I have been trying to make a turn based game with out a grid. My original plan was to just use the navmesh since it was already built in but it has a couple issues. Navmesh is only an approximation and has no function to show the distance a unit can move from its current location. At best I have managed to just have it draw a spline to the cursor to display the one path that is found. My other option right now is a grid with very small tiles and units taking up multiple tiles.
So I am looking for alternatives to writing an entirely new path finding system which I don’t think I have the knowledge to do.
If you’re already drawing a spline, then you can get the location of a point at a distance along that spline equal to the max distance the unit can move. Then tell the unit to move to that point. Maybe? Just an idea.
That was the general idea when I tested the spline method. It also gave the idea of trying to draw a polygon out of a bunch of those splines but seems it would be a lot of pathfinding to make anything accurate.
Ideally I would like to look at the blueprints of another project that has managed to use navmesh in turn based but I am not sure they exist. I haven’t seen a grid with pawns taking up multiple tiles yet either but that seems doable just less optimal.
Ohh, I think I misunderstood the question. You want to draw some sort of overlay that shows the area that the unit can move? Hmm. I found one answerhub question that was fairly relevant, but the answer wasn’t very promising. I think this is outside the scope of blueprints.
Yes those pictures show what I am looking for. I asked a similar question in answer hub and the response was pretty much that navmesh doesn’t do that yet.
The shape of the distance wouldn’t necessarily be a circle. It would be affected by having to go through rough terrain or around objects. Navmesh supports some areas costing more to move through just not the showing part.
do you plan to make any kind of AI? then think, how you can implement AI decision making to create a competitive CPU opponent. in case of a turn based strategy, tiles or hexes are cool, you can use a Dijkstra (A* without heuristic) to get the possible movement area easily, then make some other evaluations of targets… so imo, let’s make your simple pathfinder, there are many online resources.
I don’t know that game if you don’t mean HoMM3, which uses a square grid on the world map.
AI wasn’t a high priority with gridless though EQS looked like a good way to do it, maybe still is. I would use A* if I have to settle for a grid, which it looks like I have to. I haven’t seen much resources for handling multiple tile pawns. I just wanted to avoid a grid if possible because neither hexes or squares are good at modeling both circular and square pawns.
Yeah, multiple tile units are tricky, I made a working RTS demo having this feature, inspired by Company of Heroes. Basically you have to use so called ‘clearance maps’, but the actual unit should be excuded from the clearance map used for its pathfinding.
