CAINav 0.3.0: Path Corridors and More

CAINav v0.3.0 has been released. It is a 'big little' update.  There aren't a lot of new features, but the underlying structure has changed a lot.  

The full change log can be found in both the distribution package and the SVN repository.  But there are several changes worth mentioning here.

Two Boring Items

The NavManager Unity component has been retired and replaced with the NavSource component.  This is worth mentioning here because the functionality of the two components appears to be the same.  And they are pretty much 99% the same.  The difference is that NavSource only provides navigation resources.  It does not handle the CrowdManger.Update() method.  So if you use it you'll need to make sure you add code somewhere to manage the crowd manager. 

The documentation for the last release had some big holes, especially for the crowd manager and introduction to navigation.  That has been mostly addressed.  There is even some navigation related getting started code to hold you over until the new sample pack is released.

The New PathCorridor

The biggest new feature is the addition of the PathCorridor class.  (And U3DPathCorridor Unity extension.)

The NavmeshQuery class contains almost all the pathfinding features needed to hand roll your own navigation solution, whether you just need a list of waypoints or you want to implement complex local movement and steering.  

If you want to manage steering for crowds of agents, then you can use to the CrowdManger.  The crowd manager is great, but it requires that you give it a lot of control and can be overkill for certain situations.

The path corridor fills in the middle ground.  It takes an initial path of polygons (a corridor), then helps you manage it without worrying about locomotion inaccuracies, floating point errors, a moving goal, or any of the other common pathfinding gotchas that make moving along the path difficult.  

Definitely take a look at this new class.  It can help you get rid of a lot of your path management code.

Now, Multi-Platform Friendly

This is where the 'big' comes in, even though most of it is hidden.

CAINav is still supported only on Windows, and is likely to stay that way as long as I don't have a way to validate it on other platforms before release.  But my goal is to keep it friendly for use on the other Unity target platforms

That goal is now much closer to being  met due to a lot of work by Dan Treble down in Australia.  Dan, who is working on an game called Quick Quest, went through the pain and suffering of getting CAINav working with Unity on iPhone and Android.

I expected some minor adjustments to the C++ code.  The surprise was the C# code.  I'll cover that in detail in a separate post.  For now, suffice it to say that the C# syntax for Windows and iPhone plugins is not compatible.

You will have to build your own native libraries.  And for iPhone you will need to copy the C# code directly into your project.  But due to Dan's feedback the CAINav code base should now be useable on both Unity iPhone and Android. The documentation includes some tips.

In closing, here is a much nicer navigation mesh visualization than I can produce, courtesy of Dan:

Until next time, take care of the bobcats.