[1.7.10] Simple updateAITasks question for entity

[Frag]

Hi guys,

 

is there any way to make sure that this call is not made on the entities when they are out of sight of the player ... or at a certain distance of any players.

 

It is just about saving CPU ...

 

Is there a check I can make inside that call to filter it out if my entity is far from any player?

[Draco18s]

world.getClosestPlayer

[Frag]

Is it the standard way to stop far entities to execute the AI?

[Draco18s]

You could look at the existing AI functions.  AIWander I know turns off when the player is more than 32 blocks away.

[jabelar]

I don't know that the AI actually turns off.    The logic within each AI task may check distance to the player, but it still checks every tick I think.  In other words, by the time you check the distance you're already technically executing the AI!

 

I think the main thing is to simply make the AI do as little as possible when out of range.  So it will still run, you'll still have to check range, but then you can short circuit the execution to minimize processing.

[Frag]

I don't know that the AI actually turns off.    The logic within each AI task may check distance to the player, but it still checks every tick I think.  In other words, by the time you check the distance you're already technically executing the AI!

 

I think the main thing is to simply make the AI do as little as possible when out of range.  So it will still run, you'll still have to check range, but then you can short circuit the execution to minimize processing.

 

Yeah I thought about that, but I was just wondering if searching for player proximity at every tick for every entity would eat to much CPU instead of just executing the AI ...

 

I could this this, but I wanted to know from the guys who do a lot of creature in their mod (like mo's creature or something) how they handled this.

 

I wanted to make sure I was not missing a standard way to turn of the AI ...

[jabelar]

Like I said, it is a tradeoff.  By the time you check to see if the entity is in distance to enable/disable the AI, you're already doing some processing.

 

On a modern computer, only really crazy stuff can cause performance hits.  Think about all the checks that Minecraft is already doing every tick.  Most mods are just a drop in the bucket.

 

Note that I think you can set entities to despawn if they're out of range for a long time, and the chunk loading and unloading also help manage the overall active portion of the world.  This is the way Minecraft naturally ensures there isn't unlimited entities.

 

In my experience, while it is good to be sensitive to performance issues you only really need to get fancy if you find an actual performance issue.  Performance issues usually have a Pareto distribution, meaning that a couple issues usually cause >80% of the problem.  So just spend time on those issues, and usually you can only identify the worst offenders after you've tried it out.

[Frag]

Like I said, it is a tradeoff.  By the time you check to see if the entity is in distance to enable/disable the AI, you're already doing some processing.

 

On a modern computer, only really crazy stuff can cause performance hits.  Think about all the checks that Minecraft is already doing every tick.  Most mods are just a drop in the bucket.

 

Note that I think you can set entities to despawn if they're out of range for a long time, and the chunk loading and unloading also help manage the overall active portion of the world.  This is the way Minecraft naturally ensures there isn't unlimited entities.

 

In my experience, while it is good to be sensitive to performance issues you only really need to get fancy if you find an actual performance issue.  Performance issues usually have a Pareto distribution, meaning that a couple issues usually cause >80% of the problem.  So just spend time on those issues, and usually you can only identify the worst offenders after you've tried it out.

 

Thanks Jabelar,

 

very good answer here. I will just check the distance from the players. As you said, I doubt that it will kill the CPU. I will try both and do some perfmon measurement. So I will sleep better

 

Thanks for the help!