LarryLaffer!
What number of messages we have to post in this thread ? (How big response ?)

Contribute this, please! and thank you.

As you probably already know by now Aris, I've been writing a plugin .dll (pv) which contains some of the pathfinding functionality of Perfect AI. The primary purposes of writing such a thing were to improve my C++ skills, and gain experience in writing plugins for 3D GameStudio. Simultaneously, the secondary purposes were to produce something that might be useful to myself and others. If there was a demand great enough, I was going to contribute pv (open source) to the community, as I have done with eLL. Given the lack of interest in eLL (I am mainly at fault here), and the fact that you are now offering a superior (to what I have written, assumed to be at least given the descriptions of features and the assumption that your experience is much greater) path finding solution, I can only predict that the community would now widely dismiss a contribution such as pv, and that attempts to provide adequate details, explanations and documentation for such a plugin would be a waste of time. I suppose the fact that a potential contribution would probably no longer hold the meaning to the community it would have, is unimportant and irrelevant.

I think that, for as long as I work with 3D GameStudio, I will welcome any examples of pathfinding for 3D GameStudio, and certainly those with examples of more features. (Of course, I don't believe that generally, as a whole, the community is like-minded, welcoming inferior, weaker, less feature-rich, unnecessary examples.) I welcome what you offer. If you decide to make the contribution, I will thoroughly enjoy studying the source, and learning, if I am able.

The abbreviated version: I vote "yea".

Would be very much interested in your AI.

Thank you

-raiden

Very generous offer, I could use such pathfinding. I hope you decide to
contribute it in some form. Thanks!

Yea, this would be a very helpful contribution!

That is a generous offer indeed, I'd be very interested. I'm struggling with AI at the moment, myself, so this could be good even to look over and see how it's done.

i was first not planning on having nod path fining in my game but maybe i just changed my mind ;D

please give! ^^

This would be a really great help for our project!

wow... I guess there IS a need for it..

ok, cool, keep an eye on this thread. It should be ready by tomorrow, or maybe the day after

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so realtime search means you can use entity levels too? levels without blocks?

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No, realtime search means that the paths are generated on the fly, so if there's any change in the level, it will reflect on the path made(doors open and closing, etc). But you can use level without blocks as well

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String pulling
(a rubberband function?)

I guess this works (a bit similar) like B-Slines. To smooth the movement.

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no, it's nothing like that. String pulling helps when you try to reduce the number of waypoints in a path so it will look a little nicer. Here.(pdf)

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I wonder though, if you might do better right now to push hard and finish the Intense AI.

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Hi JimFox, how's the game going on? I managed to download the demo some time now but forgot to let you know. I really liked what I saw and I really enjoyed seeing Intense Dialogues in it being put into good use.

Anyway, it's cool, I got a few days free since the ball's at the animator hands right now. And It won't take me too long anyway

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LarryLaffer!
What number of messages we have to post in this thread ?

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much less than what you did I didn't expect that much of a response..

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As you probably already know by now Aris, I've been writing a plugin .dll (pv)

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I had no idea.. But I suggest you keep working on it and release it when it's done, there's hardly only one best way to do something. Your solution could be better at something that mine is not so the community could benefit from both(some people might prefer DLLs for example..)


Cheers,
Aris

As I have read from the document on string pulling,
the path is smoothed by trying to reach a node up the path if it is visible,
This works well on a pure 2D enviroment.
But using a trace wold not be enough, as the
bot might try to reach a node, he can see, but a crack in the floor
or a close edge might make him fall down.
So do you check on the floor, if there is some kind of drop?
Again, it a good sollution for 2D Pathfinding, but
might cause a lot of trouble in a 3D Arena.

Here another interesting page from valve:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Navigation_Meshes#Introduction