[v1.4] Node Map - Node-based maps made easy

@vyshan Hmmm. I'll have to dig into this. Stay tuned, and let me know if you discover anything else.

And thanks for the feedback, too!

 

Would this asset be useful for building a game like Lara Croft Go? Perhaps with a bit of scripting, but could this work?

 

Hey, @Battin! I've not played Lara Croft Go. Is it similar to Hitman Go? I could see Node Map working for something like that, but as you mentioned, a good deal of that kind of functionality (lerped animations, moving obstacles, attacking/being attacked by enemies, modifying paths) would need to be handled through scripting.

I would say maybe take a stab at making some of those mechanics first, using two adjacent squares or something, and if you find yourself needing something more robust to handle the pathfinding over a larger map, come check into Node Map. I'd also recommend checking out the documentation to ensure you're aware of exactly what Node Map does and does not do.

Let me know if I can be of any help!

 

Thank you for answering this quick.

It is similar to Hitman Go, the only things that are changed are Animations and she is able to grab ledges in order to go to higher ground (instead of just a board).

I have my animations and character ready. I just need a solution that can help me define a path, of which the character moves on. Whether its straight on the floor or moving upwards on a ledge.

Your systeem seems suitable, but I just want to know for sure, before I'll buy it. Still, the asset looks amazing.

 

Thank you! I feel confident Node Map could be a benefit to you, but I want to reiterate that any kind of functionality not covered in the demo would have to be scripted. I'm happy to offer advice on that kind of stuff once you get there, though, and if you find there's features you'd like to see added to the asset, I can see about adding them in, even.

But please be aware that I have a day job as well, and things have been pretty busy and crazy lately, so my side projects aren't progressing as quickly as I'd like, so I can't promise a prompt timeline on asset enhancements. Just want you to be clear that you should be comfortable adding in functionality not provided by the asset on your own in case I'm not available for a bit.

 

Hello there!! Just bought this asset and I have some minor issues / improvements i'd like to ask. But let me tell you you have done a AWESOME job!!!

1- I'm using Unity 2019.1.9f1 and whenever I add a new Node Map in a scene, all transform tools gizmos (move, rotate, scale) for any Game Object that is NOT a Node are invisible, so I cannot use the arrows to move an object or the sphere to rotate. So if I have a Node Map in a scene, it is really difficult to move other Game Objects. I've tried loading another scene, creating a new one, disabling the Node Map, even deleting it... but the transform tools for the other game object types are gone

2 - When adding a 2D map (as requested before), we have to rotate it 90 degrees to match unity's built-in 2D view. It is not a big issue, but worth mentioning

3 -When adding a 2D node, it would be great to predefine in which Sorting Layer you want its SpriteRenderer to be in. I am using a 2D game with several sorting layers, and every time I add a new node I have to manually change its sorting order. Maybe in the "NodeTypeData" add a Sorting Layer option beneath the Sprite.

4 - In a 2D game is not "usual" to turn the sprite towards the destination. It will be awesome if the "transform.LookAt" in line 209 of the agent to use a bool "Look at destination" in the agent's parameters so we can dedice whether we want the agent to rotate or not. I had to comment that line and it works perfectly

I will continue to test the asset.

 

Thanks for the purchase, @FibriZzo, and for the feedback!

1. This issue was reported to me previously and seems to be new with 2019. I have a fix for it, and will roll it out in the next update.

2. I don't think I ever came up with a good solution for this one. In your mind, how would this work? If you change between 2D and 3D, should it rotate the map for you automatically? Or should the default just be to align to the XY plane for 2D and have to manually reposition it if you want a 3D map? I guess since I designed the system with 3D in mind, I went with 3D as the default, but the requests for a more streamlined 2D experience are valid... I just don't know what the best move is to serve both appropriately. Ideas here for implementation are welcome!

3. This is a great idea, and I will absolutely add this.

4. I had this one on my ToDo list before and it slipped through the cracks. I think you're spot on again: an option to turn agents (defaults to true if map is in 3D mode when agent is created, false if 2D) that is specific to each agent. That way you can have some agents that turn and some that don't on the same map.

