- Providing the comparer as a type argument that is a struct allows the calls to be devirtualised, leading to approx a 3x performance improvement.
- Use a single backing array, rather than a list of arrays.
- Enforce SA1604 ElementDocumentationShouldHaveSummary.
- Enforce SA1629 DocumentationTextShouldEndWithAPeriod.
- Turn off some rules covered by IDExxxx rules.
- Remaining rules are treated as part of OpenRA style.
An event is added to Map to indicate when the cell projection is changed. This is important as this can mean Map.Contains(CPos) could now return different results for the cell. The HierarchicalPathFinder is made aware of these changes so it can rebuild any out-of-date information. This fixes prevent a crash if a cell that was previously outside the map changes height and becomes inside the map. The local path search will explore the cell as it is inside the map - but if the HPF was unaware if had been updated, it will still consider the cell to be outside the map and unreachable, resulting in a crash.
If a path search is performed by the HierarchicalPathFinder when the source cell is unreachable location, a path is still allowed and starts from one of the cells adjacent to the location. If moving into one of these cells results in the actor moving into an isolated area that cannot reach the target this would previously crash as no abstract path could be found. Now we handle such locations by giving them a unreachable cost so the path search will not attempt to explore them.
Imagine a map split into two by a one tile wide line of impassable cliffs. If an actor is on top of these cliffs it is allowed to path because it can "jump off" the cliff and move into the cell immediately either side of it. However it is important which side it chooses to jump into, as one it has moved off the cliff it loses access to the other side. The previous error came about because the path might try and search on the side that couldn't reach the target location. Now we avoid that being considered.
Using the local pathfinder, you could not find a path to an unreachable destination cell, but it was possible to find a path from an unreachable source cell if there was a reachable cells adjacent to it.
The hierarchical pathfinder did not have this behaviour and considering an unreachable source cell to block attempts to find a path.
Now, we unify the pathfinders to use a consistent behaviour, allowing paths from unreachable source cells to be found.
If a path search is attempted from a location outside the map, then PathSearch will filter these out to prevent any crashes. The path search will result in no path. However if the location is within the map but on a custom movement layer that the locomotor cannot use, this currently crashes. To fix this we apply a similar filtering logic to ignore any source locations that cannot be used, and so the path search will result in no path for these as well.
When using the internal AbstractCellForLocalCell method to check if a local cell is reachable, this should return null when the cell is unreachable. If multiple abstract cells were required for that grid, this worked as intended. Only reachable cells are stored in the localCellToAbstractCell mapping. For a grid that required only a single abstract cell, which is the common case, we optimize this to store only the single abstract cell rather than the whole mapping for potentially 100 cells in that grid. However this makes no distinction between the reachable and unreachable cells, so when we check later we get incorrect results. If a cell is unreachable but belongs to the same grid as a single group of reachable cells then we incorrectly report it as reachable. The easiest way to see this incorrect behaviour is when the PathExists is called and can sometimes indicate a path exists when it does not.
To fix this, we now ensure we perform a check to see if the cell is reachable in this single layer case, this allows us to retain the optimization where we don't need to store the whole mapping, but allows us to correctly indicate when cells are unreachable.
By tracking updates on the ActorMap the HierarchicalPathFinder can be aware of actors moving around the map. We track a subset of immovable actors that always block. These actors can be treated as impassable obstacles just like terrain. When a path needs to be found the abstract path will guide the search around this subset of immovable actors just like it can guide the search around impassable terrain. For path searches that were previously imperformant because some immovable actors created a bottleneck that needed to be routed around, these will now be performant instead. Path searches with bottlenecks created by items such as trees, walls and buildings should see a performance improvement. Bottlenecks created by other units will not benefit.
We now maintain two sets of HPFs. One is aware of immovable actors and will be used for path searches that request BlockedByActor.Immovable, BlockedByActor.Stationary and BlockedByActor.All to guide that around the immovable obstacles. The other is aware of terrain only and will be used for searches that request BlockedByActor.None, or if an ignoreActor is provided. A new UI dropdown when using the `/hpf` command will allow switching between the visuals of the two sets.
During the refactoring to introduce HierarchicalPathFinder, custom costs were no longer applied to source locations. The logic being that if we are already in the source location, then there should be no cost added to it to get there - we are already there!
