Guards: Benchmarks for weighted grid-based pathfinding

Abstract

The primary objective of this paper is to aid game developers in finding the most suitable pathfinding algorithm for their games. Despite recent advancements in this field, there are few available studies that can be compared due to the absence of a standard benchmark set for weighted environments. This paper presents a new dataset for pathfinding in weighted environments. Furthermore, an investigation was conducted into the impact of node weights on pathfinding speed, and a correlation between them was identified. The complexity added to the maps due to node weights was defined as weight complexity, and two metrics were introduced to estimate it. The weight correlation factor has been identified as the most effective metric for estimating the weight complexity of the map. Another contribution of this paper pertains to the development of a model for estimating the pathfinding speed of algorithms based on weight complexity. This was accomplished through the utilization of the non-linear least squares method, which was applied to create a model for each algorithm, considering both its average search time and weight correlation factor values associated with the map. Finally an overall score metric was developed by using the integral of the models, enabling the evaluation of different algorithms in various scenarios.