Flow Graphs

Ok. How about we add some depth to our AI? Like, making a North Korean walk from one point to another, or get into a vehicle? Easy. First of all, delete all the extra archetype entities you may have lying around - you wouldn't want to be attacked while watching your AI guy walk around. So now you have one archetype entity. Go to the objects tab and select AI. Create a TagPoint and place it in your map - this is where your NK will walk to. Now open the entity section and navigate to the triggers directory. Place an AreaTrigger near your North Korean.



Now, select your AreaTrigger and on the RollupBar, find the Flow Graph section. Click Create and then click OK to dismiss the dialog. Once you have the flowgraph open, right click on the grey space and Go Add Node > Misc > Start. Then Add Node > Entity > EntityPos. And finally, Add Node > AI > AIGotoSpeedStance. If all you see is a dot in the space, use the mouse wheel to zoom in to see the nodes properly. Now, click on the EntityPos node and move the flowchart out of the way (or connect it to the top) so you can see the perspective view. Select the TagPoint object and then right click on the EntityPos node and select 'assign selected entity'. Then select the North Korean in the perspective view and right click on the AIGotoSpeedStance node and select 'assign selected entity'. Now we need to connect the nodes together. Click on the 'output' connector on the Start node and drag your mouse to the 'sync' port on the AIGotoSpeedStance Node. Then connect the Pos port on the EntityPos node to the Pos port on the AIGotoSpeedStance Node. Your flowgraph should look like this:



Now click the AI/Physics button (down the bottom) to see him walk. Click it again to disable it or your AI will not work ingame. As you can see all the flowchart is is logic. For instance, you could create another TagPoint object and get the AI to walk to that one after he's walked to the first one. Play around with the flowchart nodes and see what you can get the AI to do. Let's make the AI character get into a vehicle now. First of all, delete your AIGotoSpeedStance and EntityPos nodes, and create an EnityID (Add Node > Entity > EntityID) and a VehicleEnter node (Add Node > Vehicle >Enter). Now create a vehicle in the Perspective view (for an asian_ltv select entity in the objects tab and go to the vehicle directory and double click on asian_ltv). Now select the vehicle and right click on the EntityID node and select 'assign selected entity'. Select the North Korean in the perspective view and do the same thing but for the VehicleEnter node. Now connect the ID port on the entityId node to the VehicleID port on the VehicleEnter node, and the output port on the start node to the sync port on the VehicleEnter node. You can change what seat he gets into by modyfing the Seat variable (use the inputs sidebar) on the VehicleEnter node. Now either go ingame or click the Ai/Physics button to see your AI character enter the vehicle.



With enough experimentation, you can end up with this: