PathEngine Announces SDK Release 5.12, New Licensees
Lyon, France - October 4th 2007 - PathEngine announces release 5.12.00 of the PathEngine pathfinding and agent movement SDK, with a number of important new function points including: 'connected region' queries for fast inter-agent reachability determination, support for dynamic control of off-mesh connection costs, and an example project demonstrating 'obstacle set double buffering' (for very fast pathfinding against large numbers of semi-dynamic obstacles). On the licensing side we're very pleased to announce licensing to Rare (Microsoft Corporation), for two yet to be announced Xbox 360 titles, to Gungho Online Entertainment, Inc. (in Japan), and to Saab Technologies.
Our connected region mechanism uses existing pathfinding preprocess data structures to assign a unique index to each interconnected sub-region in pathfinding unobstructed space. This enables pathfinding query cost to be completely avoided in many situations otherwise resulting in failed queries, and opens up the possibility for some interesting behaviour level agent and position reachability analysis.
Off-mesh connection costs can now be specified per 'collision context' (e.g. per type of pathfinding agent), and can also be turned on and off individually, avoiding the need to obstruct connection endpoints with dynamic obstacles, and opening this feature up for more interesting dynamic behaviours.
The semi-dynamic obstacles demo shows how to apply the powerful 'preprocessed obstacle sets' SDK feature to certain requirement sets where pathfinding against large numbers of run-time modifiable obstacles is required. The technique demonstrated is based on 'double buffering' a pair of obstacle sets, with foreground pathfinding taking place on one obstacle set whilst pathfinding preprocess is being updated for the other set in the background.
More detailed information about this demo can be found in the following section of our online documentation:
http://www.pathengine.com/Contents/ProgrammersGuide/ExampleProjects/'SemiDynamicObstacles'/page.php
As with a number of other SDK demos, the semi-dynamic obstacles demo is implemented against the PathEngine testbed, and included (together with rebuildable source code) as part of the publically accessible 'testbed-only' version of our SDK, available on the following page:
http://www.pathengine.com/downloads.php
Other changes in this release include support for filtering sliver ground fragments coming out of the 3D content processing and optimisations and display tweaks in the testbed.
For a detailed list of all changes please refer to the main SDK change-log:
http://www.pathengine.com/changelog.htm
About PathEngine
PathEngine was founded in 2000 and benefits from experience providing pathfinding and AI to the games industry for over 15 years.
Our SDK is built around an advanced implementation of points-of-visibility pathfinding on three-dimensional ground meshes. The approach taken enables us to provide both pathfinding and collision in tight integration against a single, sophisticated, agent movement model, with agent shape taken into account, with seamless support for overlapping geometry, and with dynamic obstacles directly integrated into the core movement model.
PathEngine features in the genre-breaking MMORPG 'Granado Espada' (by IMC Games) (released in the west as 'Sword of the New World'), 'Mobile Suit Gundam: Operation Troy' (by Dimps Corporation), 'Titan Quest' (by Ironlore Entertainment), 'Pirates of the Burning Sea' (by Flying Lab Games) and many other triple-A titles.
For a full clients list please see:
http://www.pathengine.com/clients.php
The SDK includes extensive integration with the 3DS Max and Maya content platforms.
For more information, including documentation and demos, or to arrange an evaluation, please visit our website:
www.pathengine.com
telephone: +33 4 72.07.81.54
email: generalcontact@pathengine.com