Hey guys.
I have a building rich map with lots of stairs and ladders and I was wondering if it was possible to navmesh/bot enable them.
Is this possible?

Ladders, no. Stairs, yes. If a bot can walk there, it can be meshed. If he must jump, or climb a ladder to get there, then no.

Also make sure you leave a little extra space (any objects like crates and such to close will most likely cause that area to not be meshed) around the stairs of any buildings you use. And when you first edit the navmesh, make sure that any islands are not an area of a building that is needed. For example I usually would end up with an island for the upper portion of one of the construction houses, the collision mesh has a bad spot on the stairs that causes the meshing process to break in that area.

I've actually seen moments where bots would 'jump' if stuck on something in BF2.

I specifically have seen bots, albeit in BF2142, jump in specific spots like over crates and holes in walls... But again, that's BF2142.


If only there was someway to 'fake' this behavior. Like an invisible elevator that would lift a bot up, or take him down, when it would hit a 'trigger'. I think of 'old school' Day of Defeat bots when I think of bots and ladders.

As a behavior bots will jump when stuck in BF2/142. It takes them a while before they will do it though, and IMO is a rather poor way of having them get around. What would take a person 2 seconds to get over by jumping, would take a bot a min or so probably.

The map looks like this. (See picture below)
Yes, the map is very small.
There are no slopes present in the map and the entire map is closed off by walls.

With this in mind, wouldn't it be possible to create a a very steep navmesh for the ladder? (like a very steep stair) Or can't bots use stairs at all?
aiPathfinding.map.maxSlope 85 (just under 90)

I also added this map on the bot support forum.
http://www.battlefieldsingleplayer.com/for...showtopic=15009

Stairs will be navmeshed if the building has an AIMesh ( col3) and its steepness is below the maxSlope in the mentioned statement.


This is dangerous because your navmesh fills the whole map and tells the bots they can go anywhere. This will probably lead to chaotic behaviour.
Use the editor to load the static with the staircase and examine its col3 ( Render menu -> Toggle Draw Collision -> AIMesh ) . If there's none you either have to edit the navmesh directly ( adding a ramp in the staircase location ) or equip your building with a valid col3.

Can bots walk up a 85 degree angle? No? Then that's a BAD idea. Bots can use stairs, as they can walk up/down those just fine(really, they aren't even aware of WHAT they are walking on). But ladders? No, they are hard coded to jump off of those if they end up on one, and really don't know how to use them anyway.