PODbot Waypointing Tutorial | Some common newbie mistakes

Some common newbie mistakes

Picture 1 - Placing unnecessary waypoints

The waypoint in the middle of the window was probably set with the intention to help the Bot with navigating through it. However it results in the opposite. If the Bots have a clear Line of Sight to another waypoint they assume there won't be any obstacle in the way. It would be better to delete the waypoint in the window and just connect the waypoint in front of the window with the one behind it.

Picture 2 - not fitting Wayzones


Look at that biiig wayzone assigned to this waypoint. If a Bot tries to walk over this foot-bridge he will almost 100% fall down into death because he would think even the free space beside it is walkable. For precise movement a wayzone radius of 0 should be assigned instead.

Picture 3 - No connections between Waypoints, bad ladder waypoints

First, the connection from the normal waypoint isn't the best. It is better to have the angle of approach set in a more straight angle. But the really bad error is that there's probably no connection from the ladder waypoint to the normal waypoint above. Let's take a look down from the upper waypoint:

Yes. It's even worse. There's a one-way connection from the upper waypoint to the ladder waypoint (at an angle where the Bot won't use the ladder resulting in broken legs), there's no connection from the ladder waypoint to the top and worst of all would be the only Path Bots could take to reach this position. Playing with such waypoints would result in Bots circling around a single waypoint just because the waypointer forgot about connecting them. Simply manually connecting the ladder waypoint with the top waypoint would get rid of the problem.

Picture 4 - Wrong Placement of Important Waypoints

Now look at this. Isn't it funny how peacefully the Terrorist Important Waypoint, the CT Important Waypoint and the Normal Waypoint co-exist at the same place ? NO, it's not!
This map - cs_galleon - is a hostage map where the Terrorist Team starts on the ship and the Counter-Terrorists Team spawn somewhere else outside the ship. Having both of the Important Points at the same place screws up all tactical reasoning the Bots do and will just result in Deathmatch Gameplay (if there even will be gameplay then). So the CT Important Waypoint should be deleted and be recreated at the CT Spawn Area or in the near of it. In addition the CT Waypoint and the normal waypoint are much to close together. More about this below...

Picture 5 - Bad approach angles for Ladder Waypoints

The normal waypoint in the front is connected with the ladder waypoint in the background at an angle that the Bots will almost everytime run either into the back of the ladder or collide with the side of it. To make it even worse the normal waypoint on the right is also connected with the ladder waypoint (you can't see it on the picture) so the Bots will get stuck everytime they want to use the ladder (they don't know how to manoever around backsides of ladders).. Luckily there is a button at the left of the picture so if the Bot heads off to press it, there's a chance he will approach the ladder from a better side. The problem could easily be solved by deleting the connection from the waypoint on the right side to the ladder and by moving the front waypoint a short distance to the left.

Picture 6 - Waypoints too close together

Besides that two waypoints at this close distance are absolutely unnecessary, it will slow down the Bot (because of the higher amount of waypoints) and furthermore will do no good to the Bots Navigation and Collision Avoidance. I'll try to explain:

The Bots have a hardcoded radius inside my DLL where the Bot thinks he reached this precious waypoints. It differs between types of waypoints, to stay at the example picture normal waypoints are considered to be reached when the Bot is inside a radius of 50 Units from the center of the waypoint. To see what I mean with 50 Units you could set a waypoint to a 50 Unit Wayzone by typing 'wayzone setradius 50'. Now in the example picture the distance between the 2 waypoints is way below it, at a rough guess I would say 16 Units. So what ? If the Bot reaches Waypoint Nr. 1, he automatically thinks (in the same frame) he has reached Waypoint Nr. 2 without any movement which obviously is bad for precise movement. Furthermore I'm post-processing the paths of the Bots so when 2 Bots have the same waypoint as a goal I try to find alternative waypoints. So if a colliding Bot #1 wants to reach Waypoint Nr. 1, Waypoint Nr. 2 will be a assigned to Bot #2 which leads to the Bots getting stuck in each other very often. Avoid something like this at all costs!

Picture 7 - No Waypoints at all !


I can imagine looking at this scenario that the waypointer thought something like this: "Oh well, these Bots are waypointed and I don't want them to move here so I just don't set waypoints here and everything's fine". This is wrong! It's true that POD-Bot uses waypoints for basic movement so the Bots normally should never reach this position in their normal navigation. But it's totally different when engaged in combat ! If a Bot is attacking/fleeing an enemy he doesn't use waypoints but uses an unwaypointed navigation like Realbot for example. So it could easily be the case that a Bot is engaged at a position where waypoints are available, moves backwards while fighting the enemy, finally kills his enemy and stands at the position where I took the screenshot. Now the Bot wants to switch back to waypointed movement but can't find a waypoint in the near distance and is stuck forever again. So a basic rule would be to place waypoints even in areas where you doubt a Bot will ever move to, you never know what could happen in combat!

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