Hello
I was asked by a friend (who's a huge EQ fan) to stop by and offer some help in pathfinding
Won't be able to do any actual code (unless you guys really need it) as I havn't got EQ personally.
But I have alot of experience creating fast pathfinding system
(excuse the plug but..)
http://www.foxbot.net if you want to see what I can do
I'd be pleased to offer any assitance you guys need.
If you want to go for waypoints (as its simple..but requires someone to build them for all the zones..) then you can use a 'shortest path' lookup table for the monsters...whilst its running finding the shortest path takes no time atall, as its just a lookup.
The cost comes from the table taking up quit a bit of memory..may be a problem for 100+ zones running at ones with about 800wpts on each zone..would need about 150meg of RAM (though dunno if that many wpts would be used/that many zones can be run at once)
Theirs are ways of only precomputing parts of the table, and working the rest out on the fly (very slight increase in CPU usage for a reduction in the amount of RAM used)
Then you can use A* (or other stuff) for pure searching (no RAM useage, but lots of CPU needed) for working it all out as and when its needed.
Don't know exactly what the monsters need to do when it comes to path finding.. (I take it they don't need todo complex things like flancking buildings or taking things other than the shortest route to a destination)
Seems like it should be pretty simple as they don't need to take into account any level data atall...just follow paths (waypoints)
Oh, I also know a reasonable amount about code optimisation and processor load balancing, so anything I can do to help their aswell, let me know.
RedFox