UnitySteer - steering library for Unity

Hello everyone,

It's a pleasure to finally release UnitySteer, a library of steering components for Unity, covering anything from path following to obstacle avoidance to following neighboring vehicles. You can find more details, as well as the source code and a few examples, here.

The library is under the MIT license and hosted on Github, so contributions are welcome.

Cheers!

 

wow, i think i could really use something like this!

 

Just brilliant!

 

Ricardo, very interesting. Thank you for sharing this with the community. One question: What do you mean by "Vehicle tethering" in your features description?

EDIT: Never mind. I took a look at your project and that answered my question. Nice!

 

Wow, not bad.

Does it handle bunching/congestion/queueing gracefully in some way?

As in.. does it attempt to go another route if another entity is blocking a path, but is moving?

 

magwo:
UnitySteer implements pathfollowing - currently directly linking up to Path (I'm gonna do some work on this part when my vacation starts next week), so in terms of getting a path recalculated based on congestion, this is something you'd have to set up in a parallel system - tracking clumps of characters and adjusting Path connection/node weights based on that.

 

It can help handle them gracefully, in the sense that it'll do its best to ease the vehicle among the currently known neighbors, plus they can all avoid colliding with each other, but repathing is beyond the scope of the library since it doesn't handle pathing by itself.

Like Emil points out, repathing would require your pathfinder to know that a node is more expensive because it has more objects on it, which not only depends on your pathfinder but on your specific game constraints.

Of course it can be built upon to accommodate it - you'd start on the PathFollower vehicle and the Pathway classes.

(Edited for extra details)

 

WOW. This is an awesome library!

Thanks for sharing

 

Awesome .... Thanks for sharing!

 

Glad you guys like it, do let me know if you build anything with it.

Cheers,

 

Awesome, thanks for sharing it!

 

Thanks for porting the steering library. When I download the project and open it, I receive several warnings:

"Couldn't load the script xxxxxxx becasuse it's file name doesn't match the class name. Please make sure the file name of the script is the same as the class defined inside it."

Is this normal? Any thoughts how to remedy these errors and get the project working. Thanks for any help with this.

Mitch

 

Hello Mitch,

These are actually warnings, not errors. It's normal, and shouldn't stop your project from running.

I've seen this with standalone class files - my guess is that Unity is attempting to treat the class script the same way it treats MonoBehaviours, and when it can't it raises the warning.

If there's anyone from Unity reading this, can you guys elaborate?

 

I see - thanks for the info.

 

This library is awesome thank you for sharing, Any way of suppressing the warnings? Those are pretty annoying.

 

thank you very much on the info and files, very very useful

 

Not right now. They'll go away in a future release of Unity.

 

I'm trying to create a pursue behavior that avoids obstacles, I'm using the WanderRadarBehavior from the obstacle avoidance example as reference, just replacing the wander part of it with a pursueBehavior.

For some reason this doesn't work, my object pursues its target but goes over all the obstacles, I also don't see any of the red debug lines so I can only assume I did something wrong.

Any pointers?

here's how my class looks like

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System.Collections;
4. using UnitySteer;
5. using UnitySteer.Vehicles;
6.  
7. public class PursueRadarBehavior : PursuerBehavior , IRadarReceiver{
8.    
9.     public LayerMask ObstacleLayer;
10.    
11.     // Use this for initialization
12.     protected void Start () {
13.         base.Start();
14.     }
15.    
16.     // Update is called once per frame
17.     protected void Update () {
18.          base.Update();
19.     }
20.    
21.     public void OnRadarEnter( Collider other, Radar sender )
22.     {
23.         Obstacle obstacle;
24.  
25.         if( ( 1 << other.gameObject.layer  ObstacleLayer ) > 0 )
26.         {
27.             obstacle = SphericalObstacle.GetObstacle( other.gameObject );
28.             if( obstacle != null )
29.             {
30.                 Pursuer.Obstacles.Add( obstacle );
31.             }
32.         }
33.     }
34.    
35.     public void OnRadarExit( Collider other, Radar sender )
36.     {
37.         Obstacle obstacle;
38.        
39.         if( ( 1 << other.gameObject.layer  ObstacleLayer ) > 0 )
40.         {
41.             obstacle = SphericalObstacle.GetObstacle( other.gameObject );
42.             if( obstacle != null )
43.             {
44.                 Pursuer.Obstacles.Remove( obstacle );
45.             }
46.         }
47.     }
48.    
49.    
50.    
51.     public void OnRadarStay( Collider other, Radar sender )
52.     {
53.        
54.     }
55.  
56. }
57.  

