I’m making a 3D game, and I’m gonna add NPCs which will need path finding. I know how to do this in 2D, but how do you do it in 3D?
I thought about making a 2D map and calculate paths using that, but is there a better way?
There’s a navigation mesh plugin available, if you search forums for “navmesh” or “navigation mesh” or something like that you’ll find it.
Also if you use a terrain that means the npcs are bound to a 2d surface, so 2d grid should work well.
Someone else knows this stuff better then me tho.
before i made 3d grid based pathfinding:
http://code.google.com/p/easyfinding/
just wanted to inform, because maybe someone need simply 3d pathfinding.
need some fixes but it work. actually i do not update it, because i will propably make my own graph based pathfinding(to learn this method) or using navimesh.
it is only good(not best) for grid based(even 3d grid) games. like fallout 1/2 or heroes.(only)
in other cases navimesh is best like androlo said. its graph as i good know, so it is much faster…
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Thanks, will look into it.
This post looks promising for path finding. It uses nodes which could easily be adapted to 3D space.
I’ve also found quite a few supplementary articles on these algorithms from a Google search and there are videos on YouTube too.
As far as I know now, you got 2 ways to do it: either with gateway nodes or with navigation meshes. Gateway nodes is easier to make, but it lets NPCs zigzag. I have no idea how navigation meshes work, I know that they give information about what is walkable and what is not, but how can you determine it’s best path? By raycasting? Don’t you have to casts a ray into every direction and for every ‘block’ you walk then?