Path searches support the ability to go from multiple sources to a single target, but the reverse is not supported. Some callers that require a search from a single source to one of multiple targets perform their search in reverse, swapping the source and targets so they can run the search, then reversing the path they are given so things are the correct way around again. For callers that also use a custom cost like the harvester code that do this in order to find free refineries, they might want the custom cost to be applied to the source location. The harvester code uses this to filter out overloaded refineries. It wants to search from a harvester to multiple refineries, and thus reverses this in order to perform the path search. Without the custom cost being applied to the "source" locations, this filtering logic never gets applied.
To fix this, we now apply the custom cost to source locations. If the custom cost provides an invalid path, then the source location is excluded entirely. Although this seems unintuitive on its own, this allows searches done "in reverse" to work again.
When asked to find a path from multiple source locations, the abstract search is used to determine which source locations are viable. Source locations that cannot be reached on the abstract graph are excluded from the local path search. As we know the locations are unreachable, this prevents the local path search from expanding over the entire search space in an attempt to find these unreachable locations, preventing wasted effort.
In order to determine these reachable locations, the abstract search is expanded successively trying to reach each source location each time. However, this failed to account for a property of the ExpandToTarget for which a comment is now added. If the location was found previously, then expanding to try and find it again will fail. If the source locations were close together, it was likely that the initial expansions of the search space would have included them, and thus they would not be found on a later expansion. This would mean these locations would incorrectly be thought unreachable.
To fix this, we check if the location has already been explored (has CellStatus.Closed in the graph). If so we can check the cost to determine if it is reachable.
Activated with the '/path-debug' chat command, this displays the explored search space and costs when searching for paths. It supports custom movement layers, bi-directional searches as well as visualizing searches over the abstract graph of the HierarchicalPathFinder. The most recent search among selected units is shown.
Teach HierarchicalPathFinder to keep a cache of domain indices, refreshing them only on demand and when invalidated by terrain changes. This provides an accurate and quick determination for checking if paths exist between given locations.
By exposing PathExistsForLocomotor on the IPathFinder interface, we can remove the DomainIndex trait entirely.
Replaces the existing bi-directional search between points used by the pathfinder with a guided hierarchical search. The old search was a standard A* search with a heuristic of advancing in straight line towards the target. This heuristic performs well if a mostly direct path to the target exists, it performs poorly it the path has to navigate around blockages in the terrain. The hierarchical path finder maintains a simplified, abstract graph. When a path search is performed it uses this abstract graph to inform the heuristic. Instead of moving blindly towards the target, it will instead steer around major obstacles, almost as if it had been provided a map which ensures it can move in roughly the right direction. This allows it to explore less of the area overall, improving performance.
When a path needs to steer around terrain on the map, the hierarchical path finder is able to greatly improve on the previous performance. When a path is able to proceed in a straight line, no performance benefit will be seen. If the path needs to steer around actors on the map instead of terrain (e.g. trees, buildings, units) then the same poor pathfinding performance as before will be observed.
Two different issues were causing a path search to not explore cells in order of the cheapest estimated route first. This meant the search could sometimes miss a cheaper route and return a suboptimal path.
- PriorityQueue had a bug which would cause it to not check some elements when restoring the heap property of its internal data structure. Failing to do this would invalidate the heap property, meaning it would not longer return the items in correct priority order. Additional tests ensure this is covered.
- When a path search encountered the same cell again with a lower cost, it would not update the priority queue with the new cost. This meant the cell was not explored early enough as it was in the queue with its original, higher cost. Exploring other paths might close off surrounding cells, preventing the cell with the lower cost from progressing. Instead we now add a duplicate with the lower cost to ensure it gets explored at the right time. We remove the duplicate with the higher cost in CanExpand by checking for already Closed cells.
Move the domain logic involved into a base class named DensePathGraph. The base class contains all the domain logic necessary to traverse a graph including concepts such as custom movement layer.
PathGraph becomes responsible for proving a backing array for the pathfinding information, and is where the pooling logic lives instead, helping split the two concepts out.
Some path searches, using PathSearch, were created directly at the callsite rather than using the pathfinder trait. This means some searches did not not benefit from the performance checks done in the pathfinder trait. It also means the pathfinder trait was not responsible for all pathing done in the game. Fix this with the following changes:
- Create a sensible shape for the IPathFinder interface and promote it to a trait interface, allowing theoretical replacements of the implementation. Ensure none of the concrete classes in OpenRA.Mods.Common.Pathfinder are exposed in the interface to ensure this is possible.
- Update the PathFinder class to implement the interface, and update several callsites manually running pathfinding code to instead call the IPathFinder interface.
- Overall, this allows any implementation of the IPathFinder interface to intercept and control all path searching performed by the game. Previously some searches would not have used it, and no alternate implementations were possible as the existing implementation was hardcoded into the interface shape.
