NPC'S ANYONE????

post=147881
That's not what I'm really talking about. Let's say the random NPC wanders in front of a door. How is that not annoying that you have to wait for a second for him to move out of the way to get to your destination? What about a sitation where you're trying to walk out of the town, a random NPC walks infront of you, you accidentally press against him but decide to go around him but he goes in the direction you were trying to go around. It's not about getting stuck, it's about getting your time wasted.

If you consider that a concern, you can do what Liberty said and put an event in front of the door that bars NPC from occupying that spot. However, this is rarely a major concern. An NPC standing in front of the door usually has three directions to move which means he's very unlikely to stand there for long. This sort of problem rarely amounts to more than 3 or so seconds wasted for every 5-10 hour of game. Of course, if you have a lot of wandering NPCs in a tight quarter, like you're simulating a party, then the problem of NPCs blocking your way becomes far more likely. Worse, other NPCs can in turn block the blocking NPC. In this case I would recommend setting up invisible NPC blockers.

Normally though, the only major concern is 1 tile wide paths. If an NPC walks into them they can be stuck there for minutes.

Why would you ever have randomly moving NPCs? They look really stupid, walking to nowhere. Even static looks better than that. Just have them going back and forth, or in circles, or down a set path.

I don't see any problem against randomly moving NPCs, but it's good to have a variety. I prefer having some randoms, some moving in set directions, and even some interacting with others or whatnot.

To me, if you're going to have any half-significant number of NPCs and want to give every single one of them a purpose, that just pushes development back further for something that the player might notice, but ultimately won't marvel at. I'm also of the mindset that too much of anything, whether it's good or bad, is a bad thing, and thus variety is the spice of my choosing.

Well, NPCs moving randomly doesn't make them look like they're doing anything, especially when they move back on to the square they were just on, when it's obvious they're not trying to do circles. Plus, if you're on the one map too long, you'll never know where they'll be, meaning any comments they make may be out of context. ("Look at this inn! Isn't it a great inn?" ... "What inn?") and it really isn't that much trouble to set them going Right Down Left Up on a loop, or Left Left Right Right, or putting them next to another NPC to have a chat, or have them as that energetic little kid jumping on the spot, or running back and forth on a road as they exercise for the upcoming race, or just standing there, pondering, or a million other things that look much more orderly and logical then Left Right Left Left Down Up Up Right Left Left Left Up Down Down Right, Stay in spot while trying to move in a direction that isn't blocked, Up Left Right Right....