Overview
This is a guide on how to use path nodes to set walking paths for NPCs to follow in-game.
General Tips
Before you get started placing paths, here are some tips you can follow if you want to.
- Read the other workshop guides. They are very useful and will help you make amazing maps!
- If you are confused about what Path Nodes connecting are and what they do, think of them like line segments: The Path Nodes are the two points connected, and they form a line segment. This line segment is a direction that tells the NPCs to walk on it. So think of a mexican guy walking on a line segment, back and forth, that’s basically what it is!
- If you don’t know/don’t remember what a line segment is, please use Google.
What are paths?
In Postal 2, a big part of the game is walking around, and seeing NPCs walking around too! But, how do they know where to walk by themselves? Well this is achieved by using Path Nodes to build pre-set paths that NPCs can follow.
So if you want a bum to walk up and down a dark alley, you have to build the path for it first.
Since the A.I. isn’t intelligent enough to know where to walk on its own, you have to give it directions on where to go. That’s why you see bystanders walking up and down the street in-game.
Why would I need to use/place paths?
Well, lets say you’re making a custom city map. All the buildings and streets are made, but it feels a bit empty, doesn’t it? Well good thing you can add people to liven things up! But wait, why aren’t they moving? It doesn’t feel like a real city if there aren’t loads of people walking everywhere in every direction.
Well you build paths to have those people walk in every direction (if you set the paths like that)! You can make it so the bystanders walk up and down the sidewalks, or walk through a building. It all helps you make better maps!
How to place paths and make them usable
First you need a map to place paths in! You can make your own test map just for this tutorial, or you can look at the pictures below and use your memory later.
Ok, now you can start placing path nodes to shape out your paths!
What path nodes basically are, is they are connecting pieces of your paths. You place them to tell the A.I. to walk along them. You can add path nodes by right clicking on the floor of your map and in the menu that pops up, selecting “Add Path Node”. You will then see a red apple icon appear where you right clicked! Well done, you just started piecing together a path for your NPCs to walk through.
After placing a couple more paths in a straight line, it’s time to build the paths so all the path nodes link together!
You do this by pressing this icon at the top of the editor. Note: the more path nodes you have, the longer it will take to build since the engine has to link all of them together.
NOTE: The path nodes you want to link together have to be near each other. If a path node you placed has no other ones near it, when you Build Paths a warning message will pop up saying the current path nodes that aren’t connected to any others. If you don’t fix the problems, the NPCs can’t use them.
How do I know what the path will look like?
After placing a couple path nodes, and Building Paths, the path nodes will be connected to form a full path for NPCs to walk through.
You can view which path nodes connect to each other, and what paths the NPCs will walk through by clicking the Toggle Paths button for your preferred viewport. When you can see various colored lines connecting each path node together, you are looking at a preview of the path you just made.
Now, if you’re wondering what the different colored and shaped lines mean, I’ll put some explanations below.
The coloration of the path line tells you what kind of a path it is (ground, flying, jump) and how wide it is.
– Blue – narrow path
– Green – normal width
– White – wide path
– Pink – very wide path
– Orange – Flying path, narrow
– Light Orange – Flying path, wide
– Light Purple – requires high jump (higher than normal jump capability)
– Yellow – forced path
– Purple – “advanced” path (requires “intelligence” to be used)
– Straight lines mean the bot can run, jump, or crouch-walk along the path
– Curved lines mean the bot needs to use a translocator to take the path
And as a general guide for heights:
– Jump Height – 48 units
– Double-Jump Height – 88 units
Troubleshooting Path Nodes
When you place path nodes, a variety of things can make them unuseable by the A.I. Luckily for you, the POSTed can automatically detect these sorts of things and it will warn you about them!
Here are some common errors when dealing with pathnodes, and how to fix them. NOTE: These suggestions may not always work and I’m not responsible for what you choose to follow.
1. Navigation point not on valid base, or too close to steep slope.
How to fix it: This error is usually shown when a pathnode is on a base that is too steep for the NPCs to use. To fix it, a suggestion is to move the path node off of its current location and try to position it on the floor. Some times where you may experience this is when you try to put a path to make stairs for the NPCs to walk on.
2. PathNode # is in same location as PathNode #, and May be too close to other navigation points.
How to fix it: This error usually occurs when two pathnodes are way too close to each other, and one of them should be removed since it’s unnecessary.
3. Navigation point is embedded in level geometry
How to fix it: This error means that the Path Node is in an object on the map. To fix this, try to see if the pathnode is inside of any structures, and try moving it outside of that structure.
4. No paths from PathNode#
How to fix it: This means that this path node is too far away from any other nodes, and it needs to be moved closer since it isn’t connected to any paths.
Closing
I hope this guide helped you! I realise that this engine is very old, and due to this there may not be a huge array of resources available. But we can try!
I have actually uploaded some maps already, check out my Workshop Uploads!
Have any other questions or problems? Feel free to comment below, or ask for support on the workshop forums!
Rate up the guide and share it with friends of similar interests if it helped you!