Abstract
In this paper, we propose a method to efficiently control the path of non-playable characters (NPC) in an interactive virtual environment such as a game or virtual reality (VR) by calculating a weight map and path similarity based on the user’s path. Our method automatically constructs a navigation mesh that provides a new route to the NPC by referring to the user’s trajectory. Our method finds more paths that users usually go through as time passes, and the number of users increases. Accordingly, the paths that NPCs can traverse automatically are updated adaptively to the virtual environment. In addition, NPC agents can move smartly by assigning high weights to the user’s preferred paths. We tested the usefulness of the proposed method through several example scenarios in an interactive environment such as a video game or VR, and this method can be easily applied to various types of navigation based on the interactive environment.
Highlights
IntroductionThere are no roads in areas where people do not often go. As time goes by, people explore and mark these areas with routes, creating roads where people can travel
In the real world, there are no roads in areas where people do not often go
To demonstrate the excellence of the proposed method, we checked the paths of non-playable character (NPC) in various environments, and it was confirmed that the unbroken path was stably generated
Summary
There are no roads in areas where people do not often go. As time goes by, people explore and mark these areas with routes, creating roads where people can travel. Others follow the path created by those who have been there earlier, and as a result, the path gradually expands and becomes clear Inspired by this natural path-creation process, this paper introduces a new way to explore non-playable character (NPC) paths in an interactive virtual environment. Using existing static navigation mesh-based methods, when NPCs reach a dead end, that is, without a navigation mesh, even if the destination is nearby, it may fall into unexpected situations such as NPCs returning or being caught between obstacles (see Figure 1) This situation occurs because the NPC’s movement depends only on the static navigation mesh, which in turn leads to another problem in which the NPC behaves differently from the developer’s intention. By using the newly generated paths, the existing static navigation mesh can be expanded and the inefficient route of NPCs can be improved
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