Well --- Good luck let me know when you figure it out. Then maybe you can teach me!
Jack use the web and get your education in programming outside of this place and that manual. Google some really basic path finding, even old stuff. I C if you good with lite-c. Start to recreate it simple , then expand. Make a study of path finding. As you read through where it started and how it got to now. As you study the code, logic, math and langue in your adventure, you will look up new and other things.
How can a dot product cut the number of node to check in half? Can a lerp or tangent be used to interpolate past a middle node in a 3 node chain? What the heck is the logic of A* without all the crazy math?
Or don't go through programming the hard way - grab a newer engine and just use the path finding out there. There is no point in reinventing the wheel. Find a path finding package and just use it. That's the idea of the AUM too some point... If you don't want to be a programmer and even a programmer not limited to games than don't.
It's a love of logic design and computer science.
Learn just level scripting and level/play design. The programmers can write the hard code, you just grab the assets and use scripting to access the stock stuff than bring the game to life! Do you want to figure out how to make a model melt into water then turn into a bubble? Or do you want to script the encounters with the bad who melt when the player enters level room-22?
Scripter[edit]
In early video games, gameplay programmers would write code to create all the content in the game—if the player was supposed to shoot a particular enemy, and a red key was supposed to appear along with some text on the screen, then this functionality was all written as part of the core program in C or assembly language by a gameplay programmer.
More often today the core game engine is usually separated from gameplay programming. This has several development advantages. The game engine deals with graphics rendering, sound, physics and so on while a scripting language deals with things like cinematic events, enemy behavior and game objectives. Large game projects can have a team of scripters to implement these sorts of game content.
Scripters usually are also game designers. It is often easier to find a qualified game designer who can be taught a script language as opposed to finding a qualified game designer who has mastered C++.
Disciplines are here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programmerPick a focus... I wish I had. Here in this engine this forum you kind of touch it all and all on your own... And you never get good at any of it. We have the shader guys and physics guys, I've now a sound programmer and a UI programmer... Those that specialized got good. It's a team sport - or rather a team JOB, just like banking of stocking store markets, it's smaller teams in a greater team, in a collection of unrelated teams... This how all things work.
