Currently Replaying BG II, Good Pathfinding Is Vital

[Labadal]

I'm currently in the middle of chapter two of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and I also completed another playthrough of Planescape: Torment last year. While both of these games are two of my favorite games and get replayed by me every now and then, the pathfinding in these games have always been an issue.

 

I am hoping that Pillars of Eternity gets a lot of testing in this area. I have faith in the team. I'm certain we'll get good writing and everything else we expect from a game like this, but Pillars of Eternity has a chance to improve this type of game even further. With good pathing and (good character AI), I am hoping this will be the best exploration experience in any IE game or IE inspired games. No longer do I want to move my party, only for one character to decide that he/she/it wants to go stand by a wall while my other party members decide to take the right path.

 

I feel that this is one of the areas where we could get the biggest improvement.

 

What do you guys think?

[JFSOCC]

I think it's widely known to be one of the weak spots of the IE engines, and will certainly be improved in Eternity.

[Labadal]

I guess so. It's nothing I usually think about, but now that I am playing, I was reminded of how annoying bad pathing can be.

[rjshae]

You're talking about games that are more than a decade old. I'd be shocked if pathfinding isn't vastly improved. Even ToEE was better at it, although there they took the easy way out.

[Stun]

I wouldn't worry too much about this. We're talking about technology flaws that existed 15 years ago. And even back then, we saw improvements in each successive game. (icewind dale 2, for example, had better path finding than bg1).

 

Me, though, I'm still concerned about the AI proper. Of the enemies and your own party. I wonder how much improved it's going to be from the IE games.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Stun

[cromfaeyr]

I am not worried about pathfinding at all.. Look at the team that is behind this game... I have a feeling that it will be even better game than BG2 (and if u ask me BG2, fallout2  and Torment were greatest rpgs ever made ) right now I am even not  playing new games only replaying the old ones ... cannot wait for release day of PilOEter (didnt want to write PoE XD ) and tides of numenera

[PIP-Clownboy]

ctrl + j EVERYWHERE. 

[Labadal]

Both Dragon Age games didn't always have great pathing, those games aren't that old.

[Lephys]

Both Dragon Age games didn't always have great pathing, those games aren't that old.

 

Let us, then, be thankful that this game is being developed by whom it is, and not by the development team of either Dragon Age game.

[Labadal]

Well, that was one of many examples. Dungeon Siege III had some issues with pathing, but nothing major. Drakensang: The River of Time had some issues, so did a couple of other games.

 

Haven't really played a tonne of rtwp games other than the IE games.

[Lephys]

The main thing to keep in mind is this:

 

Just because games that aren't old have had pathfinding issues doesn't mean that pathfinding issues are still unavoidable in game design. Just as the fact that technology now allows for the avoidance of a lot of older games' pathfinding issues doesn't in any way guarantee that a given development team working on a given game will successfully avoid such issues.

 

Stun's point was that, back in the day, it was pretty much unavoidable and tricky. Nowadays, we have much more industry experience at our disposal, and much better hardware/software capability for handling such things. Therefore, it's now much more possible/easy to have good pathfinding. Doesn't mean it's any less possible to have crappy pathfinding (no effort/crappy AI budget = still bad pathfinding). But, there's nothing we can look at now to just predict whether or not Team Eternity is going to execute awesome pathfinding design or not, until we simply play the finished game and/or see evidence of the finished pathfinding system at work.

[Labadal]

I completely agree. The only thing, though, is that I can't come up with a game* that actually has very good pathing.

 

Edit: Role Playing Game*

Edited January 3, 2014 by Labadal

[Lephys]

Then I'd say we're a bit overdue for one, eh?

[Robsidious]

I think it's widely known to be one of the weak spots of the IE engines, and will hopefully be improved in Eternity.

 

Fixed

[Reever]

Oh my God, you don't know how right you are!! Just played and fnished Planescape: Torment the other day and it was really annoying to see TNO try and find his way around companions and NPCs xD

 

So yeah, at least make the AI so good as to make companions get the hell out of the way :D

[rjshae]

With good pathfinding, there's perhaps a law of diminishing returns at work which decides how much coding effort can be expended before the costs get too high. Maybe somebody should work on a genetic algorithm instead and train it up...

