Kythera AI

Advanced AI middleware that empowers you to create better games, quicker.

Kythera AI is our advanced AI toolset that has been in continuous development for over a decade. With a suite of features for both 2D and 3D environments, our offering can save you time and money with out-of-the-box integration. We empower users to create immersive environments with AI, and non-playable characters that understand and dynamically react to the world arround them.

It's compatible with Unreal Engine,
Unity, Custom Engines and more.

IMMERSIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR YOUR NPCS

With our 2D Navigation, you can ensure that characters understand their worlds, and that they can intelligently navigate complex terrain - both in vast, open spaces and small, confined areas. Kythera AI empowers users with tools to quickly and easily generate NavMeshes dynamically at runtime, run asynchronous pathfinding and have NPCs that meet the creative demands of modern, immersive games.

Some of our 2D Features are;

Dynamic NavMesh | NavMesh Pruning | Asynchronous Pathfinding | Advanced Obstacle Avoidance | 2D Formations | Moving Navmeshes | Multithreaded Pathfinding | Area Costs | Flocking | Rigid Formations | Navmesh Clamping

UNDERSTANDING OF VAST ENVIRONMENTS AT RUNTIME

Whether your game is set among the stars, or in the depths of the ocean, our 3D Navigation tools allows creatures and vehicles to traverse rich 3D environments. Kythera AI's Surface Navigation provides users with the tools to quickly allow characters to navigate complicated 3D environments - perhaps it’s an alien climbing the walls, or a creature dropping from the roof of a cave.

Some of our 3D features are;

Dynamic Multi-threaded Octree Generation | 3D Pathfinding | Avoidance | Surface Navigation | 3D Formations | Advanced Splines | Pruning

A red spacecraft flies through a futuristic city lit by low sun, as other ships pass by

SAVE TIME AND MONEY BY DYNAMICALLY GENERATING COVER AND NAVIGATION

Our Automatic Markup for both cover and navigation can save you hundreds of hours in level design, while also creating more compelling and immersive gameplay. By dynamically analysing the geometry of your level at runtime, any setpieces within your game can instantly become a cover point for enemies to hide behind or an obstacle to vault over.

Both AutoNav and AutoCover are designer friendly and highly configurable, giving you the freedom to create custom navigation and cover types.

NAVIGATE COMPLEX ENVIRONMENTS FOR UNIQUE GAMEPLAY

Our innovative approach to 3D Surface Navigation means that you can easily have AI characters navigating complex 3D environments. For example, an astronaut spacewalking on the exterior of a space station, an assassin scaling a building, or an alien creature climbing up the walls and ceiling - all of this and more is possible with Surface Navigation.

Kythera AI's tools ensure characters and vehicles move smoothly on and around the surfaces of any 3D terrains, allowing for greater immersion and unique gameplay.

The viewer is looking out of a rocky cave toward sunlight - a flying creature is seen navigating the through-line of its navigation path as configured by the AI engine

GREATER TACTICAL DEPTH FOR YOUR GAME

If your game has any tactical depth, then our Spatial Query System will be a great addition to your toolset. Developed by our founder Matthew Jack - an expert in Query Systems - we offer powerful, customisable querying that produces robust sets of positions for AI agents to consider. Flanking, mounting overwatch, switching cover positions - all of this and more is made seamlessly through our SQS.

Our querying can be written in either our C++ DSL or in our custom SQS markup. The syntax for both is nearly identical, making it easier for teams to collaborate efficiently.

A series of game obstacles are seen being observed by a game character in the foreground. Each obstacle features a different colour of highlight to explain the AI candidate scoring for that position

BRING AI TO YOUR SPLINES

A fighter on a strafing run, or a stealthcraft following a set course - these are just some of the possibilities with splines, and we have taken this implementation even further with our Advanced Splines. All of our AI agents run full AI and avoidance on their spline, meaning the fighter can dynamically react to an obstacle that appears on its path.

We offer designers greater control and creative freedom to have AI follow and join splines with realistic motion, to remain aware of their environment while on the spline and employ our dynamic 3D avoidance when necessary.

A ship navigates round a tower in a futuristic city landscape, leaving a glowing blue contrail in its wake

MANAGE THE COMPLEX DEMANDS OF MODERN GAMES

Drawing on techniques from programming language design, Kythera AI’s behavior trees feature signal and exception handling, state machines and reusable blocks – helping designers manage the complexity that open-world gameplay demands.

Behavior trees can be dynamically linked at runtime based on the world state, allowing an environment to deliver its own behaviors to characters who enter.

Not into behavior trees? We support other paradigms like finite state machines and selection trees, giving the same access to our other features under a simpler state-selection model. Either way, when things go awry, tight integration with Kythera AI’s blackboard architecture and frame-by-frame diagnostic replay make debugging complex behaviors an intuitive and visual process.

The software interface is shown, with a left navigation sidebar and a behaviour tree (similar to a mind map or flow diagram, with grouped and connected nodes) is being used to configure AI behaviour parameters

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