ACSTG AI Cannot See Through Grass
With this mod the AI will lose sight of the player if its line of sight (LOS) is obstructed by grass. Unlike with Real Engine and Dynamic Camo mods, this means you can be hidden while on tarmac, bare ground, with wrong camouflage, you can be prone, crouching or standing upright – and remain hidden – IF enemy AI’s LOS to you is obstructed by grass.
The first two videos above are with the Mod, the 3rd video is default Arma3 (for an easy comparison; coloured indicators are for clarity, they are not part of the mod).
It’s been over a 10 year wait (more if you count Arma 2 etc?), but it is finally in Arma 3. The mod was tested on the default maps – Altis, Stratis, etc, but should work on any map that has a string "grass" in grass texture files name.
How it is without the mod in vanilla Arma3 right now: AI has X-ray vision through grass. It is able to spot the player through the grass and, once spotted, maintain lock despite the player being obstructed by grass and changing directions hundreds of meters away. Playing without grass is not an option (very ugly), same with short grass mods (ugly ). Being unable to disengage and use grass for concealment is also boring, as is being relentlessly pinged by the omniscient AI after the first shots have been fired, and our Dynamic Camo mod/Real Engine mod cover is blown. Short/medium grass looks great in Arma 3 and allows for deeper tactics – when this grass isn’t ignored by the AI that is 🙂
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Move slowly and make use of LCtrl+W and LCtrl+S to gradually change your stance to carefully peek around and through the grass. Fast, abrupt movements can blow your cover.
All (?) AI mods are compatible with this mod, as it does not change anything in the AI logic. It is also compatible with Real Engine and Dynamic Camo mods, since its algorithm is completely different to them.
The mod is doing quite a few calculations, but I have noticed no fps drop with 20 AI simultaneously swarming the player.
Our AI teammates may also use grass for concealment. However, their system is simplified compared to the player’s (more like RE than ACSTG – to reduce the computation load). It works only when our AI teammates crawl through the grass. But, this should be enough to approach and disengage as a concealed unified squad – under many circumstances. See this video for a demo: https://youtu.be/VbTFwcXq_I8
Licensing – standard Arma APL-ND https://www.bohemia.net/community/licenses/arma-public-license-nd .
EDIT: Updated the mod to work in Campaign missions and not just Eden Editor ones. Other minor improvements.
EDIT2: Updated the mod to work in multiplayer. Multiplayer signatures were tested on a sever (big thanks to @Gunter Severloh!) and appear to finally be working. Make sure you delete old bikey files and use the bikey from the current version (ACSTG_2.bikey). The mod needs to run on both the server and the clients.
EDIT3: Added AI teammates’ concealment.
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