 

I kinda got it working, but I had to modify MpPursuer for that purpose, I also had to add some things here and there, are we supposed to be modifying this classes or is there a better way to do all of this?

 

Hola Ratamorph,

(Edited to clarify)

UnitySteer is meant to be a toolbox, not necessarily plug-and-play behaviors, since every vehicle has different requirements. Most of the provided vehicles are meant to be examples of how to implement a specific behavior using the included functions, and then you build your own vehicle by mixing and matching the provided methods.

In the specific case of MpPursuer, it was mostly a direct translation of the original vehicle from OpenSteer, implementing solely the pursuit behavior, and did not have any obstacle avoidance written in.

Cheers,

 

Sweet, awesome job. It is people like you who make unity3d the best of the best.

 

Hola Arges, thanks for the reply, I got obstacle avoidance fully integrated into mpPursuer, now I'm working on getting all the different colliders in unity to work as valid obstacles, this will be a heavier change, so we'll see how that goes, I'll be more than willing to share my changes back if you are interested.

 

Sure, sounds good. Do you use git? If so the best path might be to clone the version at GitHub, which is the most recent one, and then send me your commits.

Cheers,

 

Yes, I got the source from git, I'll let you know once I got something ready and stable, it might be a while because I'm only suppose to work on this on fridays, other than that is my free time.

 

i'd be interested to see your changes too, ratamorph, though i think rather than trying to make other colliders work with radar obstacle avoidance, we might be better served by implementing containment obstacle avoidance into UnitySteer, as demonstrated here:

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/Containment.html

i'm not a very good programmer but i'll start working on this once i fully wrap my head around what's already here. thanks for this btw, arges.

 

That would be useful, let us know how you are doing, I'll take a look at it aswell.

 

also, i don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but when i tried to use WanderRadarBehavior in my own scene, putting the Radar script on the Radar object before the sphere collider component caused the scene to crash on start 80% of the time. adding the script component after the sphere collider component fixed it, but still, it was a bit off-putting.

 

Hello everyone,

Glad to see some lively discussion on UnitySteer.

Regarding obstacle avoidance, what I really want to implement is ClearPath: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/CA/ The algorithm is straightforward enough, and the results as demonstrated are great. I just haven't had the time, busy working on client stuff and a game of my own.

I'm afraid I've never seen that crash teatime. Are you on Windows or Mac?

 

I think right now radar is doing what the blue guy is doing. I have only looked at the code for a about an hour and it does not have the best documentation so I could be wrong.

The blue guy will sometimes going into the grayarea.

 

no, this is more what radar does:

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/steer/Obstacle.html

it only applies a force opposite the obstacle's center, hence it only really works for circular or spherical obstacles. try using it in an enclosed space and it freaks out. containment isn't perfect, but it's much more versatile.

this clearpath stuff is really incredible, though it seems quite a bit over my head right now.

 

From the always interesting Mikko Mononen:

http://digestingduck.blogspot.com/2009/10/velocity-obstacle-prototype.html

These are the HRVOs he refers to:

http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/HRVO/

 

Hi, if any1 has an example of Path and UnitySteer intergrated... please

I'm trying to accomplish it myself but not succussfully yet.

 

Very interesting project.. thanks!

 

We have moved this issue over to Answers:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/254/unitysteer-and-path

 

hi,

I've dowoaded UnitySteer as well as the accompanying example. I opened the example project and added Unitysteer to the assets folder, but I'm confused about the next step.

For example the Avoid obstacles scene.

The Kitten instance in the Hierarchy panel has a Mono Behaviour component added to it and this component requires a Script that is not assigned yet. Which script should I add here?

The same goes for the Proximity detector which is a child of the Kitten. Which script should I assign there? And how can you tell, also for the other scenes/examples?

And what is the function of the Capsule in the scene?

Confused!

thanks for this library though ,

Andy.

 

Hello Andy,

Most odd - it would appear that some references got lost. I have updated the site to the latest version, you can find it here:

http://www.arges-systems.com/files/UnitySteer.zip

Fair warning: this is very much a work-in-progress version, and may contain issues. Do let me know how that goes.

