A question for those of you that make mods

To the modders,

1: How possible is it to create an AI NPC that can find holes in the map that can be used to under mesh and log these to a file for the map to be patched before release.

2: Would it be possible to create an AI NPC that is programmed to play like a human and test the game mechanics for exploits.

If this is possible could this then be expanded with regard to cheaters on servers, would this then same AI NPC be able to in real time detect and suspend the players using these exploits and cheats in a live server?

If this were possible you could have the AI similar to the archivist that could be on various points on the map that would have a direct link to Funcom or Zendesk, and would be able to act accordingly in real time whilst informing them of the exploits and cheaters.

You would be able to inform the AI from a selection regarding exploit or cheat similar to the selection when reporting a player, where on the map, and from the players list who is cheating or exploiting.

This AI NPC could collect the evidence as it is happening, and if the criteria has been met have the ability to suspend whilst investigated the player there and then, this would eliminate players abusing the system, overloading the Zen desk with support tickets.

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I think you are overestimating both the capabilities of AI and Funcom.

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I did reply to this in the discord where it was also asked :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. 0%
  2. No
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Yes I asked in several places to get a wide range of views as possible but as I answered in discord I was unaware that the mechanice needed are already within the game, it is just a case of joining the dots.
I did also thank you all for your thoughts also:)

So we’re doing the good ol “I’m going to ask those who make mods and might know, then completely disregard anything they say because I know better”?
I’m totally fine with that actually :slight_smile:

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Most people rhino/drawbridge to mesh. Sinkhole does have a gap you can climb into though.

Not at all I genuinely asked the question in several forums and also researched various sites to see and it was then I realised how this could be done, nothing about I know better at all.
As for disregarding what you say I took what you said but I found it did not match up with what I had found out within the dev kit and the various sites the moment I actually realised was loading up creative mode for the first time and seeing the commands that were availiable.
As for Ai maybe that was the incorrect thought probably more like a scripted npc, all of the abilities to acomplish this are within the game itself it is that it would have to be done at a dev level, which probably has about 1% chance of being achieved.
I asked people and you gave me your thoughts of which I took into account,but the motive behind this is nothing to do with who knows best or credit kudos whatever it is more about seeing all of the players especially over the weekend losing so much due to these cheats that I am determined to try to find a solution is all.

No more and no less
If you have a genuine interest in this then I would be glad to share what I have found out with yourself, just pm me and I can explain.

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I like where your head’s at, giving Funcom the old Bethesda treatment and brainstorming/ turning to the modding community to fill in the gaps.

First, you’ll have to stop using “AI” and use something more like “A.I.”. No need to play stupid to over 1 billion people who spell it with love. :smile:

It is obvious that when it comes to handing over their work to modders, Bethesda are champions.
It was the modders who fixed the bugs instead of Bethesda and Bethesda found nothing better to do than to put the mods in question on their special and anniversary version.
So even if Bethesda are incompetent, at least they know who to turn to to correct their games.

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I wasn’t lying to you or “talking out of my ass”.
The idea itself is just horrible to begin with because it’s trying to utilize things in a scope that they were simply not designed for. I understand how it would make sense as a player since NPCs exist in the game… so why not make them do stuff…, but that’s just not how things work.

Actually in your idea the biggest limiting factor is the NPC and AI itself… It’s simply not needed… if you wanted to do automated tests on a map you can set up automated tests… I am pretty sure there is software out there that can analyze the topography of a map… or if not, a purpose built one can be made. That does not need to do anything with ANY of the gameplay elements such as NPCs, so coding an NPC to go walk the map and make some sort of a “Role-playing wanderer diagnostic tool” is just not a viable option… 99% of the challenge would actually be making the NPC be able to walk around like that… and not the automated map test which can be done way easier with external tools if there really is a need for it.

Furthermore it would be horrible practice wasting the resources of live servers on diagnostic tools that should be done in a specialized non-live environment and not at the expense of players and simultaneously on all servers. We’re talking about the map, which is a static asset.

But literally every answer from anyone who even remotely knows what they’re talking about was a straight up no, so I’m not sure why that’s not good enough for you and what “evidence” could you have possibly found to make you believe that they’re wrong. I mean sure… NPCs exist… you can check the environment around them… that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea… you can check the area without the NPC too :man_shrugging:
Like I said before though, if you want to waste your time on this, don’t let me stop you.
Good luck :slight_smile:

everything is possible. Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality :slight_smile:

My personal opinion is that self-developing and learning artificial intelligence will be used in the security sector within 20 years.

I would also like to add that both attackers and defenders will benefit from artificial intelligence. Resources and processing power will determine who wins. and the corporate ones, that is, the protectors, will win. Greater processing power consumes electricity. something that a hacker group cannot access.

