Once you have understood the main concepts of Autodesk Navigation outlined in the Overview, and have seen it in action using the sample browser in the Navigation Lab (see Getting Started with the Navigation Lab), you are ready to begin integrating Autodesk Navigation into your own game and level editor using the step-by-step guide presented in this chapter.

As each and every game engine is different, the exact steps that must be taken in order to integrate Autodesk Navigation will necessarily be different as well. However, most integrations follow a typical progression, outlined in the following sections.

This chapter is intended primarily for use by the person responsible for the initial integration of Autodesk Navigation within your game. However, a basic understanding of this material will be of use to any developer working with Autodesk Navigation.

After completing all the sections in this tutorial, you should:

• Have a basic working integration in your game engine.
• Understand how you can use the Navigation Lab for live visual debugging of your game.
• Generate a NavMesh, using either the Navigation Lab or the NavData generation API.
• Understand how to create and run a query.
• Understand how to create a Bot, and how to make your game characters compute and follow paths from place to place in your game world.

This tutorial does not explore all possible aspects of the above. Instead, it focuses on achieving first results as soon as possible. Once you have completed the tutorial, you can invest more time in exploring more in-depth features of the NavData generation framework (e.g. using multiple sectors), and the runtime (e.g. using obstacles, smart objects, custom queries, etc.).

The integration procedure detailed in the following sections makes certain assumptions about your development environment and your game engine:

• Your game engine must be able to spawn non-player characters at specified locations in the world.
• You must have at least one test map or terrain that you can load into your engine.

The SDK package contains several code tutorials that illustrate how to perform certain basic or common tasks, including many of the initialization tasks referred to in these integration instructions. You can use these tutorials as examples or models for your own development.

These tutorials are included in this documentation under Test, and are also available in the test/tests directory.

You can also use the code of the labengine and labgame tools as an example of a way to integrate Autodesk Navigation into a simple game engine. Full source is available in the tools/labengine and tools/labgame directories.