andrew. @ Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:19 pm wrote:
No, two paths never meet. Imagine a tree where it could only branch off to two at a time.
Ya, I figured as much. If they did, you would be forced to know your coordinated in worldspace, so as to know you've reached this point already. So long as the end is extenal (the outer wall), then you could eliminate all the nodes in the current node.
If you know either the general area of the exit, you could take your position in world space, and try to make a beeline for it using the smaller delta angle from the exit.
Fig A is if you don't know.
Fig B is if you do know.
These two are what you can assume when going into the maze.
C and D is just the logic of my suggestion.
If you don't know where the exit is, or have the ability to observe clues toward the edge of the maze (bounding box/area) in order to make a guess at where it is, then left hand rule is pretty much the only way I know of. The only suggestion is that if both you and the teacher knows this, and you know he'd also assume right hand rule as well. Uou could try to randomly choosing when meeting new nodes, keeping the stack of nodes you haven't visited, versus the nodes you still need to take.