Wednesday, 3 December 2014

Multiplayer Map Design - Path nodes & spawn locations.

Following the first batch of peer review feedback, I was happy with the base look of my deathmatch map, this then is where the basic AI implementation begins in the form of 'player starts' and 'path nodes'.
Player Starts are in-game spawn points which AI characters and end users will access and respawn on every time they are killed in-game and are found located in various places around any map. These are shown as joysticks within the viewport.




Following placement of a player start in the viewport, player nodes are added then duplicated [Using Alt + Move], in the pathing process player start points, pickups and navigational aids all act as nodes to lessen the amount of nodes necessary, even if only by a few, marginally bringing down the file size and shortening the load times of a map for an end user.
I have implemented many path nodes and pickups within my map and the result so far can be seen below.


There is still a lot of experimental work to be done in terms of pathing, due to interaction issues with animated software, some corridors must also be widened if possible, as the AI will ignore certain coloured path lines, I am hoping to fix these with addition or altering of path nodes and possible pickup placement, however I will also have to take into account the architectural flow of the map at the same time, so the map stays true to the figure of eight, whilst becoming fully functional with no AI issues.

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