I’m trying to set up my NPCs so that when the player goes more than a short distance away, they switch into a “dumb” mode, where they pathfind based on their AI but don’t aren’t rendered, don’t run collision checks, or bother with any of the other expensive stuff that nearby NPCs do.
To that end, I tried disabling visualization, actor tick, and capsule collision, but leaving the character movement component ticking:
This results in the invisible, non-colliding characters freezing in place, and not moving. If I break the link to Set Collision Profile Name, and only disable tick and visibility while leaving collision active, they move normally.
Is there a way to disable collision entirely while maintaining motion? I basically want to reduce characters to invisible points, and only leave their pathfinding/navigation and AI active.
I think i would build a NPC Manager system that handles the NPC’s when they are out of the view of the player.
The NPC manager could store the location variables(loaction, rotation and so on), handle the movement of the NPC’s(a much simpler movement system than the AI system, to reduce the impact on the preformance of the game) and store information about the actions of the NPC(so the correct animation is played when the player sees the NPC again)
The NPC would be De-spawned since the needed variables are in the NPC Manager, so the NPC could be respawned anytime at the correct location with the correct rotation and doing the correct action.
You don’t need AI for invisible characters, the AI will just cost you preformance. Just make a system that makes it look like that NPC’s around the player is doing stuff, they don’t have to do stuff that the player does not experience, it just have to look like they did.
The only invisible characters you need AI for is invisible enemies, if you have any.
I hope you get my point.
Hope it helps
Edit: Forgot: I think the AI need the collion to navigat the navmesh…
