DSN Release Notes

Fixed

• Memory leak related to tracking paths

• Crash that could occur in packaged builds when cleaning up nav data

• Rare crash during component updates

• Bug which could cause various AI re-pathing issues

Added

• CanReachTarget function to test if a target can be pathed to

  • Can be expensive as it will perform a pathing operation

• GetPathToTarget function which returns raw path data to a target without moving

  • Can be expensive as it will perform a pathing operation

• EnhancedNavModBrushTest property added to SurfaceNavProxy

  • Improves handling some types of nav modifier volume brushes

Changed

• Slightly decreased memory usage by splitting the nav point object type into 2 different object types

• Minor improvement to pathing algorithm when dealing with nav modifiers

Fixed

• Bug related to AI not using valid nav links

• Bug related to finding the closest start/end points during path finding

• Bug related to pawn’s offset location being calculated incorrectly when pawn is scaled

• Crash that resulted on client when joining a server or when server shut down

Added

•  Support for origin shifting

• Property in SurfaceNavProxy to show debug stats

Changed

• Moved resource heavy logic to background threads

  • This means you have more of the main game thread available for other work

• Improved navigation generation performance when moving a nav mesh volume such as to track onto a player

• Decreased r/w lock instances by moving nav point lock to the owning nav block

  • Too many locks caused problems with some platforms

Fixed

• Rare crash when attempting to find closest planet for navigation

• Crash that could occur when deleting a SurfaceNavPawn from the scene

• Bug related to invoker component disappearing from actors when opening the project

Added

•  Option to Show Where Navigation Ends

  • This will help identify problem areas that may need adjustments

• Added blueprint node to get a random reachable point nearby

• Added blueprint nodes to move to a random point nearby

• Added behavior tree node for moving to a random point nearby

Changed

• Minor adjustments to some blueprint function categories

Fixed

• Fixed uncommon issue where nav point normals could be flipped on very small geometry

• Added defaults for some structs to get rid of uninitialized property log output

• Bug where navigation wasn’t generating on certain types of collision that it should detect

FIXED

• Bug which caused an ensure test to fail when iterating over a nav link array.

  • This bug would force a breakpoint when debugging, but would not crash. 

• Compile error when building against UE5.4 Preview.

Added

• Linux support!

• Ability to control trace profile (or channel) used for generating navigation.

• Functions to allow dynamically disabling/enabling of DSN plugin's navigation generation.

• Ability to control min/max navigation data to process per tick.

• Ability to offset the generated navigation to better control the alignment in your level.

  • This will especially benefit blocky/voxel worlds.

• Ability to apply pathing expense multipliers per pawn based on surface angles.

  • e.g. It could be more expensive for your pawn to go climb a wall vs walking around it on the ground.

• Visual indicator for a pawn's navigation offset location will now show as a small blue wire sphere.

  • This is shown in the level editor when you select the pawn or in BP editor viewport for the pawn when selecting the movement component.

• Control how far the AI can be from navigation and still successfully path.

  • Pathing attempts will fail if pawn is beyond this distance from any DSN navigation.

• Inside corner assist which will help decrease pawns floating over inside corners

• Ability to configure your pawn to dynamically decelerate when approaching an inside/outside corner or turn.

• Custom Surface Nav Pawn which is pre-configured with correct movement component.

• Functions for getting raw DSN pathing data from within the pawn's controller.

• Events in SurfaceNavPathFollowingComponent to get notified when certain pathing data changes.

• Function to get the approximate length of the path between 2 locations

Changed

• Using bit fields in some heavily used objects to slightly decrease memory usage.

• Parameters used for pawn movement offset which will give more granular control.

  • Be sure to update the new parameters in your pawn so the offset is as expected.

• Navigation generation no longer relies on block size and, instead, uses grid point distance and a grid point count to determine the size of the block.

  • In prior versions, the final calculated grid point distance could be different than what was provided to force it into the block size.

