Any Ideas for Preventing NWN Dragons From Getting Stuck?

[Legacy_PyroDrew]

               NWN huge size creatures (most notably dragons) often get stuck on/in/near terrain/obstacles in many various modules so that it becomes very easy for the player to kill them from a distance without any retailation from the dragon.  It turns epic dangerous battles into comedy at best and anti-climatic at worst. 

I (role)play my character(s) to take advantage of any unexpected situation (use a NPC as a decoy, have 2 of my enemies fight each other, etc) and not limit tactical/strategy options during a game.  However, this sticky situation often happens even when I'm not trying to use the terrain to my advantage, so I'm not the main cause of this problem.

Many NWN modules place dragons and huge size creatures in areas with obstalces/terrain and it's not realistic to expect builders to go back and modify their modules.

Is there any current fix for this?  Is any fix ever even possible given the game mechanics (override folder?script?)?
-Modify obstacles to be less "sticky" (smaller?)?
-Modify huge NPC size creatures with more ease to move by obstacles?  Fly over?  Pass through?  Respawn into a nearby location if immobile/stuck (console command has "makesafe" for player... anything like that for the creatures?)

Ideally, I would like to avoid any scenario where I have to stop (role)playing my character and become DM to free/makesafe a dragon every time it gets stuck.  Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par PyroDrew, 15 octobre 2012 - 09:21 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Pattycake1]

               I know Jasper's. AI makes dragons fly to enemy targets when they can't reach them.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_PyroDrew]

               

Pattycake1 wrote...

I know Jasper's. AI makes dragons fly to enemy targets when they can't reach them.

I don't know if Jasper(re)'s AI works with Tony's AI, but even if it did someone in 2007 on the NWNVault posted the same problem even with Jasper's AI (which hasn't been updated since 2006)...
Jasperre's AI:  http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=2108
"I have not made any modifications but I have found that pursuing NPCs get stuck very easy on the most simple of objects.
Is there a way to fix this?"

And upon further searching it seems Jasper's AI has other problems as well...
http://social.biowar.../index/13894539
"...the Priest goes about casting Inflict Serious Wounds and Inflict Medium Wounds...."

That post has a solution for players to correct that specific problem and apparently others have improved Jasper's AI further, but I see no mention of this sticky problem being corrected on NWN Vault Jasper AI threads or in old threads here.

Perhaps BePower's updated script of Jasper's AI doesn't have these problems?
http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=3675
But "no news is good news" about this problem seems too optimistic.

Edit: Perhaps this post should be posted in the Scripting Forum... if a moderator can move it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par PyroDrew, 15 octobre 2012 - 05:45 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

                When I was working on a single player module I was using Baba Yagas spiders and Spide Cave for a nightmarish scene running from a massively big spider and all its babies, armed only with a candle. It was comic on the first run through however, because the big spider kept getting stuck behind cracks and stalagmites, despite this being the spider cave tileset.

I found two solutions to this:

The first was to take advantage of the cool disapear/appear animation that spiders have (dragons have a cool one too) whihc shows them "climb up to the roof" disappear and then reappear when they jump down on the PC. I triggerd this animation when they were stuck somewhere in combat out of range of their target. I wrote a script for this and posted it on the vault. Its called Jumping Creatures, and is configured with local variables on the creature. Its actually a lean and simple "flying/jumping" system. This can be used on top of most other AI systems as you do NOT have to set the creature's AI events. You simply tell it what special AI script to run when it is "DeterminingCombatRound".

The second was to reduce the amount of space the engine thinks the creature takes up. I went into the appearance.2da, and adjusted the row for the appearance I was using for the spider. The columns to adjust are perspace and ... um the other one next to it (something-or-other space '> ) 
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 15 octobre 2012 - 07:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Thayan]

               Maybe try using the package below created by henesua. It shouldn't be too difficult to change the nw_c2_dropin script (the default OnSpawn for dragons) to automatically place the necessary variable on the creature as an alternative so you don't have to modify all the dragons in the toolset per the instructions.

AI: Jumping Creatures - http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=3819

EDIT: Heh - just now saw that the man himself beat me to the punch. Nice. '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Thayan, 15 octobre 2012 - 09:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_henesua]

               No problem, Thayan. Its good to see that others have had enough use for the code I wrote to recommend it to others. Thanks.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pattycake1]

               I'm not 100% sure but I think I used a modified Jaspere AI on my server when it was up because of those issues. If I did I will post it on the vault for every one.