Birds & Biterfish actors

[[NBK]DxTrEm3Fx]

I have a couple of questions about the bird and biter fish actors. Do they only show up when you play the map on the server? When I do a practice session I will only see one bird in my map and I have 3. And the bitter fish never show up at all. I'm looking for a tutorial about these types of actors so I can set up their properties correctly based on my needs below.


The Birds:
I just want them to fly in a circle not be aggressive or attack players or bots. I do not want you to be able to kill them. So I want them visible for the duration of gameplay while in the map.

BiterFish School:
I want them to protect the redeemer that is located in the water and be very aggressive towards bots and players. You should be able to kill the bitter fish and if you do kill them I would like them to respawn after a certain amount of time.

https://dxfxhouse.com/images/bird.JPG
https://dxfxhouse.com/images/biterfish.JPG

[OjitroC]

I have a couple of questions about the bird and biter fish actors. Do they only show up when you play the map on the server? When I do a practice session I will only see one bird in my map and I have 3. And the bitter fish never show up at all.

No, they should show up playing off-line.

The birds will be non-aggressive - are they all placed somewhere where they can circle freely (perhaps you need to set a GoalTag if you want them to fly a particular route, though not sure about this)? How big is the 'space' they are in? Are they high enough to 'circle' without hitting obstacles? Birds in relatively small spaces will hit obstacles and become stuck. If they are fairly low and likely to get hit by projecticles then they will need a lot of health to survive a whole game.

The water texture needs to be translucent for BiterFish to be seen. If killed, they won't respawn - I not quite sure how you would go about respawning them, possibly need a Creature/ThingFactory and Spawnpoints but quite how you tie that to the destruction of the original School I don't know.

[Barbie]

I do not want you to be able to kill them [The Birds].

Set Pawn>ReduceDamageType to "All" and Pawn>ReduceDamagePct to "1". So they cannot be hurt.

You should be able to kill the bitter fish and if you do kill them I would like them to respawn after a certain amount of time.

That can easily be done by a custom version of BiterFishSchool. I have done similar in map MH-Thra_Fortress: every time a player enters the water, some fishes are respawned; I used a custom CreatureFactory for that.

[OjitroC]

A bit more info on birds from Steven Polge's Unreal Creature Care and Feeding Guide

Spoiler

Although birds are flockpawns, they are added individually. They have several different selectable behaviours. By default, they will fly around randomly in an area whose size is determined by their CircleRadius attribute. Note that this area should be relatively free of obstructions, as birds are not smart. If bCircle is set, they will soar around a circle with radius CircleRadius. If GoalTag is set, they will not move until triggered, and then quickly fly to their GoalActor. Birds are now unlit by default. If you want a bird to show off cool light/shadows, then set its bUnlit property to false. Birds that you don’t see no longer cost anything. However, be sure not to use birds in big open areas where they can be seen from far away, as the full cost of rendering their mesh still exists, even if they are smaller than a pixel.

[[NBK]DxTrEm3Fx]

Hello All,
The birds have plenty of room to circle the area that they are placed in. And only the bird in the Blue flag seems to spawn. see screenshots.
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/bird1.png
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/bird2.png
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/bird3.png
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/bird4.png
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/bird5.png

As far as the water goes. It's is transparent you can see in, and the fish can see out. Even when I enter the water within their radius, they are a no show. I will try deleting and re-adding the actor.
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/water1.png

Should I be using the BiterFishSchool or just the single biter fish actor. I want to use the school of fish.
https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/biteractor.jpg

I will also check out Steven Polge's Unreal Creature Care and Feeding Guide. And I will check out the settings posted in the replies above.

Thank you for all of your help. It is greatly appreciated.
Dx.

[OjitroC]

Should I be using the BiterFishSchool or just the single biter fish actor. I want to use the school of fish.

Yes, you should use the BiterFishSchool. I'm sure you have but is the water area correctly set up as a WaterZone?

On the birds - have you used F5 to cycle through the view of the scriptedpawns in the map (as this may indicate what's happening with the birds that don't appear)? Is there anything in the log that says something about the birds/biterfishschool?

[[NBK]DxTrEm3Fx]

Hello OjitriC,
Yes, I'm sure it is set up as an actual water zone. I mean, I swim around in it, and so do the bots.

https://dxfxhouse.com/maps/waterzone.jpg

https://youtu.be/sx8IkOavXUY

Bird flying around.
https://youtu.be/mcsB-nMT9qg

I will investigate the F5 technic you describe in your post.

[sektor2111]

On the birds - have you used F5 to cycle through the view of the scriptedpawns in the map...

Bird IS NOT Scriptedpawn in any way.

For this problem stock has nothing else than spawning and stacking BiterFishSchools until... idk, I don't test insane things. As Levels there are Aggressive or Not Aggressive - Extreme Aggressive doesn't exist.
For having aggressive fishies spawned all time, it's needed a custom BiterFishSchool tracking these creatures from time to time and bringing them back after a while if they have been eliminated by a blast or something; or other custom fishies which are capable to re-spawn after let's say 10-15 seconds in theory. These also are NOT part of stock they have to be written. Mapping in a creative way has options but these options are requiring a bit of Script knowledge.
Even a custom water-zone might be capable to spawn whatever custom fishies unlinked with any "Master-School" just wild creatures aggressive fired up by "Event ActorEntered" or how it's called...

EDIT: PS - Plain stock servers/games are not accepting Non-Players pawns like birds rabbits etc. Perhaps not everywhere can be seen all this work.

[OjitroC]

Bird IS NOT Scriptedpawn in any way.

No, OK it's not but you know what I meant - you can cycle through the 'pawns' in the map using F5 (on a pedantic and non-serious note, you will notice that I didn't capitalise 'scriptedpawn' so I wasn't necessarily referring only to ScriptedPawns - birds are pawns and they are scripted ).

[sektor2111]

birds are pawns and they are scripted

I thought they are aliens

[[NBK]DxTrEm3Fx]

I've ditched the biter fish not worth the effort and the birds will just stay doing whatever it is they will do. If I could get this damn masked texture fixed the map will be completed and released.