Dependencies

This program requires the packages numpy and pygame to be installed. You may install these packages with pip in a Python 3 virtual environment (venv) by entering the commands below from within the project's directory.

Windows (Command Prompt):

> python -m venv grassfire_env
> grassfire_env\Scripts\activate.bat
> pip install -r requirements.txt

POSIX (Bash):

On Linux, you may need to install python3-venv beforehand.

$ python3 -m venv grassfire_env
$ source grassfire_env/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Run

Simply run main.py in a terminal to start the program and provide parameters via input as prompted.

The terminal outputs a matrix like:

[[ 0 -1  3 -1 -1 -1 -1  0 -1  0]
 [-1  3  1 -1 -1  3  3 -1  0  0]
 [ 3 -1  4  3  3  3 -1  0  0 -1]
 [ 3  3  4  4  3  3  3 -1  0 -1]
 [ 3  3 -1  4  4  4 -1  0  0  0]
 [-1  3 -1  3 -1  4 -1 -1 -1  0]
 [ 3  3  3  3 -1  4  4 -1  0 -1]
 [-1 -1  3 -1 -1 -1  4  3 -1  0]
 [ 0 -1  3 -1  0  2  4 -1  0  0]
 [-1 -1  3  3 -1  3  3  3  0 -1]]

Where the numbers in the matrix are represented as:

• Obstacle (-1)
• Default fill (0)
• Starting cell (1)
• Destination cell (2)
• Visited cell (3)
• Path from the starting cell to destination cell (4)

Pygame GUI

The generated matrix is passed down to the Pygame module grid_gui and the GUI is automatically built based on the received information. Below is an image of the GUI that is generated from the matrix output above.

Pygame GUI color legend:

• Starting cell
• Destination cell
• Obstacle
• Visited cell
• Path from the starting cell to destination cell

Customization

• You can modify main.py to comment out the line that invokes Grid.init_from_user_input() and manually construct the parameters of the Grid class if you wish to run a pre-set grid without having to input parameters into the terminal every time the program is run.

  • Example: grid = Grid(8, 8, 20, (1, 1), (6, 5))
    The above will create a matrix of 8 rows and 8 columns, an obstacle concentration of 20%, a starting cell at the 2nd row and 2nd column, and a destination cell at the 7th row and 6th column.

• You can modify main.py to disable the plotting of cells the algorithm had visited while searching for the destination cell (yellow-colored). This can be done by setting the boolean plot_expansion parameter of the Grassfire class constructor to False. If this option is disabled, the value of the matrix element that corresponds to the visited cell will not be changed from the default value of 0.

Legal

This project is distributed under the terms of the MIT License.