trailz

A library for generating mazes

This library is based on the algorithms from the book Mazes for Programmers: Code Your Own Twisty Little Passages, by Jamis Buck

Requirements

• Node v7.5+
• Yarn v0.28.4

Installation

This module uses yarn to manage dependencies and run scripts for development.

To install as an application dependency:

$ yarn add trailz

To install as a global dependency for CLI use (options below):

$ yarn global add trailz

To build the app and run all tests:

$ yarn run all

Overview

To use the library create an instance of the Maze class with the size requirements and algorithm type. It will automatically generate the maze and save it within a grid. The contents of the maze can be retrieved by using the .string or .repr properties to get the contents. The .string will give an ASCII string representation of the maze. The .repr method will return a two dimensional array that contains the representation of that cell. This representation is 1 of 16 possible representations for a cell (for drawing purposes).

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
|                                       |
+---+   +   +   +   +   +   +---+---+   +
|       |   |   |   |   |   |           |
+---+---+   +   +   +---+---+---+---+   +
|           |   |   |                   |
+   +---+---+   +---+   +---+   +---+   +
|   |           |       |       |       |
+---+---+---+---+   +   +   +   +---+   +
|                   |   |   |   |       |
+---+   +   +   +---+---+   +   +   +   +
|       |   |   |           |   |   |   |
+---+---+   +   +   +   +---+---+---+   +
|           |   |   |   |               |
+   +---+   +   +---+   +---+   +---+   +
|   |       |   |       |       |       |
+   +   +---+---+   +---+   +---+---+   +
|   |   |           |       |           |
+   +   +   +---+   +---+---+   +   +   +
|   |   |   |       |           |   |   |
+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

 11,  8,  8,  8,  8,  8,  8, 10, 10, 12
 11,  6,  5,  5,  5,  7,  7, 11, 10,  4
  9, 10,  6,  5,  7,  9, 10,  8, 10,  4
  7, 11, 10,  6,  9,  4,  9,  4, 11,  4
 11,  8,  8,  8,  6,  7,  5,  5,  9,  4
 11,  6,  5,  5,  9,  8,  6,  7,  7,  5
  9, 10,  4,  5,  7,  5, 11,  8, 10,  4
  5,  9,  6,  7,  9,  6,  9,  6, 11,  4
  5,  5,  9, 10,  4, 11,  6,  9,  8,  4
  7,  7,  7, 11,  6, 11, 10,  6,  7,  7

Usage

import {AlgorithmType, Maze} from 'trailz';

const maze = new Maze(10, 10, AlgorithmType.BinaryTree);
console.log(maze.string);

This will create a new instance of a maze using the BinaryTree algorithm. A new instance of the maze can be rebuilt without creating a new instance with:

maze.rebuild(AlgorithmType.BinaryTree);

This will reset the grid and reapply the BinaryTree algorithm to the grid. The grid can be resized and rebuilt too.

maze.resize(5, 5)

This will resize the grid to a 5x5 maze and reapply the algorithm.

CLI

The command line interface allows one to create mazes and print their contents to a text file.

$ trailz -r 25 -c 25 -a Sidewinder --verbose -o maze.txt

This will create a 25x25 maze using the Sidewinder algorithm. The contents will be printed to the terminal and also written to a file named maze.txt (the default).

Arguments

• -r|--rows {#} - the number of rows to create in the maze. The default is 10.
• -c|--cols {#} - the number of columns to create in the maze. The default is 10.
• -a|--algorithm {name} - the string name of the algorithm to use when generating the maze (see the list below). The current default is the BinaryTree algorithm.
• -v|--verbose - will dump the contents of the generated maze to stdout. Not shown by default.
• -o|--output {filename} - where to dump the contents of the maze (text file). The file maze.txt is used by default and will be overwritten on successive runs.

API

• Cell
• Grid
• Maze
• Algorithm

Algorithms

• AldousBroder
• BinaryTree
• HuntAndKill
• RecursiveBacktracker
• Sidewinder
• Wilsons