Building a Modern Pathfinding Engine
Pathfinding is a key component in many video games, and is a popular topic for ongoing research, although very few researchers have the opportunity to deploy their work into commercial titles. This talk will begin by looking at pathfinding architectures and describing our experience going from a research project to a commercially deployed pathfinding engine that is shipping in BioWare’s series of Dragon Age games. In looking at the actual constraints in a shipping game, we see that there are a number common misunderstandings in common characterizations of pathfinding in games. These build to current research challenges in the field, and topics of ongoing research.
Nathan is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Denver in Denver, CO where he teaches and performs research in artificial intelligence and games with a specific interest in applications for the games industry. He designed and implemented the pathfinding system in BioWare’s Dragon Age series, and has done other work on more traditional games. He is also known for writing Dome Wars, a classic 90s tank game for the Mac.
