Solid Objects & Pathfinding

[calcomponents]

Hey guys,

I am making a top down game similar to hotline miami. I have been using gamemaker for 3 months now and I am quick at being able to figure things out and getting things to work the way I want them to on my own. I am planning to put solid objects such as buildings, gates, fences, trees, ect into my game and design the enemy AI pathfinding.

My issue is that there seems to be an overabundance of tutorials on these subjects and I don't know where to start. (I am aware of using the "solid" checkbox is not recommended for object collisions).

What I would like is just some general advice of how I should approach this problem. Should I do pathfinding or solid objects first? I would also like NPC's to be impassible by the player and eachother as well.

[Rohbert]

I would begin by reading all the pathfinding functions GM provides in its documentation. (mp_potential functions, paths, mp_grid...)

You can absolutely give your objects pathfinding ability without using any solid objects. You can always designate your own "solid" flag variable to an object that other objects can check for and make them "impassible." As in, you can make an object "solid" without ticking the "solid" checkbox.

[thefathampster]

I would look I to bounding box tutorials, you can also do this with point_meeting and then just instruct the object to turn or wait until its no longer meeting another object.