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I understand this with regards to live testing a map patcher and was not advocating this in the slightest, although it may have seemed that way when I posed the question, they were two different things really.

I will share what I have thought about here and see what ideas come out of it.

First one with regards to testing the map.

Map Hole finder

Viewport_Hole_Test {to test where textures and mesh meet or not as is the case for holes.}

This would have to use the grids within the map and test each one and publish hits to {Hole_Found}

Hole_Found would store the exact coordinates within an array and publish this,using ue4’s ( Observer Pattern)

A seperate viewport could then subscribe to the coordinates that have been published by the previous viewport to go and determine if it can do one of the following

Condition 1: either use a placeable within the hole that can be used to store items or a respawn point for player. (Already in the game)

Condition 2: be used for placing foundations in, and in turn placeables or spawn points for players. (Already in the game)

Hole_Build_Tester:

If
Either Condition 1: either use a placeable within the hole that can be used to store items or a respawn point for player. (Already in the game)

OR Condition 2: be used for placing foundations in, and in turn placeables or spawn points for players. (Already in the game)

Then Call Fill_Hole
Return

Fill_Hole Would subscribe to Hole_Found and allow devs to do what they do when patching holes here.

The second with regards to a realtime reporting system:

Realtime chest detector:

Using the existing funcionality within the game that allows you to report a player this could also call {ShowPlayers}

The reporting player would then select the player that he has seen cheating this could then be published using ue4’s ( Observer Pattern)

The admin viewport could then use {ToggleDebugHUD} to retrieve the information regarding the player and could then call {Invisibility} folowed by ViewPlayer [PlayerName] which it has subscribed to.

This could then actually watch the player and record with exact coordinates and timestamp what the player is doing from the playeers perspective.

It would then determine based upon criteria already in the game (as to undermesh,one kill,lag switch)

Lag switch could use the players ping and the distance between the reported player vs distance to killed player to determine based upon internal game values whether this is indeed lag switch or bad ping.

If this distance is not within parameters of the game taking into account the ping then it could set a flag

The flag could then store this as a possible lag switch one hit kill and could then continue to watch the player to see if this is a one off or a repeat.

If the suspected player again does this then the flag is set again and maybe third time the player is disconnected from server.

It could then inform funcom via the reporting ability within the game that this players actions needs investigating as a possible cheater.

To prevent overusing and spamming the reporting system a player may only report 1 time every hour or something like this a cooldown period so as not to spam the system.

This is what I meant that the mechanics for this were already in the game and were actively in use in one form or another, it would have to be done at a dev level and would not really require them to do really any content creating just reworking existing things that they already have it in place.

I apologise if I came across as a knowall as this was not my intention, my wife tells me this sometimes but I can get a bit of a one tracked mind and in this mode forget myself.

Any thoughts on above is appreciated and can either sink the ship before it sails or enhance the idea to create a viable working solution to present to funcom in the hope that they may do something with the cheats.

This sort of realtime compiling of evidence would eliminate false flag reporting, abuse of the system to get a player or clan banned, and prevent a backlog of reporting tickets at zen desk regarding cheaters on a server.

Noted :wink: I will endeavour from this moment on to try to use A.I. :heart: from now on instead of AI.

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i think the main point is not about npc :slight_smile: , but to find a way to reduce way to cheat in this game and having the zendesk system working better than actually… and focus on hacking

most usual cheats actually are lagswitch, and building done in sky or undermesh.
let’s open our mind, i am not dev at all, but i know in build functions as toggledebug hd, and abiltity for the game to know exactly where the player is in 3d world coordinate in real time. accessible by anybody by shift + alt + l and probably lot of others tools built ingame that i ignore.

now well if nothing to do to reduce cheaters in this game, let uninstall it :slight_smile:

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I don’t think you’re getting the main point, man. Cyc is trying to come up with ideas about how to make things better for all of us. Rather than shooting down his ideas in some kind of peeing contest about who is more technically proficient, you can apply that energy to make things better.

Anyone who has been on the forums for the past week can see there is a dire need for improved security. It would be a chad move if you put that big brain of yours to work devising a solution, my friend.

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I think I perfectly got the point…
He was asking modders if some sort of automated NPC moderator / exploit finder could be made… As a modder who knows this game very well I gave them the factually correct answer, that it’s not… this had nothing to do with any kind of “peeing contest”, I was merely trying to save them time.

Now… if if makes you and the previous commenter feel better… I can lie… and we can spin a lovely sci-fi story about how we’re going to do this and include all the programming jargon that chatGPT can spit out… but that’s not going to make it any more real… In fact I welcome you to research it and let me know if you find ONE example of this ever being done in any videogame… not to mention on an old version of unreal engine 4.

