This tutorial can be applied to PogamutUT2004 and will mostly hold in PogamutUDK examples.
Previous tutorial has shown us how to use navigation graph for planning movement of the bot. This tutorial presents an alternative approach that can be used when you don't have navigation graph at all or when the graph doesn't provide all the necessary information.
This example is installed by Pogamut UT2004 installer. In NetBeans click New Project -> Maven -> Project From Archetype -> Local Archetypes Catalog and select 03-raycasting-bot-archetype project. Moreover, as Pogamut 3 has been fully mavenized, you can try and run this example even without installing the Pogamut NetBeans plugin. However in that case you won't be able to use visualization as this is a part of Pogamut NetBeans plugin. To open up this example in NetBeans follow up the steps in Opening Pogamut Examples chapter. This archetype information is below.
For UT2004 example:
cz.cuni.amis.pogamut.ut2004.examples
03-raycasting-bot-archetype
3.3.1
http://diana.ms.mff.cuni.cz:8081/artifactory/repo
For UDK example only change to cz.cuni.amis.pogamut.udk.examples and 3.2.5-SNAPSHOT . The rest remains the same.
You will find up-to-date list of available archetypes in Pogamut Maven archetypes catalog
Raycasting is technique commonly known from computer graphics
based on analytical geometry. The goal of raycasting is to compute
intersection of a ray and the
geometry of the world. Simple high school analytical
geometry can be used for implementation of raycasting but this isn't
topic of this tutorial. If you are interested in math behind raycasting
you can read this
site. This tutorial is concerned with using raycasting in Pogamut
and Unreal Tournament.
The basic low-level API provided by Pogamut requires these 3 stages:
Enable raycasting feature and rays visualization
If you want to start continuous computation of ray X world
intersections set AutoTrace parameter of the
bot to true, you can do this by
getAct().act(new Configuration().setAutoTrace(true));
method call.
For debugging it is handy to enable also DrawTraceLines
feature. This feature will visualize the rays you will set up in
UT. Thus, you can extend the previous call to
getAct().act(new
Configuration().setDrawTraceLines(true).setAutoTrace(true)).
Initialize rays
Set the ray by AddRay command, eg. by
getAct().act(new AddRay("left45Ray", new Vector3d(1, -1, 0),
500, true, true, true));. Exact meaning of the parameters
is described in JavaDoc.
Handle results
Once the AddRay was send, the UT
computes the result and returns it in
AutoTraceRay message. You can obtain this
object by:
registering a listener that will be notified each time when a new ray is received from the environment
IWorldObjectEventListener<AutoTraceRay, WorldObjectFirstEncounteredEvent<AutoTraceRay>> rayListener = new IWorldObjectEventListener<AutoTraceRay, WorldObjectFirstEncounteredEvent<AutoTraceRay>>() {
public void notify(WorldObjectFirstEncounteredEvent<AutoTraceRay> event) {
//check which ray it is
if (event.getObject().getId().getStringId().equals("left45Ray")) {
//do something with the ray
}
}
};
//don't forget to register listener above to the WorldView! (best in botInitialized() method)
getWorldView().addObjectListener(AutoTraceRay.class,
WorldObjectFirstEncounteredEvent.class,
rayListener);
OR by checking presence of the object in world view
periodically, eg. in logic()
method
AutoTraceRay ray = null;
...
if (ray == null) {
// ray has not been initialized yet, try to obtain the instance
ray = getWorldView().getAll(AutoTraceRay.class).get(UnrealId.get("left45Ray"));
}
Note that you may easilly go through all rays in the world view by using the following construct:
for (AutoTraceRay ray : getWorldView().getAll(AutoTraceRay.class).values()) {
System.out.println("Ray: " + ray);
}
Once you obtain the
AutoTraceRay object, this object will be
automatically updated by the platform when new results are
available.
As you can see the process of initializing rays is quite complex.
To ease this process there is Raycasting class
that is utilized also by 03-RaycastingBot example. First, let's open the
example, you will find it under →
→
→
→ .
Raycasting class is automatically instanciated in UT2004BotModuleController
class. Through this class we will set up the rays. This has several stages:
Initialize multiple rays at once, RaycastingBot does this in
botInitialized() method but you can do it
in logic() or
botSpawned() as well. Do not do it in prepareBot()
method (it won't work because the connection to the environment is not ready
at the time of execution of prepareBot() ).
// 1. remove all previous rays, each bot starts by default with three
// rays, for educational purposes we will set them manually
getAct().act(new RemoveRay("All"));
// 2. create new rays
raycasting.createRay(LEFT90, new Vector3d(0, -1, 0), rayLength, fastTrace, floorCorrection, traceActor);
raycasting.createRay(LEFT45, new Vector3d(1, -1, 0), rayLength, fastTrace, floorCorrection, traceActor);
raycasting.createRay(FRONT, new Vector3d(1, 0, 0), rayLength, fastTrace, floorCorrection, traceActor);
raycasting.createRay(RIGHT45, new Vector3d(1, 1, 0), rayLength, fastTrace, floorCorrection, traceActor);
raycasting.createRay(RIGHT90, new Vector3d(0, 1, 0), rayLength, fastTrace, floorCorrection, traceActor);
You can notice that two things has happened. First, all previously added rays were removed (this is done just to be sure that we are starting on clear ground). Then, five new rays were created.
Register the listener that will be called after all rays were initialized (the first result of computation come from UT):
// register listener called when all rays are set up in the UT engine
raycasting.getAllRaysInitialized().addListener(new FlagListener<Boolean>() {
public void flagChanged(Boolean changedValue) {
// once all rays were initialized store the AutoTraceRay objects
// that will come in response in local variables, it is just
// for convenience
left = raycasting.getRay(LEFT45);
front = raycasting.getRay(FRONT);
right = raycasting.getRay(RIGHT45);
}
});
This is the advantage of using Raycasting object over previously presented low level API. You don't have to manually code the mechanism that will wait for initialization of all rays.
Inform Raycasting instance that you don't intend to register any new rays (so the counting of incoming AutoTraceRay objects may start):
// 3. declare that we are not going to setup any other rays
raycasting.endRayInitSequence();
Navigation bot uses a simple reactive algorithm of navigation that
can be in brief described as IF no ray is signalling THEN go
forward ELSE move in opposite direction of the signalling ray.
The algorithm is coded in logic()
method.
Now, let's see how the bot is doing. Start the server with
DM-TrainingDay map by executing
startGamebotsDMServer.bat. Then switch to spectate
mode by right clicking the server node in Netbeans and selecting
action. After the UT client loads,
you will see the raycasting bot navigating through the environment. The
bot will have five rays; however, only three of them are used by the
navigation algorithm. When the ray is green then the ray hasn't collided
with any wall or actor, otherwise the will turn red.