Offline Grid-Based Coverage path planning for guards in games

TL;DR

This paper presents a new grid-based algorithm for efficient coverage path planning in 2D polygonal game maps, aiming to improve automatic exploration by non-player characters.

Contribution

It introduces a novel algorithm specifically designed for covering complex polygonal areas with holes, using prior map knowledge and grid representation.

Findings

Good performance across various map complexities

Outperforms simple heuristics in coverage efficiency

Serves as a foundation for future NPC path planning improvements

Abstract

Algorithmic approaches to exhaustive coverage have application in video games, enabling automatic game level exploration. Current designs use simple heuristics that frequently result in poor performance or exhibit unnatural behaviour. In this paper, we introduce a novel algorithm for covering a 2D polygonal (with holes) area. We assume prior knowledge of the map layout and use a grid-based world representation. Experimental analysis over several scenarios ranging from simple layouts to more complex maps used in actual games show good performance. This work serves as an initial step towards building a more efficient coverage path planning algorithm for non-player characters.