One of the best resources on the web for all things about AI in computer games can be found at http://www.gameai.com and is run by my good friend and collegue, Steven Woodcock.

Additionally, Amit Patel has assembled one of the best pathfinding resources on the web at http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/gameprog.html

Also, don't overlook the pathfinding capabilities of other algorithms like Dykstra's and Flood's. Use yahoo or alta vista and conduct searchs on the web for "shortest paths" and "mobile robots" to find papers that will introduce you to a wide variety of ways to find paths (some more applicable to 3D worlds without tiles/cell).

Good luck!

Eric

Gamasutra http://www.gamasutra.com also has a great article on pathfinding AI algorithms. Its buried somewhere in the archived articles, as its pretty old.

- Splat

Thanks for your help.
I've read somewhere that Gamastura has an article about unit movement, too, that is written by one of the coders of AoE.
(I think i will get a Gamastura member now )

Yes, the Unit Movement articles were written by Dave Pottinger, the engine lead on both Age of Empires and Age of Kings. That two part article is well worth the read, although it does not really address pathfinding per se, but instead does an excellent treatment of unit movement issues.

Eric

Where are those articles? I cant find them on their site.

The Unit Movement articles were orginally published in the Game Developer Magazine and I recall the 1st one showing up on Gamasutra early this year. I don't recall when the 2nd showed up. Virtually all articles that have appeared in GDM show up on Gamasutra.

I would have to search through the Gamasutra archieves to tell you exactly where they are, and since you can do that just as easily as I can (from their web page) then I'm going to leave that up to you to do.

You should not have to go back any farther than the first of 1999. Definitely, no farther than mid-1998.

Also, FWIW, the author of those articles (and a pretty nice guy too) Dave Pottinger, will be giving a lecture on terrain/map analysis at the upcoming Game Developers Conference 2000 in San Jose in March 8-12, 2000.

Eric

I've found an article that covers pathfinding at Gamastura, but i just can't find Dave Pottingers articles. But I know they were there once.

(I will look for them one more time...)

[This message has been edited by Melo (edited December 12, 1999).]

I can't find 'em!

I went ahead and looked too and did not find them on the Gamasutra site. I did find the Game Developer Magazine issues (Jan 99 and Feb 99) that contains the articles.

So, I've sent an email to the editors asking where are these articles on Gamasutra and if I ever get a response and they tell me where they are, I'll post it here.

Eric

I think they were takin' 'em out, because i've read one of them 1/2 a year ago. It was a good article. It's a pitty that I don't have the Article anymore ...