Monster's Mind

[palistov]

From what I know, you should add path nodes everywhere you want a monster to easily navigate. If you don't put path nodes in a hypothetical hallway (we'll call it hall A), the monster will still move there if it sees the player there. The only problem occurs when the monster turns a corner or moves around an object and there are no nodes to help it patrol back around said corner/object.

Now, a properly path-mapped level will have nodes everywhere a monster can get stuck, and even then some. This will make it so when the monster turns that nasty corner in hall A but loses sight of the player, it will turn to the nearest path node in line with its destination node and move there, using nodes that will give it the shortest path back to its assigned patrol nodes. This is why there are a kajillion path nodes in a given map file, but many of them are unscripted/unassigned. They are just used by the monsters as their yellow-brick-roads back to where they're supposed to be.

If you want to study the AI of the monsters, I suggest making what I call a "sandbox" map. Put a bunch of rooms, objects, doors, closets, nodes, distraction objects, etc and put a monster there. I also use my sandbox map to test scripts and such, but that's another story. Then activate the entity info in your debug tab. It will show all path nodes and draw the monster's (or monsters' D: ) current path(s) with a nice purple line. It will also show a red node, which I believe depicts the place the monster(s) most recently saw/heard the player or any sounds he made.

P.S. don't try and study two monsters at once. It's freaking scary toying with those things.