I'll get to work on this soon. Keep an eye on this space for updates. And please continue to offer feedback and improvement suggestions!

 

Thanks a lot for the quick response!!!

Keep it up with the good work

 

I will keep listing the things I've changed from the original code (in case you find them useful: they are all quick changes that I needed them for my project):

1 -I think I've solved it by commenting the line 27 on NodeEditor.cs: Tools.hidden = true;
I don't know if that solves "everything" about it, but it works for me

2 - In 2D, the lines and the nodes are rendered in the sorting layer "NodeMap" automatically. That made them invisible in my game (there's no "NodeMap" sorting layer and I have placed the background of the game in another layer) because they were trying to render in a non-existent sorting layer.

The solution I've created is that I've added a string parameter to the Map called "spriteSortingLayer", so I can change them from the Map itself. (Obviously, I've changed the MapEditor.cs to reflect this new field). Then, in path.cs and node.cs I've changed the code to use that variable when selecting the sorting layer.

3 - When I pressed the button "Redraw Map", RedrawMarkers was called in every path (Path.cs). The problem was thay it only re-calculated the path points (CalculatePathPoints). I've added two more lines: the update of the line.sharedMaterial and the line.sortingLayerName, so if I change any of those, all paths visuals are updated accordingly, not only the new ones.

4 - A similar solution I have applied when creating the BoxCollider2D inside the nodes: the scale was always 1,1,1. I wanted to change that value because my nodes were visually bigger than the size of the collider, so I could "click" in the image but the collider wasn't as big.

Again, I've created a Vector3 variable inside the Map.cs called "nodeBoxSize" and every node that is created uses that size when creating the collider.




Thanks AGAIN for your awesome asset!!!

 

Hello there!

Just a quick question, to see if anyone (or the developer himself) may help:

How would you implement a gamepad/keyboard movement system using NodeMap?

In my case, I only need a "node to node" movement: if I move the stick of the gamepad / press WASD on the keyboard, it will move to nearest node "in that direction" (the same as if I click on that node)

I know it is difficult because right now there is no spatial knowledge of the other nodes, just a list of connected ones...

Any ideas?

 

@FibriZzo Do you mean using a gamepad or keyboard to move a cursor, and then pressing a button to set that Node as the target destination? I would do that by implementing a cursor object that moves the way you want using your own control scheme. Add a trigger collider that detects if a Node is inside it, and if so, enable the option for setting it as the destination. Optionally, when your cursor stops moving, you can check if it's intersecting a Node and snaps to its position. You'd also not want to use the keyboard/gamepad agent scripts, if that wasn't obvious.

I also want to mention that I'm still looking into the previous issues you brought up. I thought at least a few of them would be easy to crank out, but I had trouble finding a way to make things function as an option, and to ideally not break existing projects using the asset. Couple that with busy personal life stuff right now, and you get disappointing progress. But keep the feedback coming! It'll work its way into the asset eventually!

 

Yeah, that's basically what I am doing. I create a game object that will rotate as I press the stick with a big collider. Then, I will check which nodes this collider touches and see if I can move to that node (it is a direct path). If I press the button, i will move towards it.

I have to check some more issues, for example: if there are more than one node in the same direction and "it is viable" to move towards more than one, I have to decide to which one to move to (for example, check the angle of the current axis and move towards the node with the smaller diference in angles).

I will let you know my final solution and thoughs

 

This is my first implementation

It is working as intended. Obvioulsy, the visuals are placeholders, and it won't show the "area" of touching, but it works



Basically what it does is:
- When I press the stick / WASD, enables the "NodeReacher", which is a game object with a collider
- If that collider touches a Node, it adds it to a list of nodes. If it stops touching one, removes it from the list
- Then, I send the list of touching nodes to a manager which will check which are "one step away" and "mark it" to show the player that he can move there (the red fireball).
- If I have a Node selected and I press "X", I move there

Easy peasy!

 

Hello there, thanks for making a very nice system to build a game on. My purpose is to make a strategy game with different locations on the map connected by roads etc. Your node map seems to be ideal to do this, so I bought it to give it a try.

