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embedding-shape 2 hours ago

Well, depending on how you implement it, there might not be any way of getting unstuck, imagine a wall that is 3/4 circle for example, with a small opening, could it escape with that sort of naive algorithm? Players tend to be kind of sensitive to "stupid unit movements", and not having pathfinding is a great way of triggering that feeling in every play session.

card_zero 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There certainly are naive ways, although whatever I suggest here will be poorly thought out and will lead to the next problem. But OK, I suggest a scent trail. Each unit paints where it's been and prefers not to go that way again. Then of course it could paint itself into a corner, so it needs a local-maximum-busting strategy too, which probably means marching off in an arbitrary direction to see if it gets unstuck.

This would be behaving like a caged animal, and in a game, that's good, and better than a smarter algorithm. You don't want them to be idiots, but you don't want them to be magic, either.

The old "follow the left-hand wall" maze-solving strategy is another naive way to get out of a trap. It's not fun gameplay, but it's naive and it exists, so better naive strategies do too.

hluska 30 minutes ago | parent [-]

That’s pathfinding. I thought you were opposed to pathfinding?

jhbadger 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

When you get stuck, try random directions. That's what my robot vacuum does.

embedding-shape 44 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not sure if you've played any RTS lately, but I'm fairly confident people would drop the game relatively fast if they started seeing their units taking off in random directions because they cannot find their way around a wall. But we could also be playing very different games :)