Remarks: Variations in BASIC
From Maze
Even small changes to the 10 PRINT code can have a significant impact on the visual output and the pattern produced. The output of 10 PRINT has a unique visual appeal which can be understood in terms of design and composition (diagonal vs. orthogonal, for instance), and in terms of how it plays against the contextual expectations of the historical period when it emerged (all-text BASIC programs on the one hand and graphical software, particularly videogames, on the other).
As tweaking the program slightly will show, 10 PRINT is a kind of optimal solution that is uniquely elegant in its design space, that of the Commodore 64 BASIC one-line maze generator. Any similar attempt is both less concise (it requires more code) and less expressive (it resembles a maze less or produces a less interesting visual pattern). In fact, the concision of the code and the expressiveness of the image are tightly related, and arise out of a unique set of constraints and interactions, particularly the interaction between the desire to constrain the program code to a single line and the sequence of adjacent characters in the PETSCII table.
The following variations, like the original program, begin by referring to adjacent PETCSII characters.
Contents[hide] |
Orthogonal Weave
464 × 366 pixels
There are no other two characters in the PETSCII data set that, when substituted for "\" and "/", will result in the construction of a traditional orthogonal maze. Vertical and horizontal bars, for example, result in a disconnected weave, while solid and empty squares result in rough static.
10 PRINT CHR$(102+RND(1)*2); : GOTO 10
Though it's certainly not a maze, this version of the program imparts a three-dimensional impression, as if someone had woven bands of material over and under one another.
Corners
464 × 366 pixels
Randomly selecting corner pieces such as "L", by contrast, turns the image into a honeycomb.
As it turns out, diagonal mazes are symbolically efficient on a Cartesian grid due to the fact that four characters meet at the corners, whereas only two meet along an edge. Thus, intersections of up to four lines (the building blocks of a rectilinear maze) can be created at corners if we use diagonal lines.
(Add note on including 1,2,3,4,5 etc. spaces in order to try to create a spaced offset -- note similarity to Gotcha etc.)
10 PRINT " "CHR$(108+(INT(RND(1)+.5)*3)); : GOTO 10
Four Walls
464 × 366 pixels
One of the most intuitive methods of constructing a maze-grid is to take an approach like graph paper, using four characters to signify either a top-wall, bottom-wall, left-wall or right-wall for each cell on the grid. Such characters exist in PETSCII in both "thick" and "thin" variants. Such a process is unfortunately less elegant, as these characters are never placed continuously in the PETSCII character set, and so cannot be addressed with a simple offset.
One can, of course, construct an orthogonal maze instead in a variety of other ways. One way is to address a set of four or more horizontal character elements a l. There are two styles of these characters (thick and thin) available in the Commodore 64 ASCII character set. However, these four character types never appear continuously in the table, so the elegant method of using a simple RND offset must be made a bit more verbose -- for example, selecting between 181, 182, 184 and 185 using two random offsets.
10 PRINT CHR$(181+(INT(RND(1)+.5)*3)+(INT(RND(1)+.5))); : GOTO 10
The image that emerges is indeed mazelike, but (like the code) lacks simplicity and elegance. potential redundancy between the top / bottom and left / right elements creates apparent variation in the thickness of the walls -- an interesting but potentially distracting implication of messiness and texture.
Two Walls
464 × 366 pixels
(...discuss how 181/184 is the best approximation of the classic orthogonal game aesthetic, but it is still less elegant than 109/110 -- we have to carefully force the random result to an INT before introducing an offset multiplier, which adds length to the line, conceptual complexity to the demo, AND as a result we get a less visually interesting output -- that is, it is both less formally dynamic as a design and less contextually unexpected)
10 PRINT CHR$(181+(INT(RND(1)+.5)*3)); : GOTO 10
