How to determine that nodes in Grid Graph are unreachable before applying pathfinding?

Question

I would like to determine accessibility of nodes before applying pathfinding algorithm to Grid Graph.

I have a surface with nodes overlayed on it and I would like to somehow determine that nodes inside yellow region are unreachable from outside of it (from behind the wall).

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Related: http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/32813/how-does-dwarf-fortress-keep-track-of-so-many-entities-without-losing-performanc/32831#32831 — BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft, Jan 08 '13 at 19:11

Kevin Reid · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-08T22:34:11.130

9

Choose a walkable node.
Flood-fill it. Any square not filled is not reachable from the chosen square.
Repeat the above with another unfilled walkable node to find another separated region.

If you do this completely, you will have a list of connected regions of the map (a partition of it into connected components).

If your map is static, you only need to do this once. Otherwise, it's still not hard: If a node becomes unwalkable, rerun just on the component containing it and you may find you have two components. If a node becomes walkable, then if if it has immediate neighbors from two different components, combine them.

edited Jan 08 '13 at 22:34

answered Jan 08 '13 at 17:18

Kevin Reid

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Note that Kevin is suggesting doing this once when your map is loaded, not every time you want to find a path. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Jan 08 '13 at 19:13
Yup. Once when your map is loaded and possibly again when the walkable areas have significantly changed.(for instance when a previously closed door is opened and now is traversable) – Qqwy Jan 08 '13 at 19:46
I've added info on what to do if the map changes. – Kevin Reid Jan 08 '13 at 22:34

How to determine that nodes in Grid Graph are unreachable before applying pathfinding?

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