Under the Bridge

Here’s a nice looking piece of code to help you out with that next great RTS game you’re planning on writing for the iPhone; from the same dude responsible for the awesome ASIHTTPRequest, it’s ASIPathFinder!

What is ASIPathFinder?

ASIPathFinder is a complete implementation of a cooperative path finding algorithm, and will probably be most useful for writing Real Time Strategy games. It is written in Objective-C, and is compatible with Mac OS and iPhone OS.

What is a co-operative path finder?

A co-operative path finder allows multiple objects to find a path on a map, planning ahead to alert other objects of where they’re going to travel. This means that an object can avoid other objects ahead of time, before they collide.

It’s said to be based on the techniques described in this paper, but if you’d rather just see it in action, why yes there is an app for that:

ASIPathFinder is based on code I originally wrote for my Space Harvest game for iPod Touch and iPhone.Download the game to get a feel for its capabilities.

So there you go, BSD-licensed and everything, documentation here and project on github!