making enemy avoid obstacles without pathfinding object?

[Klownzilla]

Hey! In my game I'm making (Action RPG) I have been able to make the enemies chase after the player and attack him when close enough. Sometimes resulting in various conditions for the player as well, like poisoning for example. I searched through the forums but couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.If I walk away from the enemy and stand behind a tree or a fence or whatever, the enemy keeps walking and walking against the tree/fence as it tries to walk through it.

I solved this with a bunch of, probably un-necessary ("If player position is... + enemy position is.....") then I put an object to the left or right of the tree/fence for the enemy to follow instead, and on collision with that object he returns to follow the player. It works pretty good but it is extremly much work if you have a frame with lots of obstacles and many enemies. I guess everybody will say "Use the pathfinding object" but I can't understand anything about that D**n object hehe...I'm completely lost with it. Is there a better way for me to make the enemy avoid obstacles or is my method the only non pathfindingobject way? I'm asking now before doing more un-necessary coding

Thanks!

[Ryan]

A very basic algorithm is to use line of sight, record the last place that the enemy could establish line of sight, and then create a node at the location. Move the enemy towards that node, and once it's reached, try to establish 'line of sight' again and repeat.

It's somewhat more realistic because the enemy would lose sight of a player rather than having a kind of 'ESP' allowing them to navigate to the player flawlessly regardless of line-of-sight.

The drawback is lots of enemies will all bunch up around the nodes, rather than move in a group-like behaviour like the flocking object can achieve. Also enemies will act kind of dumb if they can't establish line of sight, rather than investigate further down the hallway to determine possible locations of the player, so you may need to create some predefined patrol paths that enemies can adapt to if they lose line-of-sight.

[Klownzilla]

Not sure what to do really haha but thanks for the answer

[dascribe]

I don't quite get the pathfinding object either.
Sounds like you already have a solution.
Maybe you should group your objects to make it so you only have to do the rules once.