JavaScript to C# and A*

For this weeks work I decided to port my project from JavaScript over to C#. I made this decision after meeting with Chris for my presentation last week. Originally I decided to program the whole AI in JavaScript as I was more comfortable with JavaScript in inside of Unity as I haven't used C# too much in Unity. As I also had never programmed any AI I decided that using a language which I was more comfortable with was a sensible choice. However one thing that I overlooked when making this choice was that I didn't take into account what languages employers would like you to know. This is because I want this project to be a good piece for my portfolio once leaving University and to help with getting a job. After looking into jobs as both Unity developers and programmers outside of Unity I found that many jobs wanted knowledge of C# with very few mentioning JavaScript. Because of this I felt that it was worth spending the time to port the project to C#.

After porting my project I decided to look into creating my own version of the A* path-finding algorithm as suggested by Chris at my presentation. I started by going back to my research materials to get an understanding of how A* works and the benefits of using this instead of a different algorithm. Ian Millington in the book Artificial Intelligence For Games (Millington, I and J.D.Funge, 2009) mentions that A* (Or a version of A*) is used in many projects due to the efficiency and easy implementation of it. Another resource that I looked at was a YouTube video created by Sebastian Lague (Lague, S. 2014). In this video (and the following videos in the series) look into how A* works and how you would go about implementing this into Unity. After looking at these resources I feel that I would be able to create a version of this so will be spending my next few weeks implementing it into my project.

References
Lague, S (2014) A* Pathfinding. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L-WgKMFuhE

Millington, I. and Funge, J.D. (2009) Artificial intelligence for games. San Francisco, Calif, Oxford: Morgan Kaufmann; Elsevier Science.