Hello once again my friends.

During the course of conception of our game, me and my friends thought it was obvious that our characters, npcs and enemies should be solid (you cant go through them).

As the development goes on, and I play more and more old school snes action rpgs and modern rpgs and action games I see that it is not as obvious and amazing choise as it seemed at first.

Most action rpg games and action games I play seem to simply allow your units to go through each other, unless theres a rule where then cant go to a certain area and a character is blocking the entrance/passageway.

So I have been thinking about this a lot, and want to ask your opinion.

How do you do it, and how do you like it?

Can your characters go through each other or do you prefer the feeling of a solid creature?

I think I know what you mean with the old-school RPGs. I spent a lot of time in the SNES final fantasies waiting for NPCs to wander away from a narrow hallway so I could get through it. But there's also the aesthetic consideration for walking right through dudes.

I'd say it depends a lot on your presentation. If it's a tile-based game where the world is populated by icons that represent characters, then passing through other people isn't a big deal. It's easy to imagine that the relationship in size between people, passages, doors, chairs, etc. isn't always 1:1 and walking "through" a guy is just like walking past him too closely for the graphics to represent. On the other hand, if it's a to-scale visual game, like Morrowind, walking through people feels ghosty.

Again, though, movement mechanics are relevant. After all, if I'm trying to get past a guy who's in a narrow hallway, I could make eye contact, say, "Excuse me," and expect him to turn sideways so I can slip by. If I'm trying to get past an enemy combatant in the same situation, he's likely to take advantage of the narrow pass to square off and hold me back.

Unless you're going to come up with Assassin's Creed-style animations for pushing through crowds, you'll struggle to represent both of those situations well, so I'd suggest linking pass-ability to aggro. If the other party is neutral or friendly, you can walk right through them, but if they're hostile, then they are an obstacle. You might even want to add in a little bit of a judo move, like in some fighter games (Kengo II springs immediately to mind), so you can engage a target in hand-to-hand, spin around and switch places with them, then retreat to get past them.

AI has a lot to do with this as well. Its perfectly fine to make NPCs impassable if the AI is smart enough not to linger in places where its in the way. If they stay in the way, maybe its not an issue with them being solid, but with them being too stupid to move.

Quote:Original post by JasRonq
AI has a lot to do with this as well. Its perfectly fine to make NPCs impassable if the AI is smart enough not to linger in places where its in the way. If they stay in the way, maybe its not an issue with them being solid, but with them being too stupid to move.

Indeed.... there are so many games where you can get utterly frustrated because you ran one way, with NPCs behind you and it turns out to be a dead end, but you can't properly go back because the npcs following you are blocking your way.

Think Assasin's Creed: NPCs are 'shovable'. A crowd of people kind of 'flows' out of your way.
Starcraft II's pathing (compared to Starcraft I) units will 'get out of the way' when another unit needs to get through.

Personally I prefer 'solid' for aesthetics. Mechanically, I have nightmares with non-solid RPGs because I always get killed by several small weak units that 'stack' on top of each other. Likewise, if units can stack on top of one another, Area of Effect abilities become disproportionally overpowered.