If I am correct you run on the side of the roads because hb2's navigation takes the shortest path possible, to fix this you would have to tighten up the meshes more towards the center of the road. In HB 1 every profile had an independent mesh file to accompany it, the authors would customize the mesh to work perfectly with the profile. But with HB2 all meshes are distributed and no longer modifiable which means it is up to the devs to solve all the little mesh problems, which needless to say is a daunting task.
Very often you will find that it has nothing to do with the actual navigation. HB queries the navigation to do the pathfind and trust me, if HB gives it two 'correct' points, you will get the optimal path 9 out of 10 times (the pathfind suffers in its A* because of separated polygon and point algorithms. It will first find a path with polygons (which is not done completely optimally because computing single point nodes out of polygons is hard), then it will find the actual points within those polygons). Trust me, you do not see this often, and if you see it, it won't look like it's going "sight seeing". What you refer to as 'sight seeing' is very likely when HB queries it with an end point you didn't expect, where you then assume you know what the end point is. EDIT: Also, please don't hesitate to contact me if you find any weird paths. I can take a look at them manually. You are correct.
i've noticed that its always run down the sides of the road more frequently then down the middle. And as a result it likes to run into fences, light posts, signs way too much. It does catch itself and 'backs away and around" but more often then not it takes 2 or 3 attempts before it clears the items because the point its trying to goto is at that spot it got stuck so it keeps trying to go back. One of these spots that always caused problems was in the middle of Xroads. I finally had to put blackspots in for the middle post cause it would almost always hit it and get stuck half the time til i manually avoided it. But all in all.. overall things have been good. Seems when these issues come up, tis cause the toon tries to go to a point by going thru the narrowest point available (quickest route). Maybe if the meshing works like I think, widen it just a few hairs shy of a cheap date on prom night. to see if it avoids the narrow paths that cause problems. (case in point, Kodo's get stuck alot of places where other mounts don't due to their size)
I personally think it would be nice to allow people to override meshes... That's one beautiful feature in HB1, is that if there's an issue with a mesh, people could simply fix it and release, or optimize it to work best with the profile. In HB2, if there's an issue like what is being said in this thread, it is left up to the authors of HB to fix it sometime, which isn't always optimal. It's also nice to have the default meshes being automatically downloaded since people did manage to mess them up at some points... All in all, I think if there was a possibility of allowing people to include their own modified meshes, and having some tag in a profile "overriding" the default meshes with the new meshes, would allow the best of both situations.
I approve manual the option of a manual mesh for now, like i said, just nit worth the risk of running to me at the moment. I just decided to give the bot a second shot so started a human mage and low and behold i come back to my computer to find him trying to air hump his way between the mailbox and inn.. guess it thought it a shorter route but its too narrow to walk through. Would be one thing if it just ran into the spot and got stuck, at least then you would look afk on autorun.. but jumping up in the air and jiggling around while trying to force my way endlessly through the impassible gap make me look either an obvious bot or mentally handicap to the dozens of onlookers in town.. I mean the current mesh idea is revolutionary but in its a current state its a step back from the manual mesh or oldschool waypoint to waypoint method.
I also think allowing a waypoint-to-waypoint method would be very nice as well, especially if combined with support for a flying mount. It would completely replace Gatherbuddy with something that's 100x better, allowing the bot to be much more useful (for example, you could make a bot that paths to the back of Dragonblight, fishes in WG, then paths to the nearest mailbox in Dragonblight, rinse, lather, repeat). Quite honestly, I just think a little more flexibility in the pathing system is what's necessary. If time is an issue for you, I could offer my services as I have 5 years of C# and C++ programming under my belt...
I have to say something counter to all of the above... I have been levelling 3 toons on various questing profiles and on the whole they dont get hung up on various posts all the time, even in DUSKWOOD. It does happen occasionally, and when it does the bot unsticks its self quite well. Even manually when I have autorun on and reading something on my other screen, I will get myself hung up on a post, I would be weary of something too PERFECT.
Well yea but like I said in my post there is a difference between afk autorunning into an object and running into an object while randomly jumping, strafing and backing up and running into it again. One tells me hey that guy is afk on autorun, the other makes me raise an eyebrow and say wtf is going on here and lead a knowledgable person into thinking its a bot. Right now its the one thing holding this bot back, hell maybe my standards are too high, but i just want a bot that looks humanlike to any passerbyer, but in my eyes this is right now far from it, and i would settle for any fix necessary just because right now i refuse to use my bot, and would give anything to fix that, even if it meant implementing a less ambitous but more proven navigation system.
I have had the issue myself on a few toons I used with Mord's profile, pretty common. I remember in one version awhile back Mord black listed ever single pole in Duskwood but it isn't a huge deal. Yeah it looks bad if you hump 10 pulls on the way to do 1 quest, but how often does something like this actually stop you dead in your tracks. Honestly with the new expansion near, and the restructuring of many zones, I don't see the Dev's wanting to put a ton of time into something that is going to get completely altered. Time would be better spent on long term core things, like adding functions to HB, adding instances meshes, our tweaking meshes in Outlands/Northrend since these zones will not be changing like other ones will. I mean yeah I would love to see my bot run down the center of the road and jump over fences like I would if I was controling the character, but something that small this close to a drastic change just isn't feasible at this point. TL;DR - Expansion soon, minor mesh fixes = waste of time.
isn't it possible for someone to help you on fixing meshes MaiN because if so I would like to help out to map out every single area in order to create a better place, like netherwing ledge its a terrible nightmare too... I have to either add 100blackspots or meshes need to be fixed.
while I appreciate that everyone has their own opinion on this, I only started this thread to get a status on this issue and what/if anything would be done to fix it. As Main has stated he will look into it, I feel this thread can be closed and reopened by him when he has more info to share with us. Sound good ?
Woa, that would be great !!! Will test as soon as my test account is no longer 'sleeping' thanks, mate !!
Can u also fix please in icecrown the Shadow Vault? Bot hangs 100% every run in the left banner up the stairs (if u look from SV down the stairs, see pictures) and cant unstick himself. If u blackspot the left, he runs into the right banner and cant unstick. If u blackspot both, so he have to take the stairs in the middle, but he runs in the right banner again and hanging there. Sorry, but this is crap like hell. Coordinates left banner: <Hotspot X="8292.979" Y="2756.322" Z="655.8039" /> Coordinates right banner: <Hotspot X="8295.951" Y="2785.996" Z="656.0255" />
thanks for the fixes Main, this has turned into a very productive thread, perhaps we could get a sticky for users reporting mesh related issues in the future?
