Well first off you have two situations. Wide opens and ppoiinted routes. Wide opens dont' use ppoints. An npc simply takes a straight line from point a to point b if both points are inside the wide open.
The issue with Z is this: The server does zero collision, or physics work. The npc is simply moved from one point to the next in a straight line (either with ppoints or not depending if its a wide open). The CLIENT however, will do collision and physics based on iterpolation of the npc's position and velocity vectors. Basiclly when ppointing a zone, you really need to use a lot of points, especially on hills and such. Because if you try to move an npc through the inside of a hill, while the clioent will do the proper physics and make the npc walk up the hill, if an update packet comes through when the npc is in the middle of the hill (INSIDE the hill because you didn't path up top of it), then the client will move the mob to that position and it will end up under the world. The system is not the best. In fact it sucks, and there isn't one single person on the eq dev team that complained about it. But it does work, and it is simple.
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