Pets and NPC's follow paths, can player?

[Apoc]

With a proper navmesh (assuming the entire world is generated), should allow you to go pretty much anywhere and never be stuck. (Save for the fear/knockback etc, glitches into/behind game objects) The more efficient way of checking obstacles and obstructions, is through the navmesh itself, as you can load that data quicker, and it has the benefit of being in your own code (which makes it that much easier to work with)

Although, that is double-dipping in the long run. (Loading the current map stuff from memory, and parsing it is a lot more efficient than loading your nav mesh from disk, then doing all your mesh generating and such)

Simply leaving 'void space' in your navmesh would be a much more efficient method of collision detection than actively doing collision checks. (If you already know you'll run into something there, why the **** would you even let your nav system know it's there? What it doesn't know about, it ignores, and goes around!)

And yes, A* or Dijkstra are two of the best pathfinding algorithms there are. (A* is great for fragmented meshes such as a WoW nav mesh, Dijkstra's is great for it as well, but suffers some performance issues)

@Cypher: The nav system should never be 'adding' new points to the mesh, simply flagging points as good/bad depending on if it has issues. (I.E: running into a random rock somewhere that you can't get passed, would flag that point as bad, and the pathfinder should avoid it)

[testout]

I used A* and generated a map on the fly (and pregenerated later) in my video here:

[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

[Cypher]

Originally Posted by Apoc

With a proper navmesh (assuming the entire world is generated), should allow you to go pretty much anywhere and never be stuck. (Save for the fear/knockback etc, glitches into/behind game objects) The more efficient way of checking obstacles and obstructions, is through the navmesh itself, as you can load that data quicker, and it has the benefit of being in your own code (which makes it that much easier to work with)

Although, that is double-dipping in the long run. (Loading the current map stuff from memory, and parsing it is a lot more efficient than loading your nav mesh from disk, then doing all your mesh generating and such)

Simply leaving 'void space' in your navmesh would be a much more efficient method of collision detection than actively doing collision checks. (If you already know you'll run into something there, why the **** would you even let your nav system know it's there? What it doesn't know about, it ignores, and goes around!)

And yes, A* or Dijkstra are two of the best pathfinding algorithms there are. (A* is great for fragmented meshes such as a WoW nav mesh, Dijkstra's is great for it as well, but suffers some performance issues)

@Cypher: The nav system should never be 'adding' new points to the mesh, simply flagging points as good/bad depending on if it has issues. (I.E: running into a random rock somewhere that you can't get passed, would flag that point as bad, and the pathfinder should avoid it)

Apoc, I didn't say points should be added for a pre-generated mesh. But if you're generating a small mesh by hand, you need your system to be able to 'fill in the gaps' and add extra points when it wanders away.

I assume you're talking about an automatically generated mesh, rather than a hand generated one. (ie Greynav rather than the base OpenBot nav)

Whilst you are correct about most of what you're saying, you're again asserting it based on the assumption that the mesh is automatically generated. If you need your system to 'learn' its a little more complex than just never writing to the mesh and leaving blank space where you don't want it to go.

Also, how do you propose you include GameObject information in your mesh in an automated fashion? Its impossible to do with a pre-generated mesh because theres no client-side data that shows where GameObjects are going to be loaded, the whole point of them is that they are dynamic. So you still need to have collision detection in place.

EDIT: Upon closer inspection it appears my posts may be a tad ambiguous, my apologies, was in a raid at the time and writing between wipes.

[grak]

Haven't really read this.. But couldn't you just get elite with Pather? Sorry if i misunderstood.
Pather works like a charm for me

[Shynd]

Any post that begins with "haven't read" ends with fail.