PERAGRO primus BETA release v1.0

Posted By: Wjbender

PERAGRO primus BETA release v1.0 - 03/02/12 13:50

...
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 14:20

link works fine, I'll try it soon. Looks interesting, I see it is based on Recast which is free and open source, I just wanted to deal with it too, but I'm really happy to see that I'm not alone! But first I'm dealing with hierarchical pathfinding, not navigation meshes... as I remember it is already in Neoaxis game engine.
Thanks a lot!. I hope it works laugh
p.s. I thought English is the official language of South Africa.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 14:26

well actualy theres to many languages over here,but its
not the language i grew up talking so when writing i kinda
make mistakes ,though strangely enough my codings fine
think that counts as another language.thanks for verifying the link
to others:oh yeah this currently works with a8 due to me using
physx but you dont have to you use it ,will work with
a7 if you replace physx functions .hope it works for you guys
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 14:44

oh hell change this pXent_setmass(ent,80); to
pXent_setmass(ent,0); in controller.c
didnt notice that!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 16:18

hi
I get an error message at start of the demo: "empty function called in main", and "error building navmesh". navmesh.h is only the header, no navmesh.c present, so this is the reason of empty call.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 18:43

okay i will have a quick look into it,that usualy
means requered c++ runtime library's missing .i actualy
tested this contribution on more than one system as to
make sure theres no problem from my side but thanks,will
check it out right now
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 19:17

i looked into it,uninstalled all c++ runtime librarys on my seperate windows drive (i have 2 ,1 to check and other to program) ...now it kept working so i dont know if theres
files hidden somewhere (c++ runtime files),BUT i have
to say that this also occurs when the navmesh plugin.dll
is NOT INSIDE OF GAMESTUDIO\PLUGINS folder so without
being nasty i have to ask did you copy the navmesh plugin.dll
found inside ""navmesh plugin for acknex.zip"" the first one
in the list /or inside the release folder,did you copy that
into your gamestudio\plugins folder ?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 19:24

oh yes and a quick way of checking if this is a bigger problem
than just missing plugin.dll is run the recast.exe also
in one of the zipt files ,if it doesnt run then i pretty much
have the problem pinned down because i build that recast.exe
myself so it could be c++ compiler setting/runtime library's
related then. anyway i realy hope its just a matter of forget
to copy dll file to plugin folder .i could be to blame here
not writing in the readme file where that plugin dll is.
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 20:18

sorry I did not copy that dll I thought the demo runs standalone.
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/02/12 23:46

It worked for me nicely, but bots get stuck on the slopes, they just turn to the walls.. Will you make obstacle avoidance as well?
Posted By: Damocles_

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 00:00

Thanks for the effort, but I dont really have the patience to look though all that readme text to see what to copy where to ge it started.

How about you pack everything into an executable demo, so we can have an easy look at it.
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 00:37

All you need to run this, it just to place "navmesh plugin.dll" which is in "navmesh plugin for acknex.zip" into the root folder.
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 15:30

yes it works, copy dll to script folder or to ackneck_plugins folder. I will make some tests later. but yes a clearer description would be fine.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 18:44

a
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 18:53

yes,busy with collision avoidance,doing a few tests with opensteer ,it wil take some time... oh and guys listen this plugin is not complete i was becoming lazy .
and so sorry for all the confusion i was in a mad rush
i even deleted some of my own work by mistake !!! man i
just stopped the delete operation in time i tell you!
now i know theres alot of files /zips etc but had to include the source code,yes it needs a much clearer discription/instructions for people to follow,that will come..
thanks for looking into it and sorry for posting this much.
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/03/12 19:28

Will it be something like this, at the end:
Omni-bot Flood Fill Navigation to NavMesh 2
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/04/12 09:45

That will be ideal to work towards, once the tiled navmesh is implemented it wil be able to add remove tiles at runtime and generate as player moves,will look into flood filling
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/05/12 13:34

All my focus is now on the plugin ,exposing alot of functions ,custom builds will be done from within your code,i want to cut the recast tool out of the process .this wil let user build navmesh at rutime,have alot of ideas i want to implement...the old plugin wil be seen totaly useless when im done with a newer one
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/06/12 08:29

it would be really great to be completed! good luck (and have good ideas just in right time laugh )!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/23/12 18:49

going to make a small update to plugin,builds will now
be done directly from within lite-c by simply specifying values.
only static navmeshes ,tile navmesh(which has dynamic properties) not implemented yet as im proggraming blindly here ,a8 free version so no extra plugin support
dont know if i can use loadlibrary yet..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/23/12 19:32

I think you could ask some help from Jcl as your work can greatly enhance 3d gamestudio usage. of course his support is limited.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/23/12 22:20

hope it works,im not finished with the plugin this is
just a small update that enables navmesh building
from within lite-c(without using recast.exe) although
recast should still be supported,theres no directions
and thorough explanaitions on how to use this as i
will work on that when im far enough into coding...
if this works/doesnt let me know please

Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/24/12 13:42

I can't download it. It says that I need to sign up.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/24/12 16:30

download should work now
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/24/12 17:27

Press 'Switch to Full Reply Screen' near 'Submit' button, you'll find a lot of useful stuff there. For example tag to post download links properly and code blocks as well laugh I'll try download link now.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/24/12 18:02

thank you 3run !
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/25/12 07:43

Still can't download..
Quote:
You should Sign Up or Login to download this file

Posted By: Ch40zzC0d3r

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/25/12 08:31

Upload it on mediafire.com
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/25/12 20:15

download hopefully now ! blush
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/26/12 07:54

It's kind a slow, why? Otherways, there is no bugs I've found laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/26/12 09:33

uhm.. it appears that i have removed a wait() by mistake

Code:
//inside aibot.c line 106
		case follow_target_entity:
		{
			wait(1);//<-missing



if someone would be so kind as to confirm this please?
@3run thank you ,@sivan i think that's the closest to
a complement i ever received here.
@ch40zzcod3r thanks dude.
and also main.c: mybuild.navtype =navsimple;
to mybuild.navtype =navtiled; i think my values were set up for tiled .make sure its not loading 2 copys of the plugin
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/28/12 20:54

theres a new small update
download link will be up on page 1 from now on..

a few changes were made
theres a new debug draw function now to
visualize the navmesh and paths they are
stil under developement but working..
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/29/12 07:54

It works smoother then previous one laugh Looks great, man don't stop this project!!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/29/12 08:15

I'm really interested in your updates, but I can start to test your work probably only from next week or after, I have no time at all now... frown
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/29/12 17:10

Thanks 3run and sivan , gonna install a8 full trial again so i can get back on top this thing.im going to create a mesh from the navmesh to display for debug mode so shaders textures etc can be placed to enhance the look and best of all engine will handle that
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/02/12 10:23

oh man! now that i have a8 up i see the controller was fubar!!
i have uploaded the fixed version..will continue to develope now
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/03/12 12:42

current c++ source uploaded
its not yet in a acceptable format/version but its there for you
to grab and do whatever you want..
Posted By: HeelX

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/03/12 15:16

I always had some sort of navmesh'ing at some place on my never ending todo-list and also had an eye on the Recast project, so, I am very keen on your project.

Your demo could be even cooler if you would let the user select a MDL and click with the right button to place a guard and with the left button to let the guard walk to the clicked position. This could teach people how to invoke navigation-starts and how to determine the nearest position on a nav mesh from a 3d point in space (or if it is not on the nav mesh).

What I would find interesting is how to save a navmesh and re-use the saved file and if it could be loaded from a buffer (e.g. so that it can be contained in a WRS).

If you could provide a navmesh generation process that takes a wmb with the data of static meshes, models and flags like passable or invisible or so as source, this could become quiet handy!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/03/12 18:14

Originally Posted By: HeelX
Your demo could be even cooler if you would let the user select a MDL and click with the right button to place a guard and with the left button to let the guard walk to the clicked position. This could teach people how to invoke navigation-starts and how to determine the nearest position on a nav mesh from a 3d point in space (or if it is not on the nav mesh).

What I would find interesting is how to save a navmesh and re-use the saved file and if it could be loaded from a buffer (e.g. so that it can be contained in a WRS).

If you could provide a navmesh generation process that takes a wmb with the data of static meshes, models and flags like passable or invisible or so as source, this could become quiet handy!


i was thinking in heading into a point and click scheme like rts games
for the demo but as of this moment for me to progress any further i had
to get up some sort of visual confirmation of the navmesh.
so currently im working on a few debug drawing features,one
of them is to create a visual mesh from the navmesh instead
of just lines and points wich just really takes away
recources, but the mesh would be like any other entity mesh handled
nicely by the engine..
also i remember mikko have created code for this specific need of
finding a point in the navmesh area to spawn whatever needs to be
spawned on the navmesh.

i started out with the idea in mind to directly create the navmesh
from wmb files but at this moment my abilitys/knowledge with gs
is not up to standard yet so i came up with an altarnative solution
im going to add a function that enables people to feed triangles and
vertices into the builder so that it will be limited only to what gs/user
gives acces to,and then just to build on that function for wmb/whatever
support in the future.also another point i just thought about is
to add a build in editor to let users select triangles of meshes
onscreen and to export them to a file wich could be loaded into
the builder again ..

now as for the saving of navmeshes i was leaning towards saving
the already build navmesh data and then loading/parsing it back
into the builder but bypassing unnecesory steps although i have not
looked into it yet im still open to what ideas may come up when
i have reached an improved/functional version,there are so many
things that could change at this stage that i cannot work on
an idea of saving/loading navmeshes(or adding documentation)
but i do think i remember i read somewhere that recast does
not support serializing at the moment.
so yes this is a very intresting point.

Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/04/12 09:11

visualization of a pathfinder is really the best chioce laugh I'm also working on a different pathfinder, and I started with implementing visual representation of all the processes, because I'm coding with a lot of errors... frown but in this way debugging/optimization is much easier.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/04/12 18:43

Originally Posted By: sivan
visualization of a pathfinder is really the best chioce laugh I'm also working on a different pathfinder, and I started with implementing visual representation of all the processes, because I'm coding with a lot of errors... frown but in this way debugging/optimization is much easier.


@sivan so true ,even though im used to code without seeing
whats realy going on this gets real tough when doing a bit more
complicated things ,we realy need helper functions like drawing stuff
to see whats actualy happening and yes especialy for bugs/optimizing
so much more becomes obvious with it,totaly agreed.

i have seen some screen shots of your project the map builder i think,
keep going man it seems like you know your pathfinding stuff!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
@everyone theres a new update,check out my new debug mode drawing
functions.. i think this wil be the last of the small updates
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/04/12 22:17

When I try to run latest demo, I get ERROR E1513:
Quote:
Script crash in draw_debug_border:
And after, when I press OK, bot doesn't move, only run animation is played.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 07:43

thank you for letting me know because i dont get this error on mine
i have uploaded a new one with changes i thinked caused the error
if this does not work now then i know the error comes from within
the plugin but stil no error on mine confused

wow you do parkour if i would do that it will be called falling on my ass
in style
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 11:30

Yeah, I used to do parkour in the past laugh
About the plugin, something strange.. I first got error E1513:
Quote:
Script crash in create_solid_debug_mesh
But when I launched it again, it worked, here is the screen:

And it's very slow.. I can't recreate the error which I got on the first launch somehow..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 11:46

Crap thats so bizzare ,all i can think of is polygon and triangle pointers fill up memory or something weird in plugin i will check this out but im kinda blind to the problem cause it works perfect on mine runnin at 512 fps without a single frame drop ,3run how do i put up a image ?
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 12:24

You use the image tags.