I have two questions:
1: Do you have any experience with Playmaker? I was wondering how difficult it isto convert parts of the script to Playmaker, since I'm making the majority of the game with that system. It would be really useful if Playmaker could find neighbours etc.
2: If I would like to add extra standard variables to a node (population, food production etc.) I should add them in the Node generation script right?

 

@lapoleon1821:

1. I own Playmaker but haven't really used it, much less created integrations for it. My understanding is it should give you access to public members of scripts, though, and everything you should want access to within NodeMap is public and accessible.

I'll try to find some time to mess around with Playmaker and see if I can get a working example or something. Or maybe it'd be a relatively easy bit of work to create an integration that allows you to use Playmaker without having to touch the code, which would probably be great for the non-programmer users of NodeMap. I've been swamped with work and life stuff recently, so I'm woefully behind on addressing items with this asset. Stay tuned!

2. I would think you'd want this to be a separate script you attach to your Nodes. I'm hesitant to recommend modifying any of the scripts that come with the package, as any updates I'd push will overwrite your changes when you update. There might be a way to have it so NodeMap emits an event for, like... everything, so you can watch your Map and have certain scripts added automatically as needed.

Are you generating Nodes at runtime, or just in the Editor?

 

Currently I'm generating them in the editor. So it's easy enough to copy FSM's manually, but it's always better to make as much automatic as possible.
Thanks for the tips, I agree that it's probably best to create my own script and then refer to that whenever needed.
It would be great if you could look at Playmaker integration, but don't sweat it, I know how much time small children can take up

 

Hey!

I'm currently searching for a system just like this to use in my project. From what I've read here, on the store page itself and in the documentation this seems very suited for what I had in mind. I do have a few questions though.

1. Are there any videos available of it in action on a "cube" node map, just like the screenshot on the asset store?
2. How well optimized is this system? And are there options to improve performance by disabling certain options?
3. Is there some sort of system that allows me to create a 3d grid, for example 5x5x5, in editor?

Thank you!

 

Does someone know if the curved paths were implemented?

Also, is there a way to cancel a movement? I found the pause method on the Agent but I would actually like to stop it not just pause.

 

node placer for NodeMap
mouse + space key

 

hi, Justin, are you around?
looking for advice.

using offset from a node for a lane.
this is how it looks

and works well, but have an issue with direction:

see gif. the first node in on up-right, the last node is down-left
nodeMap finds the (shortest) route in opposite direction, so the car turns
I'd want it to continue in that direction
(ie. to have a route which goes around to the finalNode, but doesn't make a 180)


should I try to divide the route into sections (adding an array of endNodes)?
makin up a route like that would slow the workflow, is there an alternative?
_______________
minor issues:
- if nodeMap is copy-pasted, sometimes PathFinding() fails [missing reference error if I remember correctly]
- switchin off draw markers and draw nodes, and node colliders a bit clunky (path markers have to be switched off one by one as multi editing not supported, but I can live with that, if it's hard to change)

 

Hey, @dibdab. I'm still around. I just haven't been very active lately because of life just sort of taking over. I'm on a tough project for my day job that's been requiring me to put a lot of brain power in, and when that happens, I don't have a lot left in the tanks to work on my personal projects at the end of the day. So the updates I've been wanting to do to NodeMap have been critically delayed.

I wanted to start by saying I'm very impressed with your clever adaptation of NodeMap to work as a traffic system. While I designed the package to accommodate several different use cases, moving cars wasn't really something I thought would be suited well for what I had come up with. Once I saw there was a desire to use it for that, I started work on a new asset that would be designed around simple traffic systems, but using the same node-based approach as NodeMap. (After typing out much of this post, I went back and looked, and saw it was you doing the traffic thing. So I guess you're very much responsible for me creating this new asset!)



This project, too, has been sorely neglected, but I really do want to finish it and get it out there for people to use, assuming there's a desire for it. Anyway, on to your questions.

- - -

If I'm understanding the problem correctly, it sounds like once the car reaches its destination Node, it then sets a new target destination and finds the shortest path to it, which leads it right back the direction it came. You'd like it to have to find a more realistic and traffic-abiding path, so it would continue around a loop to get there, for example. This type of path finding is beyond the built in A* style that NodeMap uses. But don't worry! We're good developers, so we can figure this out!

