So guys, tell me what you want me to do for future C#/XNA tutorials. Next tutorial will cover C# classes (a more in-depth look) with a few more XNA concepts. Also, was the last tutorial too long, or could you follow it all right?

So here's another edition of "What is DF working on today?"

Pathfinding! Yay! But more complex than that! That is my implementation of a modified A* heuristic algorithm. In other words, RTS pathfinding AI. So what can this baby do? Well, first off an explanation of the image!

On the left, you can see a horde of red dots, with a bunch of white lines. The red dots are units, the white lines are the paths they are going to take to get to where they need to. On the right, you see that they have stopped moving, and in fact, clumped together as a group, each on their own square. That's right - it even conforms around terrain! And it runs quite fast, as well. I may make it look easy, but there's a lot more to it under the hood.

Pros:

Fast. I even ditched the closed lists, instead having an iterating SearchID.

Dynamic - you can add stuff like buildings on the fly.

Islanding - AKA if two areas are inaccessible from each other, it returns no-path immediately.

Cons: Currently only grid-based, though I could switch over to any-point without dropping anything. I'd have to re-sort figuring out how to "land" a group

Unfinished: Unit movement cooperation. Currently, while objects are moving they can go through each other. Reconciling this will take the form of each node having an "occupant" and if a unit needs to go through, it basically asks "would you kindly GTFO my path?" However, as shown, they still end up in their proper places, spread out. Should not be too difficult, an example of emergent behavior (aka LIFE, simple rules create complex behavior)

And now for the bonus material

Bonus material removed, after proof of intelligent life after all - at least on the yyg-chat. Turns out the abuse of power had good intentions, and apologies were had by all. A more civilized debate occurred, in which several points were illustrated:

C++ is more powerful and flexible.

In terms of preference, people's opinions will get in the way.

Regardless of your preference, C++ is stronger, assuming you are knowledgeable.

Your opinion is yours to have. You may think that one is better than the other, and as long as it has nothing to do with performance or other quantitative specifications, it is just that - an opinion.

In short, my thoughts that C++ was quantitatively better were realized, and their opinion that GM is a good tool so long as one keeps within GM's boundaries was realized.

This unfortunately is only a small subset of the YYG, and I cannot help you if you venture deeper, for the map is incomplete.