Cheers,

 

ah great,

all the examples are working now,

thanks so much for your fast reply and action,

Andy.

 

AI? take a look,

I want move my fish~~ :wink:

 

I am learning unitysteer and open it in vs2008 today.

When I add the Scripts to Unity,
1. build am empty Boids gameobject
2. Create a Cube, add Rigidbody, SphereCollider and Boid Behaviour script
3. Create ProximityDetector, add Sphere Collider and Radar script which target set to Cube in Scene
4. I created a Cube boid Preabs, drag the Cube to it

The same structure of the sample project.

In the scene, there are a FPC and a plane.

I would like to see how the Cube randomly move. However, it throws nullexception error.

But, when I close it and reopen it, it does not throw error. However, the Cube only move one time and stop.

How should I make it work?

 

Hi Ricardo

Today I downloaded the two Projects from github: Examples and Unitysteer. I have problems thereof:
1.- When I open the UnitySteer Example Project, Unity 2.6.1 asks to me for Upgrading Project, so I did it.
2.- I select the Kitten in the Avoid Obstacle Scene, and missing scripts, so I close the unity and copy the UnitySteer folder to Assets of Example Project. I open the example project again and that's right but...
3.- no namespace "system.linq" and similiar so I did it: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/746/the-type-or-namespace-var-could-not-be-found-in-c. And now I've got this error:
4.- Assets/UnitySteer/Behavor/Vehicle.cs(223,48 ) error CS0117: UnityEngine.Vector3 does not contain a definition for 'Clamp Magnitude'

What Can I do?
Downgrade to unity 2.0 free version?
Downgrade to WindowsXP or just wait (and save money) for unity 3.0?

Thanks in advance

 

Hola Lalo,

I'm afraid the version of UnitySteer currently live is compatible with Unity 3 only. You could check out this revision for a version compatible with 2.6:

http://github.com/ricardojmendez/UnitySteer/tree/47df3200a47367bba0016f108be28f37fb423d1e

By clicking on the GitHub download link:

http://github.com/ricardojmendez/UnitySteer/archives/47df3200a47367bba0016f108be28f37fb423d1e

However, I would advise you to wait for Unity 3, as things have changed significantly (for the better!):

http://www.arges-systems.com/articles/42/unitysteer-changes-and-re-organization

Cheers,

 

Gracias Ricardo

I'll be watching for the news, and again thank you so much for your time to this project and for answer too.

Have a nice day Ricardo :wink:

Lalo

 

Hello, I started playing with unitysteer 2 days ago, but i was using the sources from the example project. Added my code on top of it, and it was working correctly today. I updated to the new master branch, only changing the SteerForTarget with SteerForPoint and updating the layers thing, and my units seem different, they seem to be behaving a bit more dumb, sometimes one of them wanders off for 20 secs and then comes back.

Would it be possible to update the example project, so I could see how the new changes fit in?

 

I noticed you said you're mostly using non-monobehaviour baseclasses, so I took a look as i'm also interested in using MB's as wrappers (and doing away with 8 bazillion Unity-specific retardations), but it's mostly Utility/Helper classes and delegates. Did you change it around a bit since the initial post?

 

SilentWarrior, do your vehicles use anything that descends from SteerForNeighbor by any chance? That change has been there for a bit, but I can't think of anything else that might be affecting you.

The project on github *is* the latest sample project, so do let me know if any of the scenes are not behaving as you would expect.

 

Hi Duke,

Yes, I did. The changes are detailed here, and they make UnitySteer significantly more modular than before. I'm actually gearing up to tag this latest version as 2.0, as I'm pretty close to done with the polishing.

I believe this was the latest version that had the wrapped classes, in case you're curious: http://github.com/ricardojmendez/UnitySteer/tree/47df3200a47367bba0016f108be28f37fb423d1e

 

Hi Arges I have the unity3d 3 pro version and I can't open the exemple project (unity3d failed to open this project "Creating directory error")
Do you already seen this?

 

Sorry Arges to get the latest version of unitysteer I just get the last version from the http://github.com/ricardojmendez/UnitySteer site (Download button)

 

Hi Leonardo,

Yes, that is the latest version of the sources, but I'm afraid I've never seen that error. I take it you're also getting the latest version of the examples themselves from here, correct?