Improving Pathfinding Quality With New Algorithm

[Riesegarder]

Since this is related: Could we have support for an “AgentCanDrop” parameter?

Pathfinding now supports Climbable Trusses

I would like a parameter for AgentCanDrop. Currently the only way to allow an agent to drop off a navmesh onto a lower navmesh is to set AgentCanJump to true. But this means the path will also allow jumping up onto a higher navmesh. Sometimes there are cases where your agent should not jump but should be allowed to drop down.

[Krant19worlddv (Krant_dv)]

you can control the jump height from the humanoid it self

[Daw588]

I’m talking about jump height that pathfinding considers a viable path, not the capability of the humanoid.

[Riesegarder]

Really appreciate that there’s a lot of improvements!

I got excited to try it out and found this bug where a path was generated through a gap that’s too small for the agent radius –

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Making the radius smaller (that would fit the gap) actually made it hug the walls better:

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Radius of exactly the same size as the gap generated this:

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Finally, making the radius bigger than the gap generated a path that really marked it as untraversable

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Here’s the repro file
PathfindingUseImprovedSearch - gap bug repro.rbxl (53.6 KB)

[watIsInTheName]

Thanks for the repro. We will investigate

[ColRealPro]

THANK YOU SO MUCH TO THE ENTIRE TEAM THAT WORKED ON THIS

You have no idea how much time I spent trying so many solutions to get pathfinding to not suck, and usually eventually give up and gave restrictions to map builders on what they can or cannot do for pathfinding purposes

THANK YOU!

[NotToastehNew (TastyToastyTheToast)]

WOOOOOOOO! Roblox is really cooking!

[ITS_SELINASOON (imagine)]

Will pathfinding API safe to call in parallel?

[wclxb (michael)]

such an out of the blue update but this is awesome! keep up the great work

[coolmapj (Tails)]

This update is a REVELATION for us developers!!!

I’m very excited with this news and I’m sure everyone else here is feeling the same way. I will be putting this straight into my game.

[ItzMrRatsP]

Are we getting the name of the new algorithm anytime soon? @watIsInTheName

[Puma_incredible (Stickz)]

How did you get that UI in that image?

[Linux_55 (Dughoo)]

Roblox, are skinned meshes ever getting ragdoll support without having to divide them into 15 parts?

[Bettercat4 (Lynxmountain)]

This is awesome. now I can finally add an entity to my infinite maze generation game without using my old hacky attempt at getting the nearest path.

[Riesegarder]

This plugin by tyridge77

[Update] Pathfinder - Quickly Test PathfindingService in Studio

PathfindingService is a great solution for many cases of AI in roblox However, it can be time consuming to figure out exactly what parameters you need for things like AgentHeight, AgentRadius, as well as traversal costs now that PathfindingModifiers are released. To solve this I made a quick little plugin that allows you to test this and adjust values to your liking in real time Click the plugin icon or set up a hotkey in studio settings [image] [image] [image] Click twice t…

[gwenniekins]

I really agree with this, maybe adding a tab into the GameSettings menu. having so many things that are almost always going to be “Default” as a property just clutters the properties menu. Another option I was thinking, was actually having them within their own drop down within the properties.

Overall, this is an amazing update, since I’ve tried doing maze pathfinding, and pathfinding on terrain, and I’ve come across almost all of the issues that were addressed

[Judgy_Oreo (DisplayName)]

Pathfinding (and I would think Nav Mesh generation) is done on a separate thread.

It is not using “Parallel Luau” because it’s not implemented in Luau But it is parallelized.

[D_CIPHR (Cipher)]

This is outstanding!
I’m very excited to use this updated algorithm in my games!

[CrafterRBLXGo (Crafter)]

Partial paths are now a thing? Maybe its worth to use PathfindingService now!

[Alex645ca]

Tried this feature out a couple hours ago in a few places of mine that have heavy use of NPCs in ways that don’t rely on a player (ie, I was just using Test Server with no clients)

Performance-wise it seems better. I was still seeing NPCs running into walls like before (might be an issue on my code’s part, my games’ maps are randomly generated so navmeshes are out of the question afaik)… and most notably, with the setting enabled, the test servers would just randomly close after about 10-15 minutes. Not sure if it’s a crash since it wouldn’t freeze up or anything prior, but if there’s some way I could privately send the files of the games this happened in to some Roblox employee to take a look at, I would like to know how to do so.