Autodesk Kynapse

Autodesk Kynapse is an artificial intelligence middleware that helps game developers build more compelling character behaviors in video games. It offers high performance pathfinding within dynamic environments, and automated tools for generating AI data. Kynapse has been successfully integrated into at least 100 high profile games of different genres. Using Kynapse, developers can help improve game play while reducing development costs and cutting time to market.

Kynapse provides the low-level AI algorithms that enable game developers to build compelling behaviors on top of. Using Kynapse, game developers can be more focused on the game play, building unique and compelling experiences. Kynapse provides a framework so that the game developer does not need to worry about low level code, complex algorithms and hardware optimizations. Furthermore, Autodesk’s philosophy with Kynapse is that it should be an off-the-shelf solution that 'just works' with minimal time to integrate. With this in mind, Autodesk’s goal is that Kynapse can help the game developer build compelling AI behavior more quickly and reduce development time, resulting in a game title that is more fun and hopefully profitable.

Why Kynapse?

Production proven solution

Kynapse has been used in at least 100 games spanning multiple genres: Massively Multiplayer Online Games, First Person Shooters, Action Games and Role Playing Games. As mentioned earlier, this wealth of real-world usage has resulted in a highly robust solution with technology from the collective needs of the industry

Extensible

Kynapse provides a flexible framework that is extensible to support the many ways that a game character would move in a world. The underlying Kynapse framework provides a wealth of tools that developers can use to build rich and compelling AI.

High runtime performance

Special attention has been paid to building a high performance, lightweight runtime AI engine for Kynapse. Specific runtime performance features are: time slicing, real-time data streaming, platform-specific optimizations and multi-threaded/core support. These optimizations enable Kynapse to perform efficiently across many platforms and scale to large, complex levels with high numbers of characters.

Fast data generation performance

In the past, Kynapse might have gotten a reputation for having somewhat slower PathData generation speed. This is no longer the case, as performance has been markedly improved since version 7. Current versions of Kynapse provide faster PathData generation performance on large datasets, leveraging on optimizations made to underlying algorithms and multi-threading enhancements.

Get support when needed, confidentially and quickly

While open-source solutions have their benefits, they do come with some drawbacks. When things get tough and help is needed, it’s really not available. Trying to get help from an open-source community likely means waiting for other developers to answer in their spare time. If the problem is obscure, there's a chance it won't be answered. Also, game production may be confidential, which means information can't be divulged on a public forum. Kynapse customers are given access to fast, private support from a dedicated, experienced full-time team.

Source code is available

The Kynapse runtime library source code can be made available. This may be useful if the production has specific needs that the Kynapse run-time library does not already provide.