enemy Pathfinding stutering when tracking player

[hot stone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0DmvxlvoE heres a video of the npc stuttering,
also a few things to consider when responding to this help request

1. I am inexperienced and i dont know alot about coding, i have also taken a long break before this so i may make very silly mistakes.
2. Please be patient, and if you dont wanna work with someone who likely wont understand explanations the first time, then ignore this post.
3. i did get this code from a forum, i have an understanding of how it works but not enough to replicate it with no reference.

also a person who commented on the stuttering said that it had something to do with the heartbeat function being inefficient.

[amber sentinel]

can pretty much guarantee you're using movetofinished:wait()

[amber sentinel]

yep and you are, there it is.

movetofinished:wait() is a noob trap, do it properly: https://create.roblox.com/docs/characters/pathfinding

[hot stone]

alr thanks ill check the post out

[oak scarab]

shutdown!!!!

[amber sentinel]

I honestly don't know how many times i have to say it. movetofinished:wait() is a newb trap. you and all these other beginners make the same newbie mistake, and have the exact same problems with your path following code:
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[oak scarab]

YESSIR

[amber sentinel]

i said it before 6 months ago and I say it again now:
i'm not sure where yall getting this newb trap from but whoever started it should be poked with a rusty spoon istg

[oak scarab]

Sank you for your wisdom

[proud karma]

bro whats wrong with movetofinished wait() its good for detecting when a moveto is finished?

[amber sentinel]

I have explained that several times too

[proud karma]

I dont see where you explained it

[amber sentinel]

just trust me, you need to follow the character pathfinding page and how it connects to movetofinished instead of waiting for it.

this lets you interrupt the movement to give it a new path instead of waiting for it to finish its current path before moving along a new path. the wait just locks up the entire thing

you cannot interrupt it

e.g pathfind to player and using movetofinished:wait()? oh sorry the player just moved and now you're still waiting for the old path to finish being followed. and then people complain "why is my npc pathfinding stuttering/slow"

and the answer is always because you fell for the noob trap and cannot interrupt the pathfinder with a new path

... that's before the 8 second timeout problem on movetofinished

[proud karma]

well I wouldnt even use it at that scenario I would just do a while loop with move to

[amber sentinel]

that's only if you have line of sight

if you don't have line of sight and need to pathfind around obstacles, you need to use pathfindingservice. and again, if you just movetofinished:wait(), the npc will stutter because it waiting for movetofinished and then generates a new path after the npc stopped, which can take a second or so. during that time the npc is just standing in place not moving at all because you insisted on using the noob trap.

it's better to regularly pathfind, allow the npc to follow the path until the new path is available - that way the movement is never stopped entirely

then when there is line of sight you can moveto directly towards the target position, but not before then, and again even if you do that - if you used movetofinished:wait(), that code is still waiting and now you've got 2 blocks of pathfinding code running at the same time

[amber sentinel]

which is the long way of saying, it's a newb trap no matter how you look at it, no matter how you slice or dice the problem. don't use it, ever.

[proud karma]

I use it sometimes like when I need a player to move thru a for loop

For i = 1,10 do
Moveto
Movetowait
End

[amber sentinel]

it's still wrong because of the 8 second timeout

[proud karma]

Nah jt takes 2 seconds to reach

[hot stone]

im kinda having trouble with the doc

can anyone help me with it? or does anyone have like a video of someone using movetofinished() using connections instead of just using it outright

[amber sentinel]

the docs have a copypaste section of code for it

there's lots of tutorials on pathfindingservice you just need to look for it

if any of them use movetofinished:wait find a different tutorial

[hot stone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjwI4b2ZRZk ok i think i finally found a tutorial using movetofinished:connect() the first 9 videos shown in the search are just using it without a connection

[night pagoda]

** You are now Level 1! **

[hot stone]

ok so when calling the followpath function do i use my target instead of a part

[hot stone]

so first screen shot is variables second is targeting function and third is pathfinding

anyone know how i would get it to loop the pathfinding without it jittering?