Zone wide NODE-based path finding discussions

[m0oni9]

Originally Posted by fathernitwit

It cannot be done automatically because the emu has a VERY bad perception of the zone geometry due to the fact that the zones are converted out of the s3d files, and many in-world objects are not included in that set.

I don't know if we're agreeing or not. My suggestion would be to have manually created nodes, but with either manual or automatic connections. In either case, the initial grid (I am calling it graph) calculation should not be too intensive, though it will probably be O(n!) -- given, I do not know how efficient an average LOS check is. The graph will need to be generated at zone boot, but thereafter the brunt of the work would be finding a path from node A to node B.

What I kind of had in mind was automatic connections from pre-generated nodes. This way, someone may be able to create hotkeys (ie: "Node Type 1", "Node Type 2"), and go about the zone, hitting the keys where appropriate. Afterward, a script would generate nodes from the log file, used for inserting into the DB, or maybe a ".path" file. It may even pre-calculate the node connections.

The biggest problem I see with the system, other than getting it all to work well , is the potential hit of finding a path between nodes. It could also take up a nice chunk of memory.