Hey everyone, I am writing the AI for a FPS and I was wondering what was the best way to make the AI look like it's not just going to run at the player. Also I was wondering if it's possible to place a node mesh on the level and if I should write a plugin for maya to do it. I have spoken to some people and they told me that best first is a good way to go about it, especially since I have a lot of enemies on the screen being rendered. So far I have heard about flocking, fuzzy logic, and a view frustum which I can calculate by placing a circle around the bot and doing a dot product which I will check to find the front of the bot. Anyway I hope I hear from anyone cause I'll take any advice that anyone has. Thank you for reading my post.

I realize I probably was going on about everything I heard and not asking the questions I had in a proper manner. I wanted to know what pathfinding algorithm would work best in a FPS that has tons of enemies on screen and no upper levels and stairways. I was told to try and use Best First for it.

I also wanted to know how to go about placing a node mesh on a level in maya. A friend of mine said I could make a plugin for maya to do it, but I thought I would ask anyway since I'm willing to listen to anyone elses ideas.

Other than that, I was also talking about how to implement a view frustum to check if the AI is in the line of fire of the player, which an instructor recommmended to me. I thank you greatly for your advice and hope to hear from you should this post clear up anything that I didn't ask properly. I guess it's good to get some rest before posting. Thank you for your time.

With the exception of writing a plugin for maya my book "Programming Game AI by Example" will show you how to do all those things.