Two advanced tools now work together to give game AI developers more power to
create intelligent behaviors and interesting interactions for game agents
SAN FRANCISCO, California, March 10, 2005 – Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (www.stottlerhenkeinc.com), a leading provider of AI middleware for games and simulations, today announced integration between SimBionic(TM) — Stottler Henke’s award-winning visual authoring tool for rapidly creating intelligent behaviors that enhance characters in computer games without programming – and the PathEngine(TM) toolkit for pathfinding and intelligent agent movement. The products can now be used together by game AI developers to more easily and efficiently specify complex behaviors and interactions with game characters.
Stottler Henke, a San Mateo, California-based software development and consulting firm, made its announcement today at the 2005 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. The company is exhibiting there in booth #119.
“Providing a combined solution of SimBionic AI middleware and PathEngine’s superior pathfinding middleware gives our customers the power and flexibility they have been demanding,” said Dan Fu, head of the SimBionic group at Stottler Henke. “The simplicity of the SimBionic AI Middleware architecture made integration with PathEngine a no- brainer.”
“We’re excited to be working closely with Stottler Henke,” said Thomas Young, president of PathEngine. “The functionality offered by the two products is perfectly complimentary and a combined solution is extremely compelling for companies wishing to save development costs and reduce risk without giving up power or flexibility.”
SimBionic and PathEngine are available immediately. Contact Stottler Henke for details.
SimBionic’s components
SimBionic consists of two major components: a visual authoring tool and a runtime engine. The SimBionic authoring tool is a standard Windows application. SimBionic presents its logic graphically, communicating more information to more people compared to textual methods. Visual representations can be understood by experts and software programmers alike, so they can speak the same language resulting in superior collaborative development. The SimBionic runtime engine takes the behavior description, and makes it operational within a game or training simulation. The engine is efficient, highly scalable, and provides a Java technology or C++ application programming interface so software developers can easily interface it with simulations and games. The SimBionic authoring tool runs on Microsoft Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP operating systems. The SimBionic runtime engine runs on these operating systems and also on Linux.
An ‘integrated movement model’ architecture for robust agent movement
By providing both collision and pathfinding operations against a single advanced movement model, PathEngine is unique in providing a fundamentally robust basis for the implementation of intelligent agent movement. PathEngine’s movement model supports arbitrary connections between overlapping ground layers and accounts (exactly) for agent size. Powerful ‘collision context’ mechanisms seamlessly integrate dynamic obstacles into this movement mode and the inclusion of ground management functionality makes PathEngine a truly complete agent movement solution and an ideal partner for SimBionic’s visual behavior authoring system.
About Stottler Henke
Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches. The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training, planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support, and computer security and reliability. Stottler Henke’s clients include manufacturers, retailers, educational media companies and government agencies.
Email: ong@stottlerhenke.com
Contact #: 650.931.2710
About PathEngine
Founded in 2000, PathEngine is built on experience providing pathfinding and AI to the games industry over a period of more than 10 years. The PathEngine toolkit uses a ‘points of visibility’ approach to pathfinding, which enables extremely fast pathfinding, even over long distances, and pathfinding against a sophisticated integrated movement model. In addition to pathfinding, PathEngine also provides collision and ground management functionality and helper methods for robust movement along paths.
March 10, 2005