Coder Corner

John Ratcliff told me about a new pathfinding library named “Recast“. It’s open source and it looks pretty good. I am currently using PathEngine in Konoko Payne. That’s a powerful library but it has one big problem for me: navigation meshes have to be created by artists. Since I am the only “artist” in this project, it has always been a huge pain in the butt to open MAX and manually, painfully, create the nav meshes. I more or less did it in KP’s prototype, but never even started for the “real” level (especially since the level is “under construction”. No way I’ll spend time creating a nav mesh for a level which might change the next day).

So the biggest appeal for “Recast”, to me, is that it automatically builds nav meshes. I have no idea about the runtime performance or memory requirements yet, but for me this single feature makes it worth checking.

So, I did.

Pretty simple API, seems to work as advertised. Didn’t test it much yet but seems to work, and it’s fast.

• This picture is what I get on KP’s “Depot” level. That’s what you get out of the box, without much parameter tweaking. Pretty good.
• Only problem I see is that some cables on the ground end up creating big holes in the nav mesh, for some reason. I don’t know why yet. I don’t know if it can be easily solved by tweaking the build parameters a bit more. In any case this is a non-issue, I can simply filter those triangles out of the building process.
• Here are the build parameters I used. You can open this from KP’s console and build everything while the game is running. So far, so good. This is one big step towards releasing KP’s source code. I couldn’t do it before since PathEngine’s license prevented it, but now everything’s possible! (I just have to replace the physics engine, duh!)

(to be continued)

I guess I should make it official now that I signed the contract. I am now a proud NVIDIA employee, and I will be working with my old NovodeX mates in Zürich - yep, good old Technopark. In a way it feels like moving backwards, going back to my past rather than exploring new cities, new countries, and trying new things. On the other hand, it feels curiously good to “go home”. Granted, it’s not really my home. But it feels familiar. Friendly. Safe. Secure. Just like a home should be. After 2 years in Spain it may also just feel good to go back to a place where things Just Work. No “caldera” exploding in the middle of the night, no brainless Internet provider forgetting my files on a desk for 2 months, no bad surprise when going for shopping. Of course the weather will not exactly be as gorgeous as Barcelona’s, but hey, that’s a bonus: no more sunburns.

This has been a crazy month of July. Packed with interviews, trips, phone calls. I got so many job offers it’s not even funny. While most people suffer from the financial crisis, lose their job, struggle, I got some 19 offers in the two first weeks, and they kept coming. Some of those were insanely appealing. You have no idea how hard it has been to decline all of them but one. For a while I felt like Paul Atreides, having visions of all the possible futures in all those cool places and cool countries. They really all felt good. It was an impossible task to select just one. I wish I could have worked for all of them. I wish I will, some day.

It’s been a long time since I last wrote a scrolltext but I feel like writing greetings again. In no particular order : Kenneth, Cortney, Simon, Greg, Andrew, David, Oliver, Paco, Martin, Sys, Tatiana, Christer, Christophe, Candace, Jay, Vik, Robert, Francesco, Marie-Therese, Sandra, Alexis, Joachim, Pascal, Vangelis, David. You know who you are. Thank you!!

Fecking hell, I’ll miss the craic !