc.

I haven't seen anyone post about the wide ass circle here tho so maybe something I'm doing.

No , I get that too , the 2nd character goes past the main one , turns back and comes around to follow again.

 

[ownagejoo]

While the intent was to make it look less botty, yes the extra "randomness" if thats a good term for it, that is made by those lines quoted above really make it more jerky. I am currently working on a couple things trying to clean that up.

But for now, taking those lines out should smooth everything out to a point where the jerking goes away.

the biggest problem is the distance and narrow paths, without a way to tell if there is a obstruction or drop off, then a follow will never be really clean.

We have discussed this with Ama before, and its just way to much trouble to get it in isxeq2. So we will have to live with some level of autofollow that botty.

Ownagejoo

 

[Pygar]

No , I get that too , the 2nd character goes past the main one , turns back and comes around to follow again.

The extra's tab uses /follow sometoon

Its the ingame auto follow, any arc's or whatever are being caused by lag on your systems. Extremely low framerates, or latency between server causes this. ToonB is reading ToonA's loc incorrectly.

 

[chemical77]

Aha. I had the framerate for backgrounded windows set to 5 in Innerspace. Bringing that up to the default level put everything back to normal.

 

[Pygar]

There have been some performance posts suggesting to use lower framerates to boost performance.

There are times this might hold true, if for example you are performing minimal movement, the lower framerates might generate overall better performance.

However, for most of what I use the bots for, I wouldn't go under a framrate of 8, and I tend to dial in around 14.