Python Maze Generator

One of the things that I continue to notice is that in the machine generated mazes there are always lots of dead-end paths off of mainline path. While when a human makes a maze by hand there tends to be fewer quick dead end paths and a branch will usually take you 4+ squares before you realize that it's non-terminal.

I would think that either there is an algorithm or metric that would score mazes to make them more "realistic". Any references?

There's probably better ones avaliable now on github, but this one caught my eye.

I was wondering, are there any examples of mazes (real or programs) where the structure, rules or walls change based on a certain algorithmic pattern?

So that you've not only got to find the right way out, but you must crack the code before a way out is even possible.

Kind of like the movie Cube: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0123755/

This one has a nice 3d effect to my eyes, where the dark blue on the left appears to be farther than the rest of the maze.

Can someone explain?

http://www.janthor.com/maze/rainbowpath.32.32.1128433606.84....

Zoom in for a better effect

Such maze patters reassemble Lightenberg figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenberg_figure

They are created by electric discharge going through path of least resistance in insulating materials.

I was expecting a simple explanation of some maze generation algorithms, but was very pleasantly surprised with the path-length based visualization stuff. What I mean is that there is more to this page than the title suggests!

Well my work has this site blocked and categorized as Adult. Anyone know what may have caused that? This is the first time I've actually ever come across a blocked site at work.

This is super cool, and surprising to see since last week I implemented something similar in ClojureScript. Mazes are awesome.

http://jeffcarp.github.io/maze/

Code: https://github.com/jeffcarp/maze/blob/gh-pages/maze.cljs

This is awesome, thanks for sharing! The rainbow coloring is an interesting technique for visualizing the structure of mazes.

For those interested, I wrote a similar maze generation tool in Python which includes implementations of Kruskal's algorithm, Prim's algorithm, and recursive backtracking, and can output similar images. https://github.com/jpwright/maze.py

His site has a whole lot of chastity belt images and drawings- I'd say that's why this site has been marked as adult.

FYI Bluecoat Threatpulse has your site listed as "Adult/Mature Content;Entertainment"

sometimes I think there is a very fine line between math visualizations and art.

I keep thinking it would be interesting to take an image (like a face) and let it show through the maze instead of colorizing it.

There should be an epilepsy warning! @_@