2 replies to this topic

[Creepin]

Starting BWS yet another time, I've noticed, as many times before, that NPCs, both hostile that are moving into melee and neutral who want to talk, are always moving straight to the point which I've clicked by mouse (issuing movement order), not to the point where I actually am at any given moment of closing in. I always felt it so stupid, and annoying, and not true to original, but usually ignored it. However, this time I decided to go through to find out what mod makes creatures aim so (needles to say, I had no other candidates than TobEX). I started by checking vanilla BG2, and found out that it has the same behaviour. Aha, I thought, then what I am remembering as correct behaviour was from BG1, and since BWS is based on BG2 engine, that's why I feel this behaviour changed. So I went and checked vanilla BG1, and much to my surprise it acts the same: when I'm precisely to the west from creature willing to talk, and click to move to the south of said creature, it immediately turns straight to south, even though I'm actually about SWWW from it.

So, the question is: is it my memory playing tricks and creatures were never moved straight to my char, not to his destination, or something weird happened and broke my vanilla installs?

[Argent77]

It was always like this. Even the "improved" pathfinding in the Enhanced Editions is not any better in this regard. I remember reading a post on the Beamdog Forums some time ago where someone involved mentioned that it would be too much work to fix it.

There are all kinds of weird situations based to this particular behavior. It can even be exploited to cast melee-ranged spells from afar (even from the other end of a map), such as healing spells. To do this:
1. Pause your game.
2. Select your target character to be healed and instruct him to move to the healer.
3. Select the healer and cast your healing spell on the target.
4. Unpause the game.
5. Pause again as soon as the healer starts casting.
Now you can instruct the target character to walk to any location of the map. The healer will still be able to heal him.
 

[Creepin]

Thank you Argent77, then it is my memory, how typical of her! Also, neat trick