[img]yourimagelink.here[/img]

"yourimagelink.here" has to be exchanged with an link to an actual image on the web - you can upload it at imageshack.us or similar sites.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 13:49


this is on my pc so im temporarely confused
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 13:50

Strange, I get that weird screen with my A8 COM...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 13:54

im gonna have to look into a8 com..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/05/12 15:01

i think i found what seems to be the cause
when i have "run this program in compatibility mode for windows xp(service pack 3) of sed properties enabled it does not happen at all but
when i dont the problem persists when you use debug run
but when you use test run it goes away
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/07/12 09:39

looks good @ 400fps wink
Posted By: Random

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/07/12 11:08

400 fps?!
What kind of computer do you have?
Mr. unbelivible XT 4000?? grin
Posted By: Widi

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/07/12 11:26

works fine (512 fps)
good work
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 16:01

Hi,
i needed to put a wait into create_solid_debug_mesh() , otherwise I got a script error E1513

debug_mesh = ent_create(CUBE_MDL, 0, 0);
wait(1); // added this

it works, goes up to 128 fps in windowed mode on my old pc, after a few seconds at startup with low fps.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 16:26

the next update will hopefully address some issues ,i have found one myself
lately that needs correction ,but in anyway so far it seems the plugin itself
has no bug yet hopefully ,more lite-c coding faults ,by the way if you need
higher fps then simply only use debug_create_solid_mesh instead of the
lines and border ones since they are resource hungry thats why i added
the solid mesh function since meshes get handled nice by engine and it does not
need to be drawn by us every frame ,engine handles that..
also a frame rate eater is the current demo version of the aibot ,it
generates a path every frame ! i have already corrected that in the newer one
which generates a path only when needed but my next update will take time
because i am adding more than usual..

a error in draw_debug_border i found lately
VECTOR *p;
needs to be
VECTOR p;

Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 19:36

a new demo was uploaded
-----------------------
i tried to improve the demo's performance especialy the debug draw functions
and the bot's pathfinding demo functions ..
my next demo will have much more featers as i am busy working on the plugin
its going a bit slow because i want to make sure im not building code
ontop off bugs ,so far it seems that the recent bug's came from the demo
code itself and not the plugin this is because im not as good with gamestudio
as i need to be but my c++ is gooood ,i have alot of updating to do to get source to the new recast version...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 20:41

Damn.. it still doesn't work for me frown
Same problems as before... Here are some screens:
Quote:




Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 20:50

have you try this? this is what i thought the problem is
-----------------
find your sed.exe shortcut
right click
goto properties
goto compatibility
check run this program in compatibility mode for:
select windows xp sp3

on mine i also have checked disable visual themes and disable desktop composition and run this program as an administrator
but i have win 7

what you have?
o yes also restart your pc after applying the new property's
or it wont take effect

i achieve the same problems as your screenshots when my properties are not set this way
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 21:24

I launched this with my Windows XP sp3, same I tried to launch it with Win7 and I got same results frown
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/08/12 21:41

i will then have to go through my plugin code ,has to be a bug in the
polygon/triangles functions or something im missing with the mesh creation code
..will not give up untill i have found the problem here its unacceptable to me
!! 3run you could still remark the 3 debug draw functions in main.c and look at the demo
if you realy want to but i know thats besides the point ,to tired to
work on this now but will start tommorow
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/09/12 08:07

Still runs with 400 fps... but at the first try I had some wrong debug-drawed polygons all over the level. After the restart everything looked right wink!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/09/12 12:01

FINALY!!!!i think i squashed the bug ,was in my mesh creation code
a memcopy problem not in the plugin at all,thew ,please let me know if
im just on a delusional trip with the fix. uploaded the fix

@rei maby your system is capped with gamestudio at 400 fps i dont know
but mine capped at 512
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/09/12 17:35

Ohh my Goodness!!! Mate, it worked so great and smooth laugh
I got about 140 fps with my old-craped PC and I'm happy with results laugh
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/09/12 19:19

Yup, no visual errors anymore laugh

Nah, the cap is not at 400, it's is just my pc I guess (as the fps numbers change all the time around a few fps)
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/10/12 07:25

you know this was one of those confusing bug hunt's ,i have learned now
to use sed.exe properties(compatibility mode) the default way to test my stuff
the worst of all is i had to go through the c++ plugin code and the demo
before finaly figuring it out so i hope i didn't add a problem while removing
one .holy mother of all things that's good ,major fail!!!
check this joke ,triangle_count=vertex_count * 3 what??? eek
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/14/12 14:12

yay ! im up to the new recast version ,just a matter of implimenting the new
features like collision avoidance ! and guess what the tilemesh can save and
load it seems ,lots of goodies
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/14/12 15:51

Yeah laugh Mate, this definitely one of the greatest plugins that GS every had! laugh Keep up!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/14/12 19:19

sounds cool laugh is it possible to use it with terrains or is it really good for block based labyrinths? I'm developing a RTS pathfinder (dynamic area and tile paths), things go well, but I would try it out too when ready, if suitable for my purposes, at least for performance comparison. as I know in Neoaxis and Esenthel game engines Recast/Detour is implemented, but without any crowd system.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/14/12 19:42

Originally Posted By: sivan
sounds cool laugh

is it possible to use it with terrains or is it really good for block based
labyrinths? I'm developing a RTS pathfinder (dynamic area and tile paths),
things go well, but I would try it out too when ready, if suitable for my purposes,
at least for performance comparison. as I know in Neoaxis and Esenthel game engines
Recast/Detour is implemented, but without any crowd system.


@sivan if the terrains vertices/triangles/indices are accesible yes ,basicly
any geometry which you can have acces to vertices/triangles/indices you
could pass into reccast and expect a navmesh from ,although theres more
to it when handling large areas than simply creating a navmesh ,i have
to look into how to handle large areas i think this will be handled by
multithreading when adding tiles (kinda streaming the tiles in)..
the new recast has build in crowd system with collision avoidance
and steering behaviour ofcourse, but the controll of movement is passed onto detourcrowd
as far as i could understand and theres some limit to the max agents per crowd
i think ,im not 100% on this but still learning the new beast.

@3run thanks man very kind words there. if only i can develope something even
a bit usefull i would be happy ,there should be plenty off people around here
that can continue taking it further to extremely useful stuff, but my developement
on this will continue though.
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/15/12 07:28

thanks, I will think how to do it... maybe creating d3dmesh based on terrain and obstacle model information could be a base of the navmesh. in my system I have tile surface data, or by c_tracing tile corners it could be solved but would be a long process...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/17/12 17:34

you just need the mesh buffers ... what do you use for terrain if i may ask .hmp?

plugin status:
i had it up and running with pathfinding/navmeshbuilding
(tile and solomesh), somehow i ran into a problem i think my gamestudio
is corrupted,
because my old plugin doesnt work anymore and the new one also
have to reinstall gamestudio or reformat my pc to get back to developement...
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/18/12 07:42

yes, .hmp
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/12 17:59

okay i have uploaded 2 demo's hope they work fine (coz they do on mine)
my developement on this plugin/demo's is in a horrible state rite now
because i just got some stuff up and working ,theres alot of work to be done
and alot of stuff to add to the plugin im proggressing slooooowly with this

new stuff:
agent to agent(crowd) collision avoidance (VERY early stage ,i just got it working a today..)

debug mesh now can be created in wireframe/solid mode ,so gone is the
drawing of lines that wastes particles and frames

i have a log file up for logging errors from the build process
at this moment its in the root directory of this demo and called "navlog.txt"

i still have to figure out a process of creating navmesh from ent_buffers
or add a wmb loader ,so far my experiments with ent_buffers were very slow
and messed up the navmesh...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/12 19:38

I've tried both demos, the one without collusion avoidance (CA) is extremely fast! The one with CA is fast too, but they get stuck when they rich the target entity and start jerking and moving around it in circles.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/12 19:50

haha yes the one with ca does that because i dont disable them trying
to reach the goal when they get there,they cant get to the center of the
circle(the target space) because they avoid eachother so they end up going
in wild circles ,i just played around with detourcrowd today and thats what
i came up with in a short while so its CRUDE and UGLY at this moment..
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/12 20:24

All-in-all mate, this looks awesome! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/25/12 18:54

updated the collision demo
another day another improvement..
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/25/12 19:21

Works fast and smooth mate, I'm amazed with it laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/26/12 17:48

Thanks man great to have compliments
mikko's a genius in my book
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/27/12 21:38

another small update to collision avoidance/crowd demo
added separate agent controll..

use 1 to add agent 2 to remove agent,its still unmanaged so
not much fps per large group,and theres still an update speed
issue i have to resolve ,i see also theres sometimes a head to head
collision issue aswell ,wil look into it.

i added about 30 agents before my fps dropped to just above 60
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/28/12 15:10

Oh man finally i solved building navmesh from entitys just another
step away and i wil be able to build from whatevers inside a level
I shot down one of my biggest heardles so far. Great
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/29/12 07:27

nice work, well done. but if agent would move slower maybe frame rate could be better if there are a lot of agents too. or I think using no physx also could help, if possible.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/01/12 21:30

Thanx theres a couple of issues i have to resolve with the agents
before i can inprove on it ,my main focus is now on improving the
navmeshing itself and i had a couple of brainstorming ideas
thats going to make a major improvement ,there wil be no limit
Whatsoever anymore in relation to the source geometry used to
build a navmesh from ,that means no matter if its hmp blocks
or models you could stil navmesh it BUT with a slight diffrence
in the usual way recast gets used ,i gave up accesing blocks and terrain chunks
as a source since it only gave me endless trouble or unsolvable situations
But it lead to my best idea ever with recast and im not telling yet
as its to soon but so far it works cool and if i continue with this in
the rite manner and smart enough i could possibly overcome the saving/loading
of a navmesh aswell but thats a big thing to say at this stage...
Expect a bit of showboating on my next update..until then guys have a great one
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/03/12 10:57

okay i have uploaded a source file update and
a demonstration of what im busy with at this moment
this demo shows how i take models from wed and merge
them into one mesh then builds a navmesh from that mesh.
recast will add/subtract them automatic so here i show
that i can merge 2 planes to form a navmesh and add to that mesh
a bunch of other meshes witch forms static obsticles as they cut
theire shape from the other meshes when build into a navmesh.
oh yeah theres no height taken into account on the navmesh because i made
it flat(planes)

at this moment scale and position is taken into account but no rotation yet
also instead of creating a navmesh by pieces it could simply be created
from your modelling software and added to wed and then build in sed
this eliminates the issue of being restricted to the geometry i could
pass into recast because i had to acces blocks/hmp but couldnt get
it rite yet ,this also improves speed because recast doesnt need
to go through a whole level mdl model and add triangles/vertices
thats anyway going to get removed again ...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/04/12 15:47

I solved navmeshing directly from level blocks!!! Awesome
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/04/12 16:30

