2014-06-14

Improving Performance of my Unity3D HTN-Planner (CUHP) with Multithreading


By adding some simple features, I have greatly increased the performance of my C# Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) Planner for use in Unity3D (CUHP). I previously explained how my Unity3D task planner works. To recap, it is a simple task planner written in C# for use in Unity3D, suitable for a wide range of video game genres (e.g. visual novels, adventure games, strategy games, shooter games). It can be used for NPC behavior, but also for story generation or even level generation! Feel free to experiment with it! I might also provide more (open source code) examples of the wide variety of applications of the planner in the future.

With this new blog post I show you how the performance of my planner is greatly improved by adding multithreading and functionality to cancel planning. In the previous version of my HTN-planner, the game could easily freeze up, resulting in a terrible user experience. Now with multithreading, the planner is run on a separate thread, so that the game continues to run on the main thread without freezing up. I will briefly explain multithreading in the next sextion, and follow this with some code examples. Furthermore, I provide a section about the cancel plan functionality and another section in which I explain some of my future steps.

The updated source code of my planner is available here: C# Unity3D HTN-planner (CUHP) on sourceforge.


Multithreading

I will not go into a lot of detail about multithreading, it is a complex subject and there are a lot of good sources available on the internet if you want to know more about it. That said, multithreading is "simply" the ability to execute a program on multiple threads. This is especially useful when a lot of calculations need to be done in a single method. With multithreading you can start the method with the heavy calculations on a new thread, while the main update method of your game continues to run on the main thread. This prevents the game from freezing up because now the update method does not need to wait until the heavy calculations are done.

Unity3D also provides thread-like behavior with coroutines. However, I choose threads over coroutines because threads are more flexible.

Multithreading is important for my Unity3D HTN-planner, because in some cases the planner takes a very long time to finish planning (up to several minutes). An example case is when there are a lot of applicable HTN-methods to the provided planning problem, but the planner is still unable to find a valid plan. Therefore, with multithreading, the planning can be run on a separate thread while the game continues to run on the main thread. This of course creates a new problem in some games, namely, if the NPC behavior is fully dependant on the plan generated by the planner. This could be solved in several ways, for example: by planning in advance, by adapting your planning algorithm (e.g. decrease number of HTN-methods), or by providing backup behavior for the NPC while it waits on the planner to finish.

Thanks to Mike Talbot of WhyDoIDoIt.com I found a simple way of using multithreading in Unity3D: Mike's "Loom" class. I have added this class to my CUHP project, renamed it to ThreadManager.cs and made a few minor changes.

I have added multithreading to the previously presented cleaning robot example. I have adapted my planner interface script (PlannerInterface.cs) such that when the user clicks the "Clean"-button on the GUI, a new thread starts in which the HTN-planner will run. The following code snippet shows the "SearchPlanAndSend"-method, in which the planner is started on a new thread. When a plan is found, it is automatically sent to the cleaning robot's task queue. I believe the code is very easy to understand. However, feel free to ask questions if anything is unclear.

private void SearchPlanAndSend()
{
    this.doneSearching = false;
    this.searchSuccessful = false;
    if (GetComponent<WorldModelManager>())
    {
        State initialState = GetComponent<WorldModelManager>().GetWorldStateCopy();
        if (initialState.ContainsVar("at"))
        {
            initialState.Add("checked", initialState.GetStateOfVar("at")[0]);
        }
        List<List<string>> goalTasks = new List<List<string>>();
        goalTasks.Add(new List<string>(new string[1] { "CleanRooms" }));

        ThreadManager.RunAsync(() =>
        {
            List<string> plan = planner.SolvePlanningProblem(initialState, goalTasks);

            ThreadManager.QueueOnMainThread(() =>
            {
                this.doneSearching = true;

                if (plan != null)
                    this.searchSuccessful = SendPlanToRobot(plan);
                else
                    Debug.Log("no plan found");
            });
        });
    }
}

The next section is about the cancel planning functionality.


Cancel Searching for Plan

The cancelling of searching for a plan (i.e. cancel planning) simply means that the planner is commanded to stop planning. I enabled this with a simple boolean "cancelSearch" in my HTN-planner code, which makes the planner stop instantly.

It is (for example) useful to cancel planning when the world state (or game state) changes so much that the plan currently being searched for will probably not be applicable to the current situation anymore. The plan will then most likely not produce the desired result anymore. Then after cancelling, you can issue the planner to find a new plan based on the new world state.

I provide no code sample of the cancel functionality because it is very straightforward. Just read through the code available on sourceforge and look for the "Cancel"-button in the "OnGUI"-method of the file RobotGUI.cs. This cancel button is a new addition to the cleaning robot example to showcase how to cancel planning.

In some cases of the cleaning robot example, the planner is unable to find a valid plan and gets stuck. I left this in for people who like a challenge. Experiment with the program to see when it gets stuck and try to improve my cleaning robot example so that the planner does not get stuck anymore. Good luck!


Future Work

I want to keep my future work section short this time with stating only the following: I plan to work next on a turn-based strategy game example in which my HTN-planner is used. And after that I want to work on a real-time strategy game example in which my HTN-planner is used. Feel free to ask questions though!

You are encouraged to use the CUHP-system, and expand and improve on it, as long as you share alike under the same (or a similar) open-source license.

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I found that adding these few simple lines in HTNPlanner.cs:

    #if UNITY_EDITOR
    if( !_operators.Contains( task[0] ) && !_methods.ContainsKey( task[0] )) {
    string errorMessage = "HTNPlanner can't find method \""+task[0]+ "\" which is expected to be found in ";
    if (_methodsType==_operatorsType) errorMessage += _methodsType.ToString();
    else errorMessage += _methodsType.ToString()+" or "+_operatorsType.ToString();
    Debug.LogError( errorMessage );
    }
    #endif

    just after line:

    List<.string> task = tasks[0];

    can save a lot of time when looking for possible causes for planner returning null.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Also using try{}catch{} in all my methods/operators I found rather necessary. Because Unity3d wasn't reporting to me any exceptions from there (making debugging unnecessary complicated).

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Umm the link to the original multi threading is broken sir you may want to delete it because it seems the site is gone for ever :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry for the late response, I've been busy with other things.

      You're right. I might change the links later. In the meantime, you can still find the code here: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/662891/loom-initialise-per-app-per-scene-or-.html And the same code reworked into an EditorWindow here: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/305882/how-do-i-invoke-functions-on-the-main-thread.html

      Delete
  5. The only feedbackI can offer is that Reflections isn't supported for iOS so it can't be used for iPhone/iPad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry for the late response, I've been busy with other things.

      Yes that's true. I don't think I'll ever try to remove Reflections from my code though, but maybe someone else is willing to give it a try.

      Delete
  6. Hello! How do you work with incorrect non-primitive task-tree decomposition, when you have locally correct subtrees, but they do not accomplish their main parent task?
    Here is an example (subtask "sell fossil" selected and it's locally correct, but it's incorrect for the main task): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9r8URxV2xZzeUtMbHhXUzRKNUU

    ReplyDelete
  7. Your blog has given me that thing which I never expect to get from all over the websites. Nice post guys!

    ReplyDelete