
Maze Design (2005) - amenghra
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/csk/projects/mazes/
======
xamuel
People who like this should also check out Robert Bosch's "TSP Art" (TSP
stands for Travelling Salesman Problem). While this submission focuses on
mazes, Bosch focuses on non-intersecting paths. The two problems are clearly
dual, since a maze's solution is a non-intersecting path, and conversely every
non-intersecting path is the solution to a corresponding maze.

[http://www2.oberlin.edu/math/faculty/bosch/tspart-
page.html](http://www2.oberlin.edu/math/faculty/bosch/tspart-page.html)

~~~
qxi
OP's site is from 2005 and Bosch's site mentions the author of, and links back
to, the submitted link ;)

~~~
xamuel
Oh, thanks, I explicitly tried to check but somehow missed that!

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agbell
A great book about maze generation is "Mazes for programmers"
[http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/](http://www.mazesforprogrammers.com/)

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neves
wow, US$32 for the kindle edition. It looks nice, but a bit too much for a toy
book.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
You can buy the ebook directly from the publisher for $25
[https://pragprog.com/book/jbmaze/mazes-for-
programmers](https://pragprog.com/book/jbmaze/mazes-for-programmers) . You get
pdf and epub formats and no DRM.

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wyldfire
> The designer traces regions of interest in an image and annotates the
> regions with style parameters. They can optionally specify a solution path,
> which provides a rough guide for laying out the maze's actual solution. The
> system uses novel extensions to well-known maze construction algorithms to
> build mazes that approximate the tone of the source image, express the
> desired style in each region, and conform to the user's solution path.

Sounds cool. Is there a public implementation?

~~~
amenghra
One repo I found is
[https://github.com/G3Kappa/pictomaze](https://github.com/G3Kappa/pictomaze).
It requires installing processing and the python plugin.

You can see the write up / output: [https://medium.com/@G3Kappa/generating-
mazes-from-pictures-o...](https://medium.com/@G3Kappa/generating-mazes-from-
pictures-or-masking-entropy-4d050d148539)

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sandworm101
Does anyone know of work on nth dimension mazes?

Back in the 90s I had a great maze generator/game that generated mazes with
over/underpasses between points. I've also played around in some physical 3d
mazes made of lumber. Not just walls, but several layers of paths above and
below each other like a big rubix cube (great drunken fun). So what would a
4/5/6d maze look like?

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JKCalhoun
Not a big maze fan (sorry) but reading the comments and following some of the
links, I cannot help but give a shout out to the incredible "Maze" by
Christopher Manson. Reminded me of the classic "Masquerade" by Kit Williams.

(I hope everyone is familiar with both books.)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99048.Maze](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99048.Maze)

~~~
sasaf5
Thank you for this link! Definitely gonna add this to my coffee table!

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roland35
I would love to plot some of these out with a pen plotter!

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ajkjk
Seems like the connected-vortices mazes are easy to solve if you start by just
figuring out the maze of vortex-connections first (which is very small), and
then just checking each individual vortex. (Sometimes a vortex will have
several paths which aren't actually connected internally, but that should come
out in the second step.)

~~~
crdrost
I think one would have to attack it the other way: focus on each vortex first,
classify its connectivity. Since I think any path from East to West would
break a path from North to South and vice versa, you'd have to classify each
vortex by what it connects, down to one of:

    
    
        {., NE, NW, ES, SW, NS, EW, NE/SW, NW/SE, NES, NEW, NSW, ESW, NESW}
    

In a more visual language you'd have 5x5 tiles which the bigger picture is
made out of:

    
    
        \   /    \            /    \   /    \   /    \  /
         \ /      \          /      \ /      | |      ‾‾
          X        X        X        X       | |
         / \      / \      / \      /        | |      __
        /   \    /   \    /   \    /        /   \    /  \
    
        \            /             \            /    \   /
         \          /               \          /      \ /
          \        /        X        X        X        X        .
           \      /        / \      /          \
            \    /        /   \    /            \
    

Once you've figured out each individual vortex I think solving the bigger
problem is probably doable?

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warent
I have to say I've never really found a maze that was challenging enough to
take more than a minute or so to solve. Some of these mazes look much more
difficult than anything I've seen before. Very cool and creative!

~~~
cr0sh
> I have to say I've never really found a maze that was challenging enough to
> take more than a minute or so to solve.

[http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/maze/larger.gif](http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/maze/larger.gif)

Enjoy!

Note: This is from the "Think Labyrinth!" site mentioned on the Maze Design
site:

[http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/maze.htm](http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/maze.htm)

It is also not the "largest maze" on that page by far; there are a couple of
larger ones (as zip'd files), and likely those aren't the largest today.

I'm pretty certain they are just meant as "art" \- and not to actually
challenge someone to solve them; but if you are so inclined, go for it!

EDIT: I just wanted to add a bit more about the "dense maze" \- the start/end
is at the upper-left/lower-right of the maze; the white line is the "path" of
the maze (black being the walls). Note how the image "changes" depending on
the level of "zoom" \- if you fit it to a smaller size, the "white" of the
image will take a "cross shape", while other areas are "darker" \- zoom in on
those various areas, and notice how the path changes; it's a very complex
construct!

~~~
paragraft
In related news I just found a way to lock up mspaint using flood fill. 7
minutes and counting so far.

~~~
paragraft
Update: nearly 3 hours now and still going. Feels like there might be a CPU
benchmark here.

Update final: After just over 4 hours it appears to have given up without
actually filling anything.

~~~
p1necone
I just did this too after reading your comment.

Cue "I don't know what I expected" meme.

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amenghra
a-maze-ing!

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notfed
It had to be said.

