Battlezone Forums

There seems to be no good information about pathing. How does it work? What is required to do it?

Here is some good information about how to do it.
http://www.bzcommand.com/forum/index.php?topic=98.0

Pathing is used for SP missions and IA/MPI.

labmice00 wrote:Here is some good information about how to do it.
http://www.bzcommand.com/forum/index.php?topic=98.0

Pathing is used for SP missions and IA/MPI.

I'm somewhat afraid that is not what the OP was refering to.

Anyway, if it is, there is the link with an answer. If not, than here is the answer [.....................].
Simple, you do nothing
In effect the game tries to find a sort of level path from point A to point B, the shift-F9 editor gives a good indication where ships will feel ok to move to (colored in blue, iirc, the rest is yellow). For the rest it is mostly what I like to call commen sence. When you raise a wall center-map with no clear "sides" the AI will try to ride it dead-on, believing that if they trottle up they magicly will fly over the wall .... so shape the wall a bit so it become more of a part of an oval and ships will again find a path around it.

You can also hide objects underground to steer AI-controlled units to and/or away from certain areas, you can use water to achieve the same though the AI ignores it easier and in some cases they may even choose to blatantly cross the water.
Pathing is fun, its works anyway, with a bit of commen sence, but with a bit of imagination you can pull of all sorts of stunts with it

Yes, for map making pathing is something you should test, not something you add as such. The shift f9 screens in the editor can be quite useful for this as they should give some indication of what the AI will and will not try to use. If you make narrow canyons pathing will be more difficult, as the ai has to path round other units and may often decide that canyon is blocked because their are other units in it. So a good map will offer alternate routes.

Generally good map design implies good pathing. I have run into issues were I had to replace entire bridges on maps converted from 1.2 because the AI refuses to path them at all. The hardest part with pathing when map making IMO is tunnels and bridges. Especially new ones.

Sorry, can't resist a pun.

Open up a G66v2 map using BZ2edit.exe and use Shift-F9 to see good examples of pathing. FE maps, too.

Make a shortcut to BZ2Edit.exe and put something like this in the target field:

Target:

C:\BZ2\BZ2Edit.exe /config FE13_EDITOR.cfg /nointro /novista /odfwarnings /uniquelogfile /win /resolution 1680 1050 cpmmmnt.bzn

run it