What is Cepheus Protocol?

Where other zombie games in the genre have asked "How will you die" (Project Zomboid), Cepheus Protocol dares to ask "How will you survive". Giving you the tools of a recently created new branch called CERC its now your job to tackle how to handle the spreading Pangu Virus. We are dedicated to continuing to work with our community to keep refining Cepheus Protocol till its a true gem. It should be noted that while we embrace critical feedback it should be given in a manner that is respectful and conductive of actually having a conversation. I.E Don't say X is Bad fix it. Say X is bad because of X,Y,Z . Then we can start to have a meaningful conversation. It should be noted naturally all suggestions cannot be implemented but we will keep them in mind for a possible addition in the future depending on scope budget etc.

Vehicle AI Progress

Development Update from Jun 13, 2024 https://youtu.be/6zz49hElQa8?t=1032 In the past we have gotten feedback about how our vehicles were lackluster or for a better word "Crappy". Last Thursday we transitioned the engine to 5.4.2 to take advantage of the latest Chaos Destruction(Production Ready now) and Chaos Vehicle changes. Today i will be presenting the progress we've had in the last week R&Ding the new vehicle physics and adjusting as needed. A lot of time went into learning how Chaos vehicles operate and how to write an AI that understands things like steering, throttle and a break to accurately navigate our growingly complex world.

What is Chaos Vehicles?

https://youtu.be/-lkEOEEKYD0?t=63

What is Chaos Destruction?

https://youtu.be/u3ktiewcLpo?t=32 Note: we will not be allowing full destruction but like mentioned in the last update on Youtube partial destruction in the terms of street lights, fences, walls etc. Preplaced assets in the world to make areas like the center park in Treasure Island far more dynamic so vehicles and explosions can affect the world.

Day 10

Been testing the vehicle in the more tighter-turning environments of the Calypso map! This really exposes some issues with how Unreal's default navigation points sometimes end up in the 'wrong' locations for a vehicle - something we need to investigate and see about improving so vehicles not only can accurately move where we want them to, but also pick good places to move to begin with! On the bright side, it also demonstrates our 'reverse and get back on course' logic. Not perfect, but enough to stop a lot of weird situations from becoming permanent losses! Got some more obstacle improvements in from these tests, and some improvements to 'recovery' in some situations should collision occur. Take a look! https://youtu.be/VtyLsPxkf1Q

Day 11

Gather round CERC recruits a massive improvement to Path Generation in relation to A* was pushed in today that will effectively better take into consideration of said vehicles handling to not create "human" like paths where the next points would require the vehicle to do unreasonable things just to hit all of them upon a move order. Check out the results and extra details below! :LelouchMug: -Updated with a new 'path smoothing' check that cleans out a lot of excess or redundant move waypoints, so the vehicle has less turning and 'fidgeting' to do to hit every point (by having fewer points!) -Not really demonstrated in the vid, but also added improved 'roll safety' so the vehicle will be very likely to remain upright even if you tell the driver to do some wacky stuff Sorry about the low quality (Low Framerate) of the GIF, but wanted to show the full move so had to trim some frames out to make it a reasonable size. That said, take a look! https://youtu.be/O5AgUtCCQ0g

Day 12

Some turns are still suffering but we are still working the problem to wrap them up. We will be entering the next phase soon after we iron out the remaining impact/crash issues. Since we wrote a brand new class next phase is taking this new class and properly integrating with the RTS elements we have already. I.E health bars, selection logic etc. Then we will scale up testing with multiple vehicles and then finally infantry then all of them together. TLDR: Some 'predictive turning' logic has been added, to help smooth out movement between points and make turning a little bit more natural! However, small obstacles and 'small corridors' are currently issues still for the vehicle, as seen in the GIF. They're gonna be next on the list, most likely! https://youtu.be/LVYhn82HWyE

Day 13

Testing in more environments revealed some flaws with the pathfinding, including sometimes where the vehicle would 'see a clear line' to a target and start moving there, without recognizing the ground. Short GIF, but the 'orange line' you see near the beginning indicates the vehicle recognizing that there's no straight line across, so he goes a longer way. A lot of this comes down to a bunch of little things that add up, but it's working! Also been working on improved reverse logic so it's more responsive when recovering from an impact (though not demonstrated in this GIF). https://youtu.be/UCwNgfzVgac

Day 14

The Story so Far

So we brainstormed some solutions and did some R&D last night since as many of you saw in the last GIF's our vehicles have HUGE issues going through narrow/tighter corridors. Apologies about the time its taking to build this but we want to do it right the first time and ensure these vehicles are ready for just about anything. That means hundreds of hours testing and adjusting when they fail the vast amount of "courses" we have identified that will push the Vehicle AI to its limits. This is a huge improvement but i still feel it need a bit more refinement to make it look a bit more natural. Possibly add some Post Processing to the Navigation calculation to add more "dynamic curving" based on the "degree" of the next calculated turn to "soften" it up.

Why are we concerned about this?

Vehicles need to understand their limits dynamically based on a VAST criteria of variables so they understand how to make turns accurately and minimize slow "periods". I've personally studied a lot of player bases and you guys like to build "Realistic" checkpoints and gates like the attached pictures so making it so the vehicles understand ramping down speeds and generating "curved" paths instead of crazy 90* degrees is all but required.

New pathfinding 'turn smooth' logic: the pink sphere here indicates a spot where the pathfinding detected a sharp turn with short space to do it, so it 'scooted' the point out to widen the turn so the vehicle can fit. Take a look! https://youtu.be/we__KsK0V6Q

Conclusion:

This concludes the last week of progress we've had on the vehicle. We will continue to tweak and R&D the vehicles as they stand till they are perfect. As seen in the last video(Day 13) turning needs some adjustment and some corrections are still needed before we scale up the tests with multiple vehicles and start implementing a custom "avoidance" system to stop vehicles of differing move orders from crashing into each other when possible. The Development update video linked above will have further details. After all of this is implemented we will convert all current vehicles to this system and implement the Abrams, MLRS and Bradley to officially start the CERC/Doctrines card outlined here. https://cepheusprotocol.notion.site/Cepheus-Protocol-31f1b25ce00148d6844825f4a0c0bc08?p=633fd2afddcd45df9fcf351b62e73647&pm=c