A package to generate mazes using the depth first or hunt and kill algorithm. Mazes can be generated with seed values for reproducibility
npm install maze-generation!npm
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An npm package used to generate mazes with a specified width and height.
Mazes can be generated using either recursive backtracker (Depth First) or hunt and kill algorithms. See below for details of these algorithms.
Additionally mazes can be generated using seeds, which allows for reproducible maze generation.
We use SemVer for versioning.
Ensure Node.js is installed on your machine.
Run npm i maze-generation
options object to your code, with the following to fields:width and height should be replaced by ints corresponding to how wide and tall you want your maze.seed should be replaced by an int or string and will be used as the seed for the random number generator. Defaults to a random number.algorithm should be: 'DEPTHFIRST' or 'HUNTANDKILL'. Defaults to 'DEPTHFIRST'.To stop heap out of memory errors, the maximum allowed height and width is 3000.
``javascript
const mazegeneration = require('maze-generation');
const options = {
width: 10,
height: 10,
seed: 12345,
algorithm: 'HUNTANDKILL'
}
// Generate a maze
const generatedMaze = mazegeneration(options);
`
To get the string representation of the generated maze write:
`javascript`
const stringRepresentation = generatedMaze.toString();
console.log(stringRepresenation);
Example output:
`
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
| | _ _ _ _ |
| |_|_ |_ _ | | _|
|_ _ _ _| | |_ | |
| _ | |_ _| _ _|
| | |_ |_ | |_ _ |
|_|_ | | _|_ _ | |
| _ _|_|_ _ | | | |
| _ _ | |_ | _|
| |_ | |_ _| _| | |
|_ _ _|_ _ _ _|_ _ _|
`
To get the JSON representation of the generated maze write:
`typescript`
let JSONRepresentation = generatedMaze.toJSON();
The outputed JSON object has the following structure (example is a 3 by 3 cell):
`typescript`
{
rows: [
[[Object],[Object],[Object]],
[[Object],[Object],[Object]],
[[Object],[Object],[Object]],
]
};
Where each object is a Cell object, which as the following JSON structure:
`typescript`
{
left: bool,
right: bool,
up: bool,
down: bool,
visited: bool
}
The left,right,up,down fields correspond to if the wall exists in that direction. The visited field corresponds to if the cell has been visited. This should be marked as true for all completed mazes.
##### Algorithms
###### Depth First
`
CURRENT_CELL = random cell
Create an empty CELL_STACK
While CURRENT_CELL has unvisited neighbour:
Select random unvisited neighbour
Remove walls between the two
CURRENT_CELL = that random unvisited neighbour
Mark CURRENT_CELL as visited and push it to the CELL_STACK
IF CURRENT_CELL has no unvisited neighbour:
CURRENT_CELL = CELL_STACK.pop()
* More information can be found on the Wikipedia page.
###### Hunt And Kill
`
Choose a random starting cell and set that to CURRENT_CELL
Perform a randomised walk from CURRENT_CELL
WHILE there's unvisited cells with adjacent visited cells:
Find the first unvisited cell with adjacent visited cells and set that cell as the CURRENT_CELL
Remove the wall between the CURRENT_CELL and a random visited neighbour
Perform a randomised walk from CURRENT_CELL
* More information can be found on Jamis Buck's blog.
* This algorithm hunts for the "first unvisited cell with adjacent visited cells". First is found by searching each cell on the top row, before moving to the next row.
#### Solver
The generated maze object contains a function called generateSolution which can be used to create a path through the maze. It takes two parameters, a start cell and a goal cell.
Like the Maze object, the solution object has two methods which can be used for printing the output: toString() and toJSON().
toJSON() returns an array of cells, which represent the path taken from the start to the goal.
`typescript
// example usage
const options = {
width: 5,
height: 5,
seed: 12345,
algorithm: 'HUNTANDKILL'
}
const generatedMaze = mazegeneration(options);
console.log(generatedMaze.toString());
// _ _ _ _ _
// | | | |
// | _| | |_|
// |_ |_ _| |
// | | |_ |
// |_ _ _ _|_|
const start = {
row: 0,
column: 0
};
const goal = {
row: 4,
column: 4
};
const solution = generatedMaze.generateSolution(start, goal);
console.log(solution.toString());
// _ _ _ _ _
// |S| | |
// |↓ _| | |_|
// |↳ ↴|_ _| |
// | |↓|_ ↱ ↴|
// |_ ↳ → ⇗|G|
// ¯ ¯ ¯ ¯
console.log(solution.toJSON())
// [
// { row: 0, column: 0 },
// { row: 1, column: 0 },
// { row: 2, column: 0 },
// { row: 2, column: 1 },
// { row: 3, column: 1 },
// { row: 4, column: 1 },
// { row: 4, column: 2 },
// { row: 4, column: 3 },
// { row: 3, column: 3 },
// { row: 3, column: 4 },
// { row: 4, column: 4 }
// ]
``