[Performance] Pathfinding is inefficient to CPU resources.

AendaeronBluescale

If several NPCs or player characters have to find a large way around obstacles, the FPS falls, making the game stuttering.

Best example: Firewine bridge; walk over the bridge to the eastern border of the bridge, hoping to encounter enemies below the bridge. Then watch the stutter unfolding as both PCs and NPCs try to figure out a large way around half the area map.

Suggestion: Outsource pathfinding to a separate thread.

sarevok57

did you try setting affinity to all your cores when playing the game? that should take all the lag out

astrallite

don't you mean setting affinity to a single core? Trying to run a single-threaded game on multiple cores is more likely to cause lag, not decrease it.

AendaeronBluescale

What I mean is that Beamdog should program a separate threading for pathfinding (essentially make BG:EE multicore compatible)

Alkalurops

I don't think it's as easy as running code in a separate thread. Besides, baldur.exe already uses 12 threads, so it's possible pathfinding already runs in its own thread.

It seems to me they have more severe performance problems, which could be caused by anything, from algorithmic issues to cache misses.

Bercon

Implementing multithreading to legacy code base like infinity engine sounds like a plan.

Sasayaki

As a software engineer, if pathfinding is causing lag, it's an algorithmic issue. I've seen A* do crazy good pathfinding in single thread, and I played around with some games where I moved pathfinding into its own thread for performance reasons. In the end using A* was a much better solution.