GDC 2025 Session Viewer
'Apex Legends': Preventing Exploits and Shipping Risky Features Using... NavMesh??
Ian Holstead (Sr. Software Engineer, Respawn Entertainment)
Location: Room 2005, West Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 19
Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass - Get your pass now!
Track: Programming
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
Apex Legends’ 26th Legend presented a significant technical challenge; one of her abilities allowed her to create portals through walls. However, in a competitive game where survival is the objective, there was zero tolerance for players getting out-of-bounds. This session delves not only into the details of how a navmesh based solution was created to solve this issue, but also how this allowed us to leverage navmesh to create a variety of systems, including an out-of-bounds exploit detection system and powerful procedural placement tools. This session then goes into the advantages of having each system use shared core tech in a slightly different way resulting in these features effectively providing testing for each other. Finally, this session discusses the novel web server based, in-game test framework we created to provide robust regression testing and automatic error reporting and how the combination of these systems allowed us to ship this Legend exploit free.
Takeaway
Attendees will gain an understanding how Apex used existing technology such as navmesh to ship a risky feature, as well as the advantages to reusing tech for 'always on' features in a live game to ensure both reduce regressions as well as working with in development features.
Intended Audience
This talk is targeted primarily at gameplay programmers, but also would be interesting to technical designers and anyone else interested in learning about using existing technology and tools to ship risky features in a live game.