What makes a mob good?

Oil_boi
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What makes a mob good?

by Oil_boi » Post

What makes a mob good? Quality, wise. Is it:
  • The way it moves?
  • What it does?
  • The way it acts around players?
  • How light weight it is?
  • The loot it drops?
  • The way it interacts with the world?
What mobs would people like to see in the game?
Should they be difficult to deal with or dumb and easy to kill?
Should they know where a player is at all times or should they look where they are and attack them?
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by firefox » Post

since things like invisibility potions exist, mobs shouldn't know where the player is at all times.
they shouldn't be able to see through walls either.
if possible, they should have the same vision field as the player, so you can sneak away or surprise attack when they turn their back to you.

when they don't see a target (not all have to aggressively chase nearby players) they could act based on their design type.
like golems would just stand around, guarding the place, and plant monsters could walk in the direction of where the sun currently is.
mountain mobs could move downwards while cave mobs attempt to climb upwards.

hp, armor and item drops are easy to adjust. behaviour is most complex and probably what matters most.
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Hume2 » Post

Oil_boi wrote:
  • The way it moves?
Yes. A mob shouldn't kill itself voluntarily.
Oil_boi wrote:
  • What it does?
Yes. It should do meaningful actions.
Oil_boi wrote:
  • The way it acts around players?
Yes. Mobs shouldn't ignore players.
Oil_boi wrote:
  • How light weight it is?
Yes. The mobs shouldn't lag the game much.
Oil_boi wrote:
  • The loot it drops?
Yes. The mobs should drop items which are useful and otherwise unobtainable.
Oil_boi wrote:
  • The way it interacts with the world?
Yes. If such interaction makes sense.

Also how they look like and what sounds they make.
Oil_boi wrote: What mobs would people like to see in the game?
Some mobs which are both useful and challenging.
Oil_boi wrote: Should they be difficult to deal with or dumb and easy to kill?
It depends on how frequently they spawn. I prefer many weak mobs rather than few strong mobs because when there are a few strong mobs, it's easy all the time until you meet a mob and then you get frustrated.
Oil_boi wrote: Should they know where a player is at all times or should they look where they are and attack them?
The latter, if it won't make them too laggy.
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Festus1965 » Post

The way it interacts with the world?
not making lag
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by pampogokiraly » Post

Most mobs are dumb right now. They either walk randomly or they follow you and attack you until you are out of reach.. In my opinion they should do tactic moves if they are attacking you, like one hit and run, fortify and if you hit him he instantly attacks you back.. or doing some fancy jumping to dodge your attacks and trying to go to your back.
For mobs that are just moving randomly i think they should always keep a little distance unless you tame them etc.. and they should panic if you hit them but (running away, run in circles around you or or just run and jump around all over the place). I think the other things are not so important (other than being not laggy)
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Eran » Post

Mostly the way it's integrated in the game. There needs to be a reason to interact with the mob. For example the loot can be required for certain crafting recipes, the mob could guard something or it could actively hunt the player. Then the interaction has to be fun somehow. Attack patterns or in general behaviour patterns as pampogokiraly mentioned are a great way to do this and they don't require making mobs actually smart.

There definetely isn't a single thing that makes a mob good, but the most important thing is probably being lightweight because if it's not that's kind of a dealbreaker for many people.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Sokomine » Post

A good mob ought to be aware that the player exists and observe the player carefully from far away.

Often a simplistic behaviour that still leaves room enough for the player to interpret as intelligent is best.
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Sokomine » Post

[deleted double posting due to timeout]
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by maikerumine » Post

Oil_boi wrote:What makes a mob good? Quality, wise. Is it:
  • The way it moves?
  • What it does?
  • The way it acts around players?
  • How light weight it is?
  • The loot it drops?
  • The way it interacts with the world?
What mobs would people like to see in the game?
Should they be difficult to deal with or dumb and easy to kill?
Should they know where a player is at all times or should they look where they are and attack them?

Ahh, where to begin. :)

Firstly, as for MT's sake, to have api hard coded into engine.

My fav things for a mob to have:
Wielding items
Armour wearing capability
Able to have a somewhat unique ai / personality.
Able to choose what happens on death i.e. drop items, place node, spawn more entities, make a special lighting effect / env change.
To be lightweight of course.


I love RND's original smart mobs path-finding ai, as it were to break blocks, pillar up to get you and use a baritone esqe algorithm to find you by best route possible. In conjunction with path-finding, having the smarts to not walk into lava or drown if need be during hunt.

Personality wise:
Speed
Aggression
HP
Size (maybe model variable scaling)
Loot variables
Possible speech / interaction
Model variables
Texture variables


Mind you, most of this can be achieved already with mobs redo, however it is lua heavy, and each server tick asks quite a bit from these entities, if this were to somehow be hard coded into engine for performance sake, then this would be an unimaginable increase to the value of the MT engine.

From my experience, the more code in api = laggier mobs, and everybody wants mobs.
Just my thoughts.

