VizWorld.com

MAIET Entertainment is working on ‘GunZ2: The Second Duel”, and WeMade Entertainment is working on a new MMORPG codenamed “LF”, and both have settled on Autodesk’s Kynapse AI middleware to drive the games.  It’s a no-brainer of a choice so that now they can dedicate engineering resources to more important systems, and leave the AI and pathfinding to a proven solution.

“We needed a middleware solution for the Unreal Engine that provided efficient data generation processing for path finding, solid AI for nonplayer characters and light run-time search costs,” said Joseph Ryu, managing director at WeMade Entertainment. “Autodesk Kynapse AI middleware was the obvious choice.”

Developers at MAIET Entertainment also adopted Kynapse middleware to help improve efficiency in their engineering efforts. “In the past, there have been many cases when we had to rewrite the AI code for new game titles,” explained Youngho Kim, vice president at MAIET Entertainment. “By eliminating that redundancy, Kynapse middleware will help reduce development time. The middleware offers the performance and flexibility we were looking for.”

Read the full release after the break.

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Graphics autodesk, kynapse, video game

Montreal based “Artificial Mind and Movement” (A2M) recently released “WET”, their third-person mature shooter combining acrobatics and swordplay that uses an interesting dual-targeting mechanic.  Autodesk products were instrumental in the development of the game and a press release from Autodesk details how they used Maya, MotionBuilder, and Kynapse to pull it all together.

“Our main philosophy with regards to development tools has always been that if it’s good and it already exists with the right price tag, why reinvent it?” explains Martin Walker, CTO, A2M. “That’s why we chose to work with Kynapse as our AI engine for WET. In the game, the player confronts a large number of enemies. We needed a path-finding and location-awareness system to control decision making for these characters in a coherent manner.”

Walker continues, “Kynapse has a fantastic hide-and-shoot algorithm that was used to conceal and disperse the enemies in a natural way throughout environments.”

via Autodesk – Games – Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M).

Graphics a2m, autodesk, kynapse, maya, motionbuilder, videogame

Related to yesterday’s new case studies (here and here) from Autodesk, they just officially announced HumanIK4 and Kynapse6 at GDC.

“Autodesk middleware products offer a solution to common runtime challenges, allowing development teams to concentrate on the creative work involved in authoring amazing new gameplay experiences,” said Marc Stevens, Autodesk vice president, games. “For example, HumanIK helps to alleviate the burden of large clip libraries by enabling procedural motion adaption, which reduces the number of clips animators need to produce and maintain. With Kynapse, programmers can avoid the development time and costs involved in writing custom runtime solutions for universal AI issues, like spatial awareness.”

CGSociety – Autodesk Middleware.

Graphics autodesk, gdc, humanik, kynapse