Thinking about a map conversion? Please Read The Following.

[TheJamsh]

Some may know that i converted an FE map for use with stock BZ2 a while ago called 'Tranquility'. The map had an enormous amount of bugs that i could not solve, gave it to GSH for about 2 hours and he found out the problem.

Ill stress this point to anyone thinking of bringing maps over from 1.2. ALWAYS save them in ASCii, then go through the .bzn file in a text editor, and search for AOI.

An AOI regards an 'area of interest'. The fact of the matter is in BZ2, they cause problems, and ALL of them need to be deleted. to do this, follow these steps:

1) Search for AOI in the .bzn file.
2) Look for the first number after AOI, it dictates how many there are. CHANGE THIS NUMBER TO 0
3) Remove everything BETWEEN the 0 you just typed it, and [AIPaths]
4) If youre map was anything like mine, it might reduce filesize by a substantial amount too.

[GSH]

If the AOI (Area of Interest) count is < 100, that's fine.

-- GSH

[Avatar]

Does this actually affect AI behavior in BZ2?  From BZ1 maps I'm used to outlining the play area and specifying that anything outside of it is UNinteresting to the AI, but there's been some debate over whether or not BZ2 has any code that looks at the AOI's...

-Av-

[BNG Da BZ Fool]

So does that mean that if the AOI's are less then 100 they can be left in place, and do not need to be Deleted? Tanks, BNG.

[TheJamsh]

Me and GSH had a fairly sizeable conversation about it over IRC. According to him, he hasnt found any code that relates to it, but it wouldn't stretch my imagination to think theres some hidden in their somewhere. i believe the BZ2 engine is jsut a heavily modified BZ1 engine, with changes.

Personally, the map i had had nearly 100,000 AOI's (a tad excessive wouldnt you say?) and AI was POOR to say the least. walkers would get inexplicably stuck at areas without pathpoints even relating to them. i couldnt figure it out.

The AOI's also cause youre .bzn file to grow. mine was 11mb, whereas most are around 200-400kb. the map froze on loading in multiworld conditions also.

Put simply, the les you have, the more reliable youre map will be.

[Avatar]

Are we talking about the same thing?  Path Points or paths set as an Area of Interest in the shift-F9 editor?

100,000 of them?  I can't imagine the mouse finger you'd have after setting that many of them...

-Av-

[Nielk1]

It is something BZ2 adds on its own to the maps, you never see it.

I assume it had to do with BZ1 and hunting.

[Avatar]

Ah, that makes a LOT more sense.

In BZ1 (and still in BZ2) you could manually set up either a PATH or AREA in the shift-F9 menu.

Once you specify an AREA you could further mark either INSIDE or OUTSIDE the Area.

Once set up an AREA could be marked as INTERESTING or BORING to the AI and a numerical value (strength).   You could also specify ATTACK or DEFEND, which I never really saw do anything as Tanks and Turrets were always sent randomly around the map or to Scrap Fields.

These settings specified the areas the AI would randomly wander into or stay out of while randomly wandering.

So, you could stop the AI from forever trying to climb a cliff by the edge of the map by surrounding the play area with a path, specifying it as an AREA, OUTSIDE, and BORING to the AI.  I think this simply affected the random points the AI was sent to when 'scouting' around on their own, but it did stop them from trying to reach parts of the map they weren't supposed to.

For BZ2 it doesn't seem to do anything, and you can fake it via Script or DLL so much better (cheater!  cheater!  lol)...

-Av-

[TheJamsh]

I never played or owned BZ1 outside of the BZC demo. Looking on it though i do prefer BZ2's system. Hence why i cannot actually wait for BZClassic . (damn you with you're teasers and demos)

The Shift+F9 view came straight from BZ1 did it not? Shame it didn't see any adjustment. Theres probably some things that could break maps in there... I can still see 'American' and 'Soviet' in it. Ah well. It does the job!

[Red Spot]

Just checked the maps I made and found this:

Code Select Expand

dllName = mpinstant.dll
[AiMission]
[AOIs]
size [1] =
0
[AiPaths]
count [1] =
28

Which makes me wonder how you actually get the AOI's on a map and what prevents them from ever being on your map. Note that these maps where made by hand, then modified using Winter and later got edited manually again.

[Nielk1]

Your map is just that uninteresting!

[TheJamsh]

lmao...

[Red Spot]

Your map is just that uninteresting!

Pointing out the obvious I see ... the question was "why" ..