Maze Generator

Simple visualized maze generation program.

Info

• Meant to be run in shell/terminal.
• Uses Python Curses.

Background

This maze generator utilizes an iterative version of the recursive backtracker algorithm, which is a randomized version of the depth-first search algorithm. Originally deveoloped with recursion, the program would reach max depth of recursion, therefore, the maze_generation() function had to be implemented with a stack.

The steps of the maze_generation() function are as follows:

• Start at the initial cell (designated by R_START, C_START)
• Push these coordinates to the stack
  • While length of stack is not empty
    • Pop coordinates from stack
    • For each direction 2 units from the coordinate:
      • If coordinate found is in the maze and WALL exists:
        • Push the previously popped coordinates to stack
        • Bore hole between previous coordinate and new found coordinate
        • Push new found coordinate to stack
        • Break

Usage

To run, call the executable python file from the command line:

./maze_generator.py

The constants at the top of the file can be modified as you please:

WALL = '\xe2'
DIG_GUY = 'O'
MAZE_WIDTH, MAZE_HEIGHT = 50, 25
FRAME_SLEEP, END_SLEEP = 0.1, 2
R_START, C_START = 1, 1

WALL: char: This variable is what fills the pathless maze matrix before any actual maze path generation takes place.

DIG_GUY: char: This is the visual marker of the current location on the path stack in the maze matrix.

MAZE_WIDTH, MAZE_HEIGHT: int: These integers (corresponding to the maze matrix row and column dimensions) should be less than the curses.newpad(nlines, ncols) data structure dimensions.

FRAME_SLEEP: float: This number value corresponds to the wait time between frame. Pretty much a tickrate of sorts. A higher value will result in slower progression of maze generation. (1 = One second)

END_SLEEP: float: This number value corresponds to the duration of display of the final resulting generated maze before automatic closing of the curses wrapper() function and program closing. (1 = One second)

R_START, C_START: int: These two integers correspond to the row and column coordinates of the start of the maze path generation. These values should be 0 or positive and less than the set maze width and height.