Hello everyone,
This is my first Unreal Engine plugin currently in development. It is still in an early work-in-progress stage and there is still a lot to improve, but the goal is to build a high-quality, performance-friendly crowd and pedestrian system for open-world games.
The plugin is being designed around scalable city block managers, NPC LOD systems, action points, distance-based optimization, stuck correction, and other systems needed to support large open-world environments.
I’ll keep sharing progress, videos, and updates as development continues. Any feedback, suggestions, or feature ideas from other Unreal Engine developers would be greatly appreciated.**
What is it?**
A UE5 pedestrian system plugin focused on open-world city NPCs, path following, LOD optimization, action points, and smart crowd behavior.
Current status
Prototype in development. Core movement, path logic, LOD switching, and behavior systems are being tested.
Main features
Pedestrian spawning, path following, LOD system, idle/action points, smart behavior selection, performance-focused design.
More Info:
The system is designed around a performance-focused city block architecture. Each city block can have its own placed Manager actor that handles local pedestrian logic, optimization, and distance-based behavior independently from other blocks.
Each Manager has its own LOD system based on the player’s distance, allowing entire city areas to reduce activity, simplify logic, or disable expensive updates when the player is far away. NPCs also have their own individual LOD system, separate from the Manager, so each pedestrian can independently switch between higher-detail behavior near the player and cheaper simulation at distance.
For far-distance NPCs, the system supports lightweight animation methods such as vertex animation to reduce animation cost while still keeping crowds visually alive. This allows large numbers of pedestrians to exist in the city without all of them using expensive full AI and skeletal animation at the same time.
The plugin also includes an Action Point system, where NPCs can choose contextual actions such as sitting, talking, idling, or any custom action added In Data Asset by the developer . These actions are selected based on availability, NPC state, and distance-based logic, allowing the world to feel active without wasting performance.
Both the Manager and the NPCs perform their own distance checks through the Manager system. This means the Manager controls block-level optimization, while each NPC controls its own LOD and behavior state. The result is a scalable system where city blocks, pedestrians, and actions can all optimize themselves independently.
The system also includes block detection, stuck detection, and correction logic. If an NPC becomes stuck or behaves incorrectly, the system can attempt to recover it. For off-screen NPCs, correction can be handled more aggressively, such as safely teleporting or repositioning the NPC when the player cannot see it, keeping the simulation clean without breaking immersion.
Devlog updates
I’ll keep updating this thread with clips, screenshots, progress notes, and testing results.
Looking for feedback
I’d like feedback from open-world and city-game developers about what features they would expect from a professional pedestrian plugin.
This is a link to YouTube showcasing the plugin, early stage showcase
