AI Pathing Observation - Fences

[zztong]

My favorite way to take on horde nights is to be mobile and run about the world. As part of that, I noticed recently that when Zombies jump over fences (chasing me because I jumped over a fence) they tend to square-up and jump directly over the fence. That is, they tend to jump directly across the fence. Rarely do they jump onto the fence.

 

Combining that observation with one of the more popular horde base designs with a single elevated path. It is possible to make a base where the Z's run up stairs, down a narrow path face a fence, jump over it, and the jump carries them off of the elevated path. They fall. It doesn't fool every zombie every time, but if you have 3 of these turns in the path, not many will make it past, jump off, and have to run back to the start.

 

My suggestion is that if a zombie decides to jump, it looks at the block to be jumped to determine how much surface area is present. If it is a half-block or less, then the Zombie jump onto the block, not over it. Then, if it was just something like a fence, they can just run off of it onto the ground and after me. But if the next step is a fall of more than a block, they can look to jump again. Or, more frequently, look to see if maybe they should jump at some angle to land on another block.