Detecting if the player is running away from his enemy?

I'm working on the AI for my mod, and I was wondering this:
If the player engages an enemy, is there a way to tell if the player is running away from the enemy that was engaged? And then, is there a way to tell if the player is ACTUALLY fighting the enemy, not just attacking the enemy, then leaving?

Probably not without some heuristics. You could test if the player gets progressively further away from the monster after it see's/is attacked by the player.

I'm working on the AI for my mod, and I was wondering this:
If the player engages an enemy, is there a way to tell if the player is running away from the enemy that was engaged? And then, is there a way to tell if the player is ACTUALLY fighting the enemy, not just attacking the enemy, then leaving?

You could track the player's health and distance. If a player is sustaining a great amount of damage and the distance is getting bigger, then could assume it's fleeing.

I'm working on the AI for my mod, and I was wondering this:
If the player engages an enemy, is there a way to tell if the player is running away from the enemy that was engaged? And then, is there a way to tell if the player is ACTUALLY fighting the enemy, not just attacking the enemy, then leaving?

You could track the player's health and distance. If a player is sustaining a great amount of damage and the distance is getting bigger, then could assume it's fleeing.

What would be better to test the distance; a traceline or findradius?
I've already devised a system that will increase the distance to be checked every so often, but I don't know which one would be best suited for this..

I would assume traceline. cant think of anything findradius would add if you're just checking for distance.

I mean if you already know the 2 poiints you need to form the traceline, then you dont really have anything you need to FIND.

traceline from self.origin (the monster being self, and the one calling the trace) to self.enemy.origin

save its distance
save its distance as old distance
save its distance
compare. distance with old distance

wash rinse repeat.

I would assume traceline. cant think of anything findradius would add if you're just checking for distance.

I mean if you already know the 2 poiints you need to form the traceline, then you dont really have anything you need to FIND.

traceline from self.origin (the monster being self, and the one calling the trace) to self.enemy.origin

save its distance
save its distance as old distance
save its distance
compare. distance with old distance

wash rinse repeat.

Haha. Thanks GnounC. I noticed the subject you put. I actually thought it was pretty funny..

no prob. let us know how it works when you get everything goin'.

I'm working on the AI for my mod, and I was wondering this:
If the player engages an enemy, is there a way to tell if the player is running away from the enemy that was engaged? And then, is there a way to tell if the player is ACTUALLY fighting the enemy, not just attacking the enemy, then leaving?

You could track the player's health and distance. If a player is sustaining a great amount of damage and the distance is getting bigger, then could assume it's fleeing.

What would be better to test the distance; a traceline or findradius?

  Code:

distance = vlen (player.origin - monster.origin);


I did a little bit of browsing around in ai.qc, and i think that these might help. What do you think?

  Code:

/*
=============
infront

returns 1 if the entity is in front (in sight) of self
=============
*/
float(entity targ) infront =
{
   local vector   vec;
   local float      dot;
   
   makevectors (self.angles);
   vec = normalize (targ.origin - self.origin);
   dot = vec * v_forward;
   
   if ( dot > 0.3)
   {
      return TRUE;
   }
   return FALSE;
};

  Code:

/*
=============
visible

returns 1 if the entity is visible to self, even if not infront ()
=============
*/
float (entity targ) visible =
{
   local vector   spot1, spot2;
   
   spot1 = self.origin + self.view_ofs;
   spot2 = targ.origin + targ.view_ofs;
   traceline (spot1, spot2, TRUE, self);   // see through other monsters
   
   if (trace_inopen && trace_inwater)
      return FALSE;         // sight line crossed contents

   if (trace_fraction == 1)
      return TRUE;
   return FALSE;
};

I understand visible(), but i think i need an explanation of infront().

the vector*vector operator in qc is a 'dotproduct' operator

assuming they're normalized:
angle = acos(v1*v2);
or in other words:
cos(angle) = v1*v2;

so 0.3 is an frontal cone angle of about 75 degrees each way (not simple front only).

a) Dot product their directions (or velocities). Look for sign of result.
b) compare if distance between them gets larger
c) do b but use some statistics, epsilons, or cummulative change (sum of all changes in few miliseconds to approximate if he is moving in not being on the same spot) ...

frag.machine good idea tracking the health

This is a kinda fuzzy logic/heuristics area. There's no definite way to know if the player is running away, but checking the indications will get you close enough.

It's probably best to do it fuzzily; do several checks such as increasing distance, player view direction, player health etc and add a weighted figure to a check variable for each one, and if the total is higher than an arbitrary figure you can assume he's fleeing.

... or make message box appear "Are You fleeing? - Yes, No, Cancel".