• Increase max value of CleanBlockInterval from 10 to 30 which helps to prevent blocks from getting cleaned up prematurely in cases where navigation generation could be lowed such as drawing a lot of debug data.

• Changed the name of an async blueprint pathing node from "Move To Location or Actor" to "Surface Nav Move To Location or Actor" to remove confusion as the name conflicted with a native UE pathing function.

• Improved the dynamic braking algorithm instead of needing to use fixed braking distance.

• Improved how AI pathing debug data is displayed.

  • Now only shows the active path and will highlight current target point as yellow.

Fixed

• Bug where a pawn could use the wrong nav point acceptance radius for a nav link in a shipping build

• Pathing bug that could cause the pawn to choose a less efficient path in some circumstances

• Bug related to nav links which could cause a crash in certain scenarios

Known Bugs

• While in editor mode, navigation is not updated while moving/scaling/rotating nav modifier volumes.

  • Workaround: Within SurfaceNavProxy, use the "Surface Nav Rebuild All" button.

• Ensure condition failure in Array.h related to nav link logic which can lead to forced breakpoint when debugging.

  • You can continue through this breakpoint and keep running

  • Much stress testing has been done with no actual crash

  • A patch is in the works for this issue

FIXED

• Bug when AI would re-path and wouldn't always use the correct starting point for the path under certain conditions.

• Bug which could affect AI movement over basic nav links.

FIXED

• Crash when using this plugin's EQS cone generator with certain parameter values

• Rare crash due to race condition when unloading a world or streamed level

• Issue where navigation would not build on BSP brushes

  • Limitation: Changes to brushes do not trigger automatic navigation rebuilds so you must use the Surface Nav Rebuild All button on the proxy after moving your brushes/resizing

• Errors when building/packaging for Linux

  • I have not done testing of the plugin in Linux, this is just early work getting it to build for when I'm able to test on Linux

ADDED

• Advanced parameters added to SurfaceNavProxy to control the shapes the plugin uses for testing overlaps

  • It came to my attention that certain versions of UE have inconsistent results with sphere overlaps on landscapes so I added this option in case it's needed.

FIXED

• Bug where the Surface Nav AI MoveTo function would repeatedly trigger the on failed pin

• Packaging errors

FIXED

• Crash related to nav links being moved around or removed from the level

• Crash when running game as standalone

• Occasional crash when a level is unloaded

FIXED

• Bug where navigation would not generate correctly for large coordinates within a large level.

Added

• EQS Support

  • Requires use of DSN generators

  • Some built-in EQS tests will work, but there is a DSN specific test for pathfinding

• Support for visualizing navigation data in-editor, without running game

• Properties to control display of navigation data

• Properties for better control of various timer intervals

• Properties in Surface Nav Movement Component to give better control of how to get over corners

Changed

• Slight performance improvement to navigation generation

• Slight performance improvement to pathfinding

• Slightly decreased memory usage

• Removed block pooling as block processing is faster now so no longer needs to be pooled

• Removed properties which are no longer used

• Available input parameters changed for the Draw Debug Nav Data function

• Migrated navigation generation logic from SurfaceNavBuilder to the SurfaceNavigationSystem

• Replaced Surface Nav Grid Builder with Surface Nav Proxy to better match the role it plays now

  • Surface Nav Grid Builder still exists in this version as to not break existing levels

• Changed the way nav point normals are determined which will help with min/max angle limits

Fixed

• Multiple bugs related to rare crashes

• Bug related to incorrect navigation generation under certain conditions

• Bug related to navigation and pathing when using angle limits on rough terrain

• Bug related to crash that could occur while physics simulations are happening during navigation generation

• Bug where UE native navigation progress could stall and never finish

Known Bugs

• While in editor mode, navigation is not updated while moving/scaling/rotating nav modifier volumes.

  • Workaround: Within SurfaceNavProxy, use the "Surface Nav Rebuild All" button.

• In UE5.3 the visualization of the nav data is not fully drawn on screen. 

  • Moving around will show different parts of the navigation, but is not fully displayed.