Sure, we can fantasize that in 20 years such systems might exist and AI will be actively moderating Conan Exiles, however I’m not sure how that’s going to help in the current situation.
What needs to happen right now is for Funcom to find out how the current iteration of these hack programs work… and release a patch to the game that will make them stop working.
As far as moderation goes, typically that’s not something anyone would code into the videogame and try to automate, you would be the first to complain if some bot wiped your base because it “decided” it needs to be wiped based on whatever automated code.
What I did mention even in the discord reply I gave to this is that perhaps they could use some AI tools to process player reports faster and easier separate the bs ones from the legit ones. That I could see being helpful if it drastically reduced their ticket response time.

Anyway, feel free to ignore everything I said and carry on with the science fiction talk. No need to attack me simply because I answered the question truthfully that was asked of modders in the OP. :slight_smile: Personally I will not post in this thread again.

This was my inital thought yes but it was made into 2 ideas, my inclusion of the word A.I. waas regarding that we as people get tired,miss things where as an A.I. should not, also it has a single task and could be automated this was all, nothing to do with programming jargon that chatGPT can spin out as I have never even used chatGPT.

My interests with computers stems back from zx spectrums,commodore 64’s and bbc micros as these were the home computers of the day alonside the atari consoles, the capabilities of the machines were such that for some games it would take almost an hour to load from the cassette only to get to the last 5 minutes and it to fail quite frequently due to the azimuth settings within tape machine.

I have always been fascinated with computers, electronics, taking things apart to see how they work the two are so interlinked that one really does not exist without the other, this naturally led to looking underneath the hood to see what makes things tick,this was in the days of dos.

When building pc’s installing os’s you cannot avoid the tools that are required to troubleshoot why a pc does not boot, or why a clients remote connection is not printing or why a database is not being seen by all the clients in the network, the tools are what enables us to diagnose the issues, and I was curious in how they worked, so in this type of setting looking under the hood was a natural progression.

None of this is relevant to my original post except as to the why something is not working as intended, very often by understanding what is taking place a solution can be found using the tools that are already in place.

Until I joined this forum I have never engaged in a forum let alone discord as I never felt the need to, I never gamed online other than with a private server with my sons, which was Ark until they got me Conan, I was hooked, but they after a while burnt out with playing the game so I ventured into the realm of the officials.

Issues with the game led me naturally to here, so for me this is still all new and fresh where as for many of you it is a very old game, this is the way with my sons which is ok but I still love the game.

When rewiring cars or the house if I had no understanding of the concepts of electricity and apply this knowledge in a practical sense then I would either damage the car,house or myself or even worse my kids, so this had to be right,I first learnt with regards to household electrics from a 99p book from the second hand store, I applied this knowledge to enable me and my 2 young sons back when I was a single parent to have heating on in the house in the way of storage heaters, and when the electricity board came to connect the circuit it was mssing one thing and that was meter tails,I had read about these but had glossed over the pages as at the time it did not seem relevant to the heating circuit, they came back once I had the meter tails in place and the circuit had no issues, it was safe for my kids to touch and more importantly we had heat.

This was some 30 years ago now but learning and applying what I have learnt I have always done, the practical side of it is where you get hands on and then the theoretical side starts to make even more sense.

I am never about insulting, ot belittling people I like to assist people in any way I can especially when I see others struggling, when I see the threads that I saw over the weekend and see that this has been going on for years I wondered about a solution, hence my origianl post, but this was not after speaking with anyone or thing other than my time in researching the mounds of information that is available, and whilst the original thought was with regards to A.I. it is but a thought and an idea.

I apolgise for any offense caused anyone as this was and is never my intention just looking for solutions to a program that is making alot of players unhappy and hence the many posts over the weekend with regards to their loss.

I did not realise that posting on a forum could cause so much agitation I think for me it is probably better to refrain from posting in future.

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It’s just a narrative backed up by roleplay. Sometimes it is not obvious. :slightly_smiling_face:

“Can we do X?”
“No, and here’s why.”
“Okay, but what if we could? Let’s open our minds!”

When you propose an idea that won’t work, someone explains that it won’t work, and then you propose the same idea elsewhere, that’s not “brainstorming”. That’s ignoring the experts you asked a question simply because you didn’t like the answer.

As @Xevyr explained, you can’t do this with in-game “AI”. More importantly, even if you could, that would simply mean that there is a deterministic algorithm that would allow you to detect these things, in which case you would be much better off implementing that algorithm outside the game, as a verification tool, rather than implementing it in the game and wasting precious server resources.

That said, I don’t expect this repetition of his explanation to have any effect. So far, the vast majority of this thread has boiled down to people who don’t have the knowledge berating the dude who does.

Oh, and also Johnny boy over there spamming noise the same way that got him banned for being disruptive, but that was because serious engineering groups don’t tolerate people who disrupt discussions with their gibberish. It won’t happen here.

Anyway, I’ll leave you all to enjoy your “open-minded” discussion.

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