The Sad Truth About ToEE's Pathfinding

Ha! Pathfinding eliminated what's next . Eliminating Pathfinding is indeed a wise decision Gaear. Actually, it doesn't really hurt the gameplay experience at all. I think I'll stick to it.

One suggestion:
You may want to extend the range of walkable path if possible? Of course, for the benefits of large parties just a little bit more thanks for the great work.

I know the clipping in verbo is hard to do so, because the size of the map is just like hommlet such a pain the ass! if I were in your position my brain's gonna be ripped off like a squished tomato! :mrhappy:

 

But the pathfinding in the Temple DOES suck. There's always one guy who wanders off and starts a fight on the other side of the Temple while you are trying to move.

 

I have noticed in Homlette that my four character party has just three show up if I try to move further than one screen.

My mage always seems to be standing around picking her ... when the rest of us are waiting for her.

 

Only #2 of the negatives scares me a bit. In any case, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, this is something that should be done.

 

Jerkstop for 7.1 NC:
Initial playt-through:
Used the signpost, very useful, regularly.
Also used teleport to the South target zone quite a bit.
Experienced severe jerkstop with WOTGS attackers frozen in place with exception of the initial attack.
Found that you can get around by using "C" and ducking into any near door. This temporarily refreshed and worked for a bit. The hot spot for the jerkstop is the grid on whick the Welcome Wench/signpost is on. -- that was my observation as I looked at it from a redrawing/refreshing issue. I don't think the number of scripts firing is the issue. Have you looked at implementing a new version minus the signpost as a test?

Other play-throughs:
Did not use the signpost in Hommlet one time nor in Nulb. No jerkstop experienced. WOTHGS worked fairly well with scouts moving to suck you in and the patrols were actually patrolling not static. Summoned, in this case not actually summoned, creatures attacked hextorite fighters/soldiers etc (I know this was known issue). Starting from the town hall, I went back in to building and created a base save after first attack. Went back out and moved towards welcome wench, First jerkstop happened. Exited game, went back to save. Proceeded south to bottom and up to Tree house, no jerkstop. After battle, went into tree house and saved. Repeated this moving west, jumpping into a building and creating a new save. Each time on entering map, bodies were refreshed with the previously non run falling to ground animation.
All went well. Approached welcome wench from south road. Encountered patrol then set battle at welcome wench. Saved inside welcome wench. Repeated this going north, then back south and east along road and finally back down to the Rufus and Byrne tower. All was OK except that if you enter that tower game ends (known issue)

Installed 7.2:
Where did the saves and characters go? I can live without them. If that was done deliberately, from a programming side, I say good move. I did not get the message that save is corrupt as noted you might see in docs. The pathing is only occasionally a problem so far. However it is basically like line of sight if I read Gaer's explanation. So a character coming out of the church might get "hung Up" on the edge of the path opening.
One place I still see an issue happens mostly at night but I reproduced during day. Go Jeweler, then try to move north toward bowyer/fletcher. 2 to 3 characters routinesly never move. Welkwood was tight even for the previous application for movement, however, the group moved pretty well. No bad performance for movement on any of those maps. However, I have noticed that if the entire group is selected (example the bookcase in church floor 2) I now have to manually pick a PC nearest and open it.

I prefer playing with 7 +1, so for pathing issues not sure if party size is the issue.

As far as stopping and not moving in 7.2, the only place I really experienced that was in verbobonc 7.1 castle of lords and in particular trying to get to the rabbit hole.

On the whole, movement is OK in hommlet because I usually am ducking into a building and the party regroups anyway. I would add that if you are moving within what would be normal sight radius versus clicking to move into what would be the fog of war area, movement is fine. The longer the click to move the higher the chance of funky paths or some pc stopping and the other behind being stuck.

Sorry for longer post, did not see a developer type post for 7.2 issues.

Off the topice of this post:
- barrels missing now -- one near wench was great for dumping hextorite loot in
- on curing Bing he disappears but does reappear again
- the paladin falls after the drinking contest (was this updated or was it left as original?)
- Terjon forced the marriage / conversion with Fruella to release Marek (was this old, first time I was hit with that one)

I was trying to look at jerkstop from a graphical perspective. As I now know where the hextorites are placed, thet placement matches my instances of jerkstop. Not quite sure, but maybe the sign is what is preventing the layers from being transparent to each other. That is what the fire temple visually feels like. Application is trying to draw both levels when it should not.

