title: What is a good 2D grid-based path-finding algorithm?
body: <p>I'm currently writing a 2D game in Javascript using the HTML5 &lt;canvas&gt; element. It's coming along very nicely, but i have run into a problem.</p>
  
  <p>The level design for my game is a grid (so path cost moving from one cell to the north/south/east/west cell is 1) with various obstacles occupying various locations in the grid &ndash; a lot like a maze, but with a lot more wiggle room.  Each individual level is on the order of 400 &times; 200 cells.</p>
  
  <p>I'm trying to implement an enemy that will seek out the player no matter where they might be, but i'm having trouble trying to translate one of the various path-finding algorithms to fit my situation. Most of the ones i've come across (like A* and Dijkstra) seem to be best suited to 3D or much more complicated 2D situations. I was wondering if it is possible to dramatically simplify these algorithms to better suit my purposes, or if something like the depth-first search would be a more efficient alternative given the level size.</p>