Different results from pathfinding at runtime and edit time

Beginner Questions
1
  • A* version: 5.3.3
  • Unity version: 2022.3.52f1

I’m working on a few different things for offline path generation, and generating off-mesh links for organic terrain.
With this code, I get very different results at edit time and at runtime. My editor-time paths will stop short from the destination and go to the center of the node. Modifiers also don’t get applied (trying both Funnel and Smooth).

Am I missing a setting, or doing something strange?

Here’s my code:

var path = ABPath.Construct(transform.position, nearestPoint, (Path p) =>
{
  seeker.PostProcess(p);
});
path.nnConstraint = NNConstraint.Walkable;
AstarPath.StartPath(path);
path.BlockUntilCalculated();

Here’s the settings of the Seeker:

image
image1036×730 50.7 KB

This is the path at Edit time, generated from the above code (red gizmo trail):

image
image1536×636 162 KB

And here’s the same path at runtime.

image
image1560×720 169 KB

This is tangential, but for context, the blue gizmos are what I’m actually trying to do, which is calculate “shortcuts” to places that can be in the same graph area. It detects if the point is jumpable, and compares the jump distance with the path distance (using the same pathfinding code as above). It then discounts points that are faster to walk to, with some multiplier. You can see in the edit-time screenshot it finds a bunch of points nearby, because the pathfinding results are so jagged, it thinks it would be faster to jump there.

2

Hmm, very interesting question; I’m not sure what parts of Astar are made to work outside of runtime, if any. I’ll tag @aron_granberg on this as well as watch for replies myself as I’m curious now how Astar is built to handle this.

3

I’m was able to get what I want for now by doing the following in my editor button code:

        AstarPath.FindAstarPath();

        if (!(AstarPath.active.data.graphs.First().isScanned))
        {
            AstarPath.active.Scan();

            // manually wake up the seeker start/end modifier
            seeker.startEndModifier.Awake(seeker);
            
            // register any modifiers (i.e. smooth, funnel, ...)
            foreach (var modifier in seeker.GetComponents<IPathModifier>())
            {
                seeker.DeregisterModifier(modifier);
                seeker.RegisterModifier(modifier);
            }
        }

I’ll keep updating if I run into any more snags.

2 Likes
4

Thanks. I’ll add some code to ensure modifiers are getting registered even in edit mode.