Great to hear man! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/04/12 17:06

Thanx next thing im going to try and correct is hmp
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/04/12 19:02

nice job, don't give up laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/04/12 23:33

i have uploaded the demo ,level blocks to navmesh...
but now i experience problems with adding models to the navmesh along with
the blocks for some strange reason i cannot put my finger on yet...
anyway hope it works because im having trouble with sed and acknex.exe running
in win7 so im so confused as to what is causing what problem here
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 15:37

Mate, I get "Error E1513 Script crash in build_navmesh:"
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 16:04

Thanks this is the problem im facing and again it happens
sometimes and other times it doesnt i thought i had it working
when i ran the demo a couple of times without problem and it
stil works without a problem but im not running in
compatibility mode .im not sure yet why this happens its the
same problem preventing me from adding models to blocks
now also ,wil have to take this code step by step until i find my mistake
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 17:09

whatever you do mate, pls don't give up on this project! keep it up! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 18:06

Just to be sure,its the blocks demo i uploaded and not
previous yes?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 18:44

blocks and models to navmesh -fixed
thanks 3run ,i found my mistake in plugin ,remembered remarking a
line of code late last night and i completely forgot about it ,
everything works fine now.
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 19:28

Great man, it works now laugh I'm amazed! laugh
Just one thing is unclear for me, may be it just should work this way, I don't know:
Quote:




As you see from pictures, drawn path is not going properly up on slopes.
May be this should work like this I don't know mate, I just tried to help laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 19:55

Feel free to mention things like this i myself like to be
as perfect with everything i do as much as i can
and are very judgemental on my own stuff ,i have seen this
and it could be a result of the build values or more likely
a straight trace to the target instead of pathfinding through
every polygon ,could also be with filter costs ,wil check this out and
perhaps ask mikko and the other guys for some help
if i cant find it myself . Thanks man ,i worked realy hard on this
up to now even though it seems basic to me yet ,not alot of sleep
so there could be perhaps more little problems along the way
only usage and time wil reveal
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/12 20:01

As I said before, it's awesome man, pls keep this up! laugh I'll do my best with testing, using and judging! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/08/12 19:43

I have looked a bit into that what you have mentioned and this happens in the recast tool
aswell .it seems to be the result of the current pathfind function implimented which is called
straightpath ,in case of a partial path found it sets the last point to the closest point found on the
last polygon and i have done some tests ,it only adds other points between the last point and previous if theres a reason to alter the direction ,theres also two other path finding functions
i have not implimented yet one of which uses steering ..
Currently i have altered the plugon as to alow for rebuilding navmesh
which wil allow loading new levels and build theire navmesh obviously
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/10/12 15:01

I have just finished rewriting debug drawn functions to support the
tiledmesh ,everything working great so far .. Next up wil be the dynamic
features of the tiledmesh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/12/12 09:15

Now experimenting with threads .navmesh gets build on a seperate thread
so no freeze or lockup while it builds and ofcourse its faster this way just a matter of
setting a progresion status so i can impliment a progres bar update and
waitstate before executing bots/pathfinding/debugmesh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/14/12 20:01

So far the worker thread for building the navmesh works wonderfull
i have seen no impact on gamestudio except for creation of the debugmesh
which is not threaded... Have a working build status function which
gets called from the thread with its result(it calls a script function)..
The build thread handles the whole mesh instead of a single thread per tile
(could perhaps do a thread per tile in case of the tiledmesh but not going to now)
I am going to try and handle pathfing and agents on threads aswell which
should help out with performance since gamestudio would not feel
the algorithms impact ..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/20/12 18:36

just taking some time away from this ,had a very bad dental situation
and just cant bare it infront of my pc in the cold nights long enough
to continue yet...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/20/12 18:40

just taking some time away from this ,had a very bad dental situation
and just cant bare it infront of my pc in the cold nights long enough
to continue yet...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/02/12 11:17

it wont be very long until i release the first official version ....
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/02/12 14:44

I'm waiting for this mate! laugh This will perfectly fit my current small project! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/02/12 15:01

I cant pin the time frame down for sure becouse everytime i think
its okay for release i decide to add another few things .. But it wil surely come
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/02/12 15:09

nice mate, keep this up! laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/09/12 16:54

I know this is becoming annoying replying like this and having
not uploaded the first release but had some new ideas to improve
on the avoidance system and some other stuff... The improvement on avoidance
i was thinking to let user activate deactivate avoidance when agents gets into
a certain range of eachother like a sleep state only to be used when agents
are in a proximity of collision should be a great feature
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/12/12 08:21

don't panic I'm also in the same shoe, new ideas needs time laugh

have you finally succeeded with terrain mesh?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/18/12 20:19

No i havent gone into coding the reading of mesh data yet but i can say
that i have pushed collision avoidance speed up by realising a simple mistake
i made in my old demo where i ran the crowd update for every agent instead
of a single run for all agents .just by correcting that alone i pushed up agents
to 50 and ran at 512fps on my pc .this is without any improvement ideas i had...this
was also what caused agents to speed up their movement when adding new ones in the demo...
Please note i have not uploaded /changed anything in the current dowloadable demos
there are many changes i made and all wil be uploaded when im done so yeah
Its going to be a wait but hopefully worth it ...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/19/12 06:51

Great to hear Wjbender, you are doing a great job! Keep up!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/19/12 08:39

50 agents at 512 fps in that sample level is amazing!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/19/12 11:00

With a single threaded call i have now succesfully pushed it to 170
At 512fps but i have 4cored intel cpu so stil more experementing to do
before i find a good workflow for threaded agents.
Edit..just to clarify a bit im just drawing points for
each agent ,as soon as models gets used that fps are
going to drop drasticly becouse of graphics but agents
and their algorithms are very performing great
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/19/12 11:53

it's okay, speed heavily depends on the actual graphics configuration, details, quality etc. but your search sounds quite effective. and for evaluation, when you push F11 you can clearly see how much time is needed for rendering and for functions.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 11:46

240 entities all visible 250 functions .around 1.7 fnc ms-frame.
All 240 entites are animated collision avoiding /navmesh bound/steering behaviour/path managed
agents on a single update thread with time_smooth and 5 frames wait
between updates i got 220fps on min... Seems cool to me.
Ofcourse a coder would pick a max of agents that could all be on screen
running in realtime to manage performance . As soon as one gets killed
There will be space to add one again ,done like that the number
of agents per a shooter game level should be endless..
.without models 512fps gamestudio totaly uneffected
Edit.cool just got it i to 410fps at min .has to be rememberd
that this is uncomplicated code im testing with
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 13:16

Haha oh man insane!! 499 agents with models at 200fps min and about 300fps max.gotta make
up my mind. Im going to make the maximum a choice for
the coder .my fps with 800 agents arent bad but my cpu
Is a bit hogged up at 800 so im not going to test its limit more than that
im satisfied with it...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 13:17

upload the demo to give it a try please! grin this sounds so perfect!!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 13:35

3run it will come but im sorry at this stage im changing dll code and compiling to find
my numbers ,and to top it my data im using for internet wont make it .
No worrys after im satisfied at the total results i shall upload
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 13:46

I'm waiting mate :>
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 14:00




as can be seen here 800 agents are a bit out of controll ,the code
i used for testing have alot af agents wandering to the same random position
on the navmesh so theres a couple of group ups and as im also
spawning without checking if the space is empty i have a couple intersecting
eachother as shown by the white polygon ,i have enlarged the debug
info on the image so people can see it ..(im not cheating here as will be
seen when i release/upload).. this is all i can show for now..sorry bout that
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 14:03

it seems to be okay also for an action-strategy where group of agents are fighting (like Company of Heroes, but that applies a tile based hierarchical pathfinder, which heavily inspired my pathfinder)
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/20/12 15:08

Coh was so well done i loved it ,but those guys just totaly
screwed up with the german team in my opinion ,if i had to go multiplayer
i would love to play head to head with same teams like 2 usa teams
battling it out but that damned german team i just hate what they did to it
because i would have loved playing german team.. Your pathfinder
should stil be king of the hill here i think as what you did there
all on your own is so cool just cant compare with that yet.
I think each project would find its uses among people who need it
and ofcourse i havent seen intensex yet but thats another usefull
project around .
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/21/12 11:29

uploaded as requested
IM NOT DONE its not the release version
you will see that not all code for agents are there yet like
the facing angle etc....
In avoid.c line 50 add agent.. The second parameter
determines quality 0 to 3 .0 being lowest and 3
highest. Forgot to mention dont go past 250 agents
i have limited random points to 300 in plugin to force
this just a sample.thread needs management before it wil
be stable yip more work ,theres also bug fixes and new code
I have to get from the recast repositry and
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/21/12 14:52

I got some strange stuck problems.. Some of bots just don't move.

Plus, I've found out that setting "fps_max" to "60" (that what I always do) bots movement starts jerking.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/21/12 16:24

You can try the following if you set fps max to 60..
In the main.c line 150 where the wait(5) change to wait(1)
Theres a counter in avoid.c bot script at line 61 change
800 to 10 this counter changes the target when it reaches 800
because not all bots can get into a distance of less than 5 because
they cant walk through eachother when they have the same target point
so with 60fps the counter takes long to reach 800. Set wait(5) at line
92 in avoid.c to wait(1) .. All of this will affect how well
it copes with more agents because gamestudio updates faster
it may slow down perfomance ..you can also edit the level and use a larger
Ground area for better space and spawning. If wait 1
Doesnt do try wait 2 etc
theres no thread management
so a small wait might create to much threads
like i said have to find a nice way for thread execution instead of
creating threads over and over a single looped thread or such
has to be coded..

Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/22/12 12:29

Okay i think i found something stable by using a looped
thread and fps_max set to 60, i handled 400 agents all
with normal wait 1 in theire loops at 60fps average. With
fps_min at 60 and 50 agents a stable 512fps .this is not bad
only thing is the thread wil be started and then stopped explicitly
by user code and cant be placed in a scripted loop since
its internally looped already .its very stable no problems in my opion
with the little testing i have done so far.
Edit... Yip i think a looped thread does it good by just
drawing points alone instead of models i have it stable
up to 900 agents active at 512 fps so its a sure thing
its going to come down to graphics /frame/code management
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 12:57

i dont know to whom im speaking to here anyway but for those
intrested i hav updated the demo since i felt bad uploading
the previouse demo in a state where i was stil busy testing and
it was unstable because of not having layd down a proper thread yet
.. so this one has now a looped thread and facing direction,
but theres stil ALOT to be done ,i hope it's better for testing
than the previous (i felt so bad about putting up there)..

if this is better or worse i would love to know YES nagging and complaints are
welcome ,theres a bit of a sticky situation i havent given much
thought yet and thats how to use the velocity as a animate speed or
perhaps i would have to code something diffrent ,any ideas are very welcome!
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 13:08

It's much better mate! laugh But there are still some bots which are not moving at all, they just stand in one place and rotate around. And moving speed is too hight mate, make a smaller level, add some corridors, add more obstacles but keep the same number of bots, so they will move around and avoid obstacles, each other and use pathfinding as well. And keep this up man! Don't give up pls!
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 14:03

I am not sure if the demo behaves unusual or I just did not understand it:

Most of the time most of the entities(guards) are not moving, but animaing on one position. -> Their bounding-boxes seem to collide most of time.
If they move, then their movement is really really fast.

