I’ve created a behavior tree with a “Selector” node and added a Behavior Tree Service (BTS) with a tick interval of 0.5 seconds. selector logic selects an enum state based on some game logic criteria and then I use a bunch of task nodes below. problem is that on very first iteration, selector node and behavior tree service never get run unless there is a “wait” node within child tree. What’s happening is that initial blackboard value is set to ‘none’ and there is no appropriate selectors for it, so tree gets stuck and BTS never gets ticked. I think it only fires a tick when an internal counter reaches 0.5 seconds and it starts at 0.0 seconds. internal counter increments from 0.0, but since child tree can’t be evaluated, counter never actually increments and BTS gets stuck. ‘fix’ is to put a wait 1 second node at end of tree… but this is a bad work around. BTS should tick even if none of its children succeed or can be evaluated.
You could initialize your blackboard value before you run your behavior tree, or alternatively you could wait until your blackboard value is set before calling run.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/AI/BehaviorTrees/QuickStart/6/index.html
A null pointer or uninitialized value can be annoying, I definitely agree that it shouldn’t crash script, but it also helps point to a design pattern consideration. One of two methods I mentioned might be more graceful for your implementation than a benign wait.
Hi Slayemin,
I don’t believe this is a bug, though I may be misunderstanding your setup and result from it. If you run a Service before key is set, as Breyarte explains in his workflow below, I would expect Selector to to fail.
As I said, I may not understand fully what you’re describing, however. If you can post some images of your BT and BTS graphs, as well as any other pertinent graphs from Tasks or Decorators below, I can run through it and see if this is expected or if there’s a bug in there. Thanks!
Here’s behavior tree with problem.
Just a heads up: I will be running a booth at SEA-VR 2015 for next day and a half, so I won’t be able to respond to any queries until Thursday.
So what happens if you exclude Wait? Have you paused and stepped backwards through this during PIE? It seems possible it’s running through everything and simply failing because it AttackMode key is not set yet, and you don’t have a default, no-value condition to tell it to do anything else. If that’s case, that’s expected. Or are you seeing something different?
If I exclude wait, service never ticks. service is supposed to switch enum value within blackboard from “none” to a valid one, and then tree selects right branch based on blackboard condition.
It just occurred to me that perhaps order of execution in each node is determined by order of node elements. service is below selector, so it gets executed after selector is processed. Maybe problem was more of a lack of intuitive understanding on my part instead of a bug?
Can I see inside of your Service? It’s difficult for me to follow what you’re saying without that info. Service should fire when node it’s on is reached, regardless of what’s below it.
It might be helpful if you can put this into a small test project and upload it somewhere for me so I can take a look. Let me know if you’re able to do that for me.
Incidentally, it is dangerous to not include something that can succeed as last option in a Selector chain. Without a success, Selector will continue trying each of its nodes indefinitely, and in a circumstance where each will only succeed if a value is set to something other than Null, you can enter a loop that won’t exit in circumstances such as this. I don’t believe that’s problem here, just mentioning it =)
Try running this setup both on Event Receive Tick and Event Receive Activation:
I’ll double check, but Event Receive Tick probably isn’t going to fire as soon as Service is hit. It’s probably waiting for next available Tick.
If that doesn’t resolve issue, please create a small test project and upload it somewhere, and get me a download link so I can see what’s happening in full. Thanks!
Alright, this is weird. I had to upgrade my engine from 4.9.1 to 4.9.2 and then I created an empty project and recreated what I thought would reproduce this bug – except I’m unable to reproduce it. I tried replicating project and problem in 4.9.1 but that also worked as expected. Maybe it’s project specific? Then I migrated repro BT into my main project and that worked as well. Not project specific. Maybe it’s BT specific? It is. I was able to trace it down to one thing and reproduce it:
If a sequence node feeds into selector node, and selector node has a BTS, then selector node will not execute service – unless you place a ‘wait’ node in child tree.
I’ve created necessary blueprints and assets to replicate this issue and added it to file. This can be extracted into a content folder within a third person template project. When you open behavior tree, you can see issue.
Everything you’re showing me is acting as expected. So 3 things:
- You’re using a Sequence > Selector combo off your Root. This is a bit unusual. While this can work, without any safety checks or default responses, it can lead to entire BT failing. If every child of Selector fails, Selector fails and progression moves back up to Sequence. Then, because Sequence’s child failed, Sequence fails back up to Root. None of this will fire again. If you instead use a Selector with Service off Root, and 4 Sequences (each running desired Task), you’ll have a safer method because it will continue attempting to run Sequences.
- Your Service isn’t set to call Tick when it is activated. Adjust this and your setup will work (though I would still recommend adding more default checks and adjusting your Selector and Sequence order)
- Your Selector is set to fail in any case in which AttackMode is not set to one of those 4 values. This is avoided by adding Wait node as you noted, but a different option (that wouldn’t require any sort of waiting) would be to have a fifth option that fires when AttackMode Is Equal To None.
Hope that helps! Looks like this isn’t a bug but an order of operations and sequence of BT nodes problem. Let me know if I’m missing anything to think otherwise. Thanks!
Ah, thanks for help! I didn’t know about that hidden checkbox. Checking that fixes problem.
-
attachment I sent is not my whole BT, it was a section which was about four layers deep and was just bare essentials to demonstrate problem I was getting. In practice, I have a bunch of tasks before and after selector. But I’ll take your notes to heart and re-examine my BT structure to make sure it makes sense.
-
This was fix
-
The “none” value is more of an exception catching value, so if something failed to set attack mode value in blackboard, I’d like to know so I can fix my code / blueprints.
Anyways, thank you again for assistance! I still have a lot to learn about behavior trees