Simple grid-based A* Pathfinding in Unity

A simple implementation of the A* Pathfinding algorithm that makes use of Priority Queues, applied to a grid.

Credits

This implementation integrates:

• Amit Patel's studies on Pathfinding
• The SimplePriorityQueue from BlueRaja's High Speed PriorityQueue for C#.

I only imported what I needed for the SimplePriorityQueue to work, so please refer to BlueRaja's Git repository for additional options and documentation.

How to test it like in the GIF above

In your Unity Scene:

• Create a new empty GameObject, rename it Pathfinder (for ease of use)
• Attach the Pathfinder Component to it
• Select it in the Hierarchy
• Start altering the public variables available in the Inspector.

Implementation

Introduction

As it is, the current implementation considers an 8-direction movement and two kinds of obstacles:

• Walls - nodes that cannot be crossed
• Forests - nodes that "take longer" to cross

Movement cost is 1. However, if the node to be crossed is a Forest node, it costs 2.

Create a new GridGraph

To initialize a new GridGraph that has differently weighted nodes:

// Initialize a new GridGraph of a given width and height
GridGraph map = new GridGraph(10, 10);

This will fill the grid with Nodes.

Now it's time to initialize the Lists of Vector2 that will store positions of Walls and Forests on the GridGraph. Of course you can do this using either public Lists of Vector2 or private ones.

// Define the List of Vector2 to be considered walls
map.Walls = _walls;

// Define the List of Vector2 to be considered forests
map.Forests = _forests;

Find a path

Then, to define a Start and a Goal you have to define a Vector2 for each point, so to use it to return a List of Nodes with the shortest path between them.

// The position of Start and Goal nodes
Vector2 StartNodePosition = new Vector2(0, 0);
Vector2 GoalNodePosition = new Vector2(9, 9);

int x1 = (int)StartNodePosition.x;
int y1 = (int)StartNodePosition.y;
int x2 = (int)GoalNodePosition.x;
int y2 = (int)GoalNodePosition.y;

// Find the path from StartNodePosition to GoalNodePosition
List<Node> path = AStar.Search(map, map.Grid[x1, y1], map.Grid[x2, y2]);

Parameters map.Grid[x1, y1] and map.Grid[x2, y2] refer to the Nodes in the GridGraph that are located at [x1, y1] and [x2, y2]

Again, you can declare StartNodePosition and GoalNodePosition to be either public or private.

Customization

Modify movement costs

You can alter this value in the Cost(Node b) method contained in the Graph.cs script:

public int Cost(Node b)
{
    // If Node 'b' is a Forest return 2, otherwise 1
    if (Forests.Contains(b.Position)) return 2;
    else return 1;
}

Add additional obstacles

To include a new obstacle you first have to declare a new List<Vector2>, at the top of the Graph.cs script, for each obstacle you have in mind

public List<Node> Forests;
public List<Node> Pits;

Then modify the Cost(Node b) method accordingly:

public int Cost(Node b)
{
    if (Forests.Contains(b.Position)) return 2; // If Node 'b' is a Forest return 2
    else if (Pits.Contains(b.Position)) return 3; // If Node 'b' is a Pit return 3
    else return 1; // Otherwise return 1
}