Creating Routing Gateways

This Section is broken down into three parts to help you digest it easier

I. Basic Gateways

II Gateways and Zones

III Pathfinding and Gateways

 

Basic Gaeways

Remember that button marked GT? If you dont, dont worry As you go through this section hopefully you will learn something about gateways, if not just reread this section.

If you want, you can look at what was originally written by pumkin. What we know about gateways, is anything smaller than 3 tiles doesnt work. It walls the ai in. As for pumkins no more than 5 or 6... well we've had a few people get longer gateways with no prolem. Also, gateway placement is a must. If you dont have your gateways setup properly you map will suck. Below is a minor illistration on a proper gateway.

 
* = Cliff Faces tiles
G = Gateways
_ = Passable Terrian


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A few additional things you will need to understand about gateways. If you want to do a map with lots of island hoping, you will need to put a gateway on each island you want to be able to use. If you do not put a gateway on each island you WILL NOT be able to use that island for anything, so always double check your gateway placement. The same applies for mountainous maps. Anytime you have a large flat surface with our a ramp leading up to it you will need to add a gateway to it if you wish to build on it.Remember, you can only add gateways on the 2d map

Gateways and Zones

Now that youhave your gateways placed we will continue on with how they split the map into zones. When you add a gateway between unpassable mountain ranges you create a new zone on the map. Edit world will start numbering these and add them in either when you save your map or tell it to refresh zones. Here is an example of what the zones on your map will look like in the 2d map

Notice the yellow lines? These are the gateway placements on the map. The different grey areas each represent a seperate gateway. If you look closely, you can see two areas that have a gateway that doesnt create a new zone. These gateways are there so that you can use the high areas on the map with out the need for ramps. To the right you will see what the map looks like in normal viewing on the 3d map.

Pathfinding and Gateways

Now we embark on the final lesson with gateways, pathfinding. The reason on having gateways and zones is to make the vehicle pathfinding easier and quicker. The way it has been discussed before was that the computer will assign a path for each unit folloing each zone. Large numbers of zones will cause problems though when ploting a very long move order as it is forced to cross a large distance. It also helps when the comp must cross between winding areas if they have a clear gateway plan in place. In essence, gateways when dealing with pathfinding are a double edged sword. They are very helpfull on large maps and on maps with lots of broker terrain, but they slow the game down if you place too many. When you start using zones please be careful to "over zone" your map. You may create the most beautiful map in the world, but the units sit there for seconds when given long move orders as they sit there trying to compute how to get there and what zones to pass through.