Maze Craze Algorithm

The maze generation algorithm from the Atari 2600 game Maze Craze, reverse-engineered and rewritten in Python. Maze Craze was developed by Rick Maurer.

Walgrey used this to make a TAS of the game in 00:05.39:

Files

• mazecraze.py - The main python script. Contains the algorithm and some utility subcommands.
• dumpmazes.lua - A BizHawk script for dumping all possible mazes from the game.
• mazes.bin - Precomputed output from dumpmazes.lua so you don't need to run it yourself. Mainly useful for verifying the correctness of the code using the check subcommand.

Usage

To generate and solve the maze corresponding to a seed, use generate:

$ python mazecraze.py generate 0x0400
seed: 0x0400
next seed: 0x56df
solution length: 92

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To get a list of the closest seeds to each starting seed, use search.

In the output, "seed" is the seed of a maze, "length" is the length of the maze's solution, and "steps" is the number of frames you have to wait for the RNG to get to the seed.

$ python mazecraze.py search
Starting 32 processes with a chunk size of 2048
Computed 2048 mazes in 13.344404000000395s
seed 0xff00:
    seed: 0xc3e3, length: 23, steps: 57
    seed: 0xa247, length: 20, steps: 837
    seed: 0x4f24, length: 23, steps: 1118
    seed: 0x2c09, length: 23, steps: 1747
    seed: 0xdf40, length: 23, steps: 2626
...

To unpack a maze from a memory dump, use unpack:

python mazecraze.py unpack mazes.bin

To check the code against a dumped set of mazes, use check:

python mazecraze.py check mazes.bin

License

This is all licensed under the WTFPL, because the algorithm is not mine. Do whatever you want to.