Your previous method of having a path per lane solves this problem easily, because you can set the direction for each lane, and the pathfinding has to respect that direction to get a new route. But that obviously slows your workflow down a lot, and creates way more nodes than the system was really built to handle (performance will likely become a problem).

What if we kept track of the most recent Node that an Agent passed (not counting its destination Node) and modified or wrote a new pathfinding function that would seek a path that does not allow going through that node? Do you think that would suit your needs? Maybe give a glance at your whole map and plot out some navigation cases in your head. If that sounds like it'll work, I'll whip something up that I think should do the trick, and you can try it out and see if it works the way you expect.

- - -

Copying and pasting is likely to be problematic, since I have no idea what Unity does with reference variables when you do an operation like that. My guess is that something is not being populated when you do this. I can take a look, but the first thing I would recommend would be to check the Node Data field on the copied map and make sure it has something assigned to it.

- - -

I agree. It was something I thought to include, but didn't test much during or after development (as I generally always wanted to keep them on. I think what I ended up publishing was a half-baked implementation that became tricky to change after the fact.

The updates I have planned and in the works for NodeMap are enough to constitute bumping the major version up. So that release would take care of a lot of these kind of issues. I learned a lot about what I did wrong with NodeMap while working on this traffic system asset, and I think I can use a lot of that knowledge to make NodeMap easier to work with. I'm reluctant to offer a timeline on that, as work is still pretty crazy and I've not had much time in the last few months to work on things, so I've gotta find a way to get back into the groove again before I can hope to have an idea of what will all be included and when.

But please know that I appreciate all of this feedback, and have not given up support for this asset. When I do get around to releasing an update, I intend to make it one that was well worth the wait.

 

all I'm using is getting the nodes

Code (CSharp):

1. public List<Node> nodes;
2.  
3. nodes = Pathfinding.FindRoute(startNode, targetNode);

(I'm not using Agent, but Brunosly might still want to know about it)




by setting lane as offset, the traffic goes both ways
all cars use the same nodes, and because of that I think will need to add the crossings into the play somehow on top of this
(and still don't want them to do 180 )

kinda think now that this won't be possible to pull through (since there's no guarantee even if a crossing point is added to the path, that the shortest is the right direction)
and will have to add path for each lane

 

I was just working with NodeMap, couple of notes

it would be cool if more nodeMaps could be in one scene
(first I thought one for vehicles, one for pedestrians etc)
it is possible to have unconnected set of nodes, and pathfinding works fine

but if having a bigger map still would be useful when switching off a tile to save resources
(having one nodemap for each terrain tile)

the other thing is, after I created the nodes and the paths realized that have to set all of them from two-way to one-way
so it would go like: extend node > select path > set to one-way
as the default is two-way. I guess there's no way around that to speed up workflow...

I see your traffic system version has nice indication of path directions,
is it coming along?

can you write a function that would rule out paths containing a node?
I think for my previous one-lane approach it would not work 100% because the past node might be part of the new route in some case
but this might be well useful for game design purposes (like if don't want the Ai to go somewhere)

 

http://justinschneider.com/ is not loading, seems down. Please check. Wanted to read through the docs and review the demo to decide on if the asset meets my needs, but not been able to.

 

@DADA_universe Sorry about that! I allowed my VPS to lapse while I was working on a new version of my site, and there were things that I lost in the process.

You can view the current version of the manual here. I'll try to get the demo up and running again ASAP.

 

Thanks.

 

Not a problem. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, actually.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I try to be straight-forward about what Node Map can and can't do. And bear in mind that while I do have some improvements, enhancements, and new features planned, I don't have a concrete date for when that update might happen yet.

 

Some questions please.

