Hello everyone, sorry for dumb question, just wondering how patch finding might be implemented in big games like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion? Forests are quite large and complex with all those trees, do you think they still use grid & nodes for patch finding? Or something more sophisticated? I'm new to all this stuff so sorry again if this is a stupid question :) Regards, Ernest

I think they will use pre-calculated paths to go about their schedules (head to the inn, library etc). They don't really need to dynamically calculate their paths as the world geometry is more or less static. To "chase the player" they probably just use something like seek or arrival behaviour at the players position along with wall and obstacle avoidance.

That's what I thought when I played it anyway...

No idea how they implemented it, but most games just use the terrain polygons as A* nodes and search paths that way. If the terrain is vast you just break it up into seperate grid clusters to optimize the search. You can get all fancy and do course grain pathfinding where each entire grid is treated as a single node. Then you just solve in your current grid for a smooth local path. So basically you're really only doing expensive pathfinding in your local area rather than across the whole map.

-me

thanks for replays, I've got the idea now :)