Re: Mazes and why I can't get very far in Curses!


5 Jan 1995 10:14:05 GMT

Jean-Henri Duteau (nstn1433@fox.nstn.ca) writes:
> Can someone explain to me how, after leaving a room to the north, I
> don't know that I've been turned around and am now facing west?

This isn't quite as stupid as it seems at first glance. In real life,
caves aren't aligned on a NSEW grid and cave passages twist and turn,
ascend and descend in complicated ways (something that the original
"Adventure" captured quite well). Without constantly paying attention
to a compass, it is possible to go down a passage that is subtly
turning, but which you imagine is straight, or to go round a corner
that's actually 110 degrees but which you imagine is an exact right
angle. In no time at all you can get turned round with respect to the
direction you think you are going in.

Similar difficulties are possible above ground. Trying to navigate on
the North York Moors in thick fog, even with the aid of a compass and an
excellent map I've made mistakes of twenty or thirty degrees (and was
only able to correct them by coming across trees and walls where they
shouldn't have been).

> In the closing part, I have a maze but it's not one of those annoying
> indescript room mazes. The player is able to distinguish rooms from
> each other and knows how to backtrack to the room he just left, but
> there are an amazing number of dead-ends, and loop-backs, that make it
> a maze game.

I hope it's not too big. (Minor spoilers for "Hollywood Hijinks" below)

One of the most annoying things about "Hollywood Hijinks" (otherwise a
fun game) is the maze, which is based on a square grid of at least
twenty by twenty. Only the inclusion in the game of a map made it at
all bearable, but even then it took a couple of hundred turns to get to
the centre and back out again. Definitely a mistake on Dave Anderson's
part.

-- 
Gareth Rees