Excel-VBA-Interactive-Pathfinding-Visualizer

Just a chemical engineering student who is intrested field of computer science. I noticed that not many pathfinding visualization programs are written in VBA so it would be fun to create one. Just a personal project of mine, code here may be unoptimized, hope you enjoy playing around with the program.

Application Features

1. Interactive user interface
2. Unlimited map area (Excel maximum is 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns)
3. Wide range of maze editing tools:
   1. Eraser - Allows user to remove selected obstacles/ start point/ end point placed down on the cells.
   2. Place obstacle - Places an obstacle on selected cells that obstructs the path (cannot be explored).
   3. Place start point - Places a start point on a selected cell.
   4. Place end point - Places an end point on a selected cell.
4. Different search algorithms:
   1. Breadth First Search - An alogrithm that finds the shortest path from the start to end.
   2. Depth First Search - An algorithm that finds a path from the start to end point.
   3. Greedy Best First Search - A fast algorithm that finds a path from the start to end point.
   4. A Star Search - A fast algorithm that finds the shortest path from the start to end point.
5. Random maze generator
6. Animation settings
   1. Show explored cells - A setting that can be toggled on or off depending if the user wants to see the cells explored by the algorithms.
   2. Checkbox to show actual path - A setting that can be toggled on or off depending if the user wants to see the actual path found by the algorithm.
   3. Show explored cells delay time - A setting that user can change the value of, affecting the animation speed of the explored cells appearing.
   4. Show actual path delay time - A setting that user can change the value of, affecting the animation speed of the actual path appearing.

Preview

Credits

1. Breath First Search, Depth First Search and A* Search algorithms used are in Python code translated to VBA and modified from: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/python-data-structures-and-algorithms/python-data-structures-and-algorithms-in-action?u=76881922
2. Code for random maze generator is taken and modified from: https://github.com/stelios7/ExcelPathfinding
3. Project is inspired from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1umm4PvD8n0