  • This only affects navigation visualization, navigation is still correctly generated and working.

• In UE5.3 the visualization shows navigation on the other side of walls and other meshes instead of just the side the camera is currently on. 

FIXED

• Bug when attempting to path find to a point under the navigable surface which would cause the pathing request would fail.

• Bug when attempting to add invisible collision (ie: Collision Box) that should be navigable, but no navigation would be generated on the collision.

FIXED

• Issue where the AI can approach a destination actor using the wrong offset location which can lead to undesired results.

FIXED

• Issue where AI would try to choose navigation point on opposite side of narrow platform/wall

• Multiple path following bugs related to the AI pawn and target rotations

  • This should improve final positioning when reaching a target, but may require adjusting existing acceptance radius settings within the SurfaceNavMovement component and/or on movement tasks (such as the SurfaceNav Move To behavior tree node)

CHANGED

• Adjustments to demo projects to better work with path following fixes above

FIXED

• Corrected code that was not properly filtering out components related to Voxel Plugin 2.0 support

• Issues with navigation generating on WorldScape collision (requires WorldScape patch to fully work)

• Compile errors for UE5.2 Preview1

CHANGED

• Version number of plugin shown in UE will now include patch number

FIXED

• Rare crash when quitting or changing levels

• Navigation would not generate when playing standalone mode within editor

• Multiple memory leaks

FIXED

• Multiple crashes when performing server travel due to race conditions

FIXED

• Issue where environment changes could lead to falsely marking parts of the navigation as invalid

• Issue where environment changes caused some valid navigation to be left detached and unusable

• Issue with bad navigation generation on UE landscapes

• Crash due to race condition that was being masked by one, or more, of the above issues

FIXED

• Issue where surfaces at very specific locations may not properly generate navigation

  • This fix may also make the property "Magic Line Trace Offset" unnecessary.

• Experimental corner adjustment feature not working correctly in 4.27.

CHANGED

• Changed default value for "Magic Line Trace Offset" to zero since it may no longer be needed with the above fix.

  • If there's no community feedback about this, then I'll deprecate this property and eventually remove it.

FIXED

• Issue with behavior tree task "SurfaceNav Move To" when project setting "Enable BTAITasks" was not enabled

  • The above setting is disabled by default in UE4.27

• Undesired behavior with path following when nearing goal actor that suddenly moved away.

FIXED

• DrawDebugNavData function - Nav point neighbor direction lines weren't respecting duration time and would persist

• Issue with navigation not generating on Voxel Plugin v2

• Occasional crash when quitting game in PIE

  • Confirmation is difficult as it was very rare

• Occasional crash when quitting a world made with Voxel Plugin 1.2

  • Confirmation is difficult as it was very rare

• Repathing could cause some pathing parameters to be reset to defaults for repaths

• Certain actor shapes/size/properties caused starting point of path to be on underside of a platform

• Issue which could cause navigation to not fully generate if a condition was met.

CHANGED 

• No longer need to manually change the path following component to use the DSN plugin's implementation when using the SurfaceNavAIController

  • It is now handled automatically when using SurfaceNavAIController

• Adjustments made for max pathing iterations

  • Max was increased from 20000 to 50000

ADDED

• Can now set per pawn max iterations via surface nav movement component

  • Useful in cases where you only want smarter AI to be able to path find longer distances

• Support added for UE 4.27

  • Now supports 4.27 - 5.1

  • Could not publish for 4.26 due to Epic requirements for max 3 latest versions for code plugins

• Navigation can now generate without player in level when relevant setting is enabled in grid builder

  • May be needed in cases where dev would like to run simulation without a player

• Added a Surface Nav AI MoveTo function

  • Async pathfinding BP node

  • Note: Using the Surface Nav Move To tasks within Behavior Trees still appears to be more performant

• Experimental Features

  • Added properties to SurfaceNavMovementComponent which allows selecting more advanced rotation modes instead of just using the nav point's normal to determine rotation

  • Added properties to SurfaceNavMovementComponent to improve corner traversal