NavPower is AI pathfinder middleware for the video games industry from developer BabelFlux. Now BabelFlux has announced that EA has licensed and will use the NavPower AI motion planning package for Skate 3, as well as other upcoming titles, in development with EA.
“From the NavPower perspective, it’s great to see game teams leveraging the NavPower functionality in innovative ways, and the EA teams have definitely been doing that from day one,” David Miles, NavPower Chief Technology Officer commented. “We are pleased that EA selected NavPower for its AAA titles and we continue to work closely with the development teams to deliver the highest quality AI experience.”
“We chose NavPower because it provides the best support for our large, complex levels in terms of the rapid build process and the compact memory footprint,” Mike Rayner, Chief Technical Officer at Skate 3 developer Black Box stated. “The NavPower feature set allows us to develop complex AI behaviors that look great even as the world changes dynamically around the Skate characters.”
NavPower is designed to offer support for open world games which have a high-performance build process and streaming technology, and which comprise of hundreds of meshes at runtime. Skate 3 is in development with EA’s Black Box studio and is expected to be released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime in May of 2010.