Merry Christmas everyone!
And as a christmas present, you can now download an updated version of the A* Pathfinding Project. Version 3.0.8!
The major feature for this version is the beta of the Local Avoidance which I have been working on, it is included in the Pro version of the system. If you haven’t seen it, check out this video on youtube!
Great news for those of you who have the free version is that you can now save graphs to files, including nodes!
As many of you probably have seen, the developer preview of Unity 3.5 (with built-in pathfinding), was released a few days ago.
What this means for the continuing development of this project is not certain yet, but I will not likely stop all development.
The Unity pathfinder has a number of advantages, and a number of drawbacks compared to my system, I haven’t been able to explore it very much though since it only seems to be available for Unity Pro users (which is the first drawback), I cannot edit any pathfinding settings anyway.
First of all, the Unity pathfinder has only support for navmeshes, not grid graphs or list (point) graphs. This is probably the feature most people will miss with the Unity pathfinder, especially makers of TD and RTS games as grid graphs are the primary choice among them. It doesn’t seem very expandable from what I can see in the docs, I haven’t even found a class for nodes. On the advantage side though, can be mentioned that it does have more advanced local avoidance (from recast, mine is still under development, but it’s getting there), and better support for off-mesh links, and also it seems to have support for partial paths (something I have chosen not to implement since paths are returned within a few milliseconds anyway). It does not seem to use time splicing (i.e calculating over multiple frames) as there is a function in the docs which returns paths instantly, this does in turn mean that it is not multithreaded (except for the generating of the navmesh, which can be run async), but I can be wrong about that.
The path layers they are using for the bridge and door scenes in the examples is another difference, however I have an early implementation of it in 3.0.8 (check out the “Door” scene which is included, only for pro users though as it is based on a recast graph, but the functionality is present in the free version as well, check out the DoorController.cs script in the example scripts folder).
Please comment if I have got something wrong about the unity pathfinder.
Now go ahead and download the latest version: http://arongranberg.com/unity/a-pathfinding/download/
Changelog can be found here
As an extra christmas present, I will give you a 10% discount until the 1st of January on the Pro version!
Just use the promo-code: Christmas2011
Merry Christmas!
-Aron Granberg
As far as I’m concerned your solution is still vastly superior to the built in system, especially with the tagging features you are adding to 3.1. I haven’t regretted purchasing your Pro version yet and the new features you are adding make me even happier to have gotten it.
Keep up the great work.
That`s it 4TheStone, dont lose your focus, your project is great, and way better than Unity`s buit-in path-finding system. I desire you all the sucess keep going you are a winner.
Please continue the project, regardless of the built-in navmesh in Unity 3.5! I will always use your system just because it is open-sourced and configurable.