Short point in bold; In-Depth continues afterward Is there a method for keeping team mates or groups of 'units' to stay is some kind of formation, even after movement? What I'm trying to explain, say you have yourself and a group of teammates, you move, then after a while, your teammates follow up afterward, but not in just any position they stop at, but more of a formation. Better yet, another example. Say you have a hord of angry demon-things. About nine of them. How can you keep those (eight) demon-things following their (one) leader of demon-things, in a specific formation, after movement? This will probably have a really easy/dumb solution, but I can't think straight today. Anyway, thanks a bunch.

Do a search for steering behaviors. Here's a link:

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/

My guess is that you could impose some constraints that would ensure/encourage particular formations.

-Kirk

They should try to move to their spot in the formation, instead of just following the leader.

Vorpy hit the nail on the head.

The key here is to use a point in formation as the target for the pathfinder. For example in Warriors they use V formations when your gang members follow you... If a part of the V is occupied by an obstacle, then fallback positions are used.

Then you can use traditional pathfinding and steering behaviors.

I hope that helps.

Yes, alexjc, that's exactly what I was trying to get to. How do you propose to do that?

The same way you'd do any formation, just in the new position.

Are you asking how to do formations, as well as how to maintain them after moving?

Well, the demon-like relative question was answered, but what if you were the leader and you need people to follow you? (ie, Knights of the Old Republic)

Methinks you need to be clearer with your questions. You are all over the map with some rather vague stuff.

Also, much of this has been discussed many many times all over the net and even in this thread. Do a forum search for "formation" and you should have all sorts of answers in one place rather than piecemeal.

Yeah, I know it's everywhere. I'm horrible at explaining things.
There's a search option? [looks]
Oh... [slaps self]
Thanks.

Quote: Original post by Vorpy
They should try to move to their spot in the formation, instead of just following the leader.

Quote: Original post by alexjc
The key here is to use a point in formation as the target for the pathfinder.

My point exactly. Rather than trying to do pathfinding for each individual targeting unique locations based on the expected formation, wouldn't steering behaviors combined with formation/positional constraints give a similar result? I would think it would be much less costly than pathfinding (A*, IDA*, etc.), and might give rise to somewhat unique behavior.

-Kirk

Edit: This paper discusses my original suggestion: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cache/papers/cs/25950/http:zSzzSzobiwan.redstorm.comzSz~jimvvzSzPathfindingzSzVanVerth00Pathfind.pdf/vanverth00formationbased.pdf

And another: http://www.maia.ub.es/~maite/papers/formationsWISAS.pdf

And yet one more: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/online-publications/formjour.pdf

[Edited by - kirkd on October 4, 2007 11:43:58 AM]