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Blazing Games - Ultimate Retro Project - Volume 5 - Episode 49

Ultimate Retro Project
Episode 49: Classic Maze

A random maze generator

Page Last Updated: September 8, 2006

Introduction

Maze games fit quite well with teletype games for the simple reason that the output of the program happens to be a printed maze so people can then take the resulting printout and use a pen or pencil to solve the maze. Good maze generators will also allow you to generate a solution for the maze. Of course, the teletype version here does not actually print out to a printer, but you could always use your computer’s screen printing feature to print out the maze.

Using the Console

Creating text games is interesting, but my goal was also to present the game in a way that would simulate a teletype machine as close as possible. This is why the game uses my console.

My Teletype Emulator is designed to simulate playing the game on an old teletype machine, down to the dot matrix output. Anybody who has used an old printer knows how slow they were. They were also noisy, but out of the goodness of my heart, I decided to leave the noise out.

For getting input from the user, I decided to go with a fancy LCD model, in which what you type will be send to a LCD display for your approval before being transmitted to the machine. Unlike real machines, my terminal is intelligent and will only let you enter something when the program is requesting input. Any other typing is ignored!

Playing the Game

Simply use the new command to create a maze. You will be prompted for the desired size. Once selected, a maze will be drawn out. S is the start, E is the end, and * are walls. Once drawn, you can create a new maze or use the solve command to print out the official solution to the maze.

The maze generator I used was a home-brew one and uses my own algorithm. It breaks the maze into alternating horizontal and vertical runs, then fills in the non-path areas recursively by creating mini-mazes out of the unused portions. There are probably much better algorithms out there, but I am an old-school programmer who to this date has NIH (not invented here) problems.

System Requirements

This game is requires Java 1.1 or better to run. Browsers that support 1.1 tend to be 4.x or better versions. Windows XP users may have to download a Java plug in to use Java applets.

Clicking on the link below indicates that you agree to the disclaimer (click here to read).

PLAY Classic Maze

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This game is open source with the source code being hosted at ultimateretroproject.dev.java.net

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