Path Visualizer
A sandbox to watch pathfinding and maze algorithms run.
Role
Personal project
Period
Technical stack
- React
- TypeScript
- Canvas
- Zustand
- Vite
In brief
In 2023 I wanted to write the pathfinding algorithms myself and watch them run, rather than just read them as pseudocode, so I put together a small version in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I came back to it in 2025 to move it onto a stack I know well, React, and gauge what a coding agent could do with an existing project.
Highlights
- Nine pathfinding algorithms, from DFS and BFS to Dijkstra, A-star, bidirectional A-star and Jump Point Search, animated step by step at an adjustable speed.
- Four maze generators (backtracker, Prim, cellular automata, binary space partitioning), each written with a generator function to animate the build step by step.
- Rendering on a hand-driven 2D canvas, where v1 stacked one div per cell, with performance work (on-demand redraw, culling) to stay smooth as the grid grows.
- A raycaster-style 3D mode, inspired by a javidx9 video, to walk the maze in first-person view, with a minimap and goal detection.