Just what exactly is the Pathing Tool?

bp2008 · January 2014

I didn't touch the editor for a long time until yesterday.

Wow has it gotten buggy or what?! It was fine 6 months ago....!

Anyway I notice a new "Pathing Tool" and I can't figure out what it actually does. The pathing geometry it creates is absolutely not the same as the nav mesh I see in-game with the nav_debug cheat. In fact the game seems to ignore this pathing geometry completely so I question why it even exists except to bloat the map size?

Can anyone explain exactly what this tool does, and what it is for?

Quandrastorm · January 2014

i though the pathing was used to help bots where they can or cant go
and yes it sure is buggy, crashes mutiple times per night

bp2008 · January 2014

Well the Navigation Mesh is for helping bots know where they can and can't go. It also defines where you can build as a commander or drop a gorge tunnel.

However it is still unclear to me what the Pathing Tool actually does. Obviously it is related to the Nav Mesh, but what the pathing tool actually generates is not the Nav Mesh. The geometry created by the pathing tool sure looks like Nav Mesh, but it covers a lot of areas that don't actually receive Nav Mesh when you are in the game. Pretty much any reasonably flat piece of geometry of decent size seems to get highlighted by this thing, whereas in game it is much more restrictive. As far as I can tell, only areas that have an unbroken connection to a tech point get Nav Mesh.

For example, I had a simple rectangular room with a tech point in it. The room was detached from the rest of the map. In-game, this room had no Nav Mesh until I ran the Pathing Tool. Then I moved the entire room over a little (still overlapping its old position) and loaded it in-game again. The Nav Mesh appeared in the room's old position, not in the new position! Ran the Pathing Tool again and the Nav Mesh moved to the room's new position. Then I removed the tech point from the room but did not run the Pathing Tool again. No more Nav Mesh in that room. WTF?

Howser · January 2014

It's a buggy/odd system, if you've played with it enough you'll soon figure that out. You're best bet is just making it yourself but putting duplicates of your ground faces into a layer called 'pathing'. I actually deleted the pathing ent for my map accidentally and published multiple builds forgetting to rebuild it as it seemed to be functioning just fine. So I don't even think you need it while you're grey-boxing.
You apparently need to put a pathing_settings entity to adjust the rules its built under so its not so mongy. I'd suggest just copying one from an summit or whatever to make sure the settings are right. Then build it.
I also noticed a nav mesh has to be one element to function properly. Having an isolated tech point will cause all sorts of weird issues.
That's about all I've experienced on the matter. So unless you're having issues just igore the bloody thing

bp2008 · January 2014

If I was building traditional maps, it wouldn't bother me so much. But I'm working on siege maps which must have a disconnected room that is inaccessible for the first ~25 minutes of the game. If I have the room connected to the "main" nav mesh, then any NPC unit can get in and Aliens can cyst in and build from the very start, which breaks one of the defining features of siege-style gameplay.

Whatever the Pathing Tool generates is certainly not the final Nav Mesh that the game uses. Right now I'm thinking the Nav Mesh is still generated during map load in NS2, and maybe the Pathing Tool just defines the areas that the Nav Mesh is allowed to extend to so the final Nav Mesh generation takes less time?

One way or another, the only way I've found to make a disconnected room with a completely separate nav mesh is to put a tech point in that room. And if I want it to be impossible to build on that tech point, I have to put the tech point in CommanderInvisible and put CommanderNoBuild geometry over the top of it!

Just what exactly is the Pathing Tool?

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