Ascii Maze

This is a pathfinding algorithms visualizer written in Python using the Pygame library. The program allows you to visualize various pathfinding algorithms on a map represented by ASCII characters. It supports both randomly generated maps and reading maps from files.

Features

• ASCII Map Representation: The program uses ASCII characters to simply represent the map.
• Dynamic Map: You can add and delete elements of the ascii map.
• Map File Support: You can read maps from text files.
• Pathfinding Algorithms:
  • Breadth-First Search (BFS)
  • Depth-First Search (DFS)
  • A-Star (A*)
  • Variations of A-Star that have different heuristics and/or support multiple targets instead of just one.

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• See requirements.txt file for further information

Installation & Usage

1. Clone the repository or download the source code.
2. Inside the repository file, execute pip3 install -r requirements.txt
3. Run main.py

Controls

• 1: Select start (S) or end (E) blocks, if possible
• 2: Select walls (#)
• 3: Select hubs (H)
• Left-Click: Place selected block
• Right-Click Erase selected block
• Q: Change to previous algorithm
• E: Change to next algorithm
• Space: Start search
• R: Clear map
• T: Reload map from file (basic_maze.txt)
• Y: Resets map to pre-search state
• ESC: Exit the program

Additional Information

• This was meant to be a final project of a university workshop, but plans were changed. Consequently:
  • The project uses PyGame
  • The documentation is not complete nor comprehensive
  • There are some bugs in the controls
  • There are some bugs in the hub
• I am not planning on fixing the project in the near future, might revisit it later using different technologies.
• The order of traversal for the hubs is FIFO, then followed by the end node.
• The screen is 100x39 characters.

Basic maze file

S                                      #
######################################H#
#                                      ####
############################## ############
#                              #          #
#  #############################          #                              H
#                                         #
#                                         #
#########################################
                                        ##
######################################### #
EH                                        #
# #################################################################################################
# #
# # #################################################################################################
# # #
# # #
# # #
# # #
# # ######################
# #                      #
# ##################### ##
#                       ##
                      # ###########################################
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      # #
                      #

Demo