A crazy idea to help pet pathing

[Skyhigh]

When they are not fighting and only following you through the dungeon make the pets use some sort of invisible railing system. Let me explain.

I noticed that my pet is always getting stucked when trying to follow me in the dungeon. If i'm too fast and left him 2 or more rooms behind me, he start trying to get back to me in straight line, that often result in the bot getting stucked in the wall.

Why don't for each dungeon draw an invisible rail throught the whole dungeon. That way the bot can follow that "route" and not getting stucked at all. Only time he can get out of the rail is when fighting. As soon as the combat end, the bot go back on the rail ready to follow you again.

[______________Inanis]

I had the exact same suggestin a while back, I think its a great idea.

The missions are already composited by different room 'components', right? Why not add, as Aguisha said, a rail for the pet, door to door, inside each room.
The only time the pet deviates from the pat is if it has to fight.
After the fight, the pet returns to a random location on the path inside the room it is in. If its not back on the path after 5 seconds of trying, it tries again on a different location on the path. If it fails 4 times, it warps to it.

And because I am just that bored, I have made a couple of examples as to how I imagine it would work:


We all know this room, in my opinion the worst room for my pet. I have been playing an engineer since beta, and only been able to get my pet in there for about 5 times.


How it currently works:
http://casa.linuxnation.no/~tomas/path1.jpg

The pet gets into the room for a short second, but then for some reason its warped back (Illustrated by a stylish "?" on my pic) to the other side of the door again, and it will loop like that until you give it a new command.

How it would hopefully work with leet pathing:
http://casa.linuxnation.no/~tomas/path2.jpg

The pet finds its way and everyone are happy (cept the mob), after the fight, the pet returns to one of the red marks on the rail.

[lilnymph]

bump for a cool idea (though I can hear the world builders groaning as they read this )

plus, I want an Evil Conspiracy table for my Apartment

hugs

lilnymph

[Warlock]

Much easier...........


Just make them use the MOB pathing AI. Have you ever known a MOB to NOT be able to get to you in a mission (even through walls?)

Yes I am being sarcastic :-)

[__________d'Artagnan]

I love any idea involving improved pet pathing... bumpity bump bump.

[Demenzia]

MOBs always end up getting to you, but sometimes they get stuck in walls as well. Guess their AI's not *that much* brighter than the average pet

Now with my poor little experience of a developer (... who managed to pull out a calculator out of VB 6 two years ago, and then quickly dropped back to her beloved HTML )... would it be really hard to push a little more coding in a "pet path" in the strict sense of the word? Hmm let's see, something working like...

If Engy walks more than [var=x] paces
-->then pet follows
------>if the way is open
----------->pet follows in Engy's trail
------>if obstacle
----------->pet stops
----------------->if obstacle can be walked around
---------------------->then pet walks around to find the Engy's trail again
---------------------->loop to: pet follows Engy's trail
----------------->else
---------------------->pet goes back until it finds the Engy's trail again
---------------------->loop to: pet follows Engy's trail
If Engy doesn't move
-->then pet doesn't move.

Okay, my algo sucks, no need to even tell it to me.