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How Pathfinding Works In Supreme Commander 2

Chris Taylor returns to tell you about this newfangled "flowfield" technology.

Mar. 3 2010

Posted by: Brad

In This Episode:

Supreme Commander 2

65 Comments

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the_purgatory_station

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cool.  i love tech demos.
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MarkWahlberg

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Edited By MarkWahlberg

Tired of your troops acting like dumbasses? Are your move commands taking forever to be obeyed?   Well, you're in Luck! Introducing the new Flowfield Pathfinder 9000! It slices! It dices! it makes logical troop movements!  
 
Here we see the old system, taking like 30 seconds for these two dudes to walk around each other like nervous douches in a hallway! but look! The Flowfield only takes 10 SECONDS! Amazing! Order now, and we'll throw in a limited edition FreeFlow Tote Bag for only $4.99! That's right! $4.99! ORDER NOW!

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Aarny91

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Edited By Aarny91

Really nice.

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hoyle1911

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Edited By hoyle1911

FYI, the Total War series always had this technology of two cohorts/regiments passing through each other without units spinning around not knowing what to do.  It's good to see other games adopt it, although it's kind of sad it took until 2010 to still see such rudimentary pathfinding implemented.  Oh well, Total War has its own pathfinding annoyances too.  Try navigating through a breach in a fortress wall or a town full of small buildings.  You'll want to rip your hair out.

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ONEmileperhour

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Edited By ONEmileperhour

UW! UW! UW! best known for creating pathfinding technology!!.......

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digital_sin

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Edited By digital_sin

I prefer the Clipping technology, where stuff just goes through stuff.

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TigerDX

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Edited By TigerDX

I played the demo and the thing that struck me about the unit movement is how smaller units will be pushed around like they're sliding on an oil-slick. Was a little off-putting, but apart from that I can see the game has merits... and Nolan North

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MeatSim

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Edited By MeatSim

Doesn't seem like a big deal to me but I am not game programmer.

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Kohe321

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Edited By Kohe321

Cool stuff

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buckybit

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Edited By buckybit
@RagingLion said:
" As sciencey person that stuff seems pretty cool regardless of the game. "
As a "sciencey" person you laugh about these videos and don't take Chris serious. :)
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Detrian

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Edited By Detrian

"Tried to fool the pathfinder by giving ANOTHER MOVE COMMAND"
 
Really? Giving an extra move command is putting this thing to the test? Cause if you play any rts you'd know you sometimes give like 5 different move commands to a unit in a second during intense battles.

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Verge

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Edited By Verge

 One of the things I took away from the demo was how awful the path finding was. I has units getting stuck in others and being pushed around. But I guess the demo was a work in progress, maybe the path finding was corrected late in development. At least the demo ran smooth, I saw the last game with the expansion run in to frame rate issues . . .on a 9800GX2.

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phrosnite

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Edited By phrosnite
@Scroll:  I meant that they failed at the path-finding system... Yes, I know 81% doesn't mean the game is bad.
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Tordah

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Edited By Tordah

That's pretty awesome. I hate when you have large groups of units that get stuck on each other. This happens in pretty much all RTS games I've played so far.

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scroll

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Edited By scroll
@phrosnite: By the way, 81% isn't a fail, it's just not that fantastic.
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phrosnite

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Edited By phrosnite

Strangely in the reviews people say that there were a lot problems with path-finding... Pity, I like GPG and Chris in particular and I'm sad to see them fail... The games is already 81% on metacritic *sad*
 
I really hope sh*t like that doesn't happen with Chaos Rising which is the RTS I'm most looking forward to.

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borodin

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Edited By borodin

I hated the demo but I might buy it anyway just because Chris Taylor is so damn nice!

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Moogy

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Edited By Moogy

First trailer that actually makes me want to play the game.

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RagingLion

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Edited By RagingLion

As sciencey person that stuff seems pretty cool regardless of the game.

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RIDEBIRD

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Edited By RIDEBIRD

In the demo the pathfinding was absolutely terrible. I played it for less then an hour, but I had at least 30% of my units getting stuck some time or just not figuring out what to do.

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Zeninnnnnnnn

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Edited By Zeninnnnnnnn

My jaw fucking dropped when I saw that.  Please be real.

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Aeterna

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Edited By Aeterna

That's really impressive if it actually works like that normally.

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singular

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Edited By singular

The "typical RTS" example seemed a bit exaggerated ^^
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Marz

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Edited By Marz

This sounds nice and all but it still doesn't solve problems of units getting caughtt up on terrain and going off on their own, since it's still happening in this game.

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Zanthox

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Edited By Zanthox

dag yo, dat looks goooood!

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rox360

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Edited By rox360

That's fantastic. The pathfinding was one of my biggest gripes about the first game, glad to see something done to it. The first Supreme Commander's pathfinding was almost enough to ruin the game for me, even.
 
