Can someone out there point me towards how I can start learning pathfinding. I know there exists algorithms like A* and all but its the implementation thats bugging me..
Any help would be appreciated!! (Links to tutorials and useful materials are welcome)
Starting PathFinding
A* does pathfinding. If you want to learn pathfinding, you learn A*. There are approximately 14 billion places to learn A* on the internet. If "the implementation" of A* is bugging you such that you don't want to learn A*, you are certainly going to fail.
That's like saying you want to learn how to do math but using numbers and symbols bugs you.
That's like saying you want to learn how to do math but using numbers and symbols bugs you.
In my opinion A* is one of those things that take a lot of understanding to get it to work how you want but once you do it feels great. When I built my A* implementation I used this http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm website as a guide. I haven't looked at the code because personally I wanted to figure it out on my own but he does provide some code. You really just need to keep at it, and you will get it. I literally had to go back and read the steps the algorithm should work in about 6 times to feel like I understood what it needed to do and than another 15 times when I was debugging issues.
Yes that link is good for us noobs, I read it half but I find it easy to understand if I can literally see what they mean 
So I googled for a demo.
result->http://briangrinstead.com/files/astar/
So I googled for a demo.
result->http://briangrinstead.com/files/astar/
Author
one question before I start studying A* algorithm is that can this algorithm be used to implement path finding for objects whose movements are not tile based?? What i mean is that if one object moves only with respect to time and not with respect to the tiles (which is how the map is loaded) then can A* algorithm still be used for pathfinding??
Sure, but you need something to handle the details - look into navigation meshes and steering behaviors. They are complementary technologies that fit nicely with A* in a pathing solution.
Here's a little app I wrote awhile back that demostrates A-Star pathfinding using nodes. The cool thing is you can watch the A-Star algorithm visually so you can see how the algorthim works. The zip includes the exe, source files (C++) and a supporting image file and data files. The map included in the zip has around 1000 nodes. You can click on any 2 nodes and watch as the app finds the quickest path between the two.
A-Star Path Finding Demo
A-Star Path Finding Demo
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