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That's... not a good book for pathfinding algorithms, adapted to game programming. It's one of the sacred cows of this field, but it's not really much of a re

That's... not a good book for pathfinding algorithms, adapted to game programming. It's one of the sacred cows of this field, but it's not really much of a resource for real work. The whole section of pathfinding is very weak, and doesn't mention A-Star at all, nor any refinements to it that have been developed over the years.

AstralStorm 9y ago
Correct. The difference between a programmer and code monkey is that a programmer can adapt known algorithms and devise new ones. A* is not mentioned but using heuristics to speed up searches is. (Which is the core of A* - it is Dijkstra's with a heuristic guess.) The general approaches are typically much better than an explicitly memorized algorithm that may or may not work in your case. I used the book as an example of commonly available piece of literature from 90s, not as best source. Requiring everything to be given in any easy and digested form is actually a weakness... and it might not even save time. Having read a few books that were explicitly game oriented, none of them tackled big problems efficiently. Either they threw out vague ideas (no better than the actual algorithm book, often worse) or they fixated on the specific game. Websites are no better nowadays. No depth and no breadth inn most of them. Stack Overflow is the epitome of no depth. Toy get much more mileage by reading and understanding say Knuth's books than any gaming relayed book. Despite them not even roughing the subject. Now for details, true, access to actual papers and research is very useful, but I bet few game developers have that anyway. The trap as in most rushed development is that you will choose the wrong direction then get to live with consequences. Internet does not help with it as one cannot properly communicate a problem you can't solve, and once you do the solution is almost always known. The best you would get is a set of recommendations which is most useful if you're completely green... Time, experience and experiment trumps slightly better sources 9/10.

AstralStorm 9y ago

Correct. The difference between a programmer and code monkey is that a programmer can adapt known algorithms and devise new ones. A* is not mentioned but using heuristics to speed up searches is. (Which is the core of A* - it is Dijkstra's with a heuristic guess.) The general approaches are typically much better than an explicitly memorized algorithm that may or may not work in your case. I used the book as an example of commonly available piece of literature from 90s, not as best source. Requiring everything to be given in any easy and digested form is actually a weakness... and it might not even save time. Having read a few books that were explicitly game oriented, none of them tackled big problems efficiently. Either they threw out vague ideas (no better than the actual algorithm book, often worse) or they fixated on the specific game. Websites are no better nowadays. No depth and no breadth inn most of them. Stack Overflow is the epitome of no depth. Toy get much more mileage by reading and understanding say Knuth's books than any gaming relayed book. Despite them not even roughing the subject. Now for details, true, access to actual papers and research is very useful, but I bet few game developers have that anyway. The trap as in most rushed development is that you will choose the wrong direction then get to live with consequences. Internet does not help with it as one cannot properly communicate a problem you can't solve, and once you do the solution is almost always known. The best you would get is a set of recommendations which is most useful if you're completely green... Time, experience and experiment trumps slightly better sources 9/10.