A8.32.0b (Latest A8 private beta)
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 14:44

Thanks but this confuses me now,on my pc everything works
correct .theres no bounding boxes theire passable entities
controlled by collision avoiding crowd code, all i can
think is that petformance differs very much on your pc's
theres a update crowd in main.c with a update speed 2*time_step
you might want to adjust that update speed .and for
the non moving agents i also dont grasp it because they suppose
to change theire target position as soon as the counter reaches 800
Or they are closer than 5 quants to the target . Only thing i can think of is the
counter takes a long time to reach 800 on yout pc's.this is in avoid.c .on line 52
Add agent ,the 4th and 5th paremeters are max acceleration and max speed
respectively for anyone who would like to see if it needs adjustment.
I dont get it i limited fps max and used fps min
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 14:53

60fps are 60fps, which means timers should be the same, shouldn't they?

(And my pc is acutally quite fast, hmn, without fps_max the fps goes up to 700)
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 15:24

I think so unless counter has to be increased by time step...
Having a fast pc is what may cause the fast movement
it doesnt use frame waits in the crowd update.
Its a looped thread ,although i think o should rather
try and code the thread diffrent to use a looped
update with engine wait time ,with the whole loop scripted..
Do you have any idea of the cause of problem? Oh and also
reaching the counter target very fast could prevent movemenz
so perhaps mine takes longer to reach 800?
Posted By: Rei_Ayanami

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 15:41

Sorry, I can't help you, as I never worked with threads (beside in Java) smirk
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 15:46

Thanks rey for looking at it though . Im on my own i gues
unless someyone with more experience than myself
Have any ideas
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 20:21

okay i gave it another shot ,problem i think was using a sleep function
instead of an engine wait i really hope what i came up with to solve
the issue worked ,please be so kind to say no if it did not work !!

thank you 3run and rei for taking time to look at it ,i THINK i got it
im not sure if it will run as it is suppose to on other pc so please
anyone take a look at it and tell me if you would be so kind and
thank you in advance...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 20:30

They still stuck mate.. Looks like they are moving properly, then they stuck for a half of second (walk animation still playing) and then they move again.. I have no idea why this happens, but in the old examples (making bots walk from one point into an other) worked without that stucking problem. May be thats how you make them walk randomly?
This group of bots stucked for about three seconds, they where just turning around:

Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 06/25/12 20:51

Thanks man.my concern were the frame speed diffrence
from my pc to yours. Where mine ran slow but yours fast...
the stuck thing is scripted like that you see sometimes they pick the
exact same random point as a target position and then all those
who picked that point bunch up around it and cant get to a distance of 5 within
that point couse they cant walk through eachother so instead of preventing that
in the script i just added a timer to alter their targets again and again because
i didnt want to code alot extra... but in a game ofcourse you would code to prevent that
this can easily be tested for your own satisfaction by the following.
use one bot and only change total points to something like 500 in avoid.c line 14
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 07/21/12 08:16

to try and resolve any frame update speed i have also
included a non threaded crowd update...wil not upload until
i added more functionality and error checking.
i also have been trying to cope with hmp terrain
and its a biggy because i tried writing to file all the vertices
and triangles ,when i looked into the file i found verticed that were
garbage data so i tried creating a mesh entity for each hmp chunk
and wrote that data to file and still i found garbage in vertices
.i wil continue until i pin down the mistake or problem for hmp
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 07/23/12 07:45

hmp is a naughty thing, in the end of hmp vertex list, you can find separately the shared chunk border vertices, in the same order as standard vertices i.e. starting from the upper left corner, so it could cause problems. some time ago I wrote a function to access them for proper terrain mesh deformation, but not really used it because later I fixed my problems by a DX function, but if you need I can try to find it (hopefully not deleted).
I would be very happy if you could make it also for terrain, I have some simple game idea where I could use your navmesh+crowd system.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 07/26/12 12:30

I would appreciate your help hmp confuses me
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/15/12 16:34

Wjbender@ any news?? Is it dead?? frown
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/12 07:45

More asleep than dead i was in a bit of a " giving up on coding" situation but seems like i cant get myself to walk away from coding as a whole ..somehow my rehab did not work and im back into it head first..joking about rehab offcourse ..so at this very moment i am working on a project for the aum competition ..after that i shall get back to my other projecrs naming navmesh plugin and opensteer plugin..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/12 09:32

good luck for that competition!

I hope you will succeed with OpenSteer, it would be really a killer plugin!

my main problem with Recast that it cannot handle dynamically changing environment. am I right? so if some buildings are destroyed, it should be rebuilt again which is not really possible runtime in a game...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/12 09:32

Thank you man! I'll be waiting for new updates laugh
Posted By: Random

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/12 12:15

This plugin is great!
Thanks to your plugin I can translate my "avoiding system" to a take cover system, without killing to much FPS grin
I am looking forward to show my cover-system (as soon as it works proper).
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/12 21:17

@sivan it does support dynamic functionality i have not added it yet but to give an example in a dynamicly changing situation one would only rebuild the area that changed by using a bounding box to choose the rebuild area which can acrualy be fast enough for such needs but more on that later.... @3run thanx for suppord buddy ..@random sound cool i would love to see it in action......ps im wishing to atleast win a prize this time around hehe
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/13/12 11:07

Okay i have a solution for hmp i will use hmp sdk rather
to read the triangles vertices indices....
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/13/12 11:13

wow cooooool!
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/13/12 13:57

nice! waiting for new version laugh
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/20/12 22:45



fixed rotation/scale/translation for navmesh from entities

getting rid of the ugly lite-c building code

building navmeshes directly from multiple entities with 3 easy functions to call before build
example of this :
Code:
//create a entity
	ENTITY* eland=ent_create("eland.mdl",nullvector,NULL);
	
	//scale+rotation+translation supported
	eland.scale_x=2;
	eland.scale_y=2;
	eland.scale_z=2;
	eland.x-=200;
	eland.y-=200;
	eland.z=200;
	eland.roll=60;
	eland.pan=50;
	eland.tilt=50;
	c_setminmax(eland);
	
	//create a build-mesh from the entity
	build_mesh *bm=mesh_from_ent(eland);
	
	//apply transformations
	//(i will perhaps intigrate it into another function so only 2 functions are needed)
	transform_mesh(bm,eland);
	
	//add mesh to the build list
	//all meshes to be initialy navmeshed must be added to this build list
	add_meshlist(bm);
	
	//add some other entities perhaps
	......

	//create the final mesh geometry from all meshes inside the build list and build the navmesh
	//this is done after all entities are added to the list
	geom_from_buildlist()
	build_navmesh(bla bla);



also i have made the initial build to be able to select an area for build by a bounding box

i want to add extra functions for turning bounding boxes of entities into meshes wich could
then be used as the build mesh for the entity instead of the entity model mesh,this would
provide faster builds where less detail is needed ...

theres no update now ,will update later when i am satisfied with changes/additions made..
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/20/12 23:29

OMG! laugh It looks like it's more flexable now laugh Isn't it? I'm waiting for update mate, I want to use this in my projects!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/12 12:17

Hmp to navmesh solved ,just had a vertex calculation problem
and i finaly fixed it... Getting hmp entity into navmesh is just as easy
as adding the model entities now..

have to fix the debug mesh its bugged , after that i continue with
other functions also going to look into rebuilding areas at runtime
for dynamic behaviour .going to remove the single tile mesh
and only use multi tiled navmesh..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/12 14:31

sounds cool as I'm planning to make only hmp based games laugh dynamic navmesh rebuilding would be also a great step enabling dealing with destroyable environtemt (but can it cause some runtime slow-downs?)!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/12 16:43

Should not cause a heavy slow down , i have read of some people
having moving obsticles that dynamicly alters the navmesh
but this all just happens from a bounding box which selects
tiles needed to be rebuild , and simply there cannot be that many
tiles and detail in such a small area of a game made to
perform well ..but we will have to see.

Yes this is more flexible and also easier i want to leave lower
functions for meshes aswell for when needed ..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/22/12 14:34



okay i looked into the debug mesh display issue i found and
the result is that there is nothing wrong with it ,its not
bugged as i thought ,the real problem is the 64k vertices limit
of entities, so with to much detail in the navmesh the debug
mesh wont be displayed , i thought i could try and draw this
the same way as terrain gets drawn but i dont know how i will
draw it that fast ,dont know how and if i can draw it with
d3d into the scene ...

i added a function to save the navmesh into a mdl file
so after a initial build the navmesh can be saved
as a mdl file which can be used to build the level from
instead of selecting all models entities in the level
as usual ,i fount it takes about half the time to build
from that saved mesh ,this is because some triangles have
already been filtered out of it and it already has all triangles of
all the meshes that were build from in the previous build its already a
navmesh ..
(this is where i am going to try and solve saving and loading a navmesh without building again)
maby maby not .......big maby not

displayed here is the terrain
the navmesh (previously build and saved) and reloaded and build in yellow
the blue is the debug_mesh(which is the navmesh also i save to mdl)
theres some build setting wrong here as the navmesh has some holes and stuff
i cant built it with more deatail and display it because of the 64k limit but
i can build it with more detail and not display it....
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/22/12 15:42

so basically it works fine, except the debug display because of its large poly size?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/22/12 16:28

Yes but i need to do a debug displayed navmesh or
else im going to face massive trouble ahead while
coding... How am i going to draw that much because
gs slows down terrible on draw_line but what about
drawing with d3d functions ? How or what am i going to do
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/22/12 21:21

yes I know visualization is a must to find even minor or rare bugs.
as I know draw_line3d uses one particle for each line, and particle rendering can have a clipping distance by clip_particles given in percentage of clip_far... but as I tried it does not work.
at draw_begin you can find an example of drawing a triangle by DirectX, maybe it could be extended and used for a whole mesh, maybe faster because no entity and particle extra stuff used.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/23/12 09:37

Yes i tried with begin draw for d3d but my attempt failed
Dont know why... but im thinking that maby i should only
draw borders or tiles instead of detailed navmesh .. I am going
to check that particle clip out thanx i did not know about it sivan..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/26/12 19:26

updated (for testing of new functionality)

EDIT: OH DO NOT USE ELAND MODEL I FORGOT WHERE I GOT IT

heres a list of updated functions for testing

updated functionality includes:

build navmesh from entity objects ,entity mdl file ,hmp object(bugged),hmp chunk(bugged), hmp file..
scale rotate translate transformations to update a copy of buffer vertices/triangles..

theres a limit to triangles/vertices it seems ,im not sure yet
but try not to do to many triangles/vertices ,for this
demos i have used a terrain of 150*150 vertices and when going
to high like 200*200 the navmesh stops abruptly....

build_mesh objects added to a list ,after adding all needed build objects the
meshes are merged into a single mesh and send for navigational mesh creation..
(list needs more functions for removing etc..)

the merged meshes data can be saved to mdl file(64k limit)..
could be used as an entity merger (needs more work)..
want to make a custom file format instead of mdl ,could be used instead of loading meshdata from all entities

the filtered navmesh result can be saved to mdl file(64k limit)
want to make a custom file format instead of mdl..
the filtered navmesh can be used for debug display, and for building navmesh instead of adding entities

its possible to specify navmesh initial build area by a box
..............................................................

