Hi! Are there any products which I can use to use tiles to generate random mazes for a game? Ideally, the players would shuffle the maze tiles and place them in a grid, generating a randomly-determined maze.
Ideally, I'd like a maze where it's always possible to get from one point in the maze to another -- or at least from the center to any other point in the maze.
Thanks in advance,
ACG
I don't think you're going to be able to do exactly what you've described. To get a guarantee (or even a high probability) that all points in a random maze are connected by a path, you'd have to have very boring "mazes" that have almost no walls or dead-ends.
But you may be able to accomplish something similar with a little creativity, and perhaps by changing your concept of the game a bit. The Amazing Labyrinth solves this problem by having a large number of "fixed" tiles that remove some of the randomness and help guarantee connectivity, and (more importantly) by allowing the players to move the tiles and rearrange the maze during the game. If your players can change the maze, then you not only side-step the problem of guaranteeing full connectivity, you also add an interesting element to your game's strategy.
If you don't mind a suggestion, I think you should spend some time actually making mazes in different ways, and seeing how they work. Your post indicates that you haven't thought about mazes much: you seem to have missed the fact if you can reach any point from the center then you can reach any point from any other point, by going through the center. I know that sounds like a picky comment, but if you're going to make a maze game you're going to need more familiarity with how they work, and here's why. If paths from A to B are too easy to find, there's little point in having a "maze" at all. But if they're too hard to find, your players may find maze navigation too frustrating and decide the game is no fun. Mazes need to be "tuned" to a certain size and complexity -- and again, this is not easy to accomplish with a completely randomly-generated maze. (It can be done with a computer -- that's where I got my experience -- but of course this is of no use for a board game.)
Sorry I couldn't give you an easy answer, and I hope I've at least helped a little. Good luck!
One option might be to have tiles bigger than the labyrinth cells, each being a maze itself, all of them designed to allow reaching, say, the middle cell on each side.
Then you build your board by randomly placing this tiles side by side:
Rotation would allow for even more variation:
The bigger the tiles, the more complex your labyrinth might be (smaller tiles will themselves be more simple labyrinths, so even if you use many of them , the resulting labyrinth would be easier to travel through than one using bigger tiles with more complex designs.
That's what I'm planning to use in my labyrinth game, but as usual, BGDF members are free to take any of the ideas I share here and use them in their own games. :-)
Seo
This system exists in the game WizWar.
// Johan
Darn! Everything seems to be invented already. ;-)
Seo
I was just going to say Dungeon Twister myself, but Wiz-War is probably a better precedent.
I love the maze tile made by seo. The only detail is that for each tile, you can reach all the 4 tile exit. So the only thing the maze changes is the times it takes to move to each exit (according to the maze's shape).
But if you want, you could make some maze tiles that does not allow you to exit on all 4 points. For example, a tile that connect up-left exit and down-right exit. The only problem is that it is possible to get trapped in the maze with no possible exit.
Hmm, that Wiz-War game is just like one of the games I made. Oh well, just as Seo said it seems like everything is invented already. :)
Anyway mazes are a quite more complicated than shuffling a deck and distributing the pieces randomly.
I have tried to come up with a maze system where both players design their part of the maze, and have to explore the other side, and by explore I mean you had to turn the opponents cards face up.
Larienna said:
The only detail is that for each tile, you can reach all the 4 tile exit. So the only thing the maze changes is the times it takes to move to each exit (according to the maze's shape).
But if you want, you could make some maze tiles that does not allow you to exit on all 4 points. For example, a tile that connect up-left exit and down-right exit. The only problem is that it is possible to get trapped in the maze with no possible exit.If you have the possibility to rotate the tile during the game, it could create realy nice tactics in a game:
=> Entering a tile and stopping at the first square on the tile. Rotate the tile and exit...
=> Rotating a tile another player is about to exit, so that player has to rotate it again to exit or make a detour.
This kind of moving labirinth game would be nicest with a decide beforehand style of play. [Every player decides if he is going to move his pawn or rotate a tile during that turn. Then everybody reveals the action he has choosen at the start of his turn. Think Maharadja...]
Cheese.
I love the maze tile made by seo. The only detail is that for each tile, you can reach all the 4 tile exit. So the only thing the maze changes is the times it takes to move to each exit (according to the maze's shape).
But if you want, you could make some maze tiles that does not allow you to exit on all 4 points. For example, a tile that connect up-left exit and down-right exit. The only problem is that it is possible to get trapped in the maze with no possible exit.
Glad you liked it.
I get your point, as I've been thinking about it too. But that's the only easy and elegant way I found to guarantee that you can reach the exit or any important place you might have (as if you have some tiles with special functions/rooms/target destinations).
The best way I have found to minimize this meta-square-grid problem is to design the tile mazes so that when you enter one tile not all tile exits are as easy to reach. This way, maybe in the meta-square-grid your best option is to go north, but the internal tile designs make a detour through other tiles a better choice. This is extremely linked to each game's movement rules, though.
An alternative would be to allow tile rotation during the game. Then you can get away with tiles being blocked at the beggining.
As I write this I'm thinking about a meta-maze tile system to substitute the meta-square-grid I proposed earlier. I'll work a bit on this idea and post my progress (if any) in this thread.
Seo
I don't know what is the theme of your game but you could make some spell cards usable once that could allow you to :
- pass through a wall
- double your movement speed for this turn
- teleport yourself on another tile with the same coordinate you are standing on.
- Switch place with another player
- Flip a tile ( if your tiles are double sided)
- Rotate tile ( like googleski said )
All of the posts so far pre-suppose perfect knowledge. Since I haven't got a clue about the cited games, I'm not sure if I'm off-base. But here goes:
When I was a kid, my friend begged me to play Dungeons and Dragons. He was the Dungeon Master. His brother and I spent the afternoon "wandering" around in his mental playground. We never knew what the dungeon looked like - except for the parts that we had explored.
In a board game, what is the point of having a maze, if you have a bird's-eye view of the whole thing?
I have a suggestion for the apparent problem, but I hope to get clarification first. Why do you need a random maze?
Mitch
I don't know what is the theme of your game but you could make some spell cards usable once that could allow you to :
- pass through a wall
- double your movement speed for this turn
- teleport yourself on another tile with the same coordinate you are standing on.
- Switch place with another player
- Flip a tile ( if your tiles are double sided)
- Rotate tile ( like googleski said )
As Scurra noted above, anyone interested in ideas like this should really follow his link to Dungeon Twister, as it has all this kinda stuff...
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I found a program called Daedalus which makes mazes which can be printed out -- a bunch of 5x5 mazes which can be rotated at random should do the job.
Thanks for the ideas!
ACG