Crushbone Pathing

[Ryvnor]

There's a slight issue with Crushbone's pathing that I noticed when I was in there the past few days. When the entrance opens up and you have the option to go left towards the back of the dungeon or climb up towards Orc Hill, or straight to kill the few spawns straight out from the entrance, or right to head towards the slavers, the orcs path right through the river in between the center area and the left side. They should be running all the way to the little bridge to cross the river, but they just plow right over the edge, through the river and up the other edge.

This only becomes a problem when trains happen though, since when the slavers get trained to the zone line they'll run over unsuspecting people in the center who would normally be out of the train's path.

[President]

Dev's can correct me if I am wrong but I believe pathing is a bitch-and-a-half to fix in eqemu. Basically meaning that the time they can invest, they are going to invest in fixing really important zones (like plane of hate) or other issues that are an easier fix.

There is still pathing issues in guk as well, but I believe its more of a "known issue" kind of thing that we in the emu community are going to have to deal with than expect to get fixed.

[Ryvnor]

There are a lot of bugs that can be swept under the rug and called inferior to other content. This is the bug report forum however and whether the developers budget time to fix this relatively trivial issue is up to them to decide. The post is here to let them know there is an issue as far as the pathing in this zone goes.

I've not worked with emulators and I'm assuming that there's a lot more coding involved in fixing the majority of the issues listed in this forum than altering a few lines, but then again without having worked on it I can't say that isn't the case.

As for expecting anything I post to get fixed, I personally only worry about the bugs on the scale of the disappearing stacks but I'll continue to post the little things as I come across them. Knowing there's an issue and choosing not to fix it is better than not knowing at all.

[Aeolwind]

I won't say you're wrong, but in some cases the fix can be freaking painful. I'll take a look on test. I'm some cases you can add a new node, set junctions and it'll be fine, or remove junctions (as this seems to what is needed in this case). Then others, you'll add a node and the entire zone will path to that node before it goes to the next lol.

Honestly, KLS's pathing code works better here than it did on live.

[Ryvnor]

President does bring up a point that I will ask the developers though. I do notice a lot of little, relatively minor bugs or inconsistencies as I play and many of them aren't going to break the game, like this pathing issue. Would it be preferable to simply not post issues that aren't that big of a deal, or post them in an ongoing thread (although without other posters adding input an edited thread can drop out of existence in a hurry), or continue posting them singly?

I'm not looking to clutter this forum and knock out the more pressing issues with smaller matters, I just feel that if I were developing the project I'd like to know even the smaller things to add to a master list of "Maybe laters".

[President]

There are a lot of bugs that can be swept under the rug and called inferior to other content. This is the bug report forum however and whether the developers budget time to fix this relatively trivial issue is up to them to decide. The post is here to let them know there is an issue as far as the pathing in this zone goes.

I've not worked with emulators and I'm assuming that there's a lot more coding involved in fixing the majority of the issues listed in this forum than altering a few lines, but then again without having worked on it I can't say that isn't the case.

As for expecting anything I post to get fixed, I personally only worry about the bugs on the scale of the disappearing stacks but I'll continue to post the little things as I come across them. Knowing there's an issue and choosing not to fix it is better than not knowing at all.


I'm not saying Its not worth reporting bugs, but it is well known that there are many many many pathing issues in emu. If everyone posted every pathing issue they ran into there would be 20k posts in this forum and other potentially important stuff could get lost.

This is not to say that there aren't pathing issues that are a serious problem. If you attack a mob that is against a wall standing right in front of him and he turns around warps through the wall and comes back with 50 mobs that's obviously a serious issue. But if you attack something and while you are running for your life it paths a different way than maybe it "should" but it still gets to you on relatively the right path, id says that more of a "known issue" with emu that more than likely won't get fixed.

Maybe its just my personal view, but I am more concerned with the Dev's working on getting PoAir & Kunark ready for release than worrying about the orcs in crushbone warping through the water instead of using the bridge.


My initial post was not intended as a "flame" to you but more informational as to the current status of pathing in emu.

[Ryvnor]

It's not viewed as a flame, President. I doubt anyone would get bent out of shape about the bug forum :D

I agree that the issue isn't something that needs to be forced into a patch, or fixed even in the near future. It's simply a post telling them "This spot, strange pathing that could lead to deaths for players who remember the old paths." I have asked the developers above what they'd prefer in terms of these issues so if they feel the smaller issues should be kept off the boards, I can easily turn away from them. The posts are there in the event they do have a quick method to get them fixed, or if they want to throw them on a list of "We'll get to these when all the major issues seem stable."

[doacleric]

Pathing is very, very finicky. Sometimes the NPC's seem to rigidly stick to the assigned pathing, and other times they ignore it completely and walk through the moat like you witnessed. It takes a lot of tweaking and experimentation to get it to work right. The best things to fix however are problems where the NPC's fall under the world and cause huge trains. I know guk has some issues, does any other zone?

[President]

I am curious to see what the dev's say. I know they want to hear basically every issue but there seems to be a grey area with pathing. It's kind of like a "we know its wack but its a difficult thing to fix and if its not totally wack well probably look at other things first." (and since they have endless other things to get ready IE: kunark/velious that could be never)

Honestly aside from small pathing issues, I can't think of anything else I would tell someone it may not be worth posting. I have probably surfed this bug forum for close to 6 months now and I think small pathing issues is the only time I have replied to advise this generally isn't going to get looked at unless its serious as it can be difficult to fix.

[President]

Pathing is very, very finicky. Sometimes the NPC's seem to rigidly stick to the assigned pathing, and other times they ignore it completely and walk through the moat like you witnessed. It takes a lot of tweaking and experimentation to get it to work right. The best things to fix however are problems where the NPC's fall under the world and cause huge trains. I know guk has some issues, does any other zone?

Aside from range pulling guk I don't think there are too many issues that I remember. I mean - I've seen a hundred crazy ass path's leveling up but not very often a warp through the wall holy-fuck moment outside of guk (paw?). And some cases, this isn't all that far off from classic live either lol.

[Ryvnor]

I hadn't noticed the pathing to be overly terrible in the time I've been playing, but I can definitely understand where it could be a trouble spot. I've worked with a few types of engines with questionable pathing issues that never really made a lot of sense at times, so I'll leave the minor issues I run across here off the forum.

If I do find anything that would wreck an entire zone, I'll throw it into a singular pathing post and just let that post sit as an archive in the forum. My biggest concern is keeping clutter out of the important issues and I wasn't sure just how stable the pathing system the devs have to play with was.

I did figure there may be a few issues with character/npc position the first time I walked into the forest of the floating dead (Gfay) :D

[Aeolwind]

ALWAYS post ALL bugs you encounter. Game breakers like quests and exploits generally take top priority, 2nd then is loot/vendors generally with some exceptions. Beyond that you have stuff like NPC faces, clothes, weapons etc that are important, but you won't see a HUGE push, it will be a "when we are in that area" kinda thing. Pathing, is dependent on level of severity. In the case of an orc crossing a river it may not be fixable, in the case of a train causing super bug, I may just get popcorn =o. (just kidding, maybe)

[Ferok]

Aside from range pulling guk I don't think there are too many issues that I remember. I mean - I've seen a hundred crazy ass path's leveling up but not very often a warp through the wall holy-fuck moment outside of guk (paw?). And some cases, this isn't all that far off from classic live either lol.

Pathing in Guk on live was an abomination. I was going to post something about it here as well, and then I remembered... "Hey, this is classic!"

[Imsetta]

Crushbone pathing has been updated. Should be in with server coming back up. I had to add over 100 new path nodes to correct missing holes.

Lanys_T`Vyl