One of the necessary systems in game AI is to be able to plan an agent’s path from A to B. For characters and human-like agents this is now routine, with game engines including built-in functionality for on-the-fly path-planning in a dynamic world. These systems start to reach their limits, however, when used with agents..
2020 was quite a year for everyone and here at Mercuna we’ve all been remote working since March, but somehow as busy as ever! Here are just some of our highlights from the year. Ground Navigation Our biggest effort was developing our new ground navigation system for vehicles and animals. We knew this would be..
Functional tests are a great way to ensure that the basic features of your game work as expected. They allow you to test more realistic scenarios than unit tests whilst giving more control than gameplay tests. This is especially useful for middleware, such as Mercuna, because our 3D and ground navigation systems have many complicated..
Ghost of Tsushima is a glorious swan-song for PS4 and has landed with almost unanimously glowing reviews. The beauty, the waypoint system, the foxes…and the beauty. It’s just stunning. I loved the game. Totally loved it. But as someone who works in games middlewares, I began to wonder where upcoming tech could take games like..
At Mercuna we make extensive use of automated testing including continuous integration. Our AI navigation middleware is used on multiple game engines (Unreal Engine and Unity), multiple versions of engines, on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and for multiple platforms (the above plus consoles and mobile devices). As such it’s essential that we “fail early”,..
Mercuna is excited to announce that we have been awarded an Epic MegaGrant to help fund the development of our new off-road navigation middleware for vehicle and animal AI. Epic MegaGrants is a scheme run by Epic Games, who have committed $100 million to support game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators,..
How do we solve the problem of crunch in the games industry? Let’s start by assuming it’s not going to just solve itself. And let’s recognise that devs forming unions barely works even in countries with strong traditions of unionisation, such as Sweden. The solution might lie in an industry very different from our own. ..
One of the most exciting trends in the games industry has been how our innovations have been used in novel and imaginative ways by other industries. Game experiences are starting to move so close to reality that they could have a huge impact on how we design and operate within the designed environment. Here I..
Making believable 3d navigation doesn’t just mean finding straight-line paths for AI to travel on, it also means following them in a realistic way. What we really want to be able to do is make our birds/fish/spaceships/planes/dragons move in ways that seem plausible, and one of the ways we can do this is to set..
One of the most fundamental problems facing agents in game worlds is how to move to a specific location. While a variety of solutions exist for characters moving on the ground, for agents navigating freely in three dimensions, such as drones, submarines, or characters with jetpacks, this is a much harder problem. This post looks..