I would suggest that Bioware games are not good examples of robust walk systems, as they are all riddled with player movement bugs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWfUPTSt9gE …, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuoI1J-6kLY …, https://youtu.be/7IaPf6PJUaI?t=252 …, etc.)
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Replying to @cmuratori
I mentioned them because of its use of the heightmap for collisions. Hm, i never saw such bugs in any of their games (i've played all the Aurora-derived ones) and always assumed this was because of the heightmap. Perhaps it was a case of designer mistake like your boat example?
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Replying to @badsectoracula @cmuratori
I wrote the pathfinding for DA:O (not the height map extraction from geometry). Because players were driven by physics checks against geometry instead of the pathfinding representation you would still see these bugs.
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Replying to @nathansttt @cmuratori
Interesting. Do you know why it used physics checks instead of the heightmap? Was that only for dynamic objects or for everything? Considering the "no-overlapping" limit that was already there it sounds like the heightmap already provided easy "empty vs solid space" checks.
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Replying to @badsectoracula @nathansttt
Height maps don't have anything to do with movement, they're just a (relatively bad) manifold representation like any other you might have. You still need some algorithm that determines how you move on one point of the height map towards another.
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Since they presumably have lots of blocking geometry (like doors, walls, obstacles, etc.), they still needed something to say whether you could or couldn't move somewhere, and that was their physics engine, right?
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So they presumably didn't actually have anything like a real, complete walkable area definition with all the obstacles and (moving!) blockers, like characters and platforms and so on, hence the height map doesn't really help solve the problem at all.
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Replying to @cmuratori @badsectoracula
The game had a grid representation of each level representing the full walkable area. Characters dynamically blocked the grid when they stopped. The borders of characters and things like traps weighted the path finding to influence avoidance.
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Replying to @nathansttt @badsectoracula
But was that the actual walkable area? Meaning, the player literally could only walk on a rectangular grid - not along curves or diagonals and so on?
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Replying to @cmuratori @badsectoracula
Diagonals were part of the path planning, and paths were further smoothed to allow better path segments. So, the grid represented the walkable area, but you didn’t have to stay exactly on the grid.
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No, I mean the edges. Like presumably if you have arbitrary geometry along the edges of the walkable region, that cannot be represented by "a grid", so how was that represented? Suppose the player wants to walk along a jagged cliffside, for example.
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