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UnitySteer vs A* Pathfinding Project vs Apex Path & Apex Steer

Discussion in 'Immediate Mode GUI (IMGUI)' started by douglasg14b, Apr 15, 2015.

  1. douglasg14b

    douglasg14b

    Joined:
    Oct 2, 2014
    Posts:
    34
    I'm creating a 2D space RTS (on the XZ plane so navmeshes work fine) and want to have dynamic pathfinding, local avoidance, formations, steering behaviors (follow, evade...etc) as well as inertial steering (object has inertia and has to have counter force to slow down and to turn in a different direction).

    The later is a big one, I want movement to look natural, if a ship is traveling in one direction and it suddenly has a destination that's at a 90 degree angle to it's current vector it has to turn towards it and slow down. Crappy image example: http://i.imgur.com/kr8NrNs.png

    ____________________________________________________
    Apex Steer: http://apexgametools.com/apex-steer/

    Apex Path: http://apexgametools.com/products/apex-path/


    Apex Path provides decent pathfinding, asynchronous processing, and easy to use controls/components right out of the box in addition to good documentation and plenty of tutorial videos for $65. Apex Steer is an extension of it, it's $65 and is a fairly new plugin. It provides formations, local avoidance, and snazzy vector fields. I'm not sure what other features it has though past whats listed on the website for it.

    ____________________________________________________
    Unity Steer: http://arges-systems.com/blog/category/unitysteer/ & https://github.com/ricardojmendez/UnitySteer & http://arges-systems.com/blog/2009/07/08/unitysteer-steering-components-for-unity/

    Unity Steer is free. It seems to be able to do everything to the moon and back: Steering, local avoidance, pathfinding, collisions, swarming, following, evasion...etc This seems like the obvious choice, though it does not appear to be very easy to use. Documentation is lacking and there is not many tutorials. I might spend as much time trying to figure out how to use it, as I would modifying an already existing pathfinding and steering plugin. Not sure if it has asynchronous processing.
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    A* PathFinding Project: http://arongranberg.com/astar/ & https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/1876

    A* Pathfinding Project does everything pathfinding, it does not seem to have steering behaviors (as far as I know) and costs $100. However it does have local avoidance, dynamic obstacles, and asynchronous processing. It does not seem to have any steering behaviors though. It does seem to do pathfinding even better than Apex Path.

    ___________________________________________________________


    TL;DR
    Apex Path/Steer seem very polished, but for the steep price of $130, I'm not sure of the complete featureset, has vector fields. UnitySteer seems to do it all and some, is free, but may be fairly difficult to use, does not have vector fields. A* Pathfinding Project does some required things very well, even better than Apex Path, but it's lacking some steering necessities.

    My wallet is fairly shallow, so I can't afford to just try them all.

    What do you guys think? I want to hear some opinions on these.
     
  2. jerotas

    jerotas

    Joined:
    Sep 4, 2011
    Posts:
    5,572
    Used the free version of A* (It's still available on his website), and it is blazing fast. Apex Path is on sale for half off this month :)
     
  3. Ben-BearFish

    Ben-BearFish

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2011
    Posts:
    1,204
    @douglasg14b Did you make any discoveries or opinions of the different plugins? I'm facing your same decision.