This project is a problem of dynamic obstacles. When there are dynamic obstacles, the path must be found in real-time every time the agent wishes to move because we don't know if prior solutions are still valid. It is also possible for the environment to change while the agent is moving making the currently followed path obsolete. Thus, an agent in a dynamic environment must be able to re-plan at a moment's notice. Because paths must be found in real-time, algorithm speed is very important.
One of the most commonly used pathfinding algorithms for computer games is A*. With an admissible heuristic, A* provides nice guarantees about optimality—it will find the shortest path—and keep the amount of unnecessary search to a minimum.
I will have an agent play a game in which it must collect as many of the resources in the environment is as little time as possible. I will build off my previous navigation mesh and path network generation solution from previous projects.
However, this time, the environment will be changing randomly as the agent attempts to gather resources. In this assignment, I will dynamically change the environment by spawning gates, which are walls that span between obstacles. Gates will randomly change positions over time. Note that sometimes the agent may simply become trapped and will have to wait for gates to move before proceeding.
In this project, I will implement A* pathfinding to work on a navigation mesh in the dynamic gate-filled environment.
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