A* Pathfinding Project

Overview:
This project was meant to demonstrate the core mechanics of the A* pathfinding system in the form of a demonstrable lab. I started by creating a set of lab instructions for potential use in the future, and then did my own lab. The instructions were as follows:

Project Proposal
A* Pathfinding

Create a Node class that represents a space within a Grid. Nodes require the ability to hold their own position, a boolean representing their "walkability", two distances, and a parent node for backtracking. Then create a grid class to hold a two dimensional data structure of Nodes, along with helper methods to implements the A* pathfinding algorithm. Now create a 6x6 grid of nodes, with unwalkable tiles, start, and end as represented by AStartPathfinding.png.

The A* Algorithm follows a set of rules as follows
1. Reset all nodes parents, and distances
2. Create a container to hold the open set of nodes to check(adding the starting nodes)
3. Compute the node that is closest to both the start and end node, based on Euclidean distance, if two nodes are tied for smallest total distance, choose one based on distance from the end, if those two nodes are tied again, pick one at your discretion
4. Check if this node is the final node, if not, add every adjacent node to it into the open set, setting their parent to the node that added them into the open set
5. If a node is already in the open set, compare the total distance, if smaller update the distance, otherwise leave it alone
6. Repeat step 3,4, and 5 until the end node is found, then compute recursively through the parent of the end node, all nodes on the path back to the start node.

Lessons Learned:
- A* Pathfinding
    - System used to navigate the grid
    - Generally used in systems involving Euclidian distance, as it makes calculating distances between nodes easier
    - Chooses next node to process based on distance from start and to end
- General graph theory
    - Vertices
    - Weighted vs Unweighted
    - Edges
    - Traversal strategies
        - Dijkstra
        - Bredth/Width first
- Proposals
    - Interesting experience in learning how to effectively communicate software ideas
    - Had to submit a proposal and pitch to get approved
- Shared_ptr
    - Useful in keeping track of dynamic objects
    - Dynamically declared objects are able to be shared in contrast to unique_ptr
    - Prevents memory leaks due to undeleted objects