Now that we have a sample maze to look at, what are the important elements for a maze?

The features of a maze

Is the maze we just looked at the only shape we might want?  What about other basic shapes like circles, ovals, etc?  It's possible to do those, as well.   In fact, a little creativity can achieve a lot.  But for my purposes now, we are going to stick with simple rectangular mazes like the one above.

What about the solutions to the maze?  Is there one?  More than one?

Of course, I'm sure we hope there is exactly one and no more.   It's cruel to give a willing someone a complex maze that doesn't have a solution.   And it's not nearly as much fun, if there are lots of ways of getting through the maze.  So in this case, I think you'll agree that we should pursue mazes that have exactly one solution to them.  The previous maze meets this essential requirement.

There is more, of course.  We probably don't want to make the same maze, over and over again.  So it is important that the maze generation appear to be somewhat random.  And we probably don't want the solution to be obvious, either -- if the somewhat random path always takes a recognizable form, then folks will see that fact and the maze will be far less challenging.

Random is pretty easy in QB, as we'll see.  However, getting a maze path that is of uniformly high quality may take some more work.  The scope here doesn't include high quality mazes, just the process of getting them to be reasonably decent.  As you dig in more, I'm sure you will develop your own methods.

Last updated: Thursday, June 17, 2004 19:25