CBJ wrote:Just to reiterate ZaphodBeeblebrox's point, the issue is not route-finding but path-finding. A route from A to B is easy to determine, regardless of whether you are in 2D or 3D. Finding a path that avoids obstacles and is achievable using the current engine parameters (acceleration, turning speed, ship mass, any effect of damage, etc.) is quite another matter. Of course there are long stretches of any given route where obstacle avoidance is not an issue at all, or is trivially simple, but there are also parts where it can get very complex, involving detailed navigation around, say, a station's geometry. This is where most of the processing work goes.
everyone was asking about path algorithms, I hope I explained why such are not an issue. Even with procedurally added elements like asteroids, just add the nodes in. The context was about travelling large distances
Now we're talking about localised collision detection... I get your point about that. The way I'd be dealing with them is the same way I deal with them, as a player in a little ship - by temporarily avoiding them, if you put a bounding area over every element, you can easily get AI ships to pilot around them with a temporary detour, or pause and wait for them to pass. For general travel I doubt this is a problem. For moving objects interacting with each other, make the bounding box for a ship longer at the front depending on its speed, so AI pilots will not try to cut in front of another ship's path - avoid things that are
going to be in your way as much as avoiding things that
are in your way.
for combat though, its another matter, but I'd say the same principle applies, put an imaginary bounding box around everything so it has nice flat planes to it, which makes plotting paths around it much easier and make AI pilots avoid flying too close to stations. Otherwise, you are going to have them crash into things,but that's OK like I've done that as a player sometimes. I don't think its unreasonable to see the occasional fast pirate ship crash and burn if they go too fast too close to something. You should only see it in combat though, as they would be flying slower when in proximity to a station otherwise.
so for general travel, I wouldn't expect it to be too difficult at all, if stations are fixed positions, then points could be placed around them for routing and ships would route themselves to the right place, or route themselves around stations. If not, and the station is considered a single point a ship routes to, with collision avoidance when it gets close, then that can work and might be simpler.
I think the X3 system worked very well all in all, but as we've all seen how the autopilot would get into awkward spots, stop and reorient, that could be improved by making it look further ahead so its re-orientation around objects appears more gradual. Which is, after all, how I avoid objects!
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