Pathfinding is getting close to wrapping up I think. I’ve got the path selection algorithm working, and I think it’s properly detecting when there’s something blocking a chosen path and redirecting around it just as it should. However, testing has revealed some flaws in the initial generation of the level navigation map, with some ground nodes not connecting to others which they logically should, and sometimes connecting when they shouldn’t as well.
With another day or two I should be able to fix that problem and make the nav map as perfect as I thought it was until a couple of hours ago. After that, assuming that doesn’t lead me to discover a new algorithmic problem, I move on to stage three of pathfinding, which will I think be the easiest: Taking the waypoints generated by the pathfinding algorithm, giving them to the entity, and having the entity use them to traverse the level. I’m kind of wondering whether it would be better to have the entity actually moving and jumping like the player character does, and hope that all the calculations are accurate enough that it doesn’t find itself obstructed in an unexpected way, or to just generate a high resolution series of interpolated waypoints and just move the entity along that like a roller-coaster track, playing the appropriate animations to make it look like it’s moving the normal way. The latter definitely seems less likely to break, but more likely to look weird or conflict with something else.
I guess probably the way to go is to start out doing it the legit way, like an AI-controlled little player navigating the level, and then if that doesn’t work well I can keep the track-path method as a backup. In any case, I hope to have these guys moving around by the end of the week, at which point I can go in and add a bit more nuance to their behavior and start working on their prototype animations for real.