Path finding is the method to find a path between two points in the world. It determines how the avatar moves around the virtual world. There are many different approaches that result differently. Some perform faster while some guarantee a best shortest path. We will discuss how to choose a good path finding method to fit the virtual world design.
Sometimes, finding the direct way from the start point to goal point is possible and trivial. But it can be blocked by non-walkable barrier.
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Instead, we may explore all tiles until we find the goal. Then we have shortest path according to the result that was found.
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This method seems to work but it may result in poor performance because it explored almost all tiles on the map to find the result.
Walking is one of the most frequent actions in a virtual world. And it requires path finding for every movement. As in the previous example, path finding is an action that can consume quite a lot of CPU resource if not properly used...