@Bgrngod said:

" Wouldn't it be easier to allow them to just walk through each other?  Bamn.  Problem solved.  Do they still get hung up walking around corners? "
Not only would that look immensely stupid, you could abuse it a lot, too, especially in a SupCom kind of game. First of all, there'd be no reason for units to keep a formation of any kind, so a huge army would probably move in a single, thin line. It'd be hard to distinguish your units, and even worse for your opponent. Second, I'm not sure how well blockades can play out in this kind of game, but I imagine there would be some tactical value in having your own units block your opponent's path to the degree that they can't physically move through without wasting time destroying your smaller guys. And lastly, you could potentially stack units to hide how many you have and of what kind. Especially considering SupCom's experimental units that would easily be big enough to hide an entire platoon of low-tier units inside them.
 
Besides, good pathfinding will do wonders for navigating the environment efficiently, too. Even making it through a haphazardly built base can be trickier than it should be for units in this kind of game.
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Bgrngod

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Edited By Bgrngod

Wouldn't it be easier to allow them to just walk through each other?  Bamn.  Problem solved.
 
Do they still get hung up walking around corners?

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TheIneffableBob

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Edited By TheIneffableBob
@Shirogane said:
" From a programmers perspective, that's really freakin awesome. However, i don't think anybody else really cares all that much.. Kinda sad, cause this really is some really awesome stuff happening here. "
People definitely care.
The first SupCom's pathfinding was atrocious.
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deactivated-607210540bdde

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@Shirogane:  Yah, pathfinding is very interesting, from pure math pov, optimal path requires you to maximize every single unit's current outcome, which is essentially solving the  Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation backwardly and the Fokker-Planck equation forwardly. However this method is implicit and too slow to be used in realtime pathfinding, but traditional algorithm ended up a chaos for a large amount of units. I am really curious of how those ppl in UW managed to get such good results, since I am also a researcher on physics simulation of large scale lol
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Crono

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Edited By Crono

I think it is really awesome new way of handling such an old facet of the RTS genre.  That said - I am so familiar with how the old system works in nearly every game that I wonder if it is going to be confusing at first.  Anyway, looks awesome is my point.

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Zelnox

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Edited By Zelnox

Quite impressive.

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FunExplosions

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Edited By FunExplosions
@Fripplebubby said:
" That is something that should have existed a while ago, but still nice that we're finally seeing it. Still won't buy your damn game, though.  "
Lol. Exactly how I feel. Hope everyone takes advantage of this.
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mankvill

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Edited By mankvill

That's.......actually pretty cool.

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kwyee

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Edited By kwyee

Wow awesome! I was so impressed that i dropped my sandwich! (on to the plate, fortunately no sandwich was harmed).   Makes me interested in RTSes again

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AddyMac

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Edited By AddyMac

Hope Blizzard sees this.

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Cybexx

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Edited By Cybexx

So A* with flocking then? I would like to see this example mixed with Terrain and Buildings.

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fallen_elite

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Edited By fallen_elite
@Olivaw said:
" What's funny is that there are reports out there that the pathfinding sucks hard.  Amusing! "
From reviews? My guess is early review code.
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Crocio

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Edited By Crocio

Bah, no details on  the algorithm.

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Sneakybadger

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Edited By Sneakybadger

Im actually impressed

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ShadowSkill11

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Edited By ShadowSkill11

Who the fuck cares? Ask why he turned Supreme Commander into Command & Conquer 3.25.

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Olivaw

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Edited By Olivaw

What's funny is that there are reports out there that the pathfinding sucks hard.
 
Amusing!

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lhaymehr

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Edited By lhaymehr

News flash!!! A game developer knows how to use multi-dimensional arrays! 
Unprecedented! An actual working algorithm! 

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Stargate174

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Edited By Stargate174

YAWN

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drwhat

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Edited By drwhat

Having worked on pathfinding before, this stuff is very cool.
 
If anyone's interested, the technology he mentioned is detailed in a paper titled "Continuum Crowds". The research project website is here.

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nasher27

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Edited By nasher27

Yo dawg, this game is already out

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minorinya

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Edited By minorinya

Curious to see how this compares to the Starcraft 2 pathfinding algorithm.

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Luke

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Edited By Luke
@project343 said:

" Was "shit" really necessary? "Changes the shit out of RTS gaming!" ... like, really? :| "

Lol, I think he said "shape" not shit.  "Changes the shape of RTS gaming."
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paulunga

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Edited By paulunga
@project343 said:

" Was "shit" really necessary? "Changes the shit out of RTS gaming!" ... like, really? :| "

He said "...changes the shape of RTS gaming." SHAPE.
 
Edit: Yeah, what the other two guys said. ;)
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emkeighcameron

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Edited By emkeighcameron
@project343 said:
" Was "shit" really necessary? "Changes the shit out of RTS gaming!" ... like, really? :| "
Wasn't it "shape"?
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MatthewRorie

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Edited By MatthewRorie
@project343:  Pretty sure he says "changing the shape".