The Story Behind
A few years ago, Yandex organized a contest called Robots Couriers with an enticing prize: a ticket to a closed self-driving conference for professionals. The contest resembled a game, with participants tasked with finding optimal routes on a map and optimizing delivery using robotic couriers.
As I delved into the topic, I discovered that despite route finding being a solved problem, it continued to be of interest to the professional game development community. Between 2010 and 2020, engineers made significant optimizations to the A* algorithm, particularly beneficial for AAA games with massive maps. Reading articles and research papers on these optimizations was an exciting experience.