I've had somewhere around 60 bots using two separate paths, one path being a two layered maze the other being an obstacle course. There was a lag increase, although it was perfectly playable. When the bot finished the path i had it killed so it respawned and had to path again, so it was pretty intensive. Generally though, once a path has been found its pretty much lag free.
That sounds pretty cool, what were you using it for?
Thanks, that helps.
My plan is to have as many as 50 or 60 bots running around at once. Upon spawn, the bot will be given a list of prioritized objectives. When a bot completes its first objective, it will be assigned to its objective with the next-highest priority. This means that there will be many paths and bots at once.
Finding paths with this is pretty much entirely lagless as long as you use the background search function. If you are calculating 75+ paths all at once over a fairly complex graph obviously you're going to get some slowdown, but in that case consider making a sort of "worker pool" that queues up path searches letting only a limited set work at once.
When you've actually found paths, the only issue is Blockland's poor bot networking; the raycasts which that path following system use are much more lightweight than you'd think.
I really wish Blockland had better bot networking and a proper system for doing processing tasks in another thread than the main thread. When you've got 40+ bots all doing path finding around a very large map to reach dynamic obstacles (thus needing path recalcs), doing raycasts to crouch, jump, dodge walls, container searches to attack as well as managing group behaviors.. yeah, it starts to get pretty slow (which is why I haven't released my zombie mod - too many technical requirements needed to make it playable).
Regardless, for your case though, it sounds just fine.
