What's the best way to move npcs?

Development Programming & Scripting AI
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I’m making a first person game with 2D characters in a 3D environment like classic DOOM and can’t seem to find a good way to move my enemies/npcs in the world.

Their movement patterns are simple so at first I was at first just using SetActorLocation for them but with that I’m not being able to check for collisions or use any kind of physics (if there’s a gap for instance, the character will just walk over it). I tried implementing my own collision check but it doesn’t work very well so I decided to try to use some builtin function.

I think navmeshes and AI might be too complex for this game so I was trying to implement my own MovementComponent but it’s not going very well, the enemies in the game are all inherited from APawn but all the tutorials and info I can find are for ACharacter and for player input which I don’t need.

Tried using SetPhysicsLinearVelocity and AddImpulse to the Collision Component of my pawns and they don’t seem to be doing any effect.

Thanks.

2

I think navmeshes and AI might be too complex for this game so I was trying to implement my own MovementComponent but it’s not going very well

I really don’t understand this reasoning. With using navmesh it’s a matter of dropping it in the level, changing the size to fit everywhere they go and calling move to on the AI controller with a location or actor. That’s a lot easier than implementing it yourself.

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Also you can use modifiers to allow AI driven characters to jump off ledges and such.

4

Yeah, in the end using navmeshs was the best thing to do. Still required some work but everything is working now.