I am making a game in Unity3d and I need a pathfinding algorithm that can guide enemy's towards the player on a 3d surface. The problem is that the 3d surface can take any shape, so it can be a 3d sphere, cube, torus and many more shapes.
I tried using A* but for that formula I need the distance between the two points, and since the object is curved I cannot get that so easily. I found that you can use the Haversine formula if its a sphere, but that won't work on a torus or a random 3d shape.
I want this kind of result except with every kind of object: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvunNq7yVcU
Is there a way/algorithm that I can use to get that result. I know there is something called nav mesh but I need to program it myself. Also I cannot find how nav mesh approaches this dilema. I am going to use the triangles of my object as nodes.
So my question boils down to:
Does anyone know a algorithm for pathfinding that works on any 3d surface?
Thanks in advance.
I think your problem is that you are not using a graph, I would suggest that you look into a tutorial on how to create a graph, for the language you are using if you can, (this may also help here they are using edges to connect their node which is needed if you have more then one weight). If you do make a graph you will need a node class. Each node must contain pointers to any nodes that it is connected to and an ID of some kind. In your case that is probably all you need but it is also possible to assign a weight to each move if you also have an edge class (connectors between nodes) which would be used to connect the nodes. If you do have an edge class your nodes will have pointers to edges instead of other nodes and each edge will have a weight and a pointer to 1 or 2 nodes (depending on if it is a directed path or not). You can also make a graph class to contain all of your nodes and edges.
Summary: make a node class and determine if you need the edge class (if everything has a weight of 1 you can get away with out it). Use the node class to create a graph to represent your map with each tile being a node with pointers to connected tiles. Use A* or dijkstra's algorithm to search your graph to find the shortest path.
note: most examples you will find will be for 2d graphs, yours is no different except that there are no bounds on yours, you just need to connect the nodes to their adjacent tiles.