Can't do, sir!

It's funny, learning a language or a framework while working on an all-in application of the thing. Today was one of those days with a big job and a good end, because I fixed it in a way that I understand myself. Luckily Unity has a very good documentation to work with if you understand what questions to ask. I think I might be getting better in that and in the end, that's a very powerful skill if you ask me (or is that a wrong question to ask?)

I already had the mechanism of moving to a certain place via Unitys in-built NavMeshAgent. I also have had a system to make resource numbers cross over from a resource object to a guy, so the guy is harvesting some resource. Next thing which took me the better part of a weekend (bless christian holidays for that and bless my wife for not forcing me to go furniture shopping like the rest of the dutch) was hooking these two behaviours in a meaningful way.

To be specific, when the player selects a worker and right-clicks a tree, the worker should go there, gather resources, find the nearest drop-off-location, go there, drop the stuff there in the stockpile and return to gathering. Sounds easy, but I found it is not. At least, it took time to find out what was wrong.

In the beginning, the worker looked like his arms were stuck in the tree after gathering. So I made sure that didn't happen. The guy kept his distance by making the NavMesh agent wider. That did not solve anything, because the guy did not move anyway, just sloooooooowwwwwwllllllllllyyyyy turn in the direction of the cube building to the left. After a lot of time, I found out what seemed to be wrong. I point the guy to move to a place that is an obstacle. Normally, units move around the building and that's how it should be. I was asking the guy to do something he couldn't. when I turn of Navigation static on the building, my guy started running, but that would mean anyone would be able to do that.

I had a couple of options. First, I could try and make the building accessible to just this guy. I was trying stuff with extra objects with area masks and certain stepping heights, but that did not only not work, it felt and still feels like a wood-rope solution (like we dutch say). It was too much a move to something strange to avoid the problem, not a solution.

The other thing I tried was find a spot just outside the building and move there. Unity seems to have a lot of ways to do that and I only got one to work. A building object always consists of at least two child objects. There's the healthbar on top and the graphic/collider thing below. I had a method to find the nearest building object with certain attributes and that object was input in a new method to find the nearest place just outside it. I found out which of the child objects was lowest and asked the Physics engine to find the nearest spot outside.

To that spot, I sent the guy, let him do his dropping magic, update the UI and return gathering. That works and I'm happy with that.

Typing and rubber ducking this, I found out that I could better tag an entrance child for the delivery object and take that one instead of finding out which is lowest. I'll do that tomorrow. For now I'm happy with the solution and going to sleep. Tomorrow, the office is there again.