Search space reduction using hierarchical adaptive flood filled for path planning in computer games

In simulation and computer games, efficiency in pathfinding is an important capability for artificial agents. The problem of pathfinding has been studied extensively and two aspects are related to search algorithm and search space. This paper focuses on the aspect of search space reduction. Search space could be reduced manually or automatically and its size has significant effects on computational time and memory usage. Therefore, reducing the search space is an essential process to improve the system performance. In this paper, a Hierarchical Adaptive Flood Filled (HAFF) technique for reducing search space from binary image of a map is presented. From the experimental results, it is shown that the search space can be significantly reduced with the proposed method.