ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an approach to generating traversal climb meshes from markup and to following the resulting climb paths at runtime. The procedural traversal system is independent of the underlying animation states and is robust against changes in the locomotion sets of the actors. Using climb paths in combination with virtual controller input allows AI characters to handle traversal setups in much the same way as they would normal navigation meshes. Traversal makes the AI navigation more complicated: it requires additional markup and programming for the AI to understand how to mount a ladder or jump over a wall, not to mention special animation states to control their location as they jump, vault, climb, or swim. There are a limited number of entry states for traversal sections, such as mounting a ladder or jumping up to a ledge above the initial climb node.
