How to edit A* pathfinding algorithm to find only straight moves?

Question

I found this algorithm to find path in 2D array (source):

# Author: Christian Careaga ([email protected])
# A* Pathfinding in Python (2.7)
# Please give credit if used

import numpy
from heapq import *


def heuristic(a, b):
    return (b[0] - a[0]) ** 2 + (b[1] - a[1]) ** 2

def astar(array, start, goal):

    neighbors = [(0,1),(0,-1),(1,0),(-1,0),(1,1),(1,-1),(-1,1),(-1,-1)]

    close_set = set()
    came_from = {}
    gscore = {start:0}
    fscore = {start:heuristic(start, goal)}
    oheap = []

    heappush(oheap, (fscore[start], start))

    while oheap:

        current = heappop(oheap)[1]

        if current == goal:
            data = []
            while current in came_from:
                data.append(current)
                current = came_from[current]
            return data

        close_set.add(current)
        for i, j in neighbors:
            neighbor = current[0] + i, current[1] + j            
            tentative_g_score = gscore[current] + heuristic(current, neighbor)
            if 0 <= neighbor[0] < array.shape[0]:
                if 0 <= neighbor[1] < array.shape[1]:                
                    if array[neighbor[0]][neighbor[1]] == 1:
                        continue
                else:
                    # array bound y walls
                    continue
            else:
                # array bound x walls
                continue

            if neighbor in close_set and tentative_g_score >= gscore.get(neighbor, 0):
                continue

            if  tentative_g_score < gscore.get(neighbor, 0) or neighbor not in [i[1]for i in oheap]:
                came_from[neighbor] = current
                gscore[neighbor] = tentative_g_score
                fscore[neighbor] = tentative_g_score + heuristic(neighbor, goal)
                heappush(oheap, (fscore[neighbor], neighbor))

    return False

'''Here is an example of using my algo with a numpy array,
   astar(array, start, destination)
   astar function returns a list of points (shortest path)'''

nmap = numpy.array([
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
    [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1],
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
    [1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1],
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
    [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1],
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
    [1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1],
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],
    [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1],
    [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]])

print astar(nmap, (0,0), (10,13))

I'm totally lost in how does it works, but it works, so OK. But the problem is that this algorithm also uses 45 degrees moves from one row to another e.g. (0,0) to (1,1) and not (0,0) -> (0, 1) -> (1,1). This is not very good for me, so could someone tell me how can I edit this to use only straight moves?

Answer 1

The neighbors list defines the possible moves:

neighbors = [(0,1),(0,-1),(1,0),(-1,0),(1,1),(1,-1),(-1,1),(-1,-1)]

If you do not want to allow diagonal moves, use

neighbors = [(0,1),(0,-1),(1,0),(-1,0)]