knownIssues.txt

#

Characters tend to weave their way through groups of trees instead of going
around them when wondering, and often don't take the shortest path when
arriving because they randomly weave through trees.

Add a path-following steering behaviour to vehicle.py, and add a demo of it to
plugins/ for pandaSteer.py.

In terrain.py, represent the terrain as a dictionary with one key for each quad
and links to each of the quads neighbors as the values. Whenever there is a
tree (or other obstacle) on a quad it is marked 'occupied.' You can then
compute paths from quad A to quad B by running a simple pathfinding algorithm
over the graph.

Arrival steering could consist of computing the path from the nearest
unoccupied quad to the nearest unoccupied quad to the target then following it.

For wandering and other steering behaviours, add a 'non-penetration constraint'
where vehicles will not enter occupied quads, but instead will slide along them.

#

Sometimes none of the trees seem to get added to the collision detection
system. No collisions between characters' collision tubes and trees' collision
spheres occur, characters walk right through trees. Framerate is much better :)

Sometimes only _some_ of the trees get added to the collision system.

Is this something to do with flattenStrong?

#

Currently the terrain models are raised above the sea to minimise unwanted
lakes appearing where the terrain model dips below the sea model, but this
makes the edges look weird. Put eight sea models around the terrain instead of
one underneath it?

#

Deal with lakes:

'Lakes' appear where the terrain model dips below some sea model like the sea
model currently in use, or any blue plane with some transparency cutting
through the terrain model.

Characters are unaware of these lakes and walk right through them. Lakes could
be made to look OK if the sea model had some transparency. And if pathfinding
and penetration constraint where used, along with a binary occupied/unoccupied
grid representation of the terrain, then it should be possible to get
characters to stay out of lakes by automatically marking low quads of the
terrain as occupied (look at all four vertices of a quad, if any of them is
below sea level mark it occupied, do this before placing trees, then don't
place trees in lakes!)

#

Sometimes something (like a character model) seems to get in the way of the
camera. The camera then zooms in very far, or zooms in and out rapidly, until
something moves. Could be very confusing for young users.

#

Sometimes character models fall under the terrain model. Could it be that the
CollisionRay used with CollisionHandlerFloor is on rare occasions shooting
right through a tiny gap in the terrain model? Though I don't see why there
should be gaps in the terrain model, this problem did occur with placing trees,
leading to code that 'wiggles' a tree until its ray hits some terrain. Maybe
try using the characters collision sphere to detect the height of the terrain
and set the Z accordingly? (i.e. don't use collisionhandlerfloor)