Visualisation of A-star pathfinding algorithm
A-star is an algorithm to traverse graph and search a path between two nodes with minimum cost.
Processing is a library for visual arts, built for learning to code visually.
This is a processing sketch made in java edition. So in order to run it you have to download processing from here.
I've maintained a separate file for individual cells of the grid i.e. Cell.pde
These are the parameters you can change in the sketch to observe different grid sizes and difficulty levels.
-
Grid size: change the
float columnsvariable. -
Difficulty: change the number in last conditional in constructor of
Cellobject. -
Start point: on line 65 of
Astar_pathfinding.pde -
End point: on line 66 of
Astar_pathfinding.pde
Note: The start and end points should remain within the grid, else the program will crash
Since the generation of walls depends on a random function, the risk of start and end block being completely unreachable is directly proportional to the probability of a cell being wall which is managed by the difficulty parameter.