CodeCaster

that right there is a good thought... I'll see if I can work with that. keep the ideas coming if anyone else thinks of something different though

Ooble

It's called Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm - Google it if you want more information.

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CodeCaster

It's working, but it is extremely inefficient.

The problem is that I have to call the GetPath function which contains this algorithm every pass through the main loop (many times per second) in order to adapt the path to moving obstacles, which slows my computer down to a crawl until I get very close to the target and the number of calculations gets smaller. Not sure if there are other algorithms out there, but you really gave me a wide open area in which to search for my answer. Thanks so much!

DaWei

I presume your target point is fixed? If so, calculate just one time. Each point in the grid then has its value, which doesn't change. Whether or not it's occupied is subject to movement during the game. That's a separate datum. Place your pieces, take into consideration whether or not a point is safe to occupy, but use your one-time data for the distance calculations. Actually, you could accomodate a moving target with relative measurements.

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