# 08 Tips

Short practical advice. Quick wins and common pitfalls.

## Network design

* **Place nodes only at meaningful spots** — intersections, decision points, endpoints. Don't add nodes along straight roads.
* **Default radius (150) is fine for pedestrians.** Vehicles want 300–500.
* **Bidirectional paths by default.** Use unidirectional only when direction matters (one-way streets, slides).
* **One main connected network.** Smaller islands are fine for sub-areas, but make sure you bridge where AI needs to cross.
* **Use Path Width to make AI feel natural.** 200 for sidewalks, 400–600 for roads.

## Performance

* **Don't call Find Path every frame.** Once when the goal changes, then reuse.
* **Step Distance:** lower = smoother but more frequent calls. 200 is good for pedestrians, 400–800 for vehicles.
* **Conditions are evaluated per A\* edge.** Keep them cheap — read tags or simple state, no level scans.
* **For large networks, use Debug Vis to drop debug-draw distance** while authoring (e.g. 3000 instead of 15000).

## Editor workflow

* **Spawn Classes are your friend.** Set them to your Blueprint subclasses before drawing — saves manual conversion later.
* **Validator before shipping.** Always run it. Auto-fix orphans if appropriate.
* **Heatmap to audit coverage.** Bright red = AI can't reach that area easily.
* **Color By Network if your level has multiple islands.** Reveals split topology at a glance.
* **Batch Rename gives you stable IDs.** Important for save/load reliability.

## AI movement

* **Always have a NavMesh.** OWP uses it between waypoints.
* **Lock AI Logic = false** if you want the behavior tree to keep running during the move.
* **Cancel the async action** when the goal is destroyed; otherwise the AI keeps moving toward a stale target.
* **Allow Partial Path = true** is usually right — better to get close than fail entirely.

## Save / Load

* **Set explicit names** when spawning at runtime. Auto-generated names like `OWPNode_42` aren't stable across sessions.
* **Don't save every frame.** Once per level transition, checkpoint, or player demand.
* **Network IDs aren't stable** across sessions — don't persist them.

## Common mistakes

* **Calling Find Path from Tick.** Cache the result and reuse.
* **Forgetting to register travelers** for traffic — `Current Occupancy` stays at 0 and congestion never kicks in.
* **Modifying the network from inside an event's Execute.** Defer with a timer.
* **Two nodes too close to each other.** Use Merge to consolidate.
* **Drawing a network without snapping to the ground.** Use the Snap tool after to clean up Z positions.

## Debugging

* **AI not moving?** Check the Path Result's `Query Result` enum — it tells you exactly why pathfinding failed.
* **AI takes weird route?** Look at conditions, zones, and cost multipliers. Use Inspect to read settings on each path.
* **AI jitters?** Step Distance too small, or Path Width and Step Distance disagree. Try `Step Distance ≥ Path Width × 1.5`.
* **Validator finds orphans you didn't expect?** A node was deleted while paths still pointed at it. Auto-fix or rebuild.


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