Okay this time the idea is small, and I kind of implemented a fast prototype for it already. I kind of want to get some kind of feedback.

So the game is a maze game, but not any old simple maze game.

You traverse the map using "commands"

Currently, I have implemented only "move" and "turn".

When you send your program to traverse the maze, you must return to the start point for your program to provide feedback to you.

Any program that didn't return to start point will just "terminate" and no feed back will be provided.

The maze will look something like this

[attachment=22557:maze.png]

The program is a "String"

It must start with "b" and ends with "e"

So the simplest program you can write to traverse the maze will be "be"

[attachment=22556:basic.png]

So when you first enter the maze, it will tell you where you can find empty space.

The next step will be to move and explore more.

So here I ran the command "bm4tbm4e"

Which is saying "Begin", "Move 4", "Turn Back", "Move 4" , "End"

[attachment=22555:advanced.png]

If you didn't get back to the start point you will get this

[attachment=22558:fail.png]

So this is really the basic idea. The idea of the game is to say, try "data" that are hidden in the maze. You need to uncover the maze to find all the data.

Additional planned challenges. (if i continue to work on the project)
1) Different movement cost. Right now all tiles cost 4, but later there will be tiles that cost 1, 2, 8, 16, which will kind of confuse your map.

2) Marker command, that allows you to place a "marker" on the floor and allow you to detect "loops"

I am planning(maybe) to write this as a "web" game, which is why I use python. That will allow me to convert to say Flask/Django easily. I probably can get it done by tomorrow with a good interface. But I kind of want to get a feedback of this stupid random idea that came into me today.

oh and anyone who want to play this game can get it at https://github.com/ZwodahS/mazehack

It is CLI at the moment, to run it you just need to find the test.py, and run "python test.py <seed> <instructions>" and add a "DEBUG" to the end of it if you want to see the map

The seed is there to make sure you get the same maze

So to start, you should just type : python test.py <seed> "be"

I figured that most of the people here are developers and should be at least intrigued by this >.< but if this is a stupid idea, feel free to flame me

Let me leave you with one final screenshot

[attachment=22559:funtime.png]

Solving the maze completely -- that is, exhaustively exploring the maze and returning the the origin -- is a fairly interesting CS150-level challenge that could be solved with a program using stacks or recursion. So, I don't know if its much of an interesting game -- there's no challenge in getting back since you simply do the inverse of what you did to get where you ended your exploration, and exploring for its own sake seems kind of tedious -- what's the goal? What's the reward for exploring more exhaustively?

Mazes as a challenge towards a greater goal can be interesting (This is the archetypal dungeon in most any adventure or role-playing game, sometimes sans other challenges), but because a maze alone is abstract, they tend to be fairly shallow as far as any kind of interesting gameplay goes.

To be clear, the project seems like a worthwhile pursuit to the ends of growing as a programmer (hey, go implement that recursive solver I mentioned, too!), I just don't think its particularly attractive as gameplay. There'd need to be more to it than just exploring, and I'd also get away from the idea that exploring the maze completely is "winning", you need dead-ends/false-paths/red-herrings to contrast the happy-path, otherwise there's no purpose to what the player is doing.

Adding gameplay elements, though, is fairly simple. Some traps, some loot, some dead-ends, some keys/doors, a little back-story, maybe some NPCs and dialog, and suddently you have something that looks a lot more like a game.

Solving the maze completely -- that is, exhaustively exploring the maze and returning the the origin -- is a fairly interesting CS150-level challenge that could be solved with a program using stacks or recursion. So, I don't know if its much of an interesting game -- there's no challenge in getting back since you simply do the inverse of what you did to get where you ended your exploration, and exploring for its own sake seems kind of tedious -- what's the goal? What's the reward for exploring more exhaustively?

Mazes as a challenge towards a greater goal can be interesting (This is the archetypal dungeon in most any adventure or role-playing game, sometimes sans other challenges), but because a maze alone is abstract, they tend to be fairly shallow as far as any kind of interesting gameplay goes.

Maybe I wasn't clear :P

When playing the game, you don't know how the maze looks. You are trying to deduce how the maze likes based on what is feedback to you.

It is NOT about trying to solve the game. There is no solution. You are placed in the same position every time, and you tries to get to various locations in the maze.

The maze will confuse your feedback by say, making a short path seems long by increasing the time it takes for you to move through it, so you might think that the path is 6 tiles long when it is only in fact 2.

I am not saying this is a good idea for a game, but definitely feel that you mis understood the game from what you said.

The maze will confuse your feedback by say, making a short path seems long by increasing the time it takes for you to move through it, so you might think that the path is 6 tiles long when it is only in fact 2.

The concept seems dangerous from this statement because the core idea behind the game would be to mess around with one of the key components of the game loop (content->perception->input->feedback). You would be walking a very fine line to not frustrate players. They would need to know that the game will mess around with their perception or feedback probably, else they would just be confused/frustrated and walk away, and/or you might need to ensure that there are multiple visual/auditory avenues of feedback, some of which are accurate and some of which aren't. The task for the player then would be identifying which ones are accurate.

So I implemented it and changed something. The web version is at http://mazehack.herokuapp.com/

I have changed the entire game, such that when you move, you get to the next "decision" point instead of just moving straight. This means that turns will not stop the programs, only junctions will stop the program.

I also removed the variable speed, so that moving through each square takes the same amount of time.

Then I played the game for a while, I realized I am drawing graphs to represent the information I have. It became a graph traversal game, which is not what I want. I want the need to deduce the structure of the maze based on the information that you gained, but it seems like I don't really have to do that.

I shall leave the game as it is now. There might be something here that I am missing.

I am quite sure that I am not getting the idea across clear enough, so play the game and see what I mean.