paths and rooms

[joebarnin]

Hello all. I'm seeing a weird problem with a guard's path - could be I'm doing something wrong. Here is the simplest case I could come up with. Large room (A), with a guard walking a circuit around it (path_corners only). There is a room ( off of the large room, with a door between them. If the thief (player) is in the large room, the guard does his rounds just fine. If the thief is in room B with the door open, the guard walks the path just fine. But as soon as the thief closes the door (from within room , the guard stops at the next path_corner. He doesn't start walking again until the thief opens the door again.

 

Has anyone seen this?

 

Jeff

[Fidcal]

Never seen that. It's wierd. Can you isolate that and maybe upload a test map somewhere? One other thing - try dmap just in case first (if you didn't already after making the paths.)

[demagogue]

To rule out one possibility, check to see if the visPortal on the door is okay (e.g., no weird textures on one side, anything that isn't nodraw or visportal, that it's aligned okay, etc.), since that will screw with pathfinding -- an AI will not path through a bad visPortal -- and might explain why it's the closing of the door that's making the difference (since that activates the visPortal).

[joebarnin]

To rule out one possibility, check to see if the visPortal on the door is okay (e.g., no weird textures on one side, anything that isn't nodraw or visportal, that it's aligned okay, etc.), since that will screw with pathfinding -- an AI will not path through a bad visPortal -- and might explain why it's the closing of the door that's making the difference (since that activates the visPortal).

 

That's it. I deleted the visPortal and now the path is working correctly. So now I just need to re-read the visportal wikis and figure out what I did wrong. I'll update this topic once I do. Thanks!

[demagogue]

If you did what I did to get this bug, you accidentally put a texture on one thin side of the visportal brush; all 5 of the other non-portal faces should be nodraw.

[Baddcog]

Easy to accidentaly slap a tex on one face too, I've made them right and had them turn out bad. At least it's easy to find and fix.

 

Just make the brush to fill the gap, right-click, 'make visportal'. Textured correctly for you.

[joebarnin]

Easy to accidentaly slap a tex on one face too, I've made them right and had them turn out bad. At least it's easy to find and fix.

 

Just make the brush to fill the gap, right-click, 'make visportal'. Textured correctly for you.

 

Problem solved. I had carefully inspected the brush, and it was just the way it should be (1 visportal face (matching the door), 5 nodraws). Still didn't work. But when I did the "make visportal" trick on that same brush, that fixed it.

 

I'll use "make visportal" from now on. Thanks, everyone!

 

Jeff

[joebarnin]

I spoke too soon - it's still broken. The reason I thought it was fixed is that the "make visportal" command put the visportal surface outside of the door and the door opening. So it was as if there was no visportal on that door. If there's no visportal, then the problem doesn't happen. When I moved the visportal to the correct location, the problem happened again.

 

Note that the visportal is working correctly, at least as a visportal. "r_showPortals 1" shows red when the door is closed, green when it is open. The only problem seems to be with pathfinding when the door is closed.

 

Is there something I should look for in the dmap console output? Can a visportal function properly as a visportal, but mess up pathfinding?

 

Jeff

[Mortem Desino]

Visportals don't (shouldn't) mess with pathfinding (other than breaking up one AAS area into two joint AAS areas.)

 

The only thing that comes to mind is that there is something wrong with the door itself. Maybe its locked. Maybe its origin is below the floor. Maybe its got the spawnarg shouldBeClosed or ai_should_not_handle set on it.

[demagogue]

Bad visportals do break pathfinding. I found out myself the hard way -- 1, 2.

And he already said when he deletes the visportal, all things else equal, the pathing works.

But it's true he doesn't have the same visportal problem I had (a mistexture), so I don't know off-hand what else might be wrong with it.

[Fidcal]

Try deleting the aas file - in fact delete all the related files cm proc aas then dmap again. I often find doom doesn't update them if it thinks they don't need updating - particular cm and also aas48 (spiders)