JorbStream 151114, 20:00 UTC

[stya]

Ok ok Jira might be too much, we used Trello for smaller projects with 50-100 tasks/bugs for the university. It's more or less the same thing but much lighter.. There might be better alternatives, I'm not the pro-dev who knows everything

[sabinati]

yeah loftorb should use trello

[spectacle]

jorb's got 99 problems

But pathfinding ain't one.

[Archiplex]

yeah loftorb should use trello

I agree with this, Jorb's notepad with the fixes/suggestions seemed...uh..

Complex?

[MightySheep]

I agree with this, Jorb's notepad with the fixes/suggestions seemed...uh..

Complex?

I thought it seemed fitting for a guy with an old box monitor

[Archiplex]

I agree with this, Jorb's notepad with the fixes/suggestions seemed...uh..

Complex?

I thought it seemed fitting for a guy with an old box monitor

Gotta get that refresh rate for hardcore HnH action

[jorb]

A complex txt-document, unlike a simple bug-tracker?

Indeed.

[loftar]

But pathfinding ain't one.

Since pathfinding comes up every now and then, I guess I'd better write down my current thoughts on the matter.

To begin with, I think that "pathfinding" is a mischaracterization of the problem. The real problem is the stupid clipping on unobvious corners and edges of objects and the total interruption of movement that such clipping entails, so I'll refer to the whole thing as "the clipping problem" rather than as pathfinding. Pathfinding is just one possible solution to the clipping problem, and I'm not convinced that it's the proper one. I think pathfinding is too complex (and arguably unreliable) a phenomenon to incorporate into fundamental movement mechanics. For instance, when you're fleeing from a bear (or a player), you don't want the pathfinding algorithm to cut in and choose on oblique angle away from the bear just because it happens to be the shortest way to get around the wall you simply clicked on the wrong side of. If you doubt this assessment, just consider the countless times you've sworn at RTS games for the stupid decisions of their pathfinding algorithms, and multiply that feeling by the difference in importance between a single Starcraft Marine and your main character.

I'm not entirely sure what a more proper solution to the clipping problem is, but I'm inclined to think that it is rather something akin to what happens in most games, where, if you try to walk into a wall, the wall simply pushes you back out in its normal direction, so that a simple corner doesn't prevent and interrupt movement but rather just slows it down slightly for the fraction of a second that the tangential movement will take to get you around the corner, and where one can also walk at almost full speed in a direction which only minutely crosses into a wall. I'm not sure if there's a common term for the phenomenon, but if there isn't, let's just refer to it as "push-out".

The primary reason I haven't already implemented push-out, then, is because it's not terribly compatible with the internal interfaces I use for object movement. This should of course be addressed, and perhaps I haven't made that enough of a priority (I agree that clipping is an important problem), but for now that's how it is. Perhaps it's not even that difficult once I get cracking on it.

So you might say, then, that even if pathfinding isn't the proper solution, it is at least far better than nothing until I get to implement push-out, but pathfinding movement is incompatible with the current interfaces in exactly the same way as push-out is, so that doesn't really help.

So that's how things currently lie with regards to the clipping problem. Just FYI, I guess.

[Sevenless]

Seems like a sensible rebuttle. I'd like to add into the mix: Sticking on cliffs, and general cliff traversal, could do with a bit of a change when you get around to it. Sorry, I'm sure it gets mentioned but just in case ^_^

[loftar]

Sticking on cliffs, and general cliff traversal, could do with a bit of a change when you get around to it.

Well aware, thank you.