[Stun]

Oh my God, you don't know how right you are!! Just played and fnished Planescape: Torment the other day and it was really annoying to see TNO try and find his way around companions and NPCs xD

 

So yeah, at least make the AI so good as to make companions get the hell out of the way :D

Planescape torment was a double facepalm, because the majority of your party was melee-only in that game, thus most combat encounters saw a real clusterf**k happening in combat... like Fall-From-Grace getting ripped apart by an Abishai because she can't get out of the way, because everyone else is blocking her exit path, and in the meantime, Morte can't engage an enemy because Grace is blocking him. LOL

 

Thankfully, BG2 did a modest job of addressing this. Companions "bumped" each other out of the way. It was crude but it worked.

 

The other problem is that those old games often had wonky narrow terrains in their interior and exterior maps (try navigating a party of 6 through the different rooms in the Black Raven monastery in IWD2. Damn that was a pain!) Unless you chose the single file party formation, and then took short movements, pathfinding in all the IE games is going to be a headache.

 

We haven't seen too many maps for POE, but the ones we've seen have been big and spacious, so maybe they're taking that route to address the issue.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Stun

[Wolfenbarg]

There are a lot of games with bad pathing. I rarely run into situations in games with a top down perspective where I don't ask, "WHY WOULD YOU GO THAT WAY?!?" at least once. I replayed Fallout recently and was kind of shocked in awkward maps when my character would go exactly where I said. I'm just used to games, old and new, screwing this up.

[Hephasto]

I still can't decide whether I want to see one of the 'innovations' of the Dragon Age series in PoE... that is, the ability to set 'tactics' for squad members. While Space to Pause will always allow us to have absolute control if we want to, being able to instruct a specific toon to do interrupts against particular types of enemies was quite refreshing. Maybe they've got a better idea for such a system... I'd also appreciate the ability to macro some commands... being able to push 1 button to cast all the buffs I want to before a big fight rather than going through them individually would be nice.

 

Interested on what other folks think about this.

[Giubba]

[Rabain]

I guess it is down to what players want.  Bumping for some is distasteful, but a decent way for the party to step around each other without taking a trip halfway around the map.

 

I'd be happy if the AI just bumped like in BG2 and just notified me if they couldn't get through somewhere and were actually considering taking a long route before actually taking it.  The last thing I want to see is someone I wanted to move to the front start a marathon journey through some side halls that would actually get him 10yds to the front 5 minutes too late.

[Tauron]

 

I liked comment from a guy on youtube "In soviet russia, party gathers you" hehe

[Lioness]

I am playing a new tactical RPG, which isn't released yet (Blackguards) and the pathfinding had me screaming at my screen. AI enemies and own characters (unless micromanaged) don't have such simple rules as 'avoid known traps', 'avoid triggering attack of opportunity' and 'avoid walking into frigging bonfires and sinkholes' in their path-finding algorithm.

 

Caveat game is in Beta, but the point still sloppy programming hasn't automagically disappeared because technology has evolved. Not necessarily blaming programmers' skills, it is more likely the down-prioritizing of additional iterations on the pathfinding / AI code.

[neo6874]

Can't recall any RPG where "avoid known danger" (trap, campfire, etc that you're allowed to walk through) was part of the pathfinding.  I mean, yeah, your rogue might know about it, but the rest of the party can't pick it out until it's either flagged (equivalent of "disabled" in some games) or disabled/removed/etc.  With that said though,I can't really think of any party-based/tactical RPGs that have pathing that goes through "dangerous" placeables (such as a campfire).

 

Attacks of Opportunity depend on the way the game works -- if it's D&D based, the only way to avoid AoO is to only back off 5' (1 square) from their reach on a given turn (then full move is OK the next turn, so long as you don't pass into/out of a threatened square again).  it's a bit harder to accomplish in a RTwP cRPG, since the turns don't really match up with what's happening on screen, so when the pathing is figured out for a character, an enemy might move into a position where they can get an AoO "out of turn"... 

[Lephys]

Heh, if you think what all's been mentioned so far is bad, I was watching my friend play Space Colony, and he had this little harvester thing (much like the tiberium/ore harvesters in the Command and Conquer games) that would skillfully avoid dangerous lava/molten ground in its path to get TO some stuff to harvest, then became so distracted by its cargo-full contentment that it would drive straight over the deadly ground on its way BACK to the refinery/facility, thus ending its own existence.

 

That means... the game actually had "good" pathfinding (with respect to this one particular situation), but then simply chose not to use it on 50% of the moment for that unit.