World Director NPC PRO – Massive NPC Simulation with Multiplayer & Optimization

Publish date

2025-09-27

Asset Description

World Director NPC PRO is a scalable system for optimizing and simulating both NPCs and general actors in large worlds, with background movement, advanced performance management, and full multiplayer support.

General Information

Purpose. A system designed for worlds with thousands of active pawns. NPCs preserve state (location, scale, rotation, health, level) and continue to move even far from the player, creating a consistent “living world” across large maps and cities.

Performance example. On AMD Ryzen 2700X the system handled 200,000+ pawns at 120+ FPS (project-dependent).

👑Key Features:

Four concurrent optimization levels
- Level 1: Pawns outside camera view disable rendering and reduce tick/animation cost.
- Level 2: Distant pawns remain simulated: position/path are computed on NavMesh with obstacle avoidance; movement is random within a configurable radius.
- Level 3: Further reduces the number of simultaneously walking pawns at long range.
- Level 4: Pawns stop moving but persist; they reactivate as the player approaches.
Background simulation
- Hidden and distant NPC calculations run multithreaded for FPS stability.
- While on distant levels, pawns do not execute Behavior Trees, but they still walk using simplified logic.
- NPCs can follow roads with per-NPC road sets, usage chance, and search radius.
- NPCs can gather at Points of Interest such as parks or squares with configurable attraction chance and roam radius.
Extended flexibility
- Supports static-mesh NPC representation for lightweight background city simulation (single-player only).
- Editor mode uses the game thread for NavSystem requests (avoiding thread crashes), while shipping builds keep threaded mode for maximum performance.
- Includes a save/load system for NPC states.
- Compatible with 🔗Population Control PRO system. (layer offsets, per-actor overrides).
- Layer radii can be overridden per actor/NPC for precise control.
Multiplayer
- All calculations run server-side.

📌Usage note:

This is an optimization tool. If many actors occupy the same screen space simultaneously, they will still run your code together and no system can hide that cost. Use layers, radii, and spawning strategy accordingly.

📌WD-PRO + Population Control - 🔗Documentation

Please pay your attention to the 🔗GWOF plugin. It supports most of the functionality of WD-PRO and🔗PC-PRO but with more powerful optimization algorithms and more flexible configuration.

📌All plugins for optimizing your project:

🔗Global World Optimization Framework PRO MAX
🔗World Director PRO (included World Director Actor and World Director NPC)
🔗World Director NPC
🔗World Director Actor
🔗Population Control PRO
🔗Population Control
🔗Dynamic Spawn Assistant PRO
🔗Loot Generator

📌About Our Plugins:

7+ years of proven experience in Unreal Engine development.
Regular updates and continuous improvements.
Featured multiple times in Epic Games ShowCase.
Free Discord support and active community.
Many features implemented from developer feedback.

📃Note: The plugin’s price may increase as new features are added.

Technical details

Features:

The system is divided into 4 optimization levels that work simultaneously for the best FPS performance.
At level 1 if the pawn is out of the camera's view, all its components and skeletal meshes are disabled from the render, and a set of optimization measures is applied, such as animation playback and tick rate. While at level 2.3.4, pawns can't act according to the Behavior Tree, but they can still walk.
On my system with an AMD 2700X processor, I achieved 200000+ pawns at 120+FPS.
All calculations for hidden pawns at level 2.3.4 occur using multithreading for better FPS.
Save and Load System
If the pawn is out of the camera's view, all its components and skeletal meshes are disabled from the render.
The plugin is easy to use.

Code Modules: