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From: conrad@ug.cs.dal.ca (Blair Conrad)
Subject: Re: "The Shortest Route"
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References: <1995Mar13.231632.13723@blaze.trentu.ca> <TORMY.95Mar14124452@signy11.stud.unit.no> <3ki16b$3aj@math.rutgers.edu> <3knrrf$a26@belfort.daimi.aau.dk>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 13:20:06 GMT
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Claus L{gel Rasmussen (shakti@daimi.aau.dk) wrote:
: Thus spake bonar@math.rutgers.edu (Doug Bonar):

: [...]

: >	Lots of people here have been talking about shortest
: >path algorithms and the speed of computation.  But, it looks 
: >to me like most of the talk is concering games where the playing
: >field (board) is fixed.  If that is the case, why can't you 
: >simply compute the shortest paths in the development stage
: >and include them as table look-ups in the end product?

: [...]

: Ok, lets do some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
: [ calculations deleted... went like this ]
: [1 byte/path, 100*100 field => (10000^2 - 10000)/2 * 1 byte ~ 50 MB]

Actually, probably a bit worse than that, since 1 byte probably wouldn't
be enough to represend a path...

In any event, for a few of these games, like Civilization, Colonization,
and others, the game board isn't exactly fixed. Roads may be built/destroyed,
forests may be cleared, etc. In addition, there may be hostile units around
which are to be avoided.

This would make the lookup table even less useful than indicated before.

		Blair

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