All language subtitles for 7. System Waypoints

Let's look now at the waypoint manager and system.
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I'm going to play the scene quickly and spawn an AI.
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So when an AI gets spawned, they automatically go into patrol mode and if they find the waypoint
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system, then they'll move to the closest point.
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And then, from that point, they'll do the whole waypoint step by step.
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Of course, at one point (in time), only one instance can use a particular waypoint.
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Let's see how this all works in this lesson.
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This is the waypoint system.
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It might get confusing a little, so I'll try to make sure that everything is straightforward.
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I'll start here at the waypoint level. And the waypoint here is called waypoint system, but it's actually
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just a waypoint and the waypoint is formed out of individual points like these ones.
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These are just position3D
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.
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And.
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They specify where the tanks should move next.
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If it's following this particular waypoint system. And we have three scripts here, we have the waypoint
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manager, the waypoint system and the waypoint node. To understand how they work,
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instead of going through each directly, let's figure out the steps how the AI actually uses this system.
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So the first contact with the waypoint is asking the waypoint manager: Can you give me the closest
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waypoint node that is available?
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Available means that it's not actually used by another AI enemy.
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So if you go here into the waypoint manager, what we have here is of course in the initialize phase
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we get all the waypoints that are children to it.
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So in this case it's just waypoint A but we could have easily made other waypoints as well.
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And here we have get the closest available waypoint.
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So what this does, it goes through all the waypoints and if it's in use, then it just skips it.
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And if it's not in use, then it means that it's free.
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And then inside of this, not only that we get the waypoint, but we also get the closest node from
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that particular waypoint.
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So if we look back in the scene, we have four nodes here.
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1, 2, 3, 4.
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The closest node from the player would be this one.
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So usually since most of the A's get spawned here, they either get this one or this one has points
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going back.
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So you get the closest point.
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Of course, we don't know for sure if this particular waypoint has the closest node.
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We just know that this is the closest node from this waypoint.
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When we call the get closest node from the waypoint we know is the closest from this particular waypoint.
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But if it has more waypoints, some closer nodes might be even more closer to the actual position that
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we are specifying here.
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So we need to make sure that we actually take care of this and we get the closest, closest point.
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So to provide the better example, let's say I duplicate this and move it a little.
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So...
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Let's now say we have two waypoints systems.
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So Waypoint 1 and Waypoint 2.
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It will get the closest point from this one and from this one, and it'll determine based on the position
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let's see, it's this one is the closest one.
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And if this one is free, then it will basically return this node to the player.
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So this is how this functionality works.
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Basically, it just checks all the available waypoints that are not in use and then returns the closest
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point for each.
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And then once the player decides, Oh, this is the closest point to me, I'll use this one.
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So basically this is what happens at this level and not much more.
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So the waypoint manager just knows all the possible waypoint systems and gives the closest available
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waypoint.
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Now if you look one level down where the waypoint level is, the waypoint system actually here we actually
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have the specification of the points.
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Every children often waypoint system is actually a 3D position that the enemy needs to do in sequence
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first to get all of the children. In the _process()
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we basically just display them
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with a debug line.
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So this is just for visual purposes, no functionality here.
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And, in here, we do have three main functionalities.
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Get the closest node.
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This gets the node closest in this particular waypoint.
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So of course it takes a position and then goes through all of the points here.
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And if it detects an even closer point, then it updates the closest node and once the points are finished,
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the closest node is returned.
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This is only used in combination with the waypoint manager because once the enemy AI has locked down on
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a particular waypoint and it moves to a particular position, then they will use the get next node.
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So this one works as follows: it has the current node, which is specified here and then iterates through
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the list of waypoint nodes and if we find the current waypoint in the list, then we know that the next
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one is where it should go next.
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And of course we need to prevent if it's the final point, we need to go to the first point.
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So basically this is how we can loop a waypoint system with the movement.
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Lastly, we also need to trigger the waypoint use so that no other enemy can acquire this waypoint
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system.
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So this is actually called by the children.
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I mentioned this.
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It should not be called at this level because the waypoint manager will give the enemy a waypoint node,
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which is actually a position and that waypoint nodal trigger this one from the parent.
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And then that's basically it. The last level
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here is the waypoint node.
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If you go inside here, it's quite simple.
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It takes the parent as the waypoint system, it triggers the waypoint use from the parent and it also
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gets the next node from the parent.
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So the waypoint system is actually an in-between component because get closest node is used by waypoint
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manager, get next node and trigger waypoint use are used by its children.
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So you as a developer don't actually need to go here and do anything because you either go to the waypoint
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manager to query it in the first place.
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And once you acquire a particular point, let's say this one, then you either query for the next node
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or you triggered the waypoint use once you get it in the first place.
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And that's basically it.
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And then the patrol part of the enemy AI.
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We'll look more into how this system is actually used to get the node and get to the position.
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I hope you enjoyed this lesson and I'll see you in the next one.