Zombox : Preview 04

This is a bit of an under-the-hood view of the new pathfinding system in Zombox.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• zombox
• 3d
• animation
• gamedev
• tyson
• ibele
• pathfinding

[franklynd]

Great work tyson. i don't know how you've implemented it but you can save some cycles by implementing it in a step wise fashion so it only has to compute a section of the entire path every frame.

[ivanisavich]

@franklynd Yup, that's what it currently does. Currently it searches a max of 35 nodes each time a path is requested by a zombie, and if it doesn't find the target it returns the partial path. I found a 35-node search is a good balance between performance and accuracy.

[franklynd]

@ivanisavich awesome, have you tested it on a real device yet ?. 

[ivanisavich]

@franklynd Yup. Runs at 30 fps on an iPhone 4G with 50 zombies on screen, as well as a character, vehicle and all the environment. The release will probably feature 20-30 zombies on screen at a time max, because they're the biggest performance hit and I'd like to keep fps around 40 fps on a 4G so it'll stay at around 20-30 on older devices.

[anim8ordude]

Nice! You going to add any occlusion in the end? That in itself would be good enough for the lighting.

[ivanisavich]

@anim8ordude I might bake some occlusion into the texture maps, but unfortunately realtime occlusion isn't really feasible on the iPhone...which Zombox is targeted for.

[Camtrack]

At the begining I thought that it was andrioid icon attack

[squall787]

Tyson.. you are a machine.. Ive followed your work and career for about 5 years now.. and am always amazed with what you do. This is already shaping up to be an awesome game, I hope you add some RPG elements at some point. Either way i give you all my moneys.

[terrymation]

wanna play

[ADEdge]

Love it, looks great. Cool pathfinding as well, its little details like that (ie enemys not wanting to walk though each other) which really add to games.