1) Can prefabs be spawned to the nodes or will it only work with meshes?
2) For what I would like to use the asset for, the nodes would have images (nested in prefabs) and text while the paths will have contextual text attached to them so agents can review the text on different routes before choosing which one to follow. Any issues with this?
3) Can I have nodes (and / or maps) created programmatically (based on data stored in a scriptable object for example), such that other game play aspects may populate or change the content of the scriptable objects and the map / nodes get modified in response to this automatically?
4) Can Players get to spawn and / or modify nodes during gameplay based on data they've generated during gameplay as described above?
5) What's the road map you have for node map? More in terms of features you are thinking of, knowing timelines might be at best optimistic.

Many thanks.

 

@DADA_universe:

1) I started the project out using prefabs, and somewhere along the line got the idea that it would be better to use meshes and materials directly. I've since flip-flopped back to believing prefabs would be much more preferable, and that's absolutely in the roadmap.
2) This is definitely doable if you're comfortable writing your own scripts, but it's admittedly more complex behavior than what I designed this system for. There might be a way to do that with this current version of Node Map (and I'd be happy to sit down and try to think through it with you), but if it were me writing this solution, I can't say that I'd use Node Map as it exists now to achieve that.
3) Yes, absolutely. I made the entire API public and tried to document it as well as I could for this purpose. However, several people who've used it to do programmatic maps have brought up issues or requested additional features which I've tried to provide, so I can't promise it's smooth sailing.
4) Yes, but this would be entirely scripted on your end. Node Map's API provides a way to get nodes by id (which you can get from Agent's position or through your own player system), and most properties are public and modifiable. Again, though, since I haven't actually done this myself, I don't know yet what kind of things might be encountered during that process.
5) It's... loose. I write code for my day job, and when work is busy (as it has been for the last couple months) I don't have a lot left in the tank when I get home. My kids are in that special age range (4 and 2) that take every last drop of energy I have, too, so I've not been working on the asset as I intended.

With that said, the changes I was working on include changing how camera/map rotation works so that it's more intuitive for both 2D and 3D workflows. I started making everything Scriptable Object-based, as well (like Agents not just being a string field).

My plans include adding curved paths, changing Nodes/Markers to prefabs, improving the usability of Agents to better fit with custom player objects, and add PlayMaker integration. These changes would be significant enough that it would introduce incompatibilities with previous versions of Node Map, so it would be a major version release. I think Summer of 2020 is a realistic goal for this update.

If you decide to purchase Node Map, please do so with only its current features in mind (current documentation available here), since I'd hate for someone to buy a promise that ends up getting "adjusted." If you decide Node Map isn't for you, please feel free to hit me up in a PM and we can discuss things like pathfinding or other topics that may be of interest to you if you set out on building this on your own.

 

Any news on curved paths? And moving to a ScriptableObject based approach sounds like an excellent idea!

 

I recently bought your "node map" asset, thanks for making this awesome tool.

I would like to ask you if there is any way to preview the route that agents are using while navigating the map?
How to visually show what destination the agent has and what nodes the agent pathfinding have chosen, I hope the question makes sense.

 

Hi, @XaviOromi! Thanks so much for the purchase! I love the idea of visually debugging the pathfinding, but there is not currently a built-in way to do that. If you're comfortable writing code, you could pull that information from the agents themselves and display it, but it's no small task.

Truth be told, I've sort of dropped the ball on maintaining this asset. I had started a big change to make rotating maps for alternate orientations easier, and it got to be a mess. Then life presented lots of things to handle, and with how few copies it sells, Node Map took a far back seat.

With the number of features and improvements I want to make, it's starting to feel like a full rewrite might be the easier option. Doing this would break compatibility with existing systems, but at least the option would be there for people who want the features.

I'm not making an official call on this yet, and I certainly don't want to encourage anyone to purchase the asset based on promises of future features, but it absolutely is something I'm looking into. Visual debugging (along with many other features from this thread) are definitely on the list for things to add to a new version.

 

Maybe i didnt explain properly what i wanted to do.
After reading the documentation, I found that there is a public method in the agent class where i can see what route the agent is taking: GetRoutePointPositions(Node targetNode) example

Its a shame that the asset is discontinued. Definetly the possivility to have a way to modify the path using curves would be useful.

 

Hi Justin,
I purchased your asset, works wonderfully and saved me a lot of time.
Recently the map started to behave strange.

