Pathfinding is important in many applications, including games, robotics and GPS itinerary planning. In games, most pathfinding methods rely on runtime search. Despite numerous enhancements introduced in recent years, runtime search has the disadvantage that, in bad cases, most parts of a map need to be explored, causing a time performance degradation. In this work we explore a significantly di...

Pathfinding in computer games has been investigated for many years. It is probably the most popular but frustrating game artificial intelligence (AI) problem in game industry. Various search algorithms, such as Dijkstra’s algorithm, bread first search algorithm and depth first search algorithm, were created to solve the shortest path problem until the emergence of A* algorithm as a provably opt...

The POU domain transcription factors Brn3a, Brn3b and Brn3c are required for the proper development of sensory ganglia, retinal ganglion cells, and inner ear hair cells, respectively. We have investigated the roles of Brn3a in neuronal differentiation and target innervation in the facial-stato-acoustic ganglion. We show that absence of Brn3a results in a substantial reduction in neuronal size, ...

During formation of the optic projection in astray/robo2 mutant zebrafish, optic axons exhibit rostrocaudal pathfinding errors, ectopic midline crossing and increased terminal arbor size. Here we show that these errors persist into adulthood, even when robo2 function is conditionally reduced only during initial formation of the optic projection. Adult errors include massive ectopic optic tracts...

Path planning technologies have rapidly improved over the last 10 years, but further integration is needed if pathfinding engines are to drive the behavior of even more realistic characters. This paper briefly outlines existing approaches for path planning and suggests scenarios where integration of information about character’s relationships could improve the quality of path planning in games.

A variety of techniques have been introduced over the last decade for abstracting search graphs and then using these abstractions for search. While some basic work has been done to predict the value of an abstraction mechanism, the results have not been validated in practice. In this paper we analyze a variety of old and new abstraction mechanisms in a pathfinding testbed and show that the work...