Pathfinding Provides Builders With Linkset Conundrum

Pathfinding is now widely available, although the tools are not yet in the main viewer, they are in the latest beta viewer which is available from the main Second Life client download page. Inside the viewer you will find the build tools:

Now the issue for builders to consider is whether or not they want to consider making their buildings pathfinding compatible. There are certain things to consider here, fortunately Linden Lab have a good resource on the wiki: Pathfinding Tools In The Second Life Viewer. I heartily reccomend builders read that but I’ll briefly go through some of this.

Pathfinding works on linksets, not objects in linksets, that’s a big conundrum for builders and I’ll explain why.

When you create a build for users you probably like to use as few linksets as possible, indeed if you can do it in one, then that’s great because it makes life easier for the end user. Now consider this, I have a one linkset build which I can get to either via clicking linksets from the build menu after pathfinding or by right clicking my build and selecting show in linksets:

Now I will see something like this from either selection:

Now that image probably isn’t easy to read but you can give your linksets pathfinding features such as:

• Walkable – For example floors for characters to move on.
• Static Obstacle – A Character will move around a static obstacle, good for walls.
• Movable Obstacles – They can move, the wiki suggests door linksets should use this.
• Material Volume – Best to read the wiki on this, I haven’t played with it.
• Exclusion Volume – Pathfinding characters can’t enter these areas.
• Movable Phantom – Pathfinding characters have no affect.

These are linkset settings, so you have a building, you want characters to walk on the floor, the only way I could get this to work for a pathfinding character was to set the whole build as walkable, or, unlink the floor and set just the floor as walkable, I set the rest of the building to static obstacle but in my case this means a one linkset build now becomes a two linkset build.

Now if you’re building a really funky pathfinding build where you want to make use of doors, exclusion areas so people have safe areas and characters are going to walk inside the building, it looks like you will need to break your build down into several linksets, which is not ideal for end users.

Now having to break builds down into linksets isn’t new and there are tools on the market for this, I use CrystalShard Foo’s Rez-Foo but there are other products.

Even if you’re not planning on setting pathfinding features in your builds, you may want to consider that your customers may and create your build in linksets for potential pathfinding issues. One thing to note is that pathfinding features stick to a build, if you look at a build with no pathfinding features you’ll see this:

Note at the bottom that there are no pathfinding attributes. However if you set pathfinding attributes you will see this:

Note at the bottom that this build affects navmesh. These settings stick when you rez your build in another sim too, so if you set a linkset as walkable, it will be walkable in another sim, your settings stick.

Now of course you don’t have to build with pathfinding in mind, but if you are going to, then play around and consider the options, it’s coming to a main release viewer near you soon!

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