Mazes
From Maze
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=== The Computerized Maze === | === The Computerized Maze === | ||
| − | A clear line can be drawn from the physical and visual mazes of earlier times to the mazes of the digital age. It is here, in the computer culture that has arisen in the past thirty years, that mazes once again become part of daily life. With the arrival of the computer in the 1960s and graphical displays in the 1970s, the maze has entered a kind of renaissance. There are two important developments that contributed to the prevalence of the maze as a cultural production: (1) the ability to easily generate complete maze-like structures on a screen or, with older computers, printed output; and (2) the appearance of procedural mazes, that is, mazes traversed not through physically walking through space nor through tracing a pencil on a page, but through navigating representations of convoluted virtual space that are generated by mathematical algorithm. | + | Computers did not completely change the cultural idea of the maze, but they did provide new ways to represent, generate, solve, and play in mazes. And, as computers came into the home and became widely accessible, they helped to bring mazes into daily life once again. In part, this was done through the work of early computer scientists who wrote programs to generate mazes. But many popular mazes were not as computationally sophisticated. They were, however, integrated cleverly into enjoyable computer games that reached a mass audience. |
| − | It would be a mistake to assume that all computer and video game mazes operate according to the same principles. A useful way to think about the differences between various digital mazes is to consider the perspective each maze affords—and which consequently structures the encounter with the maze. Roughly speaking, it is possible to conceive of mazes as first-person, second-person, or third-person mazes, a framework with roots in narratology but which has also been commonly applied to videogames (for example, the first-person-shooter): | + | Computer and video game mazes did not all operate according to the same principles. There are first-person mazes, partially represented on a screen, in which a subjective perspective is used an a wall or passageway directly in front of the maze walker is shown. There are also second-person mazes, textually represented, in which the maze walker is the “you” who is told the story of the traversal of the maze. And, there are third-person mazes, sometimes fully represented mazes, in which the maze walker maintains a large-scale or omniscient view. |
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| − | * First-person mazes are partially represented mazes, in which the maze walker is confronted with a subjective perspective of the maze; nothing can be seen of the maze except the wall or passageway directly in front of the maze walker; | ||
| − | * Second-person mazes are textually represented mazes, in which the maze walker is hailed by a second-person mode of address (“you”), and is fully at the mercy of the textual descriptions on the screen; nothing about the maze can be known unless “you” are told it; | ||
| − | * Third-person mazes are fully represented mazes, in which the maze walker maintains an omniscient view of the maze, a panoptic perspective that nonetheless does not guarantee safety or solvability. | ||
==== First Person Mazes ==== | ==== First Person Mazes ==== | ||
| − | Early on, ''Maze'' and ''Mazewar'' presented a first-person view of a confusing environment. ... | + | A significant early maze program was the initially single-player, then multi-player, ''Maze.'' This presented a 3D view of a maze in which a player can see (and shoot) opponents. The program was created in 1973 at the NASA Ames Research Center by Steve Colley and Howard Palmer and made into a multi-player game thanks to Greg Thompson. It was brought to MIT in 1974 and elaborated; Dave Lebling write a server that provided text messaging and supported up to eight players or robots. This program was later ported to the Xerox Alto as ''Maze War.'' |
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| + | In ''Maze,'' the environment was really a convoluted arena for combat, not a space to be explored or solved and certainly not one for non-violent diversion and amusement. Although there were more exploratory mazes in the ''Ultima'' series and in ''Bard's Tale,'' the combat arena would beome prototypical of first-person maze games such as ''Castle Wolfenstein 3D'' and ''Doom.'' | ||
====Second Person Mazes==== | ====Second Person Mazes==== | ||
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It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and without recalling these games to some extent. The various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 PRINT output a "maze" tapped into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of. | It would simply be impossible to use the word "maze" within the semiotic domain of computers and without recalling these games to some extent. The various sources from the early eighties that called the 10 PRINT output a "maze" tapped into a cultural history of mazes that home programmers and game players would be aware of. | ||
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| − | ==== Computer Generated Mazes ==== | ||
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| − | Clifford Pickover wries of "the largest computer-generated maze in the world," a designation which seems quaint today. Although he notes the program could generate an 1000-page maze, he cites the largest one she had printed to date as a 200-page maze. However, he gives the title to the 1987 maze produced by Walter Pullen. This 23-foot maze had to be stored on "eight floppy disks" and "require one megabyte of disk space" (7). In a note, Pickover mentions a maze Pullen had generated with "@2 miles of passages" that "stretched over 3031 pages" (8). | ||
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| − | Some new formulation of Moore's Law, which originally described how the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months, could surely apply to describe the continual increase in the area of single-solution computer-generated mazes. In the more general space of convoluted structures, solvable or not, the quest for the largest computer-generated maze will always be chasing 10 PRINT, whose never-ending corridors can be drawn with a one-line ''reductio ad absurdum.'' | ||
=== Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games === | === Context of Expectations: Computer Graphics and Games === | ||
