Why can't the pet we have active stay active in our homes?

Wolfenbelle

I'm sure ZOS has their reasons for not pathing mounts, pets and assistants, but why can't the pet we have active stay active in our homes? They follow us everywhere we go in Tamriel, except for Cyrodiil, no matter where we jump, race, etc. They don't have a limited path, but are attached to our characters and move where the character moves. So why can't they follow us at home? It would help a lot to make homes more life-like.

Tommy_The_Gun

It is probably more a technical issue. In almost all games (all The Elders Scrolls games I know of) you had something called
"Navmesh" - in short is is a flat polygon which "maps" places where NPCs can walk, and what places are "blocked" (example walls).

Since you can place furnitures in your house literally everywhere - creating navesh automagically "on the fly" would require too much processing power and will cause lags when communicating with server.

KerinKor

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

It is probably more a technical issue. In almost all games (all The Elders Scrolls games I know of) you had something called
"Navmesh" - in short is is a flat polygon which "maps" places where NPCs can walk, and what places are "blocked" (example walls).

Since you can place furnitures in your house literally everywhere - creating navesh automagically "on the fly" would require too much processing power and will cause lags when communicating with server.

Um .. if the PC can avoid furniture then there must, in your theory, be navmesh in some form so why would it differ for other mobile objects (aka. mobs in its original meaning) like pets?

Nestor

In the brief amount of modding I have done with Navmesh, the mesh is created over the entire area needed. The objects in that area have their Collision Domains to stop NPCs/PC's from walking through the chair or table etc.

What has happened is your active pet is treated just like any other pet you place in the home. They do their idle animation, but do not move around.

Alpheu5

KerinKor wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

It is probably more a technical issue. In almost all games (all The Elders Scrolls games I know of) you had something called
"Navmesh" - in short is is a flat polygon which "maps" places where NPCs can walk, and what places are "blocked" (example walls).

Since you can place furnitures in your house literally everywhere - creating navesh automagically "on the fly" would require too much processing power and will cause lags when communicating with server.

Um .. if the PC can avoid furniture then there must, in your theory, be navmesh in some form so why would it differ for other mobile objects (aka. mobs in its original meaning) like pets?

Pathfinding algorithms and human senses are two completely different monsters. Pathfinding involves a pre-determined, somewhat advanced "on the rails" system, not actual environmental awareness as it is meant to seem (sometimes when there's a hiccup in the "rails", you'll get those instances of NPCs sprinting into walls, or getting confused and not moving at all).

The houses are basically just planes with a base static template, and then fluid, collision-enabled geometry added in afterward at the players' behest. There's no point in the developers spending time to create a pathfinding system if the "rails" have the potential to intersect with solid entities all over the place. Of course, pets break the rules all the time, sometimes standing on near-vertical surfaces if there's no other place for them to be and teleporting to you when they get stuck, so that'd be the kind of unrealistic pet functionality you could expect in a populated house.

greyman

KerinKor wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

It is probably more a technical issue. In almost all games (all The Elders Scrolls games I know of) you had something called
"Navmesh" - in short is is a flat polygon which "maps" places where NPCs can walk, and what places are "blocked" (example walls).

Since you can place furnitures in your house literally everywhere - creating navesh automagically "on the fly" would require too much processing power and will cause lags when communicating with server.

Um .. if the PC can avoid furniture then there must, in your theory, be navmesh in some form so why would it differ for other mobile objects (aka. mobs in its original meaning) like pets?

That's not the same - your PC not being able to walk through a wall is because of the collision on the wall, not because of the navmesh saying it can't walk there.

Wolfenbelle

Pets essentially become follower objects to the player avatar (character). Pet follower objects are programmed to attach to the avatar but stay a set amount of space behind the avatar. Otherwise they move with the avatar, traveling wherever the avatar goes because they are attached in the same sense that a weapon or a mount are attached and moves with the avatar. So there should be no reason why an activated pet could not follow a character around housing building or grounds in the identical way they follow elsewhere in the game.

@ZOS_GinaBruno do you know why active pets are not allowed to follow our characters in our housing? If not, could you kindly request an answer from whoever does know within the company? Also, will this be something added in the future? Thanks so much for all you do.

max_only

This is why I requested "pet objects". Place down a "Colovian Cat Tree" in an acceptable spot (uses detection for flat surfaces and nearby objects like a siege weapon does) and the cat you enable will animate in a set way around that object.

Same for "pile of hay" or "bantam/chicken coup" or "nixhad hive" etc.

It's a purchasable or craftable object that has its own predetermined set of rules.

You're right, getting pets to randomly wander all over the house when there are so many variables would be hard in an mmo, but setting it up my way give the user flavor animation and the developer control

max_only

Called it