Time To Fix MQ2Navigation Thread

[saar]

there is a hardcoded 4056 polygon limit to the mesh, there is a 6 to 10 line segment that comments out certain secondary mesh items like trees, stumps, and stuff like that to reduce the polygon count. But also along that same line sometimes eqnavigation(azone2) will build the zbase of the zone aswell as the actual zone so doubles the polygon count. You can change the polygon count and the secondary mesh's in the cpp file before building eqnavigation. I was gonna play around with the cpp file and h files to get the secondary meshs and the polygon count issues fixed but had a crap week at work and was write a macro on top of it. The crash issue on the plugin is also in the cpp file and "i think" i know what is causing it but i need to get a compiler and mess around with it. Just was looking for an updated cpp and h files to work off of a central base just incase HTW or fry changed some lines of code from mq2.com.

 

[aspire2008]

4056 polygon limit wow! No wonder the exe stops about 1/20th of the way through building some mesh files lol.

 

[Fry]

there is a hardcoded 4056 polygon limit to the mesh, there is a 6 to 10 line segment that comments out certain secondary mesh items like trees, stumps, and stuff like that to reduce the polygon count. But also along that same line sometimes eqnavigation(azone2) will build the zbase of the zone aswell as the actual zone so doubles the polygon count. You can change the polygon count and the secondary mesh's in the cpp file before building eqnavigation. I was gonna play around with the cpp file and h files to get the secondary meshs and the polygon count issues fixed but had a crap week at work and was write a macro on top of it. The crash issue on the plugin is also in the cpp file and "i think" i know what is causing it but i need to get a compiler and mess around with it. Just was looking for an updated cpp and h files to work off of a central base just incase HTW or fry changed some lines of code from mq2.com.

There is major differences between tinmar's version and ours. I'm going to have to wait until htw gets some time to look at it, and merge in differences.

 

[flatlined785]

I had a chance to play a bit with mq2navigation, since I was able to generate a mesh file after the changes/fixes to the exe. I am now using the build as provided in the zip / updater, not a personal build.
The mesh I was using was fully created.

I was a little bit confused, I thought first, that it would be possible to do something like /waypoint add "first camp" and then /nav "first camp" or suchlike. But it does not seem so. If anyone is looking for ways to improve this plugin, having a "named location" list that we can import/export and add to would be a good one I think.

So I was able to /nav x y z .. the x and y have to be reversed compared to any loc in game. Which is a bit odd although once you know it I guess it is not a showstopper.

In the zone I was playing with, I tried running away from the zone in, around some tunnel type stuff, and then issuing /nav startloc. I was expecting the thing would nav me along the tunnels, not 100% retracing my path but roughly following that. However all it seems to do is make a direct line for the start loc, and therefore ran into walls and could not get where it needed to.
Is this expected behaviour, do I need to regen a finer detail mesh, or is it some issue?

I was able to have it navigate for me, by noting a series of "change direction" locs, and iterating through them. eg /nav point 1, then /nav point 2, and /nav point 3.

This worked fine, but I got the impression it could work out a path itself.

 

[aspire2008]

Flatlined, if its a newer zone its going to have issues like I stated earlier, because there are asset objects not detected by mq2nav currently. Or you need to go back and remake the mesh with more detail, it might not be detecting the tunnel polygons, also I have no clue how the tools work in the exe, they seem to be broken for most part.

Usually a good mesh file will be 30mb (newer zones) or higher if you can ever get it that high, good luck. The plugin is amazing, I mean truly AMAZING in old world zones, I'd rate it as the best plugin because it solves all bot like behavior while moving and makes your bot look like a normal player, which is so important for pulling.

Other than that, if you are navigating to a mob above or below, there are z-axis issues, which are apparent in old world and newer zones, I'm not sure if that can ever be fixed. If you do radius pulling it might navigate through stairs agroing a bunch of mobs along the way, because it thinks the mob above or below you is closest to your radius, which would be another reason its running into tunnel walls.

 

[saar]

Ok easy way of putting this, each square the the exe makes on the mesh is like a battleship board IE in each square put a dot and when your in game using said meshes, you navigate from dot to dot, if there is a wall it will find the nearest dot to correct the path. Now when you issue a /nav startloc will do just that will run strat to it and start navigating from it. I might rewrite the stuck logic, as of right now the logic is when its stuck is to jump and thats it.
The mq2navigation i compiled last night did not CTD but would not function correctly either but had no errors so ill dig in the code, hopefully fry can come thru and ill have the CTD issues fixed for everyone soon.