-mm
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runs
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by runs » Post

No laggy. But an API.

Minecraft mod mobs do lag a lot. So the problem is:
- Mobs always introduce lag.
- It is preferable a short set of mobs than multiple mobs.
- Mintetes should harcode some parts of the entity functions.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by LMD » Post

runs wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 23:40
No laggy. But an API.

Minecraft mod mobs do lag a lot. So the problem is:
- Mobs always introduce lag.
- It is preferable a short set of mobs than multiple mobs.
- Mintetes should harcode some parts of the entity functions.
Mobs don't introduce lag if they are implemented properly. But sure, linear searches like the current get_objects_inside_radius do introduce lag.

Some parts should be hardcoded, but there needs to be a compromise between modding flexibility & builtin bloat.
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by FreeLikeGNU » Post

I wrestle with this all the time! I wanted mobs as a tribes with a variety of jobs influence the world. i don't want mobs to just be aggressive or passive, but react to the players interaction. If the player attacks goblins they (as a group in an area) become progressively aggressive, and if the player gives more gifts the mobs become more friendly. I want the mobs to help build a story about their experience with the player.

Since minetest games are generally sandbox, the mobs should be flexible enough to compliment whatever the players do. All of this may be at the cost of performance as our computers are becoming more powerful and more efficient, however a mob mod should *easily* allow the player or server admin to pick and chose how much resource the mobs use and also what kind of interactions are available.

A good mob should also include as much source material as possible. Minetest seems to me, a game about building and as Libre Software, minetest promotes constructive sharing. I personally find the fun in making over playing and so I provide all the material I use to make the mob (gimp.xcf and blender scenes) so that others can see how its made or easily customize their own game.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Linuxdirk » Post

Oil_boi wrote:
Thu Apr 02, 2020 09:07
What makes a mob good?
A good mob “feels natural”. Smooth movement, intelligent pathfinding, ranged attack works even with obstacles between the mob and the attack target. A mob should seek cover if attacked with bow and arrow for example. If a mob has low health it should flee from melee attacks. Mobs should attack in coordinated groups (melee, ranged, heavy armor mob for protection) instead of individually attacking the target.

Non-hostile mobs should also have smooth movement and intelligent pathfinding. The mobs should also react to hostile mobs (i.e. hiding/fleeing) and should interact with the player. Following them after feeding, can be lured with food, should be able to search and eat dropped food items, should not jump over fences, should be breedable without despawing.

Ambiguous mobs should react to the player. They should be curious what the player is doing but stay away from the player. For example: coming near the player and if the player focuses on them they should run away or try to hide. When attacked they go into hostile mode, when left alone they do nothing hostile. Those mobs could depend on environment, too. At night or when it’s dark they either become hostile or peaceful.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by runs » Post

Let's see, we ask more of Minetest than Minecraft. They are asked to make super-intelligent mobs, and to do everything, when for many years Minecraft had pretty dumb mobs, cool but simple ones.

It's one thing for MTG not to include mobs, but it's quite another for people to ask for them and make wonders. Now it turns out we require Minetest to have their mobs do a triple somersault when they are in front of a cliff...

And Minecraft has lag in its mobs (of mods).

And the engine is not ready for mobs, let's see if Sorcerykid and Thermos do something else in this regard.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by FreeLikeGNU » Post

runs wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:02
Let's see, we ask more of Minetest than Minecraft.
If we were satisfied with MC why would we put effort into MT? Sure, there are those of us who just want a free-as-in-beer or even a free-as-in-speech Libre alternative to MC. I get the feeling though that most of us that stick around really just want to make stuff that is not possible or otherwise very difficult to add or change in other games.

Making a clone of MC is probably the hardest thing because people will have idiosyncratic expectations that the mod/game author wont expect. As MC will change over time, users will want new thing X or some will want old-school MC v 1.x. Its a moving target in a black-box.

MT's strength is that it can be SO much more than MC and do things that a MC just cannot simply because it is not Libre. A good mob takes advantage of this and demonstrates that anyone can be a part of MT in their own way.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by AndrOn » Post

I think the point of mobs is to inject purpose in a world: there's no pint in building big castles if there is no sense of danger when going outside!
Also, if they don't have anything you want, there is no point going out on a hunt! So we need good loot!
Lastly, I think it's important to make them easily farmable because it's always been a nice thing to do in MC/MT.

I think that trying to make mobs complex and clever would be a lot of work for few rewards in fun gameplay!

Side note: I like the idea (from MC end fortresses) of dungeons with very difficult mobs guarding a high-reward loot!
Another idea was to only spawn hostile mobs from spawners hidden in caves near the surface, mobs would be flooding the landscape at nighttime from the caves, but the player could clean an area from the spawners (with each spawner being also a tiny dugeon with loot) it would be a game of conquest to bring peace to the land.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by pampogokiraly » Post

The more complex and more smart mobs are very good, to have fun at farming them.
The complexity of a mob makes their farming much more interesting because you have more ways to mess with their ai.

