Intelligent path finding for avatars in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Path finding is an important feature of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG). In this paper, we propose a path finding algorithm for peer-to-peer online games. The proposed approach discovers a near optimal but cost effective path between any two points of a connected virtual world. The search space is reduced by the use of anchor points at each zone. As a result, computational cost and memory requirement for the system are relaxed. Moreover, active peers participate in path discovering process that reduces load on the server. In order to avoid repeated computation of a path, many sub-paths are reused at each zone whenever possible. The performance is verified through simulation.