Pathfinding
You may have noticed your Mossms are walking inside of a prim rather than on top of a prim or walking through walls instead of around them. This is because Mossms use pathfinding and your sim doesn't know that its OK for an object (your Mossm) to walk on another object (your floor) or which objects it should go around. To fix this, your sim needs a few instructions from you. Don't worry, you do not have to own the sim. As long as you can build on the sim you can tell it how to treat your objects.
Pathfinding is Off
We know that many regions have dynamic pathfinding disabled. Dynamic pathfinding can be resource intensive for a sim so it is understandable that sim owners like to turn it off. There is no cause for concern though. Mossms do not use this type of pathfinding. They use static pathfinding which is much more gentle on sim resources and works even when dynamic pathfinding is turned off.
So, how do you make pathfinding work for you? Lets take a look...
Walking Surfaces
So you have a really nice house and you want your Mossms to walk on the floor inside of the house. You can accomplish this by following these 10 steps:
Right click and edit the house.
Unlink the house by pressing CTRL + Shift + L OR in the menu at the top of your viewer select Build > Unlink
Close the object editing tools .
Select just the floor of your house and rename it to something memorable.
In the menu at the top of your viewer select Build > Pathfinding > Linksets.
In the resulting window locate the floor item that you just renamed and select it.
While still selected, change the attributes of the floor by selecting "walkable" from the drop down at the bottom of this window.
Click the "Apply Changes" button
In the menu at the top of your viewer select Build > Pathfinding > Rebake region.
Thats it! Your Mossms will now walk on top of the floor.
Important Do not link the floor back to the house. It will not work if you do.
Avoiding Walls
Now, lets say you want your Mossms to go to the pool that is sitting outside of this house.
You obviously want them to go around the walls rather than through the walls. Here is how to do this:
- Unlink the house if it is not already unlinked.
Right click and edit your walls. Give them a memorable name.
In the menu at the top of your viewer select Build > Pathfinding > Linksets.
In the resulting window locate the wall item that you just renamed and select it.
While selected, change the attributes of the wall by selecting "Static Object" from the drop down at the bottom of this window.
Click the "Apply Changes" button.
In the menu at the top of your viewer select Build > Pathfinding > Rebake region
That's it! Your Mossms will now go around the wall instead of through it.
Important Do not link the walls to the roof or the floor
Verifying
Of course, you won't want to take our word that it works. You'll want to see what you've done, right?
Go to the menu at the top of your viewer and select Build > Pathfinding >View/Test.
It will take a moment for the selections in the resulting window to become available. When they do. Deselect "world" then Select "navmesh."
What you see here is, well, the navmesh. The black area is actually a hole in the mesh and represent the walls of our house. What does that mean? Your pathfinding objects cannot pass through holes in the navmesh and will go around it. So in this case, our Mossms will only leave through the front of the house.
Now deselect "navmesh" and select "walkable" and "static obstacles."
That's pretty, but what does it mean? This is a 3d representation of the navmesh we looked at above. The green areas represent places that your pathfinding objects can walk. Your pathfinding objects will go around the red.
Tips & Tricks
Be sure that your prims do not overlap. They can touch but not overlap.
Be sure that your prims do not overlap the ground. They can sit on the ground but they cannot intersect with the ground.
Test frequently as you build. If you do and something goes wrong you will know which prim is causing the problem and won't have to tear down your entire build.
Some cut prims will not work at all. For example, a cylinder cut and twisted into a spiral ramp won't work.
Going Beyond
This is just a basic tutorial but with some practice and a little more study you can see that it is quite possible to make very complex pathfinding scenarios for your Mossms. You can make ramps, bridges, balconies, multi-story complexes... try it out! Just be sure to check your results in the navmesh previewer, to be sure that there are holes in the navmesh where you expect there to be obstacles, and connections where you expect for them to walk.
Thanks for taking the time to read, now, go make a maze for your Mossms to explore!
We're discussing more about pathfinding on this pathfinding thread on our forums, where you might find additional tips and help.