The path finding in these games is so bad...

JasonPogo

I know it's not really that big a deal. But the path finding is so bad. So many times if I have to walk down like a narrow hallway at least one of my party will just randomly start walking in the opposite direction entirely. Also no matter what formation I put my party in it always seems my warriors get hung up on something and a lone mage or something will end up rushing into a group of enemy's ahead of them and get owned. Just had to vent.

O_Bruce

We know...

I recall that someone stated that theytried to improve the pathfinding, but in doing so they accidentaly broken something else. As a result, pathfinding wasn not improved.

Musigny

@JasonPogo

In BG2EE baldur.ini, setting 'Game Options', 'Enhanced Path Finding', '1', fixes the issue (to some extent).
I don't know why this is not on by default. There must be a reason.

CrevsDaak

Well, at least you can ise CRTL+J and it isn't even close the shit PS:T's pathfinding was, and you couldn't enable the console in PS:T.

Metalloman

CTRL+J is THE time saver: I couldn't play without it...

bbear

If you play solo, you can laugh/exploit at the enemies' pathfinding.

Dee

The Infinity Engine's pathfinding is so bad, when your party walks around the house, they walk AROUND THE HOUSE.

the_spyder

BG game path finding is so bad that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.... in the opposite direction. Try it sometime.

Schneidend

The pathfinding is terrible in literally every game.

Dee

Schneidend said:

The pathfinding is terrible in literally every game.

I don't know, it was pretty good in Tetris.

mjs

I can't remember where it was but I once spent 5 minutes watching jahiera and aerie bump into each, turn around to go into the opposite direction, then both decide to come back again, only to bump into each other again at the same spot and do it all over

Musigny

mjs said:

I can't remember where it was but I once spent 5 minutes watching jahiera and aerie bump into each, turn around to go into the opposite direction, then both decide to come back again, only to bump into each other again at the same spot and do it all over

IIRC the sprites do it two times. The third time only one of them will change its direction.

SharGuidesMyHand

Ironically, the current pathfinding is actually an improvement from the original games.

vangoat

Walking back from the mind flayer/beholder lair to Ust Natha, one of my party always decides to take the scenic route and walk to the svirfneblin village...

SCARY_WIZARD

Dee said:

The Infinity Engine's pathfinding is so bad, when your party walks around the house, they walk AROUND THE HOUSE.

I thought the same thing, except not that. !

Dee said:

Schneidend said:

The pathfinding is terrible in literally every game.

I don't know, it was pretty good in Tetris.

Lemmings has some decent pathfinding...
Now, Gundam games where you have to control an MS in full 3D, those can be baaad, especially Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs Zeon. you know what, screw it, just give me a GM or a Zaku, I can't handle anything that handles like a hippopotamus or a puppy on a sugar rush


But um yesss. I just want to say I am very, very glad that attacks have good pathfinding.

Musigny

SharGuidesMyHand said:

Ironically, the current pathfinding is actually an improvement from the original games.

BG1 has always required a lot of micromanagement while moving in most buildings.
Now we can get rid of it. This is so great.
Nevertheless in the original game I never saw a sprite going through walls and impenetrable woods.
In BGEE it occurred on several occasions even though I have never been able to reproduce it. It might be related to the number of mouse commands (or UI interactions) within a short timeframe.

In BG2EE nothing similar so far.
Well, one remark though : in Watcher's keep lvl2 (chromatic demon) - air room at the top, some party members were blown away and projected through the closed doors.
This is not a vanilla BG2EE game (unfinished business, SCS, aTweaks, BG2 Tweaks). Therefore not an issue I want to log.

Belanos

Musigny said:

@JasonPogo

In BG2EE baldur.ini, setting 'Game Options', 'Enhanced Path Finding', '1', fixes the issue (to some extent).
I don't know why this is not on by default. There must be a reason.

I just had a look for that option but I couldn't find it anywhere. Is something you need to add manually?

Musigny

@Belanos
Yes. Please let us know if this works well for you. As far as I understand, this parameter increases the path (re)evaluation rate.

argent77

While experimenting with different game settings I have found the following option that had a noticeable effect in my game:

'Game Options', 'Enhanced Path Search', '1',

When enabled, the game seems to periodically recalculate the path between the character's current position and destination, which helps a lot if a character starts walking into opposite directions.

Franpa

SharGuidesMyHand said:

Ironically, the current pathfinding is actually an improvement from the original games.

In the original games you can amp the search nodes used in path finding to a ridiculous degree, drastically improving the path finding. For some reason this functionality was stripped from BG:EE though. I think the games by default used something like 2,000 or 3,000 nodes for path finding and you could increase it to 192,000 nodes or some other ridiculous amount, the Baldur's Gate: The First Saga further buffed the maximum number of nodes the game can use.

The original games also have an option to periodically recalculate the pathing. Argent777 seems to have found a way to enable this in BG:EE

The original game also has more options in general and a separate configuration program, allowing for much better tweaking of stuff, great for those with older computers and for those who can't play the game with the default configuration.

Edit: I was just then looking at the configuration file and it seems you can still tweak the number of nodes the game uses for path finding in BG:EE, you just have to edit the config file directly. I'm still a bit disappointed that they've ditched a proper configuration tool like what the original games had.

I wonder if a later patch can add 'Game Options', 'Enhanced Path Search', '1', to the config file with either a 0 or 1 to make players aware of the options existence.

Calmar

I got used long ago to simply check regularly and repeat orders if s.o. goes astray...

(Yeah, look at me, I'm sooo cool)

atcDave

Calmar said:

I got used long ago to simply check regularly and repeat orders if s.o. goes astray...

(Yeah, look at me, I'm sooo cool)

Yeah, I think actually what happens is when you first issue a movement, your characters are all close together, and they actually interfere with each other. So some of your characters end up with ridiculous or impossible routes to get where you're sending them (I have no idea why a computer would ever assign an impossible route, but it is what it is).

But if you click on the destination again, like 5 seconds later, your party has likely started to scatter, and they are less likely to interfere with each other's routes.

jackjack

I use waypoints (shift+click).