The dotsnav from dotsnav

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Introduction

DotsNav is a fully dynamic and robust planar navmesh Unity package built on DOTS. It is fast enough to add and remove many obstacles each frame, supports agents of any size, and can be used through monobehaviours without prior knowledge of DOTS.

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Getting Started

Installation

If OpenUpm is not installed, ensure Node.js is installed so you have access to npm and run:

npm install -g openupm-cli

To add DotsNav to a Unity project, open a prompt in the project root and run:

openupm add com.bassmit.dotsnav

Planes

Attach a DotsNavPlane behaviour to a gameobject. Its border will be drawn in the scene view.

To create a navmesh attach a DotsNavNavmesh behaviour. The value of ExpectedVerts determines the size of initial allocations.

To enable local avoidance attach a DotsNavLocalAvoidance behaviour. This behaviour does not require a navmesh.

Pathfinder

To enable path finding attach a DotsNavPathfinder behaviour to a gameobject. The pathfinder manages the resources required to search for paths on any number of threads, and only one pathfinder is allowed at any time.

Obstacles

To create an obstacle add a DotsNavObstacle behaviour to a gameobject and assign the Plane field. When spawning obstacle prefabs make sure to assign the Plane immediately after instantiation.

Add DotsNavNavmeshObstacle and DotsNavLocalAvoidanceObstacle behaviours as appropriate.

Add a few vertices and move them around using the position handle. The edit mode colors can be set in the DotsNav tab in Preferences.

Alternatively an obstacle's Vertices array can be populated through script. Obstacle gameobjects can be scaled, rotated and used as prefabs. Obstacles are projected on to their respective planes when inserted.

Agents

To create an agent attach a DotsNavAgent behaviour to a gameobject and assign the Plane field. When spawning agent prefabs make sure to assign the Plane immediately after instantiation.

Add DotsNavPathfindingAgent and DotsNavLocalAvoidanceAgent behaviours as appropriate.

Note that DotsNavPathfindingAgent and DotsNavLocalAvoidanceAgent have Direction and Velocity fields respectively. Currently no steering behaviours are provided, but a basic example can be seen in the avoidance sample scene.

Conversion to DOTS

Attach a Convert to Entity component all to planes, agents, obstacles and the pathfinder. When using monobehaviours to develop a project choose “Convert and Inject”. Obstacles and agents can then be removed by destroying the associated gameobject. Planes can be disposed of similarly.

Renderer

To draw the navmesh while playing, add a DotsNavRenderer component to a gameobject. If the renderer is attached to the camera it can draw in the game view as well as the scene view.

Path Queries

Path queries can be enqueued using DotsNavAgent.FindPath.

Next navmesh update a path will be calculated.

Using the default settings, invalidated paths are recalculated automatically.

For multiple agents, path finding is performed in parallel.

Creating obstacles from code

Obstacle prefabs are automatically enqueued for insertion when spawned. Alternatively obstacles can be inserted by calling InsertObstacle and providing a list of vertices.

Obstacles can be removed by destroying a previously spawned gameobject, or by calling RemoveObstacle providing an id returned by InsertObstacle.

Getting Started with DOTS

Conversion

When using monobehaviour conversion use “Convert and Destroy”.

You can use the DOTS Editor to inspect the entities in the sample scenes to get a better understanding of the components involved.

API

All public APIs expose read-only operations. Write operations are triggered by creating entities with appropriate archetypes, or updating component data.