🧭 Pathfinder Visualizer

An interactive Pathfinding Visualizer built using C++ & SFML, supporting A*, BFS, Dijkstra, and Greedy Best-First with animated exploration and terrain-based weights.

🚀 Features

• 🔍 A* Algorithm with Manhattan Heuristic
• 🧱 BFS for shortest path by steps
• 📊 Dijkstra for guaranteed lowest cost path
• ⚡ Greedy Best-First for fast heuristic-based search
• 🎨 Terrain weights visually encoded:
  • Light Gray: Easy (Cost 1)
  • Medium Gray: Medium (Cost 4)
  • Dark Gray: Hard (Cost 8)
• 🎬 Smooth step-by-step animation with adjustable speed
• 🖱️ Mouse-controlled wall + start/end placement
• 📜 Run history to compare algorithm performance
• 🌈 Multiple color themes

🕹️ Controls

Key	Action
A	Use A* Algorithm
B	Use BFS Algorithm
D	Use Dijkstra Algorithm
G	Use Greedy Best-First
Space	Run Selected Algorithm
R	Full Reset (New Terrain)
E	Soft Reset (Keep Walls)
H	Clear Run History
+/-	Adjust Animation Speed
T	Change Theme
Esc	Exit
Left Click	Place Start / End / Walls
Right Click	Remove Walls

🧠 Algorithm Details

✅ A*

• Uses Manhattan Heuristic
• Combines actual cost with estimated distance to goal
• Finds optimal path while exploring fewer nodes than Dijkstra

✅ BFS

• Explores layer by layer from the start
• Finds shortest path by number of steps
• Ignores terrain weights

✅ Dijkstra

• Always finds the lowest cost path
• Explores outward based on cumulative cost
• More thorough than A* but guarantees optimality

✅ Greedy Best-First

• Only uses the heuristic, ignores cost so far
• Very fast but doesn't guarantee optimal path
• Good for seeing how heuristics guide search

🎨 Path Colors

Final path is colored based on terrain difficulty:

• 🔵 Blue: Easy terrain
• 🟡 Yellow: Medium terrain
• 🔴 Red: Hard terrain

📜 Run History

Every algorithm run is logged with:

• Algorithm used
• Time taken
• Nodes visited
• Total path cost

Compare different algorithms on the same terrain to see how they perform!

🛠️ Build Instructions

Requires SFML 3 installed on your system.

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install sfml
g++ -std=c++17 pathfinder_visualizer.cpp -o pathfinder \
    -I/opt/homebrew/include -L/opt/homebrew/lib \
    -lsfml-graphics -lsfml-window -lsfml-system
./pathfinder

Linux

sudo apt install libsfml-dev
g++ -std=c++17 pathfinder_visualizer.cpp -o pathfinder \
    -lsfml-graphics -lsfml-window -lsfml-system
./pathfinder

Windows (MSYS2)

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-sfml
g++ -std=c++17 pathfinder_visualizer.cpp -o pathfinder.exe \
    -lsfml-graphics -lsfml-window -lsfml-system
./pathfinder.exe

💡 What I Learned

• How different pathfinding algorithms explore and make decisions
• Why heuristics matter (A* vs Dijkstra vs Greedy)
• Real-time rendering and animation with SFML
• Structuring C++ projects with clean separation of concerns