Maze Solver

Jason Sewall

January 2018

Quick start

$ python maze_viewer.py <n> <m> [seed]

(You may need to specify python3 in some systems)

Create and view a n x m maze, optionally randomly seeded with [seed]. Use arrow keys to move icon.

$ python bozo_walker.py <n> <m> [seed]

Create and view a n x m maze, optionally randomly seeded with [seed]. bozo walker will work very hard to find a (long, long) path to the solution. Not guaranteed to terminate! (But probably will).

n x m should probbly be < 200 each. It gets very hard to see things currently for large values, and the bozo walker is unlikely to terminate in a reasonable amount of time for n, m > 40

Introduction

This is simple maze creation, viewing, and solving testbed written in Python 3. The only external dependency is on Pyglet.

License

This is licensed with the permissive Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE-2.0 file in the root of the distrubtion for details.

Installation

In Windows, I recommend [Anaconda][https://www.anaconda.com/download/#windows].

Now, for Anaconda in Windows or in Linux assuming you have Python 3 properly installed:

$ pip3 install pyglet

Overview

There are 3 source files in this distribution:

maze.py provides code to build and represent a rectilinar maze with one start and muliple ends, as well as basic maze_walker code.
mazeview.py provides code to view mazes and to interatively nagivate them with the default walker. (see quick start, above)
bozo_walker.py provides a subclass of the maze_walker that randomly walks until it has solved the maze.

Challenge

Can you write a new walker subclass following the bozo_walker example that can solve the maze more reliably and quickly? Try it out! You'll certainly need to use more storage to do so, but it should be worth it.

Other projects

Make other types of mazes
- Implement other maze generation techniques
- Make mazes that have unreachable parts
- Support non-rectilinear mazes
Change from 'mazes' to 'general' navigation
- Find shortest paths, rather than find solution quickly
Improve maze viewer
- Change the textures
- Make the 'win condition' more visually interesting
- Support 'camera movement' to allow for larger mazes to be displayed well.
- 3D maze viewers!

Known issues

The Windows version sometimes does strange handling of input. It's not clear to my why at this point, but I blame Pyglet.

jasonsewall / maze_challenge