Finding the way
Learning paths through this topic
Grid pathfinding
Finds the shortest route across a grid of tiles, around walls and through the cheapest ground. A character can prefer a road over a swamp, and many enemies can chase one player without slowing the game down.
Line of sight
Answers whether one character can see another, on a tile grid or in open space. It also gives you the whole field of view for fog of war, and a guard's view cone for stealth games.
Day-Night Cycle
A world that changes with the hour feels alive: shops open and close, danger comes with the dark, and the player plans around the time. One clock drives all of it, so light, events and sleep can never disagree.
Fast Travel
Walking the same long road again and again is dull. Fast travel gives the player a way back to places they know, for a price that keeps the world meaningful, and without letting it become an escape button.
Minimap and Fog of War
Exploring means not knowing. Fog keeps the world unknown until the player has been there, remembers what they found, and gives the minimap something honest to draw: only what the player knows, as they last saw it.
Procedural Dungeons
A new dungeon every run keeps a game fresh without a level designer for every floor. A seed makes it repeatable, so a player can share a run and you can replay a bug, and a check makes sure no dungeon is ever impossible to finish.
Doors, Keys and Switches
Doors give a level its shape: some ways are open, some need a key found elsewhere, and some wait for a lever. The player learns where to go next from what is shut.
Pressure Plate Puzzles
Plates turn the level itself into a puzzle: the player has to work out what to put where, and how many things it takes, before the way ahead opens.
NPC Daily Schedules
Characters with a routine make a world feel lived in, and they give the player a reason to plan: find the baker before noon, wait for the guard to leave, catch someone at the tavern.
Grid Building Placement
Placement turns a click into a choice about space: where to put the farm, how to leave room to walk, what to squeeze in. The preview tells the player the answer before they commit.
Shots always miss a moving target because they aim where it was
The turret fires straight at the player and the bullet arrives behind them every time. Here is how to work out the point where bullet and target meet, what to do when the target outruns the bullet, and the case where there is no answer at all.
A huge boss gets stuck in a doorway that the small enemies pass through
The route is fine for a small enemy and then a big one walks into a wall corner and jams. Here is how to plan for the body's real size, what to count as its position, and what happens when no door is wide enough at all.