The exe caps the mesh at 4056 polygons and the plugin only loads 4026 polygons max as an fyi

 

[aspire2008]

Ok easy way of putting this, each square the the exe makes on the mesh is like a battleship board IE in each square put a dot and when your in game using said meshes, you navigate from dot to dot, if there is a wall it will find the nearest dot to correct the path. Now when you issue a /nav startloc will do just that will run strat to it and start navigating from it. I might rewrite the stuck logic, as of right now the logic is when its stuck is to jump and thats it.
The mq2navigation i compiled last night did not CTD but would not function correctly either but had no errors so ill dig in the code, hopefully fry can come thru and ill have the CTD issues fixed for everyone soon.

The exe caps the mesh at 4056 polygons and the plugin only loads 4026 polygons max as an fyi

Anyway to increase the polygon count by an order 50x or more?

 

[flatlined785]

thanks for the replies above, guys

I think I need to up the resolution / make a bigger mesh, from what you are saying. I guess atm it thinks it is already in the same node. The obstacles are zone-level for me currently, I am not having a non-zonefile object issue, although I understand the problem. That's why I mentioned updating the mesh file from the plugin, when a toon gets stuck in game.

I will then probably run smack into the node limit the thread has been talking about.

 

[Randyleo]

Is this still a Lifetime Membership plugin?

 

[flatlined785]

I am not lifetime, and it is functional for me.

To the thread :

I re-created the mesh with a higher cell count, possibly a higher tile count but not sure. The mesh created fully.
I am getting better nav results, but not perfect, still sometimes navigating to something far along a canyon path or tunnel path, the selected route is through a wall.
using a series of waypoints myself, instead of using the plugin to decide the path, works fine .. but seems a little pointless. Plenty of other things provide this (navigate to loc xyz), without the issue of mesh management.
The areas I am using don't happen to have non-zonefile obstructions like trees.
I think maybe if I increased the cell and tile count, it might work but I would very likely hit the hardcoded limit.

 

[zdozbou]

I think maybe if I increased the cell and tile count, it might work but I would very likely hit the hardcoded limit.

This is the biggest problem I've found. This plugin would work great in the zones I've tried (and actually continue) to use it in, but a lot of times it tries to go through a wall rather than around the corner of it, which is just a short distance away. If I could create a mesh file with a much higher cell and tile count, I think it would work flawlessly.

 

[saar]

im currently working with fry and htw to fix issues with both the plugin (CTD) and polygon limit (eqnavigation) so i am hoping soon we will have something to push to see if it fixes things.

 

[flatlined785]

What are tiles versus cells?
From the mesh generator it looked like the cells are the base mesh unit and tiles are overlaid on them. Is there something that lists what each are / how they are used, somewhere?

 

[htw]

FYI: Uploaded an updated one, that goes with new release.

htw

 

[McNukkah]

updated one

I noticed that /nav id doesn't exist anymore?


I used that pretty often, but it's no big deal...I can write around it, but if it is easy to put back in then....pretty please...

 

[aspire2008]

Is it possible to load up the asset objects that aren't part of the zone file, and include them when building the mesh?

Also, curious did the polygon limit get increased in this version?

 

[Blujahz]

I patched and used the 9/28 version of EQNavigation.exe to create a mesh for Evantil (using default settings) and I still get the No Start Reference error.

 

[Fry]

I noticed that /nav id doesn't exist anymore?


I used that pretty often, but it's no big deal...I can write around it, but if it is easy to put back in then....pretty please...

htw said to me, he had to pull some features out of our version of MQ2Navigation until he had time to recode it into the new format. He said he'd put them back in when he got the time. I'm guessing this was one of them.

 

[htw]

Indeed. I will get it added back in ASAP, and this is exactly the feedback I need. It was a royal PITA to get it all updated, so best thing on some features was to start from scratch.

/navi id I will put on my top list for it, let you know when I'm done.

htw

 

[McNukkah]

No worries at all---was an easy write-around for the time being. Appreciate the responsiveness as always...