function list:

//build_mesh object from ent model
build_mesh* mesh_from_ent(ENTITY* ent);

//build_mesh object from mdl file of entity model
build_mesh* mesh_from_mdl_file(ENTITY* ent);

//build_mesh object from hmp
//(do not use bugged in merging multiple chunks)
build_mesh* mesh_from_hmp(ENTITY* ent,int chunks);

//build_mesh object from hmp chunk
//(works okay for single chunks but if added in a loop addin all multiple chunks does not work correct)
//bugged in merging multiple chunks
build_mesh* mesh_from_hmp_chunk(ENTITY* ent,int chunk);

//build_mesh object from hmp file of entity
//works correct but theres a limit somewhere in the produces navmesh
//so vertex amount is safer in range of 150*150 or lower i think
build_mesh* mesh_from_hmp_file(ENTITY* ent);

//transform build_mesh object to match entity
//has to be transformed to match
void transform_mesh_ent(build_mesh* pmesh,ENTITY* ent);

//transform build_mesh object to match argument list
//has to be transformed to match
void transform_mesh_arg(build_mesh* pmesh,ANGLE* angle,VECTOR* scale,VECTOR* pos);

//add build_mesh object to build list
void add_meshlist(build_mesh* this_mesh);

//save the merged geom to mdl(64k limit)
//does not need to be build only needs navmesh object to be created and
//the entities build_meshes objects added to the build list
//then finalised by geom_from_buildlist
//p.s could become usefull for entity merger
// will modify it for an entity merger
void save_merged(char* filename);

//saves the detailed filtered navmesh out to mdl(64k limit)
//will add a custom file instead of mdl
void save_debugmesh(char* filename);

//create final merged mesh from all build_mesh objects in list
//bmin,bmax bounding box values for initial build area
int geom_from_buildlist(VECTOR* bmin,VECTOR* bmax);

void delete_build_mesh(build_mesh* bmesh);
..............................................................

note even though the demos use crowd agents ,nothing about crowds has been updated ..
note look into comments off files for more info..
let me know of unknown bugs/problems/ideas if you have the time or patience
much appreciated!!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/27/12 09:03

fixed minor script problems for new updated tests ..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/28/12 22:14

DO NOT USE MODEL ELAND....

added update for newest functionality of tile manipulation etc...
check out newest demos on page 1 download link...

theres stil work to be done but this is another big step closer..

/*
tile manipulation
*/
//remove tile from navmesh
void remove_tile(VECTOR* pos);
//build tile in navmesh
void build_tile(VECTOR* pos);
//build all tiles in navmesh
void build_all_tiles();
//remove all tiles from navmesh
void remove_all_tiles();
//save navmesh tiles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<----
void save_all_tiles(char* filename);
//load navmesh tiles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<----
void load_all_tiles(char* filename);
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/06/12 07:06

REMOVED FOR MAJOR RESTRUCTURING ! i am doing many changes
to accompany automatic entity to navmesh handling by setting a flag for
enities/terrain to be navmeshed and also adding my own experimental area manager
which automaticly updates an area with a thread every so often to support
dynamic world changes , the world could be divided into small managers by specifying
an area to update(like a bounding box) for each manager and these managers will
then do a lookup in their area to find any entity geometry marked by a certain flag
and then rebuild the navmesh for that geometry in that area on a thread so when
an entity is removed/added/moved in an area manager's area that manager will reflect the changes
to the navmesh in that area (almost like the tempobsticles/tilecache of recast)
also i am looking into streaming tiles on demand and streaming tiles by prebaked navmeshing .....
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/06/12 08:54

sound cool, it's gonna be a really flexible plugin! have fun and luck with it!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 18:37

i am going to drop this project and drop game-studio , anyone intrested in the source code ?? i will upload if there are enough intrest ,the source was inbetween
developement for support of dynamic behaviour and the last version....
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 19:07

why are you going to drop this and game-studio?? what's happened??
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 19:28

I don't understand it either.
It's such an amazing plugin and now you'll give up everything?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 19:41

well ...... okay i will continue but next year ,got really tired of using the trial version (installing /formatting over and over and over ,its an EVIL cycle)
and i am simply not sure if i want to buy game-studio ... next year will bring more determination but i am busy until then ... enjoy your holidays guys!!

nothing changed JUST GOT TO EXPLORE MY OPTIONS with engines ,perhaps i should
not drop gamestudio from my list of engines laugh
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 20:53

Originally Posted By: Wjbender
and i am simply not sure if i want to buy game-studio
I understand this. I didn't want to buy gs, too, because I'm still going to school so I simply haven't got the money to buy it (or there are things which are more important for me).
Then I thought once 'hey, there's a contest I could join... why not?!'
and that's how I got pro. I' sure, if I haven't had won this I'd still mess around the trial verion grin

So why don't you join the (next) contest? wink
You're talented so I think you've got quite good chances.

EDIT: just had a closer look at the contest entries and noticed, Wjbender == Johannes Bender??; if so, good luck laugh
Posted By: ratchet

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 20:55

Don't take it bad :

I also made some 3D tools for a project , some collision editor, i put lot of options, i was motivated a lot, but after some year, i became borred, even the team had a different goal ...
I gave up and gone elsewhere for another project also ...
And i had my life to manage ... this project was done during free time, it wans't like my real work !!

-------------------------


That's borring to wait a year or more for a feature, you are not sure it will appear, when you can find these features ready to use in other 3D engines !

Thats' why i vote lot more for 3D engines offering all tools and needed plugin to make a game instead on relying too much on users abilty to make some great tools and achieve to finish them laugh

-------------------

Don't take it bad is juts my point of view, when what i have seen so much times in indie 3D engines and open source small ones !

But you find the opposite, like in Ogre 3D engine where users bring amazing tools ro features !
Same thing for some commercial indie 3D engines, bringing real features each year and having such advanced Tools like NavMesjh and others ...
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 21:04

I fully agree with you, ratchet.

However, I really like 3DGS and I don't think I'll stop using it in near future.
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/23/12 21:04

agree, please do not drop it until completed, you would also gain some further motivation from it! and later you can present it as part of your portfolio.
sometimes I'm also fed up with 3dgs, but finally I can see there is no perfect engine laugh to check other engines can be fun, also good as refreshment, so try them, and select the most suitable for your preferences, and decide what is the max money you want to spend. but it is practical to define some stages of develpment you want to reach, and when it is time to think of moving to another engine, which is not so easy. I also have a strategy like this.
but if you finally give it up, I would be interested in the sources, as I'm really interested in different pathfinders. but maybe I would not really understand it frown

always reinstalling a pc is too crazy, I hate installation so much grin why don't you make a full backup of your PC before 3DGS installation, and recover it? I think it should work.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/26/12 10:59

Hmm yes i agree with you all on the points you made they are totaly valid ,
I do like gs enough to perhaps buy it but i think i should look at what
its future brings ... Yes no perpect engine for every project and i guess we
have to jump around per certain project between engines ..well
this project of mine was intended so i could learn about pathfinding and a bit of ai and
gs aswell but i am not done yet and i have not quit in my life before so
i shall continue ..better to take a little break .. Sivan basicly this detour pathfinding
is a* ontop of a navmesh produced by recast (not so difficult to learn) its actualy very fun to
get into and very intresting .. Guys i think i will keep going with gs and just add to my list
some of the other engines i admire so much ,theres no reason to abondone gs it has many uses and i love the simplicity of it ..
Posted By: ratchet

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/26/12 13:00

Yes a good choice to continue using 3DGS laugh
It is very easy i agree, but there is more easy !

Why caus after using C script i find it hard to manipulate and initialize simple objects (that should be initialized by default no ? )

It is lot lot mor eeasy to use C# indeed, specially when the 3D engine gives you function like :

Entity myPlayer = new Entity("mymodel.fbx", 0);
myPlayer.setPosition(10,10,10);

It's so much natural and easy , that's why i asked in future for 3DGS some full C# suppport (even it could leave CSript!)

Same thing for 3D Assets, it's so much easy to make a scene, adjust materials and properties in some other engines !

--------------

So yes 3DGS is capable (Battle For Forgol, SuperCan, SuperKu ...) But you must put hard work , or be a big talented team !

For simple indie loneWolves , C# full support, better workflow, real time editing, complete terrain editor would put 3DGS on tracks, even without latest 3D features, it would become lot lot more friendly like some others ....

Well it was just a reminder about 3DGS future asks laugh

--------------

Good luck to you, but PathFinding is already available on some 3D engines, or will be very soon on others( LE3D for example) , so why putting all your efforts and all your time on such feature ?


If it's needed for making a game, i would advice you to choose another 3D solution , and make your game instead !

If it's coding pleasure , continue it laugh
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 12/26/12 17:51

good to hear you stay laugh

imo each game category has its pathfinder and ai requirements. some of them can be get in some game engines, but they are not definitely a good choice in all cases, and sometimes they do not support complex pathfinding and collision avoidance, or does not work effectively.

for a simple stupid shooter a node based can be enough.

but in case of a squad based action game a navmesh is needed, as it can handle much more characters with high level area pathfinding and low level dynamic obstacle avoidance.

in case of a RTS where complex ai decision making system is required, and hundreds of characters should move in groups together, and handle also the environment changes dynamically (new buildings), a hierarchical area + tile based is better, which theory is not far from navmesh.

for open field RTS battles, potential field pathfinder also can be a good choice, it has some good features for ai decision making, but has significant limitations in complex environments.

so it is really practical to have an own pathfinder, to have full control over the base of your game ai, as it is heavily related to npc ai behaviour. and game making is not only 3d art, a good and flexible ai can result in long and interesting playing experience.
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 02/06/13 20:45

Is the plugin dead? frown

And does anybody have a download link for the newest version?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 02/07/13 17:49

Its aliiiiiive mhoehaha ... Hey man no not dead stil in developement
its going at a slow rate i have to devide my time a little to be able
to work on my projects , but it wil come ...sometime ..
What did you need ?
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 02/07/13 19:28

Nice to hear that you continue working on it laugh

I wanted to finally download and test navmesh...
but it looks like you've deleted all download links for the plugin smirk
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 02/07/13 21:52

Yes i deleted them , i want to stop releasing
small versions with small changes and push
it up to beta/release versions , so i thought
I would stop the current incomplete version
dead in its tracks , releasing small updates
shows progress but it also drops intrest and
shows failure to commitment when bugs
are found shortly after the small update..

i would like to have something much cooler
the next time i upload again ..
Until then...
Posted By: milaz

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 02/08/13 01:03

Originally Posted By: Wjbender
i would like to have something much cooler
the next time i upload again ..
Until then...


