Maze-Navigator 🧭

This project implements a 3D maze navigation system with smooth camera control, wall collision prevention, A* pathfinding, and automatic path-following.
The program displays both a main camera (left screen) and a top-down minimap (right screen), ensuring consistent camera orientation in both views.

📸 Preview

✨ Features

🎮 Controls

• A / D keys — Rotate camera left/right (affects both main view and minimap camera)
• W / S keys — Move forward/backward, with wall collision prevention
• Q key — Use A* algorithm to find the shortest path to the goal and visualize it as a red line
• SpaceBar — Automatically move along the found path with smooth rotation at corners

🧠 A* Pathfinding Overview

The A* algorithm finds the shortest path from the start node to the goal node by minimizing:

f(n) = g(n) + h(n)

• g(n) — Actual cost from the start node to the current node
• h(n) — Estimated cost from the current node to the goal (Manhattan distance in this case)
• f(n) — Total estimated cost

🛠 Implementation Details

1. Camera Rotation (A/D keys)

• Used a cameraYaw variable to store rotation angle
• Converted angle to radians and updated viewDirection
• Both main view and minimap camera are rotated simultaneously

2. Wall Collision Prevention

• Implemented isCollision() to check if the target position is a wall
• Movement is blocked if collision is detected

3. Shortest Path Search (Q key)

• Runs Astar() to compute the shortest path from current position to the goal
• Priority queue (Open List) for efficient smallest f-value extraction
• Closed List to store visited nodes
• Nodes store (x, y, g, h, f, parent)

4. Path Visualization

• Draw red cubes along the computed path
• Adjust size, position, and rotation for each segment

5. Automatic Path Following (SpaceBar)

• Generated multiple intermediate points between key path nodes
• Used Smoothstep to create smooth turns at corners
• Controlled movement states: STOPPED → MOVING → PAUSED
• Movement resumes or restarts depending on state

🚀 Troubleshooting

1. Incorrect Pathfinding

• Issue: Initial A* implementation used simple vectors for open/closed lists without ordering by priority
• Effect: Sometimes failed to reach the goal in complex mazes
• Fix: Switched Open List to priority queue and added parent attribute to Node for proper backtracking

2. Multiple Q Key Calls

• Issue: Pressing Q quickly triggered multiple A* executions
• Effect: Displayed duplicated path outputs
• Fix: Added logic to ensure a single execution per key press

3. Automatic Path Following Glitches

• Issue: Early implementation set cameraPos directly without generating intermediate points
• Effect: Camera flickered or moved backward unexpectedly
• Fix: Precomputed and stored intermediate positions, directions, and angles, then iterated smoothly

4. SpaceBar Input Handling

• Issue: Short key presses were processed multiple times
• Effect: State changes occurred too quickly, causing incorrect behavior
• Fix: Used GetAsyncKeyState and spacePressed flag to handle one press at a time