Computing History of Mazes

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==Procedural Mazes==
==Procedural Mazes==
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Procedural mazes are mazes in which the entire structure of the maze does not coherently exist in physical or visual space. The maze resides in code. There are two types of procedural mazes to consider: textual and visual.
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Procedural mazes are mazes in which the entire structure of the maze does not coherently exist in physical or visual space. The maze resides in code. Or rather, the potential of the maze resides in code. Only a portion of the maze is ever available to be traversed at any given time; the rest remains to be generated by algorithms. There are two types of procedural mazes found in the seventies and eighties: textual and visual.
===Textual Procedural Mazes===
===Textual Procedural Mazes===
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One interesting consequence of textual procedural mazes is that the players solving them often generated secondary, visual mazes.
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While visual mazes might seem to be more "maze-like," in fact, the early procedural mazes were most often textual. Most significantly, mazes were a central feature of early text-based adventure games, now known as interactive fiction. Mazes in these games were not symmetrical spaces to navigate so much as puzzles to solve, non-Euclidean space represented textually. The genre began with the groundbreaking Will Crowther's ''Adventure'', written for the PDP-10 mainframe in 1977 and expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23).
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One important consequence of textual procedural mazes is that the players solving them often generated secondary, visual mazes, often sharing them via BBSes or home computer user groups. Maze begets maze. For example, Jason Scott's TEXTFILES archive of text files found on BBS, FTP, and Gopher servers in the eighties, holds several early ASCII maps created by players of ''Adventure'', such as this map of the twisty little passages all alike:
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Note: This maze is the same for both Adventure 350 and 550
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_________ ______________
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| |___| |
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| W___W |
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______________| | |_____ E _____|
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| ___________S | | | ___
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| | | | _____|W |_____ _____|N |____
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| | | |___| | | |
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| | | U___D |______| |
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| | | | | E______S |
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| | |E ______| |_____ S _____| |______ E ____|
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|W |______ | | _____|W |_____ | |
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| | | |__________| |___ ___|S |____
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| | |_____________E D | | |
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| | | ___| | W|_____
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| |__________________| | |E ___________ |
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| N__________________U | ___| |___ ____|E |___
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|__ S ___| | N ___________| ___| N |__| |__
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| | | | |___S,E W__S (EXIT)U__
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|__| ___|W |____ | | | |
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| | |___U,D ___| |____ W ___|
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___| | | | | |
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|___D | ___| |___ ____| |___
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|___ E ____| | U,D | | N |
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| | |__________| | |
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| | ___ ___| |
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___|W |_____ ___| W |___ |___W |
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___| | | | |___S,E ____|
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|___S BRINK OF |___| | |__|
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| PIT N___S E|________________
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|D ______ E | |__________________ W |
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| | | |______________________| |
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| | |_________________________ N |
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_____|~~|____ |___ NW __|
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| | | |
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| BIRD CHAMBER| ___| |__
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_____| |___ | BACK |
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W_______________________E |PIRATEDEN|
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Adventure was enormously influential upon a generation of programmers and videogame players, but most immediately, the text adventure game inspired the even better known ''Zork.'' ''Zork'' too included a troublesome maze, its complexities most evident when fully mapped, as in this detailed map apparently drawn by a gamer named Steven Jones, which was originally published in DEC Professional in November 1982:
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[[Image:Steven_Roy_Zork_Map_for_DEC_Professional.jpg|400px]]
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Twice, then, in the span of two years this design was described in print as a maze. Why? Why describe the output as a maze and not the more general terms design or pattern? The reason likely depends upon the position that mazes held in computer culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Quite simply, this was the era of the maze craze.
Twice, then, in the span of two years this design was described in print as a maze. Why? Why describe the output as a maze and not the more general terms design or pattern? The reason likely depends upon the position that mazes held in computer culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Quite simply, this was the era of the maze craze.
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But even before they hit the mainstream in ''Pac-Man'', mazes were a staple of computer culture in its more marginalized forms. Most significantly, mazes were a central feature of early text-based adventure games, now known as interactive fiction. Mazes in these games were not symmetrical spaces to navigate so much as puzzles to solve, non-Euclidean space represented textually. The genre began with the groundbreaking Will Crowther's ''Adventure'', written for the PDP-10 mainframe in 1977 and expanded by Don Woods into a full-fledged underground adventure. Basing the game in part on his own caving experience in the Mammoth Cave system, Crowther included in Adventure a ten-room "MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." Woods would go on to add a second maze, this time "TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL DIFFERENT" (Jerz 2007, 23).
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But even before they hit the mainstream in ''Pac-Man'', mazes were a staple of computer culture in its more marginalized forms.
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Adventure was enormously influential upon a generation of programmers and videogame players, but most immediately, the text adventure game inspired the even better known ''Zork.'' ''Zork'' too included a troublesome maze, its complexities most evident when fully mapped, as in this detailed map apparently drawn by a gamer named Steven Jones, which was originally published in DEC Professional in November 1982:
 
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[[Image:Steven_Roy_Zork_Map_for_DEC_Professional.jpg|400px]]
 
In addition to ''Pac-Man'', ''Adventure'', and ''Zork'', other mazes abound [http://weizenbaum.mit.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Talk:Maze_walking%2C_solvability%2C_generate-and-test] in the early days of video arcades and home computers, but these are the most prominent examples. It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and not create some association with these games. Therefore, there's some cultural capital at work whenever 10 Print's design was called a maze in the early eighties. It is reasonable to conclude that the various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 Print design a "maze" were explicitly (though perhaps not consciously) tapping into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of.
In addition to ''Pac-Man'', ''Adventure'', and ''Zork'', other mazes abound [http://weizenbaum.mit.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Talk:Maze_walking%2C_solvability%2C_generate-and-test] in the early days of video arcades and home computers, but these are the most prominent examples. It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and not create some association with these games. Therefore, there's some cultural capital at work whenever 10 Print's design was called a maze in the early eighties. It is reasonable to conclude that the various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 Print design a "maze" were explicitly (though perhaps not consciously) tapping into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of.

Revision as of 15:03, 24 September 2010

View this revision of Computing History of Mazes.

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