Also, the more different features they have (teleport, fly, shield-wield, etc...), the more interesting and more fun they are :D

In my opinion: Make them smart and clever with interesting features, and don't care too much about lag (I'm saying this with a very bad pc... lol)
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by AndrOn » Post

pampogokiraly wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 08:42
The more complex and more smart mobs are very good, to have fun at farming them.
The complexity of a mob makes their farming much more interesting because you have more ways to mess with their ai.

Also, the more different features they have (teleport, fly, shield-wield, etc...), the more interesting and more fun they are :D

In my opinion: Make them smart and clever with interesting features, and don't care too much about lag (I'm saying this with a very bad pc... lol)
I agree, adding features and mechanics to mobs allows making fun farms, features like creepers being repelled by cats in minecraft, (though optimisation-wise I'd rather them being afraid of a cactus node for example)
But in terms of pure AI cleverness I think that what Oil_boi did recently with crafter mobs pathfinding is more than enough to feel chased when a creeper is following us. Animation-wise they could have more attack animations. (scarier and easier to dodge at the same time!)

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by Astrobe » Post

Regarding AI improvements, I suggest to read this HN subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22849387

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by runs » Post

pampogokiraly wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 08:42
The more complex and more smart mobs are very good, to have fun at farming them.
The complexity of a mob makes their farming much more interesting because you have more ways to mess with their ai.

Also, the more different features they have (teleport, fly, shield-wield, etc...), the more interesting and more fun they are :D

In my opinion: Make them smart and clever with interesting features, and don't care too much about lag (I'm saying this with a very bad pc... lol)
No AI -> Shit -> Implement AI -> Lag -> Shit

Users are going to complain anyway... LOL

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by pampogokiraly » Post

runs wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 11:45
Users are going to complain anyway... LOL
There is no way that users are not going to complain ;D
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Re: What makes a mob good?

by runs » Post

Nifty-Neutron wrote:
Mon Jun 15, 2020 17:19
runs wrote:
Fri Jun 12, 2020 12:02
Let's see, we ask more of Minetest than Minecraft. They are asked to make super-intelligent mobs, and to do everything, when for many years Minecraft had pretty dumb mobs, cool but simple ones.

It's one thing for MTG not to include mobs, but it's quite another for people to ask for them and make wonders. Now it turns out we require Minetest to have their mobs do a triple somersault when they are in front of a cliff...

And Minecraft has lag in its mobs (of mods).

And the engine is not ready for mobs, let's see if Sorcerykid and Thermos do something else in this regard.
If you mean my reply by this,
I didn't mean to compare MineTest with MineCraft.
For the AI bit I meant that the mob shouldn't be quirky meaning it should do what it is intended to do when it is intended to do it,for example if the mob is asked to attack the player when he is in a 20 nodes rage it should do that,not wonder in a random direction,the mob shouldn't make weird decisions like constantly smashing his head on a wall trying to pathfind through it,You can even make a mob with no AI yet still manage to make it cool(maybe a trader standing still and selling you stuff(not the brightest of ideas but you get the point)).
and for the lag I know there is no way to eliminate lag but at least simple mobs should not be using a RIDICULOUS amount of resources,it should be like:
More intelligent mob with more capabilities==> more resource needed.
At last,I'm not here to command people (do what ever you want in this game it's a sandbox),
and please runs do not consider this as me attacking you(I'm not the best at talking to people so forgive me if I sound offensive)
Best wishes,
Nifty-Neutron.
I don't feel concerned.

I feel the same way you do. I created a mod, called Petz, and the only reason was that you say, the mobs of mobs_redo banging on the walls. I made a request on these same forums for it to be corrected, and I was told that it was for performance reasons and that they only hit their heads against the walls 4 times before doing anything else. I stayed a bit WTF (like after six years, keep it up that issue) and decided to create Petz under mobs_redo only to correct that, Petz exists only because of that annoying no-bug bug. Funny but true.

Best Regards.

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by TenPlus1 » Post

mobs redo is always being worked on (time permitting) and issues resolved one way or another, the wall detection and turning is a bit better now :)

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

pampogokiraly wrote:
Sat Jun 13, 2020 08:42
The more complex and more smart mobs are very good, to have fun at farming them
and don't care too much about lag (I'm saying this with a very bad pc... lol)
need both dumb and smart mobs . just like some farm animals .one cow is smart enough to put its legs through a barred gate and squeeze through to the next field and return by the same method . all the rest just stand and moo at this genius cow.
Project BrutalTest...hide your Petz

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Re: What makes a mob good?

by runs » Post

TenPlus1 wrote:
Tue Jun 16, 2020 10:19
mobs redo is always being worked on (time permitting) and issues resolved one way or another, the wall detection and turning is a bit better now :)
Yes, of course, I respect mobs_redo and your excellent work on it. Taste is in the variety. Anyone who uses whatever he wants, that's it.

:-)

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