Food court

[groope]

How to build a big food area so guests can sit down and eat but they don't get lost because of the too many paths. I know to use fences to separate paths but what formats would you build ? I usually build small squares and put some scenery around it.

[Broxzier]

If the square has one or more main paths without many junctions, you should be fine. You can use the "show wide paths" open from the debug window to see if it'll become an issue. Peeps can only look ahead up to 16 junctions when searching for a path.

White = paths guests don't use while pathfinding (but can use when wandering around, and sit on benches for example)
brown = path not seen as junctions
red = paths seen as junctions

An example of a terrible food court:

If a guest wants to go through here, they have to use at least 4 junctions (red tiles).

Using just wide paths, and making one of the main paths wide as well, greatly reduses the number of junctions:

Now guests can talk through from one side to the other with 5 junctions.

Having a path that goes around the food court can prevent guests from getting lost entirely, but isn't always the most elegant looking.

[Toomix]

Hello,

I would ask you to explain to me a problem with pathfinding and how to solve it. When I make two squares wide path, people use only half of it. Why they don't use whole path?

Thanks

[Broxzier]

On 08/08/2018 at 13:03, Toomix said:

I would ask you to explain to me a problem with pathfinding and how to solve it

Every path in front of these shops counts as a junction. Place them somewhere not next to a path, but to its own plaza or something, and they pathfinding won't have to deal with so many junctions, and guests won't get stuck.

On 08/08/2018 at 13:03, Toomix said:

When I make two squares wide path, people use only half of it. Why they don't use whole path?

That's just how it works right now. The white paths are ignored by the pathfinding, so guests who are walking to somehting (not wandering) will only walk on those footpaths.

[Cubo-C]

I've never studied the pathfinding AI in RCT, nor have I cared about it, but it seems now that this totally matters. 

Speaking of this, is there a thread containing the detailed pathfinding algorithm that I can take a look? Now it seems really interesting. 

Edited August 21, 2018 by Cubo-C

[Toomix]

36 minutes ago, Cubo-C said:

I've never studied the pathfinding AI in RCT, nor have I cared about it, but it seems now that this totally matters. 

Speaking of this, is there a thread containing the detailed pathfinding algorithm that I can take a look? Now it seems really interesting. 

http://rct.wikia.com/wiki/Paths here is paragraph (Pathing Systems) about how to build paths

[Deurklink]

On 21/08/2018 at 16:37, Cubo-C said:

I've never studied the pathfinding AI in RCT, nor have I cared about it, but it seems now that this totally matters. 

Speaking of this, is there a thread containing the detailed pathfinding algorithm that I can take a look? Now it seems really interesting. 

The code for pathfinding can be found here: https://github.com/OpenRCT2/OpenRCT2/blob/develop/src/openrct2/peep/GuestPathfinding.cpp

It's a few thousand lines of code and comments though so good luck  

Edited October 1, 2018 by Deurklink

[CiroBT]

On 08/08/2018 at 08:03, Toomix said:

I would ask you to explain to me a problem with pathfinding and how to solve it. When I make two squares wide path, people use only half of it. Why they don't use whole path?

They are polite enough to not disturb people while having their meal