A comparison study on the reduction of search space using frame node technique for simulation and computer games

In simulation and computer game domains, two issues related to pathfinding problems are search algorithm and search space. This paper describes and compares four techniques used for the reduction of search space generation in 2-D simulation and game world environments. In order to improve the computational overheads, reducing size of search space is necessary. The size of search space is related to the number of nodes and edges. A high number of nodes and edges will have implications on the usage of computer memory. Therefore, reducing the number of nodes and edges will bring direct benefits to the memory usage and reduction of the search time. In this study, four techniques for the reduction of search space size are compared and investigated. In this paper, frame nodes used in the hierarchical adaptive flood filled (HAFF) technique is presented. This paper also presents the comparison results from the application of four hierarchical search spaces.