When is that until??? any hints?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/07/13 19:16



busy busy ; this is going to be an editor for the first
release version , the editor's focus is going to be
to manualy design and lay down the mesh for walkable
areas ,the editor would help in making sure that walkable
and non walkable areas are indeed present instead of
allowing the mistakes to take place that an automatic
filtering of geometry would produce ,and this would
be cool because i could pre make my navmesh in the editor
and save all data to a file that could be then loaded
perhaps with a single function like pre-baking the navmesh..

i am also going to try and add as much functionality into
the editor as i can come up with ,an example would be
the idea that i have of adding navmesh data to separate
sub objects like a building that can be added or removed
during game but its data comes from file saved previously
with the editor .

but i cant really say much at this time except i am stil
actively developing the project and have hopes and ideas for it
..more thAn i could share rite now ..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/07/13 20:51

it sounds like a crazily useful tool! visualization of hidden systems is important, manual overriding of auto generated mesh is great, especially if it can be saved and then loaded and updated fast during gameplay (to achieve destructable/buildable environment).
I want to make some simple games beside my editor and rts project to avoid getting bored, but I would need a simple to use and good navmesh pathfinder, like in Esenthel but with collision avoidance what you completed earlier.
I hope you could solve the hmp mesh problems too.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/13/13 20:46

Yes the hmp and mdl and blocks work from file and from runtime entities
i had a really bad and unknown problem until i dropped the chunki triangle
mesh of recast but the blocks had a 1 vertex miscount aswell..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/14/13 08:18

yes I saw that one less vertex count when I checked your demo with a terrain. you dig into the dirty part of gamestudio grin
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/14/13 17:43

Looks solid now , i just navmeshed 2 pieces of terrain each of 500 x 500 vertices
With triangle size 5.0 x 5.0 and some blocks and a model under about 10seconds
without any mistakes
Then saved the tiles and took look at how fast
the pre baked navmesh loaded ..it was instant
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/14/13 18:04

is there a possibility to use models only as obstacles? I mean, when their mesh is not needed to be examined, simply set their area on terrain as blocked area/tile? and other models assigned as buildings (or terrain models) could be examined by mesh for passability. It could make faster the process.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/14/13 18:44

I get what you are saying , there are a few ways of validating and invalidating
tiles/triangles as walkable , there are the walkable/non walkable flag of triangles
which could be changed but yes it must rebuild the navmesh ,and there is
the tile remove and tile build functions which also needs the navmesh rebuild
but the whole navmesh does not need to be rebuild the small area blocked
by an obstacle could be rebuild by only using its bounding box with a bit of exstra padding
which means you could rebuild that area when you add or remove the obstacle
but only that small area not the whole navmesh ....

All in all rebuild is needed but you dont rebuild the whole navmesh only
the area you want to ... But i will look futher into this perhaps there is a way
to alter something that would filter out tiles/area from the pathfinding
in a faster manner but im not sure there is a way because mikko would
surely know .. I thought about looking to find cost values
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/15/13 08:38

or maybe an easier approach to replace obstacle entities with a collider entity, like a cube, or another very low poly one, like in esenthel where its physx body is used instead of the real mesh. in case of dense vegetation it would be a practical method I think.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/15/13 13:05

Aaah i completely misunderstood your reply i thought
you were talking about obstacles you could add and remove for avoidance....

Yes you do not need to use the detailed meshes you can use low detailed models
For the objects that get fed into the navmesh aslong as carves out an area bigger than the object ...thats why also i thought about
the editor because by creating the mesh to be fed into navmeshing instead of all the
geometry you are speeding things up you can control detail to a better degree and make sure
you have the mesh in areas you want pathfinding ,it takes away alot of triangles that arent needed
for filtering so yes its possible and basicly you could create the whole walkable area mesh
inside of a modeling application aswell ..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/15/13 14:57

okay understood, it's cool.
another question: does your editor supports wmb only level loading?
I aks it because sometimes I create levels in my editor which cannot be compiled into wmb (too high poly count error), but I can make a wmb complilation easily that deals only with terrain, entities with polygon collision, and collider entities (neglecting trees and bushes). this should result in a relatively simple interaction between the 2 editors.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/16/13 11:17

Well intresting proposal , i am sure i could do a custom file
writer and loader and yes i was aiming at wmb levels .the editor
is stil in the beginning of developement so im open to do a lot
of things firstly i must get the plugin dll to work with my editor so
i basicly just have my window with buttons and grid up so far..
Because i was mainly focusing on the plugin recently..

What do you use for your collider entities ?
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/16/13 16:16

simple cubes, scaled to actual entity size, so in case of trees looks like high columns, but they can be replaced by any shape.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 03/16/13 16:27

Wont be a problem
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/13 22:49

wow i have been working very hard on the plugin
and the good news is that things are shaping up nicely.
theres better thread status checking per handle. add/remove geometry per chunk/block/entity

remove / build tiles per position or box area from entity/chunk/block .
supports dynamic alteration , no input geometry bugs ,no output geometry bugs.
code has been re-classed .

future feature plans include mesh decimation,thread pooling,convex hulls..
i decided to move the editor to lite-c ...
Posted By: 3run

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/24/13 22:56

Wjbender@ Awesome news man! I can't wait to see it in action! laugh Keep it up!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/25/13 06:54

sounds quite professional. I hope we can test it soon!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/25/13 09:11

perhaps i will release the plugin and source soon
without the editor for now ..once i have gone through
checking up on the normal pathfinding and
crowd code, with some examples and api help..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/25/13 11:44

if any help needed to make some test levels just tell me
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/27/13 20:47

@sivan thank you for offering your help ,would
it be outdoor based? I am going to need some levels for testing and demonstration purpose
I could possibly do indoor easy but i cant
Do terrain all i have now for terrain is med
If you feel you could provide a terrain level
with whatever objects please you are welcome
and it will be appreciated as long as the file size is not much and you are giving it with the purpose of allowing free distribution ?
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/28/13 15:53

yes, I thought of outdoor levels, as I work only with them.

I'm also making some terrain samples for Heelx new terrain shader, so I can make for you a few ones too, just tell me an approximate size you need, like 1000x1000m or 20x20km (you can tweak the vertex resolution in MEDD), and also can tell me some other parameters like how flat or mountainous it should be, lakes, or sea, or rivers are ratio etc. I probably will generate it in L3DT and import to MED. file size mainly depends on textures, I can use 512x512 tileable ones, they should be fine.

earlier I made a set of vegetation models for my editor, you can use them freely, just mention their source in credits or the readme file. and I have also some other free stuff like building which are free to distribute.

what could be important in your case is file format, as wmb does not allows to compile several thousands of trees, but you can use my file loader easily. it creates entities simply by ent_create based on data stored in files.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/01/13 09:36

Thank you sivan , i am sorry but will have to get back tou you on this later ..
I have added all sorts of other usefull functions and added support for wavefront obj too , currently i am trying to see if i can pull polygon reduction algorithms into the project to simplify geometry before any kind of build commences ,which
works easy because my mesh data is apart from actual entities but
the algorithm i am using does not take into account open edge geometry so this does not work for terrain well at this moment but seems okay for closed edge geometry ,i am going
to look into some other algorithms first , perhaps if i could use something like physics simplification geometry bit i am not sure yet i would have access to such geometry data perhaps i should pull out old newton sdk and look into that ... Any way i am halting release until i am doene with further testing and when my api is exactly what i have in mind for a first release
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/02/13 19:05

current function and implementation status --

Code:
//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// TYPES
//

typedef void* 		Nav_Thread;
#define tilemesh  2

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// HELPER/DEBUG FUNCTIONS

my_polygon*  get_polygons  ();
my_triangle* get_triangles (my_polygon* polygon);

int 	get_polycount ();
float ceiling		  (float val);

void save_debugmesh (char* filename);
void save_merged    (void* mesh , char* filename);
void calc_bbox      (ENTITY *ent , int chunk , var *min , var *max);

VECTOR* vec_edge            (VECTOR *from);
VECTOR* nav_random_points   (int points);
VECTOR* nearest_navpoint    (VECTOR* from);
VECTOR* random_point_around (VECTOR* from , float radius);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// BUILD PARAM FUNCTIONS
//
typedef struct custombuild
{
	float CellSize;
	float CellHeight;
	float AgentHeight;
	float AgentRadius;
	float AgentMaxClimb;
	float AgentMaxSlope;
	float RegionMinSize;
	float RegionMergeSize;
	float EdgeMaxLen;
	float EdgeMaxError;
	float VertsPerPoly;
	float DetailSampleDist;
	float DetailSampleMaxError;
	int   monotonePartitioning;
	float TileSize;
	int   navtype;
	int   buildalltiles;
}custombuild;

custombuild* create_custombuild ();
custombuild* load_custombuild   (char* filename);

void remove_custombuild (custombuild* mybuild);
int export_custombuild  (char* filename , custombuild *step);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// NAVBUILDER OBJECT FUNCTIONS
//

int is_valid_navbuilder ();
void create_navbuilder  ();
void destroy_navbuilder ();

Nav_Thread init_navbuilder (custombuild* step);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// STANDARD PATH-FINDING FUNCTIONS
//

VECTOR* findpath (VECTOR *from , VECTOR* to , int *num_points);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// CROWD/AGENT FUNCTIONS
//

-------BUSY 

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// INPUT GEOMETRY FUNCTIONS
//

void mesh_from_level_blocks		  (ENTITY* level , int chunks);
void* mesh_from_level_blocks_chunk (ENTITY* level , int chunks);

void transform_mesh_ent	  (void* mesh , ENTITY* ent);
void transform_mesh_arg   (void* mesh , ANGLE* angle , VECTOR* scale , VECTOR* pos);

void* mesh_from_ent		  (ENTITY* ent);
void  mesh_from_hmp		  (ENTITY* ent , int chunks);
void* mesh_from_hmp_chunk (ENTITY* ent , int chunk);

void* mesh_from_obj_file  (char* filename);
void* mesh_from_buffers	  (D3DVERTEX* vbuffer , short* tbuffer , int verts , int tris);

int get_vertcount (void* mesh);
int get_tricount  (void* mesh);

int*   get_tbuffer (void* mesh);
float* get_vbuffer (void* mesh);

void save_mesh  (void* mesh ,char* filename);
void* load_mesh (char* filename);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// TILE MANIPULATION FUNCTIONS
//

void remove_all_tiles ();
void remove_tile			  (VECTOR* pos);
void save_all_tiles		  (char* filename);
void load_all_tiles		  (char* filename);
void remove_tiles_bbox	  (VECTOR* bmin , VECTOR* bmax);
void remove_tiles_ent_box (ENTITY *ent , int chunk);

Nav_Thread build_all_tiles ();
Nav_Thread build_tile			 (VECTOR* pos);
Nav_Thread build_tiles_bbox	 (VECTOR* bmin , VECTOR* bmax);
Nav_Thread build_tiles_ent_box (ENTITY *ent , int chunk);


//build from multible entity boxes in a list all at once
void clear_temp_entlist();
Nav_Thread build_tiles_box_entlist();

void rem_temp_entlist (ENTITY* ent , int chunk);
void add_temp_entlist (ENTITY* ent , int chunk);


//build from multible positions in a list all at once 
void clear_temp_pntlist ();
Nav_Thread build_tiles_pntlist ();

void rem_temp_pntlist (VECTOR* pnt , int id);
void add_temp_pntlist (VECTOR* pnt , int id);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// INPUT GEOMETRY LIST FUNCTIONS
//
void  clear_meshlist ();
void  add_meshlist   (void* mesh);
void  rem_meshlist   (void* mesh);

void  rem_meshlist_ent  (ENTITY* ent , int chunk);
void* get_meshlist_ent	(ENTITY* ent , int chunk);

//////////////////////////////////////
//////////////////////////////////////
//************************************
// THREAD STATUS (DONE/BUSY)
//
int thread_alive (void* thandle);

Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/02/13 19:31

wow, thats a lot.

