I am trying to create a separate thread for my enemy's A* pathfinder which will give me a list of points to get to the player. I have placed the thread in the update method of my enemy. However this seems to cause jittering in the game every-time the thread is called.

I have tried calling just the method and this works fine. Is there any way I can sort this out so that I can have the pathfinder on its own thread? Do I need to remove the thread start from the update and start it in the constructor? Is there any way this can work?

Here is the code at the moment:

bool running = false;
bool threadstarted;
System.Threading.Thread thread;

public void update()
{
    if (running == false && threadstarted == false)
    {
        thread = new System.Threading.Thread(PathThread);

        //thread.Priority = System.Threading.ThreadPriority.Lowest;
        thread.IsBackground = true;
        thread.Start(startandendobj);
        //PathThread(startandendobj);
        threadstarted = true;
    }
}

public void PathThread(object Startandend)
{

    object[] Startandendarray = (object[])Startandend;
    Point startpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[0];
    Point endpoint = (Point)Startandendarray[1];

    bool runnable = true;
    // Path find from 255, 255 to 0,0 on the map
    foreach(Tile tile in Map)
    {
        if(tile.Color == Color.Red)
        {
            if (tile.Position.Contains(endpoint))
            {
                runnable = false;
            }
        }
    }
    if(runnable == true)
    {
        running = true;
        Pathfinder p = new Pathfinder(Map);
        pathway = p.FindPath(startpoint, endpoint);     
        running = false;
        threadstarted = false;          
    }
}