Skate 3 Adopts NavPower A.I. Pathfinding Package

Electronic Arts licensed BabelFlux's A.I. pathfinding package NavPower for Burnaby, B.C.-based Black Box's upcoming game, Skate 3, the companies announced on Tuesday. Black Box CTO Mike Rayner said in a statement, "We chose NavPower because it provides the best support for our large, complex levels in terms of the rapid build process and the compact memory footprint." BabelFlux said EA, owner of Black Box, licensed NavPower for "other games in development at EA," but did not offer specifics on game titles. Skate 3 is due on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in May 2010. BabelFlux also said its A.I. middleware is "designed to support open world games." Other games that have used NavPower technology include Namco Bandai's Afro Samurai and Eidos' Tomb Raider: Underworld. Earlier this year, online game developer Trion World Networks also announced that it licensed NavPower for multiple titles. NavPower has a navmesh auto-generation library and runtime system which BabelFlux says stitches hundreds of meshes together automatically for use in large open worlds. BabelFlux released NavPower version 2.0 in June this year.