Saarbrücken/Quierschied, Germany - Xaitment GmbH, a developer and service providers of artificial
intelligence (AI) for the games and simulation industries, has released xaitMap 2.5, the first in a series of upgrades
to its AI tool set. The new version offers game developers a new graphical interface and such features
as geometry tagging, batched builds, a project wizard, and the support
of pathfinding objects.
XaitMap 2.5, intended to ease the workflow of game development teams, can be integrated with any in-house tool in a studio’s pipeline and has been specifically designed to accelerate the build process and the automatic modification of NavMeshes. The new graphical interface minimizes mistakes that can result from complex AI programming.
Version 2.5 consists of the graphical interface, xaitMap Creator, and the xaitMap Library. Together, these solutions use a spatial subdivision technique for creating navigation meshes, says a company representative. The navigation meshes are created automatically by entering specifications about the environment and the non-player characters (NPCs) into a NavMesh Generator. The NavMesh is generated in seconds, enabling developers to make changes to the game map and to experiment with different designs in order to improve the gameplay.
Highlights of the xaitMap 2.5 AI game tool:
· Multi-platform support for PC and consoles
· Features a graphical xaitMap Creator for greater control
· Automatically generates navigation meshes from arbitrary geometry (either physical or graphical)
· Project wizard for automatic creation of new projects
· Geometry tagging: Developers can add tags to the geometry on which they are working. Those tags will be included into the creation of the NavMesh. The NavMesh will then be divided according to the tags. This can be used in the pathfinder to model different speeds for different bottoms.
· Handles very complex graphical geometry
· Multiple, simultaneous views
· Batch builds
· Supports multiple NavMesh builds in a given project
· Supports multiple agents/characters in a build
· Supports multiple maps in a build
· Supports spawnpoints: the NavMesh is only calculated for those areas that are accessible from the spawnpoint
· Supports blockings: cubes can be set to block areas in the geometry so that the NavMesh is not calculated there
Like all xaitment AI game tools, xaitMap 2.5 is a stand-alone module and can be bought separately.