I added two additional variables to Node:
public Scenario scenario;
public Shop shop;

In order to add scenarios and shops in the editor, I also added the following blocks in NodeEditor (void ShowPathSettings):
GUILayout.BeginHorizontal();
EditorGUILayout.LabelField("Scenario");
curNode.scenario = EditorGUILayout.ObjectField(curNode.scenario, typeof(Scenario), false) as Scenario;
GUILayout.EndHorizontal();

GUILayout.BeginHorizontal();
EditorGUILayout.LabelField("Shop");
curNode.shop = EditorGUILayout.ObjectField(curNode.shop, typeof(Shop), false) as Shop;
GUILayout.EndHorizontal();

All of this works, the two fields are exposed in the Editor, and I can assign scenarios and shops.
However, whenever I reload the scene in Unity (even after saving the whole scene and map), all of those assignments are gone from Node, and it's empty again.
I even have a few previous nodes, which were assigned early, which keep their assigned scriptable objects, but no new ones are saved. Any idea what this could be? Maybe I did the Editor part wrong, no clue about that.

Thanks and best regards,
Stefan

Edit: I thought I solved it by changing typeof to typeof(ScriptableObject), it worked once (the scribtableobject scenario is now saved as scenario in the node), but it's not working for the rest of the nodes. They still get lost upon reload of the scene.

 

Thanks for the purchase, @Nightfrost00!

I think what you're seeing is an issue with serialization not happening on the properties you're adding. You could try adding [System.Serializable] in front of the properties "scenario" and "shop" you added, since they're custom classes. However, since any updates to Node Map (assuming I get around to pushing new stuff...) would overwrite your changes, you might be better off adding those items in your own component and then doing something like:

Code (CSharp):

1. myNode.gameObject.GetComponent<MyComponent>().scenario

for example, to get the properties you want. I believe you'll still have to mark those properties as serializable in order for them to not get cleared out on toggling Play mode.

Let me know how that works for you!

 

The demo I had hosted on my personal site has been down for quite some time. I only recently got around to getting it online again. It also took me way too long to notice this thread had been archived, and I was sorta counting on it being available as a means of support. Please accept my apologies for any of you who were unable to get help with using Node Map during this time period.

To make up for it, there's also a second demo available! (Asset code will be updated soon)

Node Map - Movement Demo


Take a spin with the four out-of-box movement options for Node Map: Click-to-move (Player), Direct Move (Player), Patrol (AI), and Wander (AI). Some areas are off-limits to the AI, while others are off-limits to the player. Some paths allow movement in only one direction, and others allow faster movement.

Node Map - Turn-based Demo


This scene demonstrates how to use the API to create your own movement types, in this case, a turn-based system that allows moving only one node at a time, despite allowing a target node further away being set. This demo also shows how to use the newly-added methods to highlight the route an agent will take, and how to detect when two agents cross each others' paths.

Please note the Turn-based demo is not yet available in the Asset Store release. I'm currently working with a customer to collect feedback and update documentation, and I will update this space once the update is available.

 

Node Map 1.5 is now available on the Asset Store.

The biggest thing added to this release is the source for the above-mentioned turn-based demo, which shows how to use the API to create your own movement rules, as well as showing off the new methods for highlighting the route an Agent will take to its target Node.

The package has been tested and uploaded using 2019.4, 2020.3, and 2021.2. Official support is now limited to these major versions, with 2018 and older being unsupported (I mean, it should still work, but... just saying).

A few other minor fixes and additions, all covered in the release notes.

Happy coding!

 

Using unity version 2019.4.15f. I found two issues:
First of all the agent wont move if I open or switch to the scene window while the game is running, which I often do for debug purpose. Switching back to the game window make em move again.

Secondly, I get an "stack overflow" error when the agent reach its destination using the click move script. However, I dont get this error in the demo scene so perhaps I missed a configuartion somewhere? I though I followed the documetion well.

A feature that would be nice would be the ability to set how many nodes the agent should stop at before reaching its target/ another agent , instead of stop at the very same node.

 

Hey, @sobek! Thanks for the purchase!

