Experimental Code: Stop mobs hopping when pathing - FindBestZ tweaks

[rojadruid]

if this does work and stops the mobs from hopping all we need now is the actuallt pathing in "apath" figured out. I have been looking at it for awhile now and I am not making any heads or tails on it and I gave up about a mnth ago figuring it was hopeless.

[KLS]

Yeah it would be azone that generates them, alright I'll look at it when I take a look at the other stuff posted on the forums in the next couple days.

[fathernitwit]

Nice. I have comitted a cleaned up version of this code.... hopefully it still works. I disabled the two old options by default in features.h, but enabled the new "fix-at-load-time" feature, as it seems like a good compromise.

My only real concern about this is the somewhat arbitrary nature of a lot of the constants in there... 10, 20, 45, etc... We might want to either make them a rule, so people can easily change them, or else put some serious thought into deciding on good universal values...

My last thought is that if this in fact turns out to be a rock solid fix for the z hopping problem, then we should prolly take it one step further. One of the things I was trying to accomplish with apathing was to be able to load, fix, and then re-save the pathing data into the database... this way we only consume the CPU time once... it shouldent be all that hard to accomplish, the big concern is how to be sure that it is actually producing the right data... we dont want to run it against the official dbs unless we are quite sure it isnt going to mangle a bunch of paths... one challenge with stuff like this is trying to figure out how to detect such failues... as in most cases the mobs are then just way under the ground, and nobody will ever notice (unless its a named mob).... just a thought.

-FNW

[moydock]

I'm excited about this but man... I've already designed a large part of my DB with grids that won't make npc's go through hills. So much work! At least this will make the rest of my work much easier.

[Zandig]

I've downloaded the latest Win32 release: EQEmu-0.7.0-1065

==11/29/2007
FatherNitwit: (Derision) Fix BestZ pathing cleanup code top stop hopping.
FatherNitwit: (Derision) New fix-z-on-load feature.

and tested a few zones that always drove me mad with the hopping:

fieldofbone
frontiermtns

The mobs are still hopping like mad in these zones.
I'll test out some other zones soon.

[Derision]

Originally Posted by Zandig

I've downloaded the latest Win32 release: EQEmu-0.7.0-1065

and tested a few zones that always drove me mad with the hopping:

fieldofbone
frontiermtns

The mobs are still hopping like mad in these zones.
I'll test out some other zones soon.

Yes, the Win32 release has been compiled with two of the three features disabled, so you will still get hopping between waypoints. You could try
the Zone.exe that Rogean posted a little earlier in this thread, or I will attempt to build a Win32 release with all 3 options enabled in the next few days.

[Zandig]

Originally Posted by Derision

Yes, the Win32 release has been compiled with two of the three features disabled, so you will still get hopping between waypoints. You could try
the Zone.exe that Rogean posted a little earlier in this thread, or I will attempt to build a Win32 release with all 3 options enabled in the next few days.

Thanks Derision,

I will give that a try.

A proper Win32 release with all the options enabled would be greatly appreciated.

[fathernitwit]

OK, by popular demand (aka one dude who cant build), I reworked this stuff to be runtime configurable using the rules system.