Navmesh is underway :D

[SolarPortal]

Hi Friends,
After completing the spline path editor, we are now working on the navmesh editor.
We are making this feature usable now and have already moved ahead with eliminating some of the creation/destruction crashes.
Yes, lua commands will be made for:
- path generation
- convex volume addition/removal
- dynamic tile reloading.
- and more.
- if you need to request a lua command, now's your chance!

here are a couple of screenies to get going with:

[ant0N]

it looks excellent! Great job!!!
I will think about new lua commands....

[SolarPortal]

navmesh is now going across terrain again without crashing.

i should be tackling the testing functions today, so we can draw a line from point to point, test movements etc.. then onto lua and making a physics character wander around. With inclusions of waypoints.

Also, recast also has convex volumes that you can define as particular ground types, for example grass, road, water and set which ones are walkable or not. This should make for some easier AI to program. e.g. sheep can stay in the field on the grass yet a person could walk from the road into the field.
This is quite interesting, as before i could not figure out how a racetrack could have the cars driving around the main track and not cutting corners across the grass etc.. unless they spin out, in which case they need to find there way back on track.
The original way i thought of was to split the track into multiple meshes, but with these volumes, a single surface could be defined in many walkable or unwalkable ways.

[SolarPortal]

we finally have pathfinding over the navmesh as seen in this image:
red line is the path. (green orb is starting point and purple is end point).
We are also using a billboardchain to create the line which is much more visible than the standard vertice to vertice line.



it was a bit of a pain to get to this stage and we are now using the latest source version of recast
i had to make a few tweaks to fit our units, but its finally working.
With this path, there is no reason a physics character cannot walk around the environment.

[ant0N]

cheers! this need to celebrate!!!

[SolarPortal]

[SolarPortal]

here is the current version of navmesh in a video.
These are just entities, not physics. Going to have to back off for a couple of days so i can fix some engine bugs.
Just wanted you all to see the current version

[ant0N]

this is very cool! Navmesh looks very smooth and optimized. Keep it up!

[SolarPortal]

thanks antON for the encouragement. It is coming along very well, but we have decided to put it down for a few days while fixing some major engine bugs and improving the free version notification system with the ideas from before, and there are also a few download manager problems that have been discovered.

[SolarPortal]

ok, managed to find a bit of time last night to work on the navmesh.
We can now use the SCC action with navmesh, it is activated the same way as a normal entity is as shown in that previous video.

Currently, it cannot be stopped from following the navmesh and all agents run at the same speed. So the next step is per agent speeds, width and height and the ability to stop following the navmesh on command and rejoin when needed though a set of lua commands, which should make it usable. Then i need to make the spawned DCC follow the navmesh.

Getting there slowly but surely.

[SolarPortal]

yes, its time for another navmesh update.

The problem that caused navmesh to be in the release has been fixed Which means the next version will have navmesh.

In about 4-6 hours, the basis of an AI RPG melee character was created, with the AI based on navmesh movement.
Skylines scripting is really powerful now, i was quite suprised!

Here is a video showcasing semi game-play with navmesh usage.

Blue Goblin - Enemy
Green Goblin - Player Controlled Character

Both characters can be damaged and KO'd as well as attack on command.
The blue goblin will chase you across the navmesh, when it reaches you, it will begin attacking you and take off your health.
If you are KO'd, your character goes down and is no longer controllable and the scene has too be restarted. In a game, this can be swapped out for reload or respawn.

If you attack, the goblin will be damaged and KO, but there is no display for its health atm.



More than 1 enemy can also be added to the scene and chase/attack you, but the player is only attacking 1 enemy atm.

This is the starting framework of the RPG Template, like the Racing and FPS templates.

Note: The AI movement is still twitchy or overcompensates, this is the steering because of the physics controllers having to keep up and match the agents they are following. This part is still being developed. There is also a problem when the AI cannot find a path to you and can get stuck. Navmesh is good, but still not perfect.

Hope you like it

[Pirate Myke]

Very nice progress indeed. Great job, looking good so far.

[Gtox]

Wow - impressive!

[lordalmighty1]

WOW the ai looks and acts really smart nice 1

[SolarPortal]

yes, it makes a lot of difference, when they are not walking into a wall lol
Still lots to do before its polished, but it starting to look the part now

[Shando]

Hi all,

Finally back on line

My initial reaction to the latest vid is great work and I can't wait until this is released ( even if not fully functional to begin with ).

I spent some time whilst I was offline looking into how I could write my own version of the AI ( my rats don't have predefined paths to follow, unlike my Zirax warriors ) by converting the opensteer code to lua, and came to the conclusion that it would be pretty difficult to implement, and probably very slow, so seeing how close we are to drag 'n drop AI made my day!!!

Keep up the great work.

Regards

Shando

[SolarPortal]

cool, its nearly there. There are tons of features to add like different surfaces, grass, road etc.. but it is an ok usable state now.
The steering of physics is a bit wacky but its acceptable for now.

We should be having another release soon so everyone can have the new features.

[lordalmighty1]

excellent