Hostage navigation in CS

[Nard]

First of all, hi everyone. I should have made an intro post of some sort, but I'll cut this short. I have been into mapping for quite some years, but I had focused on other aspects of my life until HL2 came out. So I'm more than familiar with mapping, but I'm discovering all the new features in Source and there are some that are making me mad.

There's one thing that's not working right now, and it never happened before in HL1 based CS. It might be because of the map layout, but I'm wondering if I might have skipped something.

So here it is. I have that huge stairwell that spans over three floors. The hosties spawn on the bottom floor and the hostage rescue area is at the top. I put some nodes (info_node) everywhere so there's none that cannot see an area and another node (at the point where I'm wondering if I put too many and that's causing the problem). When I run the map though, after generating the nav file, getting the hosties up the stairwell gets aweful. They seem to have some difficulty going up the stairs. If you go up one flight on one platform, they'll go at the platform just before, but as soon as you move up the next flight of stairs, they'll move back a bit.

I'm not sure it's a node problem though because the terrorist bots are very capable of getting up the stairs in like 10 seconds without getting stuck anywhere.

So here's my question, does a redundant number of nodes screw up hosties or will I have to modify the map layout until they don't think that the best way to follow the CT's is to go out of the stairwell, on the other side of the wall...?

 

[PvtRyan]

The bot AI is in a whole different league than the hostages. They haven't yet implemented the far superior hostage AI from CZ, who try to escape by their own and warn you for terrorists. Hopefully they will soon.

 

[Nard]

The map looks too good to change anything to the architecture...

...

I guess I'll just make a FY map

:cheese:

 

[Faulk_Wulf]

Short Answer: If the nodes aren't overlapping, it shouldn't matter.

Long Answer: I doubt its the nodes, for I have made similar stairs in HL2 and have had both allied cops (ai_relationship'ed) and enemy combine soldiers follow me up them without much trouble.

(Okay, the cops weren't following ME... but they were headed to the stairs and navigated them.)

 

[Nard]

Yeah. The problem might be the hostage AI combined with the overall thinness of the stairs and the fact that you can see through the textures. The bots are going crazy in that staircase, shooting at each others from two floors down until the bullets luckily hit their targets...
=P

 

[Bluestrike]

Do you even need to place nodes now?
I removed them from my map and it seems to work just fine without them. I think the nodes were only used when there was no bot stuff.

 

[Nard]

Well, I mistakenly ran one compile of the map without nodes and ran a new nav_generate. It seemed to work pretty fine, but I put nodes down, just in case.

I was able to get the hosties to follow me up the stairs, but only after an tenuous climb where I would carefully move until the hostie was placed so he couldn't go anywhere but up the next flight of stairs...and I deducted that it might just be the general setup of the brushwork. I guess this hostage rescue will be fubar until they make them smarter (which might be never).

It's too bad because that staircase is a VIS masterpiece.

 

[skidz]

make a brush that covers the stairs with the npc clip texture so instead of individual steps its a sloap which is easier to navigate for the hosties. Now have one info_node in the middle of the sloap, and keep the others you have at the bottom and the top. This is an old trick and has been used since quake 1.
Im not sure how well it will work with HL2, but try it out anyway.
(Valve did this in some of their maps)