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Maze Runner - a game that could have been

resman

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I've been developing a library to implement fast 2D scrolling on the CGA and low-end CPUs. One of my testbed programs is this maze generator that you move a happy face around to solve. Not a particularly complex game, but it does run well on everything from a 4.77 MHz 8088 on up at 60 FPS. I decided to beef up the challenge to be something that can be played and compared with other players. The maze generator is now creating a 53x33 maze. The library is also forward compatible with EGA and VGA equipped machines, but can't use the performance tricks used on the CGA so a fast 286 or even a 386 is needed to get the frame rate on those machines. So, on to the game...

Maze Runner
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Maze Runner generates a random maze and starts the player on the left border. A randomly
placed exit will be on the right border. Find your way across the maze using
the following keys:

  • up arrow = move up
  • down arrow = move down
  • left arrow = move left
  • right = move right

You can exit the game prematurely with the ESCAPE key.

Starting the game presents you with a grid that gets generated into a maze before your eyes. Once complete, the full-size maze is displayed. The full maze is much larger than the screen so it will scroll around the player as you move through the maze.

Once you navigate to the exit, the game will print out a seed value and elapsed time. You can provide this seed value as an optional parameter to Maze Runner to generate the same maze again. This way you can try and beat your previous score, or some one else's.

The game is compatible with just about any PC with a CGA, EGA, or VGA adapter. On modern computers, Maze Runner can be played using DOS Box.

Feel free to post your best times and seed value.
 

Attachments

  • MAZERUNR.EXE.zip
    11.9 KB · Views: 5
If the original version may have been a little overwhelming given the maze size, both in terms of CPU time generating the maze and human patience solving it, here is a version that offers three maze sizes for easy, medium and hard difficulty. "Medium" is the default and is a quarter the size of the previous versions' only option, which is now the "Hard" option. An "Easy" option is a even smaller and offers a quick introduction to the Maze Runner. Added an intro screen that showed a bug in my plot() routine that is now fixed, too. Run from MSDOS command line as:

MAZERUNR [EASY, HARD] [integer]

EASY - Small maze
HARD - Large maze
integer - seed to generate repeatable maze
 

Attachments

  • MAZERUNR.EXE.zip
    12.3 KB · Views: 6
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