Additionally:
- Move the responsibility of finding paths on completed path searches from pathfinder to path search, which is a more sensible location.
- Clean up the pathfinder pre-search optimizations.
Actor previously cached targetable locations for static actors as an optimization. As we can no longer reference the IPositionable interface, move this optimization to HitShape instead. Although we lose some of the efficiency of caching the final result on the actor, we gain some by allowing HitShape to cache the results as long as they have not changed. So instead of being limited to static actors, we can extend the caching to currently stationary actor.
The existing APIs surfaces for pathfinding are in a wonky shape. We rearrange various responsibilities to better locations and simplify some abstractions that aren't providing value.
- IPathSearch, BasePathSearch and PathSearch are combined into only PathSearch. Its role is now to run a search space over a graph, maintaining the open queue and evaluating the provided heuristic function. The builder-like methods (WithHeuristic, Reverse, FromPoint, etc) are removed in favour of optional parameters in static creation methods. This removes confusion between the builder-aspect and the search function itself. It also becomes responsible for applying the heuristic weight to the heuristic. This fixes an issue where an externally provided heuristic ignored the weighting adjustment, as previously the weight was baked into the default heuristic only.
- Reduce the IGraph interface to the concepts of nodes and edges. Make it non-generic as it is specifically for pathfinding, and rename to IPathGraph accordingly. This is sufficient for a PathSearch to perform a search over any given IGraph. The various customization options are concrete properties of PathGraph only.
- PathFinder does not need to deal with disposal of the search/graph, that is the caller's responsibility.
- Remove CustomBlock from PathGraph as it was unused.
- Remove FindUnitPathToRange as it was unused.
- Use PathFinder.NoPath as the single helper to represent no/empty paths.
The path cache was originally a moderate benefit, but over time a couple of things have conspired against it:
- Only paths with BlockedByActor.None are cached. Originally all paths regardless of blocking were cached but this was deemed unacceptable due to potentially returning outdated paths as actors move about. Paths with BlockedByActor.None are only invalidated if terrain conditions change, which are rarer.
- Move will try and find a path 4 times, trying with a different BlockedByActor check each time. BlockedByActor.None is the last check and only reached if the other searches fail. This is a rare scenario.
Overall, this means the hit rate for the cache is almost non-existent. Given the constraints on path validity it seems unlikely that the hit rate could be improved significantly, therefore it seems reasonable to remove the cache entirely to remove the overhead of cache management.
- Remove functionality for tracking cells considered during the search, as nothing relies on this.
- Rename various parameters in the expand function to closer match naming of fields used in CellInfo, intended to improve clarity.
- Make Status the first field.
- Rename EstimatedTotal to EstimatedTotalCost to make it clearer it has the same unit as the CostSoFar field.
- Rename PreviousPos to PreviousNode as node terminology is a better match for usage.
Firstly, when dealing with maps with height discontinuities, the neighbouring cells we need to search are more that the set we need to search on flat maps. We ensure that as we traverse a map with varying height, we now consider cells "behind" us that may have become accessible due to a height change.
Secondly, when considering connections available via Custom Movement Layers, make sure the target cell on the new layer is actually enterable. Previously this cell would be reported as a valid connection, even if it wasn't actually possible to enter the cell as it was blocked. We also apply the same optimization of ignoring already closed cells.
As there are few custom movement layers, using an array is good for improving lookup speed. Additionally, we can simplify some code by reserving index 0 of the array for the ground layer. Code that needs to maintain a state for the ground layer and every custom movement layer can now maintain a flat array of state using index 0 for the ground layer, and the the ICustomMovementLayer.Index for the custom movement layer. This removes a lot of ternary statements checking for the ground layer special case.
In CellInfoLayerPool, instead of having to store a layer with the default values, we know we can just clear the pooled layer in order to reset it. This saves on memory, and also makes resetting marginally faster.
In PathSearch, we need to amend a check to ensure a cell info is not Unvisited before we check on its cost.
- Rename CostForInvalidCell to PathCostForInvalidPath
- Add MovementCostForUnreachableCell
- Update usages of int.MaxValue and short.Maxvalue to use named constants where relevant.
- Update costs on ICustomMovementLayer to return short, for consistency with costs from Locomotor.
- Rename some methods to distinguish between path/movement cost.
In path finding GetConnections considers connections to already closed cells and calculates the cost for them. The caller afterwards ignores them. These are 15% of all connections.
