Waypoint questions

[JavaGuy]

Can anyone clarify the relationship between waypoints and navgoals and spell out exactly how they work? Yes, I've read the tutorials over at http://www.geocities.com/rellenbroek/main_realscripts.html, but I'm still not clear on some of it.

 

I understand that if an NPC can't see his navgoal, he can't just move towards it. But what exactly do I need to do to make it navigate to it? The tutorial has a network of four connected waypoints that have to "surround" the navgoals, as the tutorial puts it, and the script in the tutorial actually makes the NPC turn to face one of the waypoints on the way to the navgoal. It's a tutorial for a Trek game; does it work this way in Jedi Outcast too?

 

Will an NPC with a navgoal he can't see go to the nearest waypoint that he can see and start from there? Does one of the waypoints have to target the navgoal? I'm getting pretty good at making NPCs do what I want when I make each and every point a navgoal and have them walk to it in the script, but it would be nice not to have to script every single turn along the path.

 

Also, some point_combat questions: The ICARUS manual seems to suggest that an NPC tries to go to the point_combat nearest the player unless the script tells him to do otherwise. Is that right? If so, suppose an NPC goes to a point_combat and then the player moves closer to a different (unoccupied) point_combat--will the NPC move to the better one? The point_combat mechanism doesn't seem very useful if an NPC stops moving altogether once he gets to it.

[Bell]

hi sorry but yes i'm gonna answere these for ya just gimme a couple more days when i have time.

[JavaGuy]

Thanks!

[UltimateZeus]

I used some point_combats in my DeathStar and Courthouse maps. You'll see that the stormys actually do move even once they have stopped and fired at you.

[Bell]

k here we are,

 

1.)ya you can also follow tuts for other games that use the quake engine and pretty much work with some exceptions; ef, quake, wolfenstein etc.

The npc's by default turn and face the next waypoint in the series so . . .

Waypoints are use to navigate your npc around obsticles. if there are no obsticles, the waypoints will be ignored and the npc will go directly to the navgoal. So if you have a series of waypoints ending in a navgoal in an open area the npc will ignore your maze of waypoints and go directly to the navgoal. But waypoints are helpful for obsticles. If you wanted your npc to go down the hall, turn left, into the mess hall, out the other door, outside, down the street and into his office, you can have one navgoal at the end with waypoints leading up to it; and script a task that sets his navgoal to that particular one. The first waypoint of the series has to be visible. He will also take the shortest route. If he can see both waypoint 1 and waypoint 2 in the chain, he will ignore 1 and start rite towards 2. Lets say you want him to stop in the middle of this path and look and say hi to a neighbor, you will have to break the chain and make this his first navgoal and script him to look and say hi. then start over and script him to go to his office or navgoal 2, and the first waypoint of the second series would then of coarse be visible and hence lead him the rest of the way. Once he gets to waypoint 2, he will have to be able to see waypoint 3 in order to continue, and so on and so forth.

 

2.)yes, as mentioned above, he will go to the first visible waypoint in the series; you can give him a choice of up to 4 waypoints to start from i believe, and one waypoint can point to 4 others, but you can't go beyond 8 total links in all in the whole chain. Try more though who knows, but your 8th may have to be a navgoal and start over.

All waypoints must successively target the next eventually targeting the navgoal; which is basicaly the last in the chain.

Ya if you have your npc's running around in open space; you'll have to script them to go from navgoal to navgoal. But lets say you have a lot of business going on and there is a potential of the npc's path being blocked; you can set up say 2 or 4 paths of waypoints all ending up targeting the one navgoal and the npc will choose the one that is not blocked and follow it; once he chooses, he is committed, if he gets blocked along the path he won't double back to take the clear one, he'll just get stuck until the path he commited to clears.

 

3.) ya its been my experience that once an npc decides on a point combat he gets stuck there and won't move; you'll have to script that; or at least i've had to to get them moving. i put in triggers that run scripts to affect them with an anger or attack script. that's my work around anyway.

 

hope this helps

cheers

[Bell]

Originally posted by UltimateZeus

I used some point_combats in my DeathStar and Courthouse maps. You'll see that the stormys actually do move even once they have stopped and fired at you.

 

oh khewl i'll have to play with it see if i can get them to work; is it just the stormy's you found work or do all of them?

[UltimateZeus]

It worked for the stormys and the rodians. Sometimes they just stay there but they can move as well.