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SoulLink Procedural AI Spawner


Magique

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SoulLink Procedural AI Spawner is a new Unity asset in the final stages of beta testing and scheduled for release over the next few weeks. We have just completed integration with Gaia's Procedural Sky System for time of day and weather. In addition to the base integration, we also provide an additional feature in SoulLink to manage your world's temperature based on the time of day, weather conditions, wind, and even elevation.

The Spawner is one component of a larger artificial intelligence system that will also utilize time of day and weather integrations. For more information on this new asset, please visit our WIP Unity fourm:

AI - [WIP] SoulLink Artificial Intelligence System - Unity Forum

or our Discord channel:

https://discord.gg/ncW9UmU

To see how SoulLink Spawner works with Gaia, please watch this Beta tester tutorial:

 

Edited by Magique
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  • 2 weeks later...

That's looking really good. I have a half written spawner because the only other thing out there is too simplistic. I think you have hit each of my primary missing features. Be sure to let us know when it launches.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just wanted to give everyone a quick update. I'm down to a very short list of just a couple of things to fix/update and then I'll be providing my beta testers with the first release candidate. So, we're looking at maybe another week before I am finalizing everything and getting a package submitted to the store.

Edited by Magique
typo
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On 2/2/2022 at 7:18 PM, Sorra the Orc said:

That's looking really good. I have a half written spawner because the only other thing out there is too simplistic. I think you have hit each of my primary missing features. Be sure to let us know when it launches.

 

I'm glad you found us and I hope that the final result will meet your expectations. I'd be be interested to know what your expectations are. If there is some feature that you were hoping for and it isn't implemented yet then I can investigate the possibility of adding it.

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19 hours ago, Magique said:

I'm glad you found us and I hope that the final result will meet your expectations. I'd be be interested to know what your expectations are. If there is some feature that you were hoping for and it isn't implemented yet then I can investigate the possibility of adding it.

My use case is for background AI, such as wildlife in nature or pedestrians in cities. Primary features:
 

  1. Spawn when the player is near
  2. DeSpawn when the player is not near
  3. Spawn individuals or groups, where groups can be between 1..n of a prefab or relative numbers, e.g. 1..n does and 1 bull per 7 does
  4. Date based spawning, e.g.  1.5 Fawn for every deer between Feb and April
  5. Splatmap based spawning, e.g. only spawn deer if there is >60% grass and < 10% rock (don't need slope or other test since this is all represented in the splatmap, others may want that though)
  6. Proximity based spawning e.g. 10% of the time spawn a wolf pack within 50m of a herd of deer, and the opposite, never spawn deer near wolves
  7. ground and air spawning

I probably have many more wishes than this, but these are what I have in my own spawner at this point. About half of these features exist in other spawners but none of them seem to exist in everything. 

Of course GeNa can do all of this, but GeNa is a pretty heavyweight system to use for simple background AI spawning at runtime. Its feature set is much larger than needed for background AI, though I do use it in some scenes for more complex spawning algorithms. The sweet spot is "enough" features (see above) and lightweight as a result.

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Interesting. I did not think about the proximity based spawning such as spawn a wolf pack within 50m of a herd of deer. However, you can do something close to that right now using the SpawnArea component. You can make a SpawnArea itself a spawnable item. In it, you can specify herds. So, you could have a deer herd and a wolf herd and make the wolf herd have a 10% probability. Although getting the 50m distance may be a bit tricky to accomplish out of the box.

For date based spawning, I have thought about that, but there is nothing built-in for that. It could be tacked on with some custom scripts with not that much effort though right now.

I will think about all these features and see if I can add more direct support for them as I do believe they have some really good value.

[edit]

On second thought, you could sort of accomplish the date based spawning out of the box by using the weather filters. If you want certain things to spawn in cold weather then you can do that. And dates can be associated with weather conditions for the most part.

Edited by Magique
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Here is a sneak peek of the upcoming playable demo that will showcase SoulLink Procedural AI Spawner as well as a pre-alpha version of the AI system

 

 
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  • 1 month later...

I'm now in the process of finalizing the Unity asset store submission for this, I expect to be submitting to the store by end of today at the earliest and tomorrow at the latest.

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SoulLink Spawner has been officially submitted to the asset store. According to Unity's confirmation e-mail, it could take 20-30 business days to get approved.

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Today I verified that SoulLink Spawner is compatible with SECTR Stream. No changes were required. The only thing to be aware of is that once you have exported your sectorized terrain, you won't be able to edit biomes or add biome texture filters. However, if you re-activate your original terrain object then that becomes available again. So, it's really pretty straightforward.

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Version 1.1.0 is in beta testing and adds Quest Machine and Polaris mesh terrain support. It also adds quest filters for spawns by biome and by area.

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The current beta is still developing. I've added a Spawn in Air feature so you can spawn flying AI or even just have objects spawn and drop from the sky if you want. I've revamped the QueryTerrainTextures component and now you can just move your mouse around the scene view and see your terrain texture influences for defining your biomes. And, finally, I'm starting on adding Proximity spawning, which will be included in the 1.1.0 release.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Proximity Filters have been added and beta testers have received the package. Next I am adding Seasons and Season Filters. After that, I will be preparing for a 1.1.0 store release.

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Seasons and Season Filters have been added and testers have a new beta package. I've decided to add some basic A* pathfinding support before releasing to store so I'm working on that part now.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Version 1.2.0 is in beta testing and close to a store release. The major features of this new version are as follows:
  • Added Suppression Radius field to SpawnArea
  • Added Spawn and Despawn methods to SoulLinkGlobal for custom use scenarios
  • Improved visibility of scene view query terrain textures information
  • Added Delay Enable Agent field to Spawnable and EnableAgent to ISpawnable interface. 
  • Added season-based peak temperatures to the weather system for assets that don't support temperature.
  • Added experimental SpawnOnTrigger script. 
  • Added Save/Load system through Pixel Crusher save system integration
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  • 2 weeks later...

SoulLink Spawner Version 1.2.0 is now available in the asset store. The primary feature added for this version is a full integration with Pixel crusher's save system.

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  • 2 weeks later...

SoulLink Spawner Version 1.2.2 was released to the asset store.

(New Features and Changes)

  • Added initial support for GKC AI
  • Added Reusable flag to spawns to prevent re-use of a spawn

(Fixes)

  • Fixed random number seed value, which was always using 0
  • Fixed issue where an invalid navmesh position was still allowing spawning
  • Fixed issue where Add Herd button was not available if you removed all herd assets from your project.
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  • 2 months later...

Magique Productions, Ltd. is holding its second game making contest for SoulLink Spawner license holders. This is a very freeform game development contest with a lot of flexibility on what you can develop. There will be 3 winners with cash and other prizes. Please see the following thread for details. The contest starts today and ends at midnight at the end of Octobre, 2022.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-soullink-procedural-ai-spawner.1264427/#post-8481983

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  • 1 year later...

SoulLink Spawner 1.4.0 with multiplayer support has been submitted to the asset store.

  • Added Mirror multiplayer support
  • Added NetCode for GameObjects multiplayer support
  • Added official support for Emerald AI 2024
  • Updated SpawnArea to handle spawnables that return false for AllowDespawn
  • Removed the SpawnSilhouette gizmo
  • Fixed Cozy Weather System 3 integration
  • Fixed compiler issue for Polaris integration
  • Fixed compiler issues with AI Navigation Package integration.
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