Did a bunch of work with the node gun today for better workflow, and a lot of attributes for links, including things like one way links, jump only links, weighted links for things like bots prioritizing a path or a road over other links
https://streamable.com/5axpckLet's say I have a straight line path set for a bot. When it sees an enemy, will it forget all about the path nodes and never remember them after it starts chasing a target? (I think it's hard coded for them to forget any evented behaviors once they spot an enemy)
This is mostly up to the bot AI... for something like a zombie you'd probably want it to just break off the path once LOS is established and go attack the player and only use the pathing to get to the player. The idea here is to just make utilities for making nodemaps and the ability to pathfind through them, what bots do with it is entirely up to the end-user, though I will include a basic zombie AI bot and probably some events
Also, will they pick the fastest path to their target? If I event a bot to go to a brick on the other side of a complex map like Afghan, will it use the nodes to get there?
Yeah the pathfinder will always try to get the shortest path but it doesn't always get it right, sometimes paths are longer than they need to be, but it shouldn't be too big of an issue. As for sending the bot to another brick, we will most likely have to find the node closest to that brick, so it's recommended to put a node on that brick and link it to the rest of the map. Then it should work fine.
even just one function like WeighDestination(Node n) that can be hooked and called by the bot's setdestination bs so anyone can insert the custom logic for deciding where the bot should move best at that given time. would work well if you could also assign tagged weights to nodes manually so if i wanted a top of a building to be a great sniper spot i could just designate all the nodes on the building as like sniperbrain+20 so any bot with a sniperbrain will prioritize positioning themselves on top of the building to shoot at players
Very interesting read, great ideas. it probably wouldn't be that hard to implement a system for adding attributes like these to nodes, but it will def be out of the scope of server-side controls. I'll make a client for the nodegun eventually