maze-solver-go/README.md

maze-solver-go

Introduction

This is a simple little maze solver made for fun and practise writing code in golang. This project is a complete re-write of another maze solver I've written in Java back in 2018 after the first semester of uni at EPFL. Needless to say, this version is way better as I have written it now that I have my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

Goal of the project

The goal of this side project was to deepen my understanding of path-finding algorithms, together with trying to create a good design, focusing on dependency injection and unit testing. It was very instructive.

Not to brag or anything, but the design was quite good, because after completing the following steps of the project:

• reading a maze;
• solving it;
• writing the solution to the file-system;

an idea came to my mind: add the feature of visualizing the progress of the solving algorithm by opening a window that displays the progress of the solver. Well, each module (readers, writers and solvers) were design to be as decoupled as possible, and it allowed me to implement the visualizer feature in only a couple of hours (which I was honestly not expecting).

Dependencies

• go >= 1.21
• ffmpeg (optional, for video visualization, see visualization methods

Usage

After downloading maze-solver from the assets of the latest release, you can use it with the following arguments

Short	Long	Default	Description
-h	--help		Print help information
-v	--verbose	0	Verbose level of the solver, see verbose levels
-i	--input	maze.png	Input file, can be a .txt or .png file
-o	--output	sol.png	Output file, can be a .txt or .png file
	--path-char-in	' '	Character to represent the path in an input text file.
	--wall-char-in	'#'	Character to represent the wall in an input text file.
	--path-char-out	' '	Character to represent the path in an output text file.
	--wall-char-out	'#'	Character to represent the wall in an output text file.
	--cell-size-in	3	Size of a cell (in pixels) for input file of image type.
	--cell-size-out	3	Size of a cell (in pixels) for output file of image type.
-a	--algo	a-star	Algorithm to solve the maze, see solving algorithms
	--visualize		Visualizer the progress of the solver, see visualization methods
	--video-name	sol.mp4	Name of the output file if --visualize is set to 'video'.
	--video-framerate	60	Framerate of the video if --visualize is set to 'video'.

Verbose levels

Level	Description
0	nothing printed to stdout
1	print the total time taken by the solver (time of the main() function)
2	prints the time the solving algorithm took to run
3	prints the time taken by each section (reader, solving algorithm, writer)

Visualization methods

Option	Description
window	will give a live feed of the solver
video	creates a video where each frame is a step the solving algorithm takes

Solving algorithms

Option	Description
dfs	Depth-first search
bfs	Breadth-first search
dijkstra	Dijkstra's algorithm
a-star	A*

Examples

BFS	DFS
Dijkstra	A*