Cheers

 

In answer to the previous releases 5.5 and 6.0:
The last time I had played was when game first arrived. My loads start from the original CDs. The only patches I had were the early fixes from Atari and Livonya, I believe, whose fix was much better. I only just got game out this year and had only used 7.1 NC. Did not have any experience with those earlier versions. I am going to try again with not using the signposts in Hommlet and Nulb. Then I will try using them to see if any difference in performance.

Uniquely, I like to teleport a lot. I picked South Hommlet probably bad as that zone is worst for jerkstop. Even when using my no signpost method, I had the jerkstop happen once after say 30 plus teleports to that site.
My next time through I picked the Deklo grove as my teleport target and then moved to North, South, East via map links. I figured there was nothing running on the Deklo Grove except random encounters. The exact result from that teleport was landing at the South Hommlet target zone with the group animations frozen in what I think you have described as the ready combat stance or something to that affect. You can always click via the map and leave, but I found that it is 100 percent safer to just exit, restart, and load from your last point. I did that and that instance of jerkstop was all that I experienced.

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You're saying they didn't fall over when dead initially?

On immediately exiting back to the exterior (example site Renton's house) the images of the bodies re-drew. I did see all the bodies and it appeared as though they were falling. To clarify further it looked like the bodies, already in the down position, just drop. Not sure if that is really a re-draw of the scene with falling animation or just the re-draw adjusting for the correct (X,Y) position relative to where they fall. The video mechanism will routinely move a body you select to a more "reachable" position. Sometimes it moves the object over, searching bodies sometimes does this. Think of the chest (bag of holding) appearing, the video engine needs to place the object in an area that it best fits in depending on object size and space available but not necessarily where you can interact with. Side note: Do not have two chests out and then have one person unsummon it -- they both go away and one goes into the ether at location ... but the pc who unsummoned both can still bring back their own. The other pc will get the chest is in the ether message. Maybe you have already explained that and I am late to the scene on it. I consider that a user education issue rather than a real problem. Sort of like do not use the console during the game and expect no repercussions.


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As far as closest pc not performing action like open chest, bookcase, etc. Seems to behave as when an npc is closest. Not a big deal, the fact is that I may normally already have one pc picked, usuaully rogue, for collecting things. So probably just me looking too hard.
So in this case I say PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair).

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As far as pathing, it is probably just me nitpicking something as I am looking at behaviour versus just getting from point A to B.

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I did not know that about the barrels. This is first game that there is not a barrel behind where Furnok stands. Guess I was lucky with my consistent randomly placed barrels.

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The paladin did not participate another pc did.
When it was over the fallen symbol appeared. Happened twice, as in I re-loaded and tried again.
If I have a save prior, will test with the paladin participating.
I may have overwritten it by mistake.

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Regarding jerkstopping, it almost visually looks like the party movement is blocked by the patrol as they move into each other when on south ore east/west road. In those instances you can actually move around above/below/sideways from where the moving patrols would be and the jerkstop seems to limited to that specific location of where the moving patrol was. The larger groupings for the pitched battles have the harshest jerkstopping.

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For 7.2, I have only gotten through the moathouse. So far no real issues.
This time I exited out into the courtyard versus going out the back door to trigger Zert/Turuko/Kobort encounter. Any issues going out that way?

In 7.1 I went out the back and the event triggered as well. Only the third floor ghost appeared for me. The one in the basement just moaned after being smacked and went away. Never found the outside ghost. But it was possible that I klooged the whole thing by independently going back to moathouse.

If I encounter any more anomalies in 7.2 will update.

Cheers

******* Update ************
Tested using paladin in drinking contest and still falls. Attached jpeg.
In truth, paladin should fall based on DnD rules.

 

Option 1, most direct route irregardless of background artwork.

 

Most definitely:

1. Pathfinding that took as direct a route anywhere as possible and ignored things like roads.

 

Yes, option 1 please.