Hello all,

I'm currently spending some time trying to improve my pathfinding library and was looking for some ideas on how to deal with direction of units and their turn radius.

For example if a unit had its back to the target, a straight line path wouldn't be suitable as returned by A* (assuming no clear path between unit and target) as the unit would have to rotate around, and the turn radius could potentially make it follow a path that touches grid cells that where not in the original calculated clear path and over cells has a blocking obstacle.

My original thinking was to factor the direction cost into the heuristic function of the A* algorithm but its getting pretty messy and not very reliable so I thought id ask if others have implemented anything similar, thinks this is the wrong approach and has better ideas or even can point me to any helpful papers/articles.


Thanks!

Sorry I'm not sure how but I double posted by accident, the other double post has now been deleted

I have also been investigating various pathfinding solutions that take into account a turn radius and agent orientation. The most useful article I've seen so far on this matter is http://www.gamasutra...pathfinding.php where they essentially make the orientation information a part of their search state space and rule out certain tiles based on the given turning radius during the search.

It's a rather old article, but I think lots of the information there is still relevant. There's also a presentation floating around on aigamedev about some pathing goodness from Company of Heroes, but if I recall, that presentation is a little light on details with regard to their vehicular movement.

Thanks snowmanZOMG and IADaveMark, that Chris Jurney article seems very interesting and looks like it discusses exactly what I was after. The bad news is the book is out of print and used copies seem to be retailing upwards of $400 on amazon . The demand for that book must be very high, wish there was an ebook version I could buy.

I'm going to have to try and find someone who has it and can lend it me