AI Tech

Throughout March, AI Tech made significant improvements to various navigation systems and AI tool features. This included implementing support for overriding agent-type properties for navigation mesh generation, which enables the designers to generate meshes inside narrow areas and create more complex levels. For example, NPCs will be able to follow or search for players inside vents. 

Another related feature is navigation volume cost areas (NVCA), which will impact navigation-mesh generation and the dynamic path computed during movement requests. There are both static and dynamic NVCA types: 

Static NVCAs are shapes/volumes preplaced by the level designers when they want certain areas to be preferred or avoided during pathfinding. 

Dynamic NVCAs are shapes created at runtime based on player or NPC actions. For example, fire areas that can expand or shrink, or areas featuring obstacles placed by players.

AI Tech also continued to iterate and polish some otherwise completed features, including NPCs pushing trolleys and NPCs using transit systems and elevators (with or without trolleys). Support was also added for hover trolleys.

On the AI Tools side, the team iterated and added new functionality to the Apollo Subsumption tool. Some of the new functionality includes being able to reference engine component tags as part of the TagSelector variable. They also moved the graph map to its own tab, added icons to the outline tab for easier viewing, and added a prompt for unsaved changes.

For the Usable Coordinator, the team continued with quality-of-life improvements and updated UI functionality.

AI Tech also completed a pass on the recent idle-system improvements. Now, they can correctly mark up specific moments in idle animations where it’s safe to leave. This allows them to maintain the visual quality the animators expect without needing to wait for the idle animation to fully transition into the exit animation.