ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

That is pretty weird edge. The only other thing I can think of is if you have a ai_tactic table that has values of zero in it. Can you check that using the Lua console?

Alchemist's Body of Fire is abusable, as tactical enemies seem to dodge the (very weak) attacks nearly every turn.

I saw a Snow Giant Boulder Thrower waste it's movement talent, because it was blocked by other NPC's in a corridor.


Predawn

Predawn, I took a quick peek in the SVN and the only possible movement I see is having an infusion... is that what you saw?

This monster was "stuck" in this particular spot for some reason. I could hit it, but it could not cast anything at me. The log doesn't show any errors, so I believe the problem is the oddity of many diagonals not being reverse-traversable. I don't see an easy solution...



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Lucky you! This isn't an FOV bug--you could see it, but it couldn't see you. This is supposed to happen. It would make things really weird if we made looking/los/fov strictly reversible.

Now, as for AI, if it was being hit by something but couldn't see anything, it probably should have moved...

Two odd behaviors for you.

Creatures with rush like to fire it off with one square between you and them, which wastes the talent entirely.

If you rest besides a trap, any allies you have will walk back and forth besides you, eventually killing themselves on the trap. In the case of alchemists, the constant damage mixed with attempting to rest until the golem is healed means that the golem will die before you stop resting.

Zop, I take it back, you shouldn't have been able to see that monster. A patch to correct this is posted here:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=25261

Here is what your field of view should have been (very different, isn't it?):

yufra wrote:Predawn, I took a quick peek in the SVN and the only possible movement I see is having an infusion... is that what you saw?

Yes, That is what I saw. I would be guessing it comes under the Tactical AI rather than the dumb AI, but I no longer have the stdout.txt file to check. The game version is unmoddified beta 21, direct from the download web page.

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, but I took a few days break from Tome to ease my pain. (Level 45 Cursed wiped out by Psyren's.)

Predawn

Predawn wrote:Yes, That is what I saw. I would be guessing it comes under the Tactical AI rather than the dumb AI, but I no longer have the stdout.txt file to check.

Gotcha, thanks. The only snow giant that uses tactical AI is the chieftain, so this is actually the dumb AI being dumb. I don't say that to discount it as a "feature" rather than a bug... the dumb AI may be too dumb, who knows? I'll take a look at it later.

Ok, I have changed (hopefully) all summons that were using tactical AI to never flee. The other examples as I skim back over the thread are actually the dumb AI being dumb: orc archer and snow giant using movement infusions, non-mana users using manasurge runes, etc. That isn't to say they should be ignored, just that they are not tactical AI.

I don't know if it's the right thread or if it has been reported before, but the monster AI has 2 major flaws currently:

1) The "hit and run" using a corner glitch

#####
#_AB
#X##
#Y#

Player in B, monster in X.
Player moves to A, monster moves to Y.
Player moves back to B, monster moves back to X.

Problem: for any class with auras, moving from B to A will trigger the aura damage, and the monster comes back for punishment over and over

2) The trap glitch

######
AB___YX
######

Player in B, monster in X.
Player moves to A, monster moves to Y.
Player moves back to B, monster moves back to X.

Problem: if there's a trap in X or Y, the monster triggers the trap over and over until it dies

Nice catches Powerwyrm... any suggestions on how a monster should behave in those circumstances? And these only occur for ranged NPCs, right?

Any NPC that has avoidant melee tactics. Best would be to keep distance 3 from the PC to avoid 1) and check for traps to avoid 2), so that triggering a trap is ok (for emergency -- usually the PC does that a lot), but triggering it twice is not ok.

Ranged AI seems to be extremely good at running away from a player who is stealthed. They can't see me, yet they can effectively run away from me. Oh, and I know they can't see me because they still fire their ranged talents in random directions.