Ambient/Random Waypoints

[Megaloptus]

I want to know how or if it is possible to create an ambient set of patrols or waypoints where the set actor(s) randomly wander between each point and make them look like they are wandering instead of patrolling back and forth like a soldier.

For example, populating a village or city and making it look alive with civilians and soldiers just going about their business.

[Dilust]

Yes, you can.
First I would suggest you to create a sub-group of waypoints. In this group you will put only the waypoints dedicated to your village.
I'd suggest that because you will need to create a very large ammount of paths.
When you create a single path, as you just know, you must link each waypoint to another. You probably do not know that you could link a single waypoint to multiple other waypoints.
For example i have a path composed by waypoints 1->2->3 now i could link the waypoint 3 with the waypoint path 4->5->6 and with the 7->8->9 path and so on. The engine will chose one of the alternative path randomly.
Do not forget that you could also link some commands to each waypoint, like a wait command, a teleport command or an actor to waypoint command to move a certain unit between waypoints.

So, you can create what you want but you must remember that if an unit see an enemy the AI will force it to engage. And maybe this could rouin your scenario.

[bassmaniac]

Hello!
I'm not a good scripter but i know you can write some "actions" for your characters in your trigger's script: talk, pauses, sleep, etc..

To give the random feeling, You can link some waypoints together to make changes, (example if you link the waypoint 0 to 1, 2, and 3, then the character will go first to 1, after finish his pathway, he will go to waypoint 2 etc..
if you multiply the links on all the waypoints, your character seems to random his pathway..

This game crually need new 3d characters like womens, childs, workers, olds... and new animations for them I think that all this should create more life in towns and villages
Hope it help..
Regards.
Bass

Edit: During i wrote, Dilust give you a better answer to your question..

[Megaloptus]

The engine will chose one of the alternative path randomly.

Well the engine does a horrible job of picking evenly. 7/10 times it will send 8 one way and 2 the other, and the lower the actor number is one lane will not even be chosen. So if there were 2 men patrolling, instead of them splitting up both will choose one and leave the other empty, which ruins the sole purpose of making 2 lanes! Is there any possible way to gauge this?