Week 10

"Pathfinding addresses the problem of finding a good path from the starting point to the goal―avoiding obstacles, avoiding enemies, and minimizing costs (fuel, time, distance, equipment, money, etc.). " according to Stanford grad student.

Picture a maze what is the fastest way to get from the start to the finish.

Pathfinding is another way to search for the best route through a problem. This is the way that game programmers implement the games. They use this strategy for the games computer, the AI of the game and from what I have read Madden and other games such as this use pathfinding algorithms, the computer picks up the strategies that you are using and us that to there advantage and trying to stop you from reaching that goal, but then you actually start getting into AI software packages in which programmers have formed and they produce the illusion of a smartness or intelligence in a non player characteristic, also called NPC's for short.

I also looked a little into Convex Hull, basically it means if you are giving a point x on a linear plane, you are trying to figure out the convex hull of the plane. Convex combinations many of them which add up to 1, it is a bit tricky but it has to do with what the x points are and the interior, how much they add up to.

The point of these is to find the shortest route from place to place. In doing this you can use this for creating new proccesses and algorithms for games, use it in architecture, in war, laying our streets in cities faster many things.


Videos games become more complex this way as well. Not just Doom any more.