I worked for two years with Intense Pathfinding 2, but there`s a bug that I`m not able to solve: It doesn`t support multiple levels. Intense Pathfinding 3 doesn`t seem to be a solution, it`s so puffed up that I don`t want to work with it anymore. Also, it doesn`t seem to support script-spawned NPCs, so it`s not an option for me.

Is there any other pathfinding solution out there for Gamestudio that:
- works without bugs
- is easy to use (manual/tutorial)
- supports multiple entities
- automatically sets up pathfinding graphs (not per hand)
- supports multiple levels, not just one (IP2 does not)
- enables me to spawn bots per scripts (IP3 doesn`t seem to support that)
- doesn`t cost more than 100$

Many thanks for your help, guys. I`m just before a nervous collapse, I worked nearly four years on my game and now everything doesn`t seem to work out because of the pathfinding.

hmm, i remember using IP2 on multiple levels, but i may be wrong. there are other nice more light-weight solutions but you may need to add some of the features yourself. try a search on the forum, keywords: path, pathfinding, a-star, a*, AI, artifical intelligence
now that the forums own search thing is crappy, you may want to try the google powered version:
http://www.acknexturk.com/search
or
http://www.dejobaan.net/3DGS/a7oogle

i dont think you'll find another automatically sets up nodes tho but that shouldnt be too great of a problem

Well, I know that there are some other pathfinding solutions. I have done some as well.

However, I'm not sure whether one of these has a proper automatic graph generation implemented. The implementations I did have not. They meet most of your other conditions, though.

If you can't find a script that fits your needs, we could certainly come up with a solutions that does. Feel free to ask, I would be happy to help you then.

Okay, I´ll look around a bit. Maybe I`ll find something useful and maybe Aris will help to fit IP3 to my needs. The problem is that I`m not willing to spend many hours on my project just to get something basic like pathfinding to work properely if there`s any alternative. I need a working base for my AI system.

Wow, you really considder these kind of upgrade late in the
development (judging by the state the bots already work as
I can see in the video)

You should rather work with workarounds than throwing the old
code over.
For example supporting multiple levels by
setting level-connection nodes.
When the bot reaches it, he get invisible and stops acting.

If you enter the other level, you place the bot in some
reasonable position again. So it appears as he
was in this level running before.

---

If you need a fresh start to the pathfinding, I suggest to
work on a cleaned up Prototype without your current
gamelogic, and try to get the multilevel-pathfinding working
there.
if it works, start to reimplement that into your current project.

---

Its always a hassle to use other developers code/systems.
Even with an alternative Pathfinding solution, you wouldnt
be able to plug it in without adaptation or tuning.

But im shure you will get some help by other devs, as your project
is worth putting effort into.

To be honest I ever thought it would be easy to implement such a "simple" function like level changing in Intense Pathfinding 2. That`s why I ignored that thing. Everything worked (and works) fine instead of that level changing thing. I contacted Aris (the dev of IP2, IP3 and Intense-X) and he said my problem is a known bug of IP2 and IP3 will support all of that features I`m missing.
Finally IP3 is here - and it`s kind of an Intense-X lite. The code is very complicated (much more than IP2) and contains sooo much ballast besides pathfinding that I don`t need. It theoretically supports level changing, practically IP3 is so different than IP2 that I have to change big parts of my AI code to get it to work again (if it ever will). And it doesn`t seem to support spawning (by ent_create), but handles everything by WED panels. I`m missing interface functions I need for my project.

So before I move over to any other pathfinding solution: Is there anybody that got IP2 to work with multiple levels or who wants to look into IP2s code? I could re-upload it to a file uploader of your choice if you`re wanting to help me out. IP2 comes with a little,interesting demo project in RTS style and is very easy to understand and documented.

EDIT: Aris is working on a new version of IP3 now that will support spawning bots. Probably everything will go well now. Thanks, Aris!