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Cutriss

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Greets, all.

I'm working on an academic experiment involving cognitive aspects of team AI modeling, and we're trying to find a good game/simulator to use to run our experiment. It looks like OFP is going to be the winner, simply by virtue of the fact that none of the other games (Ghost Recon, Rogue Spear, CS, etc) seem to be as extensible as we need them to be. The biggest thing we need is some game environment logging capability, and I can't really tell if OFP offers what we need, or if we're going to need to invest in VBS1.

What we need is to be able to log player/enemy positions relative to the map, as well as actions taken, and preferably look-at directions. My best guess is that the majority of the info we need we won't be able to get readily, but instead we might have to hack something together that will fake a multiplayer client connection, and get the data from that stream. I understand that OFP won't ever have an SDK release, so we'd need to actually sniff the packets and translate them, as well as send fake packets as an observer client.

Which brings me to another point...I remember reading that in the manual, an observer mode for multiplayer games was supposed to be available, but I can't seem to find any info about whether or not it actually exists. Does it, or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Any info you guys could supply me with would be of enormous assistance. My suspicion tells me that we're gonna have to go with VBS1, but I'm kinda concerned about how much we'd be able to modify with VBS1 (as opposed to Coalescent modifying it *for* us)...which would naturally mean that they'd effectively be doing my job, and thus I wouldn't really be necessary. smile.gif But, if it gets the job done, that's what's important, and so I'm considering that too.

Thoughts?

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Eligibility

The VBS1â„¢ products are only sold to federal, state, and local government agencies for military, law enforcement, homeland defense, and first responder training. To help reduce administrative costs, we request that only qualified organizations contact us for purchases or additional information.<span id='postcolor'>

If you can even qualify for that, everyone in the OFP world will envy you. So I am wondering now, what exactly do you need? I think I understand the first part... you want to track the movement of each AI, and have it be marked on the map repeatedley as a new marker each time and have that marker face the direction they are facing?

Be a little more specific...

//Edit:

Or, do you want something that can log things such as grid information, direction facing in a text file?

I think this is somewhat possible... but it might not be possible to write it to a text file. Most likely you could jump over this hurdle by making use of the new interface commands in version 1.75... and at the end of a mission (or when calling radio alpha, bravo, charlie, delta etc...) a dialog could pop up and could be copied & pasted into a text file.

//Edit:

Yet another edit... your best bet would be to contact Suma or Marek or one of the other OF Developers.

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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (blackdog~ @ Jan. 24 2003,19:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">If you can even qualify for that, everyone in the OFP world will envy you.<span id='postcolor'>Well, don't misplace your envy, but the experiment/project is under DOD contract, so I think we'd stand a pretty good chance of qualifying. smile.gif</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (blackdog~ @ Jan. 24 2003,19:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">So I am wondering now, what exactly do you need? I think I understand the first part... you want to track the movement of each AI, and have it be marked on the map repeatedley as a new marker each time and have that marker face the direction they are facing?<span id='postcolor'>Not quite...Keep going...</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (blackdog~ @ Jan. 24 2003,19:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Or, do you want something that can log things such as grid information, direction facing in a text file?<span id='postcolor'>Bingo!

Yes. What we basically would like is sufficient information to effectively recreate the entire battle from a file, however cumbersome it may be. Specifically, we need player locations and line-of-sight indicators, event notifications to tell us when players perform actions like firing a weapon or whatnot, in-game chat logging...essentially, we need as many axes as possible with which to "score" players based on their performance accomplishing tasks in the game. On the surface, it doesn't seem like we could rate a player's performance based on his movement patterns, but art of our cognitive model involves players forming mental propositions indicating the presence (or absence) of knowledge.</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (blackdog~ @ Jan. 24 2003,19:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I think this is somewhat possible... but it might not be possible to write it to a text file. Most likely you could jump over this hurdle by making use of the new interface commands in version 1.75... and at the end of a mission (or when calling radio alpha, bravo, charlie, delta etc...) a dialog could pop up and could be copied & pasted into a text file.<span id='postcolor'>Hmm...so basically, the script would log all these actions, and then, upon completion of a scenario (to either outcome, allies or resistance victory), a dialog box comes up containing the *complete* archived log? It sounds like the dialog would have to have a scrollbar, or else there'd be way too much information to fit on the screen.

My original idea to accomplish this task was to set up a fake client, so that it'd act as a spectator to the game, and receive game packets containing most of the information I needed. I'd then have to reverse-engineer the data packets so that I could extract useable data from it. It made sense, because any client, even in spectator mode, needs to know when and where all these events are happening so that it can display them to the viewer. I say "most of the information I needed" because we've noted that some aspects of the game may not be easily (or feasibly) logged, such as a player stopping to pull up the map or something along those lines...

One big problem I'm having to deal with is that I'm having to do a lot of hands-off research on this. We've already (unfortunately) sunk some cash buying Rogue Spear and CS (for using the Natural Selection mod). I had nothing to do with the decision to pick these up, but now there's a general reluctance to spend any money unless we know that it'll fit the bill. The eventual price isn't a big deal (which is why VBS is a possibility), but there's a whole bunch of overhead involving submitting a purchase order and justification for buying game after game, until we finally find the right one.

So, with that in mind, please forgive me if some of the aspects of the game seem unclear to me. I've done a few hours' worth of scouring the forums here to try and clear up any questions I had, but it's still had to have any real meaty questions without having actually played the game, right? smile.gif</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (blackdog~ @ Jan. 24 2003,19:10)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Yet another edit... your best bet would be to contact Suma or Marek or one of the other OF Developers.<span id='postcolor'>Would it be possible for you to PM me a point-of-contact so that I can get in touch with them? We were actually considering doing this using the e-mail address listed on the BIS webpage, but that's probably a PR person or somesuch, so this'd be far more efficient.

Thanks for your time, blackdog. I'm sorry about the delayed response, but it's been quite the busy weekend over here. smile.gif

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