Though there’s a lot of focus placed on textures, animation, environmental effects and particle effects, one of the most under-rated and yet wholly important aspects of a game is its path-finding. Without path-finding, you’ll see AI companions running into walls while enemies have a hard time figuring out how to scale basic barriers. As gaming technology improves, what will APIs like DirectX 12 do to improve path-finding?
David Miles, CTO of BabelFlux LLC which created Navpower, spoked to GamingBolt about the benefit of reduced CPU overhead for DirectX 12 especially when it comes to path-finding. “Obviously this is great for us because it frees up a lot more CPU resources that can be used for a variety of things including AI. Most clients only allocate a few percent of the total CPU available to the game for AI processing, including things such as dynamic obstacles, pathfinding, and character steering.”
Aside from high-end PCs, will Navpower be implemented for mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets in the near future? “That’s a good question. Although NavPower isn’t well known as a mobile pathfinding solution, it’s actually been used on a number of mobile games and we’ve worked with AAA developers to optimize key portions of the code for mobile platforms. So yes, it’s already available and works quite well.”
Thoughts? Let us know below.