I'm really looking forward for this to release grin
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/02/13 19:44

lol well thats just for now ... the plugin source is well over 44mb at
this stage..

thank you its nice to feel it is wanted
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/13 06:54

nice interface, I really hope you can solve the terrain mesh problem, but it can be a bit different in free/extra/commercial and in trial/pro because of terrain lod. or is it caused by mesh chunks?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/13 16:04

Thank you , well i dropped the edge collapse algorithm from this version , it wil take me a lot longer to get just the correct thing for the job ..
So basicly there is no problem with any input geimetry be it ent terrain or blocks or obj they all work , the lod i could not add because i think i dont have acces to test it .. I have added eveb more to it .it can now save any mesh to mdl .. Single tile load and save and my debugmesh is split up in meshes according to tile meshes..
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/06/13 07:17

that's great, I read about geometry conversions, it seems to be a hard thing to convert everything to a convex navmesh, so good luck. will it be displayable runtime to check for possible bugs? I mean not in your editor, but when it is used in a game?
(as I remember in trial version terrain lod behaves strangely, it os not fully supported somehow, once I talked with Jcl about it.)
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/06/13 12:15

Yeah sivan i am a bit sceptical about the lod in trial version to , it sounds to me a bit like you
are thinking about doing a navmesh for your
Path finder well it would be really cool if you could do it and keep your insane amount
of entities doing theire thing .. Well yes i have functions that would displau the navmesh by code..
Im now looking at adding some advanced pathfinding functions to use the exclude include filters and max path points to .
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/16/13 01:33

BETA release ,check page 1
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/16/13 07:23

what should I click to download it? alway further windows appearing for signing up or registering or other blabla...

about your impression: my pathfinder uses navmesh-like areas (consisting of various amount of tiles), where I do the high level pathfinding for groups, and short low level pathfindings are done on tile level for units. so in theory I could use a navmesh too, which would have benefits in case of e.g complex castles, if I can adapt its features to my needs, basically a very effective collision avoidance is a must, and (what seems to be more difficult) dealing with various unit sizes also should be solved. but if I can generate tiles from navmesh areas, the thing would work in the very same way as currently, except that my areas are processed by a terrain analysis to realize strategic positions, that should be reworked totally.
Posted By: alibaba

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/16/13 08:09

Just write some shit in the registration form wink
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/16/13 08:14

okay done. mediafire.com is more practical from this point of view.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/16/13 12:22

oh man sorry guys i worked through the night writing documentation until past 3 this morning and uploaded to wrong place and made some mistakes and forgot to mention some stuff haha ... sivan yes i was refering to that i saw you talk about convexness and thought well basicly you have a navmesh in quad format .if you triangulated then theoreticly you would have mesh data
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/17/13 09:30

okay ,fixed and re uploaded to my mediafire , damn i was so
tired i cant believe i uploaded to wrong place and made those
mistakes ..... hope it works okay
Posted By: Kartoffel

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/17/13 10:58

Works perfectly, awesome job!
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/17/13 11:38

yeah nice, only the path representing light blue line goes under the terrain in some cases, that could be a path related problem.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/17/13 14:21

thank you both , theres a recommended value that slipped past me when documenting ..
edgemaxlen =agent_radius*8 ...

thanks sivan i saw some other weird path related things i will look into this ..
edit...
yes there is a bug but not precisly what you mentioned sivan thanks i will correct it
i changed the speed of my test so i could observe more path action and i think
perhaps its the trace thingy i thought worked
because this never happend before i tried switching to external tracing wich doesnt trace into recast geometry ...


oh and hight is not an actual concern when it comes to the path on the navmesh i remember someone bringing that up with mikko but thats how it functions an actual concern would be direction .. the problem with developement on trial for me is that i only am able to observe for a short period at a time so a real test would be observing it running for an hour or more ..

by the way this is not all the features of the actual release version i made a copy and removed that code because as i agreed with 3run the actual first release i wil offer up to tust if the team deems it fitting but have to say that they do have their own system their working on and perhaps also i dont know how easy navmeshing would be for begginers but anyway thank you for checking
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/17/13 22:59

okay i fixed the bug , actualy a stupid mistake than an actual bug concerning paths , i switched back to tracing from plugin into the internal meshes instead of external ctraces , after i changed the documentation i will re upload the fixed version , i cant see any false paths anymore even with alot of walls blocking most of the terrain it seems fixed now..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/18/13 13:10

fixed and uploaded.

mmmm just when you think you have a name thats diffrent from everything else you google and bang ! its all over ! i guess using a latin verb/whatever would be common , maby i will change it , by the way hows the need for an editor ? you guys think it would be a worth while effort ?
Posted By: Ch40zzC0d3r

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 07/29/13 17:23

Thats awesome! laugh
But how do you create the dat files?
I read your pdf but couldnt find any information about that frown
Posted By: Ch40zzC0d3r

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 07/31/13 14:44

Just got everything working, I should look better through the code -.-
However, Ive got a poblem when my bots should walk upstairs on a house.
If my character stands too near on the edge on the roof, the bot cant find any path to get near me frown
I tried adjusting AgentMaxSlope and AgentMaxClimb, but the problem wont solve...
Im using peragro_findpath with the position of my bot and character.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/02/13 15:27

The dat files are manualy saved after you commenced a succesfull build you may save it out all at once or only single tiles if you need...

After its saved you dont need to do a build(with build all tiles) you only need to init the build with build all tiles =0 and load the tiles from file , all after filling the built list .. I actualy have to work on
fixing it to use empty build lists..

Edit : on second thought controllable detour crowd agent as a player wil irradicate this problem and adding a function to keep any object on the navmesh surface would also work ..but thats for another time


I may be wrong but i think your problem may
be that your caracter is standing off of the navmesh tiles because the border area on the edges do not go right up to the ledge it gets shrunk to accomidate the radius of max agent setting to keep paths away from obstructions so your agents cant get stuck ...so you may have the option of preventing your caracter from going off of the navmesh tiles border by using invisible walls or else find closest point on the navmesh from players position and use for target .. If you could upload i could look into it a bit more but cannot promise you much in the speed of my reply..thanks and good luck
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/12/13 17:33

small update + few examples (download on page1)
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/06/14 09:18

hey,

has anybody experienced with this package?
I'm just testing it again, and planning to use it in my editor to make a near future game, but I don't know whether it features agent avoidance or not. it would be important laugh

thanks.

answer: no.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/28/14 20:58

answer :
were busy adding the crowd functions but my projects , here and at esenthel engine are on backup and hold , for the time being i do not have a computer to work with , besides there is not much of a reason to continue this project .

i would like to focus on something fun for a while like a 2d game or such .
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/28/14 21:28

thanks. I know you stopped it, I just started to deal with your plugin again to use it in some simple little games because of its flexibility, and because it is interesting (= I'm checking the source too).
maybe I will add a player editor to my editor, beside my ever-lasting strategy game development (having significant performance issues), but no exact plans... some kind of 3rd person game with some AI enemies acting in groups...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 09:08

my project is not completely stopped , the last thing i was planning is to do better debug display for the meshes , to develope a file format for saving all the settings and data needed so it all could be loaded up by a single function wich would take away the list filling process at each start ( this is where the editor would have to be the main tool for this plugin ) but i had thoughts of putting the editor inside a wed plugin wich would req me to learn the wed plugin system and it seems overcomplicated , i could not decide if i wanted my editor as a wed plugin or a seperate tool and thought about other engines to use for my editor but that would have needed an extra step in the process to go from gs level data to my editor .. so anyway i left the project on hold while focusing on exploring esenthel engine with some game/tool ideas , but a while back i sold my rig so all of my projects are on hold until i buy another pc .

there are some things about this project in code that i do not like especialy the list at the start , most of wich i would have corrected with a editor , without a nice file format to save and load everything its just ugly in my eyes , the second biggest issue is to go from single threads towards the thread pool to build like 8 tiles with 8 threads together at once wich will speed things up dramaticly , i was busy developing a thread pool for that , uhmmm then there was the idea of using lower lod or convex hulls either from physics or self generated to use as the input geometry for the navmesheshing wich will also speed things up alot!

there are alot of other features with the navmesh too that i did not include yet .

the other thing was to add a user controllable crowd agend so that the player will be kept on the navmesh and be avoided by other agends (not to big of a deal to do) .

and then i also wanted to add a feature wich splits the world in segments (boxes) wich could be set to update on thread pools every certain timed amound or by a certain criterea or command ..

all of wich would make it suited for large scale games.

any way you are free to jump into it and do as you please .
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 09:42

thanks for the details. yeah without a pc it is hard to develop anything... esenthel 1.0 is great but if you need custom shaders, you can get in trouble immediately (can't buy headers any more)... and 2.0 costs some money (nearly the same trouble with custom shaders).

imo the current debug view is usable. and the startup is fast enough when it is presaved. some kind of collision avoidance is important, probably I'll check that crowd part (but there are simple workarounds I'm sure in case of low agent count). I also think of some tests with PhysX movement, but the standard 3DGS also can work.

I'm not planning to make a game with a large scale scene, it would require some advanced engine features (what esenthel/cryengine/udk has), or better programming skills of me.

what I don't know: what Recast/Detour source files you modified?
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 13:42

mm yes there would be simple work arounds , ofcourse if you study the crowd example code of detour wich i am sure you could find if you ask at mikko's recast google discussion page and you will find
it is really easy to work with .

uhm changes i made , i am not 100% sure but i remember i changed a unsupported or something qsort function into one my c++ accepted (i cannot remember if it is still like that ) and the other things i have done was like commented out some includes like debug draw files etc basicly i remarked that i changed files because simply adding a comment somewhere could perhaps qualify as a "change" , i never changed anything critical like core code so you dont need to worry about it being altered but be aware that i cannot redistribute it without the mention that changes were made . i wanted to update all the recast / detour core files again to have all the changes made to it by mikko but i have not gotten so far .. uhm and the other thing i did ,i did not use the standard example (like most do) files but i re-classed and redesigned the classes into my own and i removed the demo chunkytriangle functions and switched to single triangle rasterization (but this is also no problem because this is not core)
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 13:55

thanks. it's quite complex, hopefully I can work with it laugh I want to check Mikko's original stuff too...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 14:04

also sivan be aware that gs has a rule that if a user does not have a plugin license that the source of the plugin must be redistibuted along with the plugin (this is partly why my redistribution also contains the source )

no not really complicated at all , if you focus on understanding the functions you need you will learn it quickly and with a little time spend reading source/demo files and being active on mikkos discussion group you will soon understand it .

here you go anyone is most welcome and mikko and other members are very helpfull here .

http://groups.google.com/group/recastnavigation/topics
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 14:09

thanks!
I also found this google group, and there are several mods of it on github.
as I have won a Pro license I think I don't need to redistribute the source if I change it, but planning to do nothing in secret...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/29/14 15:10

roger that
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/17/14 21:02

removed the links ,working on a version that is fast enough for tile based rts genre's .

so far it's working out much better than I had expected , I am able to swap obstacles in and out
very fast , although, there are specific design constraints I will be sticking to ,making it a custom build stripped down ,redesigned version specifically suited for a new project I am working on .

jb
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/18/14 18:16

yeah!
just avoid separate per entity actions with their own while loops including waits. that its up cpu over a few hundreds. but it is rather on the entity movement side, that calls the pathfinder.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/15/14 14:10

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n7hnl10g5g9e8ch/rts%20first%20test.zip?dl=0

a small first time test, nothing extremely new to this RTS version yet
but you are free to run this test and see how fast offcore saving/loading
tiles are , my idea on this is to have each tile such that if removed
from the navmesh ,it would represent an unwalkable area (filled with a
building or bunch of trees "obsticles") ,and when the tile is simply reloaded
from disk it becomes walkable again..

the complete tilemap(navmesh) is pre baked and simply loaded then tiles
are removed and loaded during runtime .

i think it could be useable for RTS if i continue to develope on this concept.

notes:

press 1 and 2 to add or remove tiles during runtime ,tiles will be saved/loaded on disk .