This sounds like normal behavior by default for Unity. You just need to enable "Run in Background" in your Player Settings if you want the app to run when not focused.

Interesting. That's not something I've seen myself. Could you share a GitHub link to the project so I could check it out? Or at the very least a video of the steps you're following to setup the nodes, paths, and agents?

Might need a bit more info here. I think I understand the agent part... like you'd like the option to not move towards a node if it's occupied by another agent? As far as stopping after a certain number of nodes have been traversed, this sounds like prime functionality for custom development. The turn-based example I recently added should give you an idea how to do that, which involves fetching a path and then determining yourself how far along that path the agent should move, and set the appropriate Node as the agent's target destination.

 

Has there been any more thought into a procedural version of the node map? Not necessarily a fully 3D node map like No Man's Sky, but at least a flat procedural map? I saw a comment on the second page about it but haven't seen anything since then. Would love to see it!

 

The API for Node Map is fully exposed, so it's able to be used in that kind of situation. However, generating the full map is beyond the scope of this asset, as the specifics of what you'd need would vary greatly depending on what you were trying to do.

Instead, the idea would be that you'd determine on your own where nodes need to be, then use AddNode to create the map point and AddPath to connect them as needed in your generating script.

With that said, if you tried to pull a NMS and make a map with 4 billion active Nodes in it at once, I'm pretty sure it'd crash any consumer-level system you're using. Instead those points would be better stored without visual elements and only added to the scene and rendered as needed.

 

Ah, okay. Thanks. Yeah, a NMS style map would def be wild. I just kind of used that as an example, didn't mean to imply this asset should be capable of producing something of that scope, sorry. I was just curious if there were any plans on making any level or size of a procedural style flat map. I'll take a closer look at the API and see what I can come up with.

 

Hi Justin, I am thinking of purchasing your node map solution, but I have a question regarding its suitability to my needs: do you think it would be possible for me (without extending the asset myself) to overlay a 3d node map on a terrain? This would, in my mind, function as a detailed 3d map of my 'dungeons', which the player would then have to navigate.

 

Hey, @KutluKan! Welcome to the forums!

I believe NodeMap would be well suited to use as a navigation base in the way that you described. There are certain decisions I made when creating it that I wish now I had done differently (just using prefabs for the node/marker items in the config instead of explicitly requiring meshes and sprites, for example) so if you want NodeMap to basically be invisible and use your own geometry as the visual indication of the map layout, the workflow might be less-than-ideal. For example, you could use a plain cube mesh as the Nodes, build your map, and disable the mesh renderers for the elements so only your map's geometry is visible.

Keep in mind that the intent of the app is still to have any additional functionality provided in your own scripts, which would use NodeMap's API to respond to events like a map agent reaching a node. That is to say, while you can do what you want to do without extending the asset, you'll still have to do your own scripting to have anything other than agents moving around a map.

Be sure to check out the manual to see if it'll suit your needs. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask!

 

Hi, I'have a problem when using two NodeMaps at the same time, just one agent on each map, the agent on the second map jump to the first one, and is controlled by it... It seem that it happens on initialize... even if each map is in different scene... Any clue ?
Thanks for your attention

 

Actually... ... the real question is : What happens on initialize? One agent gets the nearest node around and stay earnest to the NodeMap this node belongs to ?

 

Thanks for making this! I've been looking for something I can use for my electric utility tycoon game for freeform power lines. I have a few questions regarding this and how I could implement it.

1. My goal is to let the player draw the power lines themselves using the Node Map as the foundation for that function. Is it easy to implement the node, path, and particularly the node map aspect?
2. Instead of the paths being something for agents to use, and something to implement pathfinding, can I instead use the nodes (in my case the transmission towers) to transmit power? The entire singular node system (which I guess would be a map in the case of the asset API, if I'm correct?) would be like a nodal analysis network where the nodes have voltage values (determined by some background matrix math) and the entire system as a whole node map would have "available power to pull" and "required power to supply" with connections at nodes. Which are going to be implemented in the aforementioned matrix math.

That's all of the questions I'm able to remember to ask at the moment. Thanks!