Hello everyone!
So its the beginning of the sixth week. The first evaluation results are out and fortunately, I made it till here. :D
This week I implemented the query functions present in DetourNavMeshQuery class. There are primarily two query functions: findPath() and findStraightPath(). Both have their own uses. The implementation initially looked to be easy, but got real complex when I started coding. There were many other function calls I had to make in order to implement these two functions, and in process taking care of the variables involved.
Both the functions have their usecases. FindPath() returns the polygons present in the path corridor. Then, its over to us how we connect polygons to complete the path. FindStraightPath() directly returns array of vertices. Here I present an example for each path finding query:
The green line shows the path in both the above images. The first image makes the findPath() query while the second one makes the findStraightPath() query.
Though, on the basis of these two images, you might conclude that findStraightPath() is obviously better among the two, but trust me, you won't always want to use findStraightPath(). You will know when you use it. :P
Apart from this, I spent time in dividing the library into 2 separate libraries: navmeshgen and navigation. The navmeshgen library provides tool to generate the polygon mesh, detail polygon mesh and navmesh. The navigation library provides tool to further process the navmesh and make queries over it. Recast, NavMeshBuilder are included in navmeshgen while Detour, NavMesh, NavMeshNode, NavMeshQuery are included in navigation.
This week I plan to make BAM serialization possible and work on the reviews made by mentor @moguri over my PR at Github.
Will return next week with more exciting stuff. Till then, stay safe!