Texture Movement Penalty Example?

Hi Bob

Texture penalties work simply by taking a channel value (R,G or B), multiplying it with some constant (which you set in the editor) and then apply that to the nodes in a grid graph. Units will try to avoid areas with high penalties. This won’t however update automatically when you update the texture, so I think the better option would be to use GraphUpdateObjects which can set the penalty of an area.


GraphUpdateObject guo = new GraphUpdateObject (someObject.collider.bounds);
guo.addPenalty = 1000; //Or some other large value, try with greater values if this doesn't affect anything
guo.updatePhysics = false; //Disable as there is no need for this
AstarPath.active.UpdateGraphs (guo);

(note: code typed directly in post, not checked)
This will add a penalty of 1000 to an area, you can reset it with the same code but -1000 as penalty when the object is destroyed.
Try this code out and view the effect by changing the debug mode (A* Inspector–>Settings) to Penalty and adjust the Roof value.

You are right in that I should add more documentation about it… but there is so much I need to add documentation about, so I can’t really keep up with it. I will see how it goes.

Cheers,
Aron Granberg

• This reply was modified 150 days ago by  Aron Granberg.

Hi Aron,

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get this feature to work at all. It could be because I still don’t know what I am doing, but I actually do think that I’m on the right track here.

Here is the code i used to instantiate an object in the middle of my path. My seeker didn’t attempt to move around it and just got stuck. I didn’t see anything happen when I changed the debug mode to look at Penalty. Changing the roof value and my value for addPenalty had no effect with multiple tries.

I attached this code to an empty game object, and passed the script a prefab (using the inspector) which is essentially a Cube with a box collider.


using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using Pathfinding;

//From Aron
GraphUpdateObject guo = new GraphUpdateObject(clone.collider.bounds);
guo.addPenalty = 10000000; //Or some other large value, try with greater values if this doesn't affect anything
guo.updatePhysics = false; //Disable as there is no need for this
AstarPath.active.UpdateGraphs (guo);
}


Interestingly enough, if I changed the layer of the prefab I passed in to this script in the inspector to “Obstacles”, it was seen as an obstacle, and the seeker moved around it correctly. I just couldn’t apply the penalty and have the seeker do the same.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Bob

I checked if penalties were broken, but they seem to work fine:
GraphUpdateObject guo = new GraphUpdateObject (collider.bounds);
guo.updatePhysics = false;
guo.addPenalty = 10000;
AstarPath.active.UpdateGraphs (guo);
If I turn on Penalty as debug mode I see red areas where I have updated the grid.
Make sure your bounds objects totally cover at least one node.

Oops, I forgot to close the tag in my post. The image is:

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9872/astarhelp0001.jpg

Yes, please send me a project so I can take a look at it.

Thanks! I’ve uploaded the unity project here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?545qbu75m2mbgwp

That is music to my ears. I\’m glad I\’m not going crazy.

It works great now that I\’ve upgraded. Thank you so much for your help.

Bob