2D pathing is seemingly impossible!

I cannot seem to find a single tutorial that suggest an easy way of pathing for a top-down game.

A* pathfinding is so complex that it’s ridiculously hard to find any good documentation specific to my needs. I’ve seen something about using it with grids as well for top-down, which I have no idea what that is nor can I find anything definitive about them.

I wouldn’t mind setting up nodes around collisions, and finding a node path that can reach my destination, but I get a little lost when they start to branch out.

This has been a thorn in my side for days and honestly it’s making me want to give up. I would greatly appreciate any solid information.

I’m using Tiled to create my maps, and I am using the built in object collision objects within Tiled.

I understand C# and Java, not so much CPP.

Been also looking for some solutions to that,
here’s current progress: (converted some A* and added gridmap generation with simple raycasts for scanning for walls…)

(webplayer v4 is the latest currently)

check the comments also, there is faster version available of the same A* code…(and some related links)

There’s no documentation on how to implement these from what I can find. Doesn’t state if these works require Unity Free, or Pro. It seems every bit of information I find assumes you’re extremely familiar with Unity already.

It is really easy to implement if you know how to do a simple grid based A* implementation. You can use different Physics2D methods and 2D colliders to check if a position is valid or not in the grid.

Pages like this explains it well: Introduction to the A* Algorithm

I guess what I don’t quite understand is how to make a grid to be interpreted by the A* script. Nor how to point to that grid with the script. I suspect Tiled would work as it prints out a nice little XML file with how many tiles and the size of the tiles.

Maybe convert all the unwalkable tiles into squares, and then try to make a mesh to cover all the walkable areas…http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Navmeshes.html

I think that’s a Pro only feature. I don’t plan on buying Unity until I can successfully make a project and potentially profit from it.

Navmeshes aren’t Pro-only. Real-time tools for 3D, AR, and VR development | Products

–Eric

Navmeshes, pathfinding and crowd simulation are for both non-pro and pro, but if you scroll down you’ll see the Navmeshes with dynamic obstacles and priority, which is a pro-only feature.

I’ll have to bookmark those and take a look later. Currently, complete auto pathfinding isn’t a big deal. Thank you.