Advanced Pathnoding

# By: Sliencer

# utcity@planetunreal.com

# UT City

Topics:

- Pathing movers such as elevators
- Making bots take different paths in Capture the Flag maps
- How to make bots use portals correctly
- How to create teleporters correctly
- How to make Jump spots
- How to use Kickers
- Making bots snipe and defend correctly

Foreword:

I am suspecting that you have some sort of level ready and are familiar with UnrealED 1.0 or UnrealED 2.0.

Directions:

Pathing movers such as elevators:

Ok, lets start out by you already having a mover ready. For this section I will be teaching on pathnoding bots to use movers, so an elevator would be the best choice to pick. Now open up your Classes Broswer. Go into the Navigation objects. Then look for the following two objects: "LiftExit" and "LiftCenter". See below for visual:

Ok, now click on the LiftExit object and go into your 3D view. Place the LiftExit where you want the bot to get on and off. One will be at the top, and one at the bottom. Make sure it is fairly far but not to far from you elevator/mover. Make sure you place two of those. Ok, now go back to your Classes browser and select on LiftCenter. Now carefully place your LiftCenter right over the center of your lift. See below for an example.

Once you have gotten all these set up, it should have a similiar look to this:

Ok, now it's time to get it set up. First go into your mover's properties. Set the tag to something unique and remember it. Now go into the Object settings and under InitialState, choose StandOpenTimed. This makes the mover go when a person/bot stands on it. See below for visual:

Now close the mover properties and open up the LiftCenter properties. This time go into the LiftCenter settings (found in the LiftCenter properties box) and next to LiftTag, put it as the tag you used for your mover. See below for visual:

Now go ahead and close the LiftCenter properties and select on both LiftExit object in the 3D view by holding the Ctrl button down to select the second one. Right click on one of them and go into their properties. Under the LiftExit settings (found in the LiftExit properties box), go to where it says LiftTag and set that again to whatever it was you set your mover's tag to. Again, see below for visual:

Now close the LiftExit's properties box and deselect them. Now go ahead and redefine paths. To do this in UnrealED 1.0, press the F8 key and go to the last tab and select on Paths Define. To do this in UnrealED 2.0, press on this button , which is the Compute Paths button. When that is finished, go to your 3D view again and right click on the gray bar just above it. Then go into View and select on Show Paths. Visual below:

You should now see two or three blue lines, one connecting the bottom LiftExit to the LiftCenter and one connecting the top LiftExit to the LiftCenter. This is good. If you do not see them, you probably tagged them wrong. See below for an example of a correctly done one:

Ok cool, your down. Now just rebuild gemometry, or if in UnrealED 2.0 rebuild geometry and lighting and test it out to see if it works. Good luck!

Making bots take different paths in Capture the Flag maps:

Now this one took me some time to really figure out, but I finally got it. Anyways here is how to do it. First open up your Capture the Flag map or whatever map you want to try it on (CTF highly recommended) and open up your classes broswer. Now before you select anything in it, go to the midpoint of one of your paths in your CTF level. Making sure that you are near or are at the midpoint, remove some of the pathnodes in it. Now you should have a gap in your path. Ok, now go back to your classes broswer and go into NavigationPoint. Then select on the AlternatePath object. Now place one on one side of your midpoint gap and the other on the other side. Basically what you should have now is a path that has two alternate paths connecting it in the middle. Now if you want you can add a pathnode directly in the center (never figured out if it was neccassary but it might be so put one in anyways). See below for a visual of what I just attempted to explain:

Once you have that down, do it for every path in your CTF level. Once you are down with that, assign half of the AlternatePaths their team number. To do this, first select on the AlternatePath that is closer to the blue base (This would be team 1), now select go into its properties. Under AlternatePath, set the Team attribute to 1. See below for visual:

Now do this for each set of AlternatePaths in your map. Remember to only assign the Team attribute to the AlternatePaths that are closer to he blue base. Also note: If you assigned the red base as team 1, then choose the AlternatePaths that are closer to the red base and set their attributes to Team 1. When you are finished with all of that, redefine you paths and rebuild geometry and lighting and test it out. Good luck!

How to make bots use portals correctly:

Before I begin with this section I would like to clarify that you have already made your portals and have placed the WarpZoneInfo's into the portals themselves. In this section, I will only be teaching you how to pathnode them correctly for bots.

Basically all you need to do is put the pathnode in front of the WarpZoneInfo on both sides of the portal like so:

| <--This is one end
| <--This is the other end

Well I think that's it. After you've done that just go ahead and rebuild geometry, lighting, and paths and you'll be all set. Good luck!

How to create teleporters correctly:

For this section I will be focusing on pathing visible teleporters, but this can also be done the same way as normal ones can. First start out by placing the teleporters where you want them. Next select on one of them making it turn greenish. Now you should see a small red arrow pointing in some direction. Hold down the right mouse button and the Ctrl key to rotate it. This red arrow is pointing to the direction that the bot/player will exit out. Position the teleporters' arrows to allow the player a good view of the battle when he comes out of the teleporter. This is about a five second process but has been known to be done in two seconds :) Anyways, that's how to do it.

How to make jump spots:

Coming Later

How to use kickers:

Coming Later

Making bots snipe and defend correctly:

A question that arises a lot in the UnrealED forums is how to make bots snipe in custom maps. Well, I think it's time to end it with a written tutorial :) First, open up your level and go into the classes browser. Go into NavigationPoint, then into AmbushPoint, and select on DefensePoint. See visual below:

Now place the defensepoints in the areas in which you want the bots to defend or snipe. Since we are talking about how to make bots snipe, I will explain this first. First click on the DefensePoint and right click on it. Go into its properites. Then select on the plus sign next to AmbushPoint and set the bSniping option to True. Then click on the plus sign next to DefensePoint and set the Team number this defensepoint will be for. I am setting this defensepoint up for team blue which is team 1, so I put 1 next to Team. If setting this for the red team, leave it at 0. (Note: If the bots don't use the right defensepoints in the game try switching the numbers around.) Now next to Priority, set it to a number. I am setting mine to 101. Let me explain why this is important.

Let's say that you have three DefensePoints for each team in your CTF map. One you put down as a 50 priority, one as a 51 priority, and one as a 52 priority. Then you start up you level and assign two bots to defend the base. The first bot will go to the defensepoint that has the highest priority number. The other bot will go to the next one down unless there's a second DefensePoint with the same number. In this case the two bots would be covering the DefensePoints with the priorities of 52 and 51.

Ok, now you should understand the concept of the priorities in DefensePoints so I'll be moving on. For an example of how I configured my DefensePoint, look below:

Ok, the next and last part is to position the arrows within the DefensePoint, so that the bots will know where to look. Click on the DefensePoint in your map, you'll notice a small red arrow in your 2D views pointing somewhere. This arrow is showing where the bot is going to look. If you have made you DefensePoint in a tower (like mine), and want it to be looking down at the ground below, just move the red arrow so that it is looking in that direction. To do this, hold the Ctrl key and the right mouse button and drag it around. Do this for every DefensePoint in your map. Below is an example of how one of my DefensePoints looks.

Conclusion:

You should now be familiar with pathing unique things for bots, such as evevators. Most of these techniques take time to master so don't fret if you can't do it the first time correctly.

Other:

-=[Copyright/Permissions]=-

Questions/Comments email me at Murphy149h@mediaone.net .

This tutorial is Copyright (c) 2000 Matt Murphy.

This tutorial is not supported by Legend Entertainment or Epic Games.