PathEngine is a software company as well as an advanced

path finding Pathfinding or pathing is the plotting, by a computer application, of the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the sh ...

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific to ...

, created under the leadership of Thomas Young. The company was founded after Young left

Infogrames Atari SA (formerly Infogrames Entertainment SA) is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Its subsidiaries include Atari Interactive and Atari, Inc. It is the current owner of the Atari brand through Atari Interactive. Bec ...

Sheffield, and the first commercial version of the software was offered in 2002. The software uses a technique called points of visibility path finding, where the agent takes into account dynamic obstacles and agent shape when navigating between points. Over time, the software has been optimized with rapid bug-fixes, and has been made to support platforms such as the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

. PathEngine has been used in games such as ''

Titan Quest ''Titan Quest'' is an action role playing hack and slash video game developed by Iron Lore Entertainment for Microsoft Windows. It was published by THQ in 2006. It was released on Steam in 2007, and later ported to mobile devices by DotEmu an ...

,'' among others''.''

History

PathEngine was founded in 2000. The first version of PathEngine SDK was released in early 2002. By the end of 2005, over 50 finished products had been released that used PathEngine. In 2007, the 5.10 version was released. Improvements included a new graph search core and several bugfixes. In 2010, PathEngine released version 5.23.

Features

PathEngine supports personal computers running the

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

, as well as the game consoles of

and

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

. PathEngine implements the search for the path and the movement of the agent in a three-dimensional medium with dynamic obstacles. There is a dynamic control overcoming obstacles and automation of content. Such a technology applied to some very large and detailed worlds includes special optimization for embossed surfaces (or other surfaces that combine detailed obstacles with a good overview and large open spaces).

License terms

PathEngine is a commercial software product created solely for the purpose of being licensed by third parties. There are three types of licenses for PathEngine SDK, each of which differs in price and level of access to the source code. In addition, each license may differ depending on which and how many platforms the final product will be released on.

References

External links

PathEngine official website
Software companies of France Video game engines Software development kits {{software-company-stub