Mazes

Revision as of 12:43, 6 November 2010 (view source)

MarkSample (Talk | contribs)

(→Second Person Mazes)

← Older edit

Revision as of 12:44, 6 November 2010 (view source)

MarkSample (Talk | contribs)

(→Visual Procedural Mazes)

Newer edit →

Line 288:

[[File:Steven-Roy-Zork-Map-for-DEC.jpg]]

−

====Visual Procedural Mazes====

+

====Third-Person Mazes====

−

One is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of Pac-Man in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by Ms. Pac-Man in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (Pac-Man) and late 1982 (Ms. Pac-Man). Pac-Man appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. Early descriptions of Pac-Man often described the playing field of the game as a maze. In 1981, for example, the New York Times characterized Pac-Man as "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while Newsweek mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" the same year (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in Pac-Man, mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers

+

What's most remarkable about these user-designed maps of mazes in ''Adventure'' and ''Zork'' is that they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze, but as noted above, third-person mazes do not guarantee safety or solubility. Perhaps it is this paradox—the pretense of mastery undercut by the promise of difficulty—that makes third-person mazes the most common in computer culture. In fact, one is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of Pac-Man in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by Ms. Pac-Man in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (Pac-Man) and late 1982 (Ms. Pac-Man). Pac-Man appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. Early descriptions of Pac-Man often described the playing field of the game as a maze. In 1981, for example, the New York Times characterized Pac-Man as "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while Newsweek mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" the same year (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in Pac-Man, mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers

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 1970s and 1980s: textual and visual.

From Maze

Revision as of 12:44, 6 November 2010

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

Search

Toolbox

@@ Line 288: / Line 288: @@
 [[File:Steven-Roy-Zork-Map-for-DEC.jpg]]
-====Visual Procedural Mazes====
+====Third-Person Mazes====
-One is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of Pac-Man in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by Ms. Pac-Man in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (Pac-Man) and late 1982 (Ms. Pac-Man). Pac-Man appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. Early descriptions of Pac-Man often described the playing field of the game as a maze. In 1981, for example, the New York Times characterized Pac-Man as "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while Newsweek mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" the same year (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in Pac-Man, mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers
+What's most remarkable about these user-designed maps of mazes in ''Adventure'' and ''Zork'' is that they transform textually represented second-person mazes into fully-represented third-person mazes. Such maps convey a sense of mastery of the maze, but as noted above, third-person mazes do not guarantee safety or solubility. Perhaps it is this paradox—the pretense of mastery undercut by the promise of difficulty—that makes third-person mazes the most common in computer culture. In fact, one is tempted to pin the advent of maze craze to the release of Pac-Man in the U.S. in October 1980, followed by Ms. Pac-Man in 1981, and the popular (though problematic) subsequent ports of those games to the Atari VCS in early 1982 (Pac-Man) and late 1982 (Ms. Pac-Man). Pac-Man appeared on the Commodore 64 itself in 1983. Early descriptions of Pac-Man often described the playing field of the game as a maze. In 1981, for example, the New York Times characterized Pac-Man as "a circle with a big mouth that eats up dots in a maze while other big mouths try to eat it up" (Latham 1981), while Newsweek mentioned the "maddening Pac-Man maze" the same year (Langway 1981). But even before they hit the mainstream in Pac-Man, mazes were a staple of computer culture, and on-screen maze-like structures abound [1] in the early days of video arcades and home computers
 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 1970s and 1980s: textual and visual.