How to set node penalty based on z position?

Beginner Questions
1

I’m using this

`
gg = AstarPath.active.astarData.gridGraph;
GraphNode[] nodes = gg.nodes;
foreach ( GraphNode node in nodes ) {
	node.Penalty = (uint)node.position.z/1000;
}`

to try and make it so my seeker doesn’t travel in the positive Z direction but it makes all my seekers cut across the graph all at the same Z position until they all reach the same X position and then continue in the -Z direction

2

Hi

There is no way to penalise them for walking in a specific direction unfortunately.
The penalty indicates how hard it is for them to walk on that particular node. So what I think is happening is that they all find that their current Z position has a really high penalty, so they move down to a region with a much lower penalty and move along the X axis to roughly where they want to go, then they will move along the Z axis because even though it is harder to walk where the Z coordinate is higher, they still need to get there somehow. That way their path will have the lowest total cost (roughly the length of it + the penalties on all the nodes it traverses).

3

But if the node penalty is descending based on the z position of the node, everything in front of them should be a lower penalty right? You recommended me to do this in my other post http://www.arongranberg.com/vanillaforums/discussion/3226/is-it-possible-to-add-a-penalty-for-moving-in-the-positive-z-direction#latest

4

Yes, but that will never prevent them from moving in that direction, they will just avoid nodes with a high z coordinate as much as possible.

5

Thats what I’m looking for but my code in my original post is not working.

6

Figured it out, even though my graph isn’t rotated, for some reason the Z position on the nodes is actually the Y position causing the behavior in my first post. I switched my code to Y and it works how I wanted.