Chapter 5.

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Artificial Intelligence: Pathfinding
Introduction
 Almost every game requires pathfinding
 Agents must be able to find their way
around the game world
 Pathfinding is not a trivial problem
 The fastest and most efficient
pathfinding techniques tend to consume
a great deal of resources

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Representing
the Search Space
 Agents need to know where they can move
 Search space should represent either
 Clear routes that can be traversed
 Or the entire walkable surface
 Search space typically doesn’t represent:
 Small obstacles or moving objects
 Most common search space representations:
 Grids
 Waypoint graphs
 Navigation meshes

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Grids
 2D grids – intuitive world representation
 Works well for many games including some
3D games such as Warcraft III
 Each cell is flagged
 Passable or impassable
 Each object in the world can occupy
one or more cells

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Characteristics of Grids
 Fast look-up
 Easy access to neighboring cells
 Complete representation of the level

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Waypoint Graph
 A waypoint graph specifies lines/routes that
are “safe” for traversing
 Each line (or link) connects exactly two
waypoints

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Characteristics
of Waypoint Graphs
 Waypoint node can be connected to any
number of other waypoint nodes
 Waypoint graph can easily represent
arbitrary 3D levels
 Can incorporate auxiliary information
 Such as ladders and jump pads
 Incomplete representation of the level

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Navigation Meshes
 Combination of grids and waypoint graphs
 Every node of a navigation mesh represents a
convex polygon (or area)
 As opposed to a single position in a waypoint node
 Advantage of convex polygon
 Any two points inside can be connected without
crossing an edge of the polygon
 Navigation mesh can be thought of as a
walkable surface

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Navigation Meshes
(continued)

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Characteristics of
Navigation Meshes
 Complete representation of the level
 Ties pathfinding and collision detection
together
 Can easily be used for 2D and 3D games

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Searching for a Path
 A path is a list of cells, points, or nodes that
an agent must traverse
 A pathfinding algorithm finds a path
 From a start position to a goal position
 The following pathfinding algorithms can be
used on
 Grids
 Waypoint graphs
 Navigation meshes

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Criteria for Evaluating
Pathfinding Algorithms
 Quality of final path
 Resource consumption during search
 CPU and memory
 Whether it is a complete algorithm
 A complete algorithm guarantees to find a
path if one exists

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Random Trace
 Simple algorithm
 Agent moves towards goal
 If goal reached, then done
 If obstacle
 Trace around the obstacle clockwise or
counter-clockwise (pick randomly) until free
path towards goal
 Repeat procedure until goal reached

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Random Trace (continued)
 How will Random Trace do on the
following maps?

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Random Trace Characteristics
 Not a complete algorithm
 Found paths are unlikely to be optimal
 Consumes very little memory

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Understanding A*
 To understand A*
 First understand Breadth-First, Best-First,
and Dijkstra algorithms
 These algorithms use nodes to
represent candidate paths

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Understanding A*
class PlannerNode
{
public:
PlannerNode *m_pParent;
int m_cellX, m_cellY;
...
};

 The m_pParent member is used to chain nodes

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Understanding A*
 All of the following algorithms use two lists
 The open list
 The closed list
 Open list keeps track of promising nodes
 When a node is examined from open list
 Taken off open list and checked to see whether it
has reached the goal
 If it has not reached the goal
 Used to create additional nodes
 Then placed on the closed list

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Overall Structure of the
Algorithms
1. Create start point node – push onto open list
2. While open list is not empty
A. Pop node from open list (call it currentNode)
B. If currentNode corresponds to goal, break from
step 2
C. Create new nodes (successors nodes) for cells
around currentNode and push them onto open list
D. Put currentNode onto closed list

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Breadth-First
 Finds a path from the start to the goal by
examining the search space ply-by-ply

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Breadth-First Characteristics
 Exhaustive search
 Systematic, but not clever
 Consumes substantial amount of CPU
and memory
 Guarantees to find paths that have
fewest number of nodes in them
 Not necessarily the shortest distance!
 Complete algorithm
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Best-First
 Uses problem specific knowledge to
speed up the search process
 Head straight for the goal
 Computes the distance of every node to
the goal
 Uses the distance (or heuristic cost) as a
priority value to determine the next node
that should be brought out of the open list
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Best-First (continued)

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Best-First (continued)
 Situation where Best-First finds a suboptimal path

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Best-First Characteristics
 Heuristic search
 Uses fewer resources than Breadth-First
 Tends to find good paths
 No guarantee to find most optimal path
 Complete algorithm

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Dijkstra
 Disregards distance to goal
 Keeps track of the cost of every path
 No guessing
 Computes accumulated cost paid to
reach a node from the start
 Uses the cost (called the given cost) as a
priority value to determine the next node
that should be brought out of the open list
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Dijkstra Characteristics
 Exhaustive search
 At least as resource intensive as
Breadth-First
 Always finds the most optimal path
 Complete algorithm

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A*
 Uses both heuristic cost and given cost to
order the open list
 Final Cost = Given Cost + (Heuristic Cost * Heuristic Weight)

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A* (continued)
 Avoids Best-First trap!

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A* Characteristics
 Heuristic search
 On average, uses fewer resources than
Dijkstra and Breadth-First
 Admissible heuristic guarantees it will find the
most optimal path
 Complete algorithm

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Summary
 Two key aspects of pathfinding:
 Representing the search space
 Searching for a path

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PathPlannerApp Demo

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Waypoint Graph Demo

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