WASD move camera ,aim with the mouse .

the bot code sucks i know but its a simple test, the "unwalkable" tiles will
only become "unwalkable" when a new path is re-planned(when the bot reaches the destination),i havent done anything
to update path's of the bot ....just run with it and let me know what you think
about speed ..

jb
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/15/14 16:22

to everyone ,please note that the list script files included in this download comes from tust library,
I have forgotten to include the tust library licence text
upon the first upload but have added it after realising
my mistake , so everything is hunky dory now with that
I believe.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/18/14 11:31

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gov7j3mirt7br93/rts_test_tiles.zip?dl=0

my apoligies , i had a memory problem which i fixed now , i also made the
test much better .

keys:
wsad : camera movement
mouse movement : aim with pointer

press/hold "1" : remove a tile (aka add obsticle)
press/hold "2" : reload a tile (aka remove obstilce)

press/hold "z" : set path start point
press/hold "x" : set path end point

check it out i think its pretty fast and good for RTS if the concept is expanded
on .

PS i know of no other engine implementation of navmeshing which do this with navmeshing (as far as i know) as fast because i
actually do not rebuild anything ,they usually do
not use obsticles as tiles as I do ,and if they do use
it I haven't seen one , I think some commercial games
may use this type of concept though..

jb
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/08/15 12:53

I just tried it now (nearly forgot it after downloading a few weeks ago), but I don't know how to execute the pathfinding. the blocking tile placement/removqal is fine, and the start/end point placement too.

I started to deal with navmesh pathfinder again in Unreal Engine 4, but I find it not really suitable for a complex RTS game, because it is difficult to handle different sized agents avoiding collisions, and agents with different capabilities (ladder climbing, slope, swimming etc.). in my custom pathfinder each capability requires its own base map, but agent size handling is easy. in UE4 you can also place blocking volumes, they said to work fast runtime too, but not tested yet.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/08/15 16:57

pathfinding is triggered upon changing any start or end position , it should draw a path as soon as both
start and end points lie within the walkable tiles (not the red ones) and obviously if a path is possible towards the points ..

new obstacles (non walkable tiles) will only be included
within the path ,upon requesting a new path ,in that simple test script it is not handled by code to refresh paths when tiles are removed ,but can be done by moving one of the start/end points to request a new path .

normally each unit of different size would need its own navmesh , but there are other techniques as well
but there is only one unit size and navmesh in that test ,for the sake of simplicity.

rts pathfinding is very dependant on the game and function itself , therefore difficult to code a library for multiple use in different games , but if it is tile only like rts games ,I think I could manage flexibility somewhat to an extent for possible unforseen things .

anyway , usually on some implementations of recast/detour , they use the tile cache/temporary obsticles for obsticles , or they use a tile rebuilding technique with polygonal regions of types , usually tiles themselves aren't used like I did.

I know unreal engine has a pretty flexible navmesh system , I haven't played with unreal engine yet but have read about its navmesh system being editable pologonable ,without using an external modeling application , to be honest I have never noticed a rts game build upon unreal engine yet .

I drop and pick up projects quite frequently , this is because I try out a prototype and quickly drop it if it sucks , so projects like this one survive only because I see something of value in it ,it could be learning /an interest/ challenge myself / usability / fun or something I would like to do , as this little idea came it might also fade away again .

jb
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/15/15 21:06

Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/16/15 07:33

it looks great. if once I would have a free month I would integrate you pathfinder to MapBuilder. it would be fun to design some AI based on it, but I should have a corresponding game concept in mind....
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/18/15 11:07





the first navmesh build and saved with my new tool ,that uses the new plugin, loaded into a lite-c application .

also the first test of my new navmesh debug display prototype ,a dynamic mesh with viewdistance constrainable to an area of inspection,updates in realtime ,along with my new texturing prototype.

Posted By: alibaba

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/18/15 11:48

Nice work! Looks really awesome!
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/21/15 17:10

thanks.

Here's a small demo of what I'm busy with ,testing the debug mesh display. .

http://www.datafilehost.com/d/dbe4393b

that was the first debug mesh I was working on , I am trying to use a tree to speed things up , which works but some issues still to sort out .
Posted By: Anonymous

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/21/15 17:20

The download manager gets deleted by my AV as bad. However I could download the project without the manager SAFELY and perfectly. Last the test crash on startup for me.

Lots of start screen errors "Can not open d3x9d_30.dll"
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/21/15 17:26

oh yeah I forgot about that , that's a new a8 bug I reported to jcl , those files references are missing in the file thats used to copy those files from gamestudio folder over to the published folder ..

just copy those files from the gamestudio folder in to the the project's folder ..

I am using a8 pro so some may find it to not work
Posted By: Anonymous

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 04/21/15 17:32

Thanks - Working fine now
Cool Stuff
Posted By: CyberGhost

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/07/15 23:12

Where can I get the plugin?
Posted By: Mark430SR

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/09/15 16:16

I think it's no longer available ...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/09/15 22:49

I will get back to you in a while ..
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 08/10/15 15:55

sadly the plugin is not in a very good state now , i am facing too much issues ,for which I do not have a proper solution to yet , I would recommend that you try something else .
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 09/27/15 16:21

i am busy with the builder-tool , again , still work to be done but it is going good .

i do not want to release anything yet , there is more to be done .
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 10/17/15 10:44



getting closer and closer , it is already functional but not finished.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/15 12:54

hi , this is a small test version ,which features the current progress of the navigational mesh builder tool.

the current features are:

file support for importing static geometry:

types - fbx,dae,obj,3ds,mdl,hmp,wmb

of which obj and 3ds are not to be used yet.
possible changes ,will be to keep only obj/fbx/dae/3ds support

file support for exporting the navmesh:
types - fbx,dae,obj,dat, .*

of which fbx/dae/obj exports the static geometry of the navmesh such that , it can be viewed faster ,by external modeling software .

dat and .* privide support for the navmesh data files, to be loaded in the game/application.

build settings:
types - txt,.*

txt and .* file types , both provide support to save and load the build settings to external files , written to file as readable text .

support for advanced build settings:

currently the build settings are not configured to be agent based ,so there is added complexity at the moment for tweaking values as needed.

i still have to add an agent only based setting ,such that you only need to give agent radius and a few other settings ,because most of the advanced values for build settings can depend on agent values.

if you would like to test it , as a rough guide you can set cell size as, cell size=agent radius/2 , and cell height=cell size/2.

the inspector:

the inspector provides support ,for viewing the build navmesh ,in a defined area such that rendering performance can be increased by viewing smaller areas in larger worlds.

the inspector is tied to ,the draw-timer and tile-draw-distance.

---------------------------------------------------------------

provided in the extracted folder ,are these files:

cube.mdl - do not delete.

blueguard.mdl - a model to use for an agent test model , you can see the radius of the model against the border distance of walls , by clicking on the world models to place the agent test model,after loading the agent model .

large_build_settings.txt/normal_build_settings - pre-saved build settings example files , you can load these settings before pressing the build button.

LICENSE.txt - read this file for specifics on the licences of other software used by this tool.

navmesh plugin.dll - this is the plugin dll under developement for gamestudio a8 , it is used by the tool aswell as the game/application which need navigational mesh functionality.

test.3ds,test.dae,test.fbx,test.hmp,test.mdl,test.obj,test.wmb - these are test models to load in to the tool , for testing the file support and the navigational mesh build process, currently 3ds/obj are not to be used.

a simple example of a build process is as follows

open navedit.exe.
press ok.
click FILE on the menu.
select LOAD GEOMETRY.
select FBX file type.
open test.fbx.
select OKAY.

by holding the right mouse button on the editor screen(the black window area), and move the mouse ,you can change the view tilt/pan , and by using the W,S,A,D keys you can move the camera.

select FILE on the menu.
select OPEN BUILD SETTINGS and open normal_build_settings.txt.
press the BUILD button ,the navigational mesh should build and render the navmesh in the editor window.

thanks to anyone who happens to test it.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/15 13:38

currently known bugs :

the agent model should be excluded from the navigation mesh geometry , will be fixed later when a list is added to the editor.

the internal input geometry list , is not cleared when a rebuild is triggered , the list clear function will be added later (not a bug , purposely left out)

fbx/dae sizes and other settings still need to be set , currently the agent hit position is ignored because of this , remedy : use mdl or wmb file to test the agent model.

slope angle or slope related settings/code are wrong ,it was correct but I changed something and did not notice it at the time , problem is easily seen on terrain , I will fix it later.

you may need to copy directx files from your gamestudio folder in to the tool folder , I have not included them in the redistributed rar.
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/21/15 20:16

so i went and fixed some things.
Originally Posted By: Wjbender
currently known bugs :

the agent model should be excluded from the navigation mesh geometry , will be fixed later when a list is added to the editor.

the internal input geometry list , is not cleared when a rebuild is triggered , the list clear function will be added later (not a bug , purposely left out)

fbx/dae sizes and other settings still need to be set , currently the agent hit position is ignored because of this , remedy : use mdl or wmb file to test the agent model.

slope angle or slope related settings/code are wrong ,it was correct but I changed something and did not notice it at the time , problem is easily seen on terrain , I will fix it later.

you may need to copy directx files from your gamestudio folder in to the tool folder , I have not included them in the redistributed rar.
(think i copied the correct one)



bugs i know of:

still an issue with some things when called across a different thread, i am not sure ,but will figure it out .

Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/27/15 21:40

Originally Posted By: Wjbender

bugs i know of:

still an issue with some things when called across a different thread, i am not sure ,but will figure it out .


i have not experienced any crashes since my last update for a few days.

i believe this will be the last small update to this little test/demonstration version ,until i made enough progress.

also valid for 7 days
NAVEDIT.rar
Posted By: sivan

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 11/28/15 21:16

hey, my antivirus denies access for the download site...
Posted By: Wjbender

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 01/01/16 16:18

i have been thinking , would someone be interested in taking over the project , i would provide the folder structure i used for the project includes etc ,and any other info needed plus the project files for the plugin and the tool ,and he may do whatever he wants with it.
Posted By: Random

Re: navmesh/pathfinding plugin - 05/05/16 19:56

Why not make it an open source project, so that everybody can work on it?
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