NOTE: Pipmaze is defunct. This page is here for archival purposes only.
Pipmaze is a program for generating random, solvable mazes for use with (but not restricted to) Pipmak. It has a command-line interface, and is written in Ruby. It generates POV-Ray scenes with a macro that sets up four shots from each cell (front, back, left, right, top and for a panoramic cube), which it puts in a Pipmak project generates from the maze.
Pipmaze has only a command-line interface.
The simplest way of using Pipmaze is to type
pipmaze.rb HEIGHT WIDTH
in your shell. This will...
It can also be run interactively, and this is very simple as well. Running it interactively is useful if you want to manually edit the maze or the POV-Ray scene, or if you want to preview the maze (which will only work for small mazes, unless you save it to a file, and then open it with a text editor). There is a useropts.inc file which can be edited to easily change some scene variables. There is also a similar file for the Pipmak project, but this is copied into the project directory.
$ ./pipmaze.rb
Maze> new 11 13
Maze> ascii
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
| | | _ | | _ _ _ _|
| | | | | _|_ | | |_ |
| _|_ _|_ _ |_ _|_ | | |
| | _| _ |_ | _ _ _| |
| | | _ _| |_ _|_ _ _| _|
| |_ _ _| |_ _ _ |_ |
|_ _ _ _ _|_ _ _| |_ _ |
| _ _ _ _ _ _ |_ _ _| |
| |_ _ |_ _ _ | | _ | |
| | _ _| _ |_ _| | | | |
|_|_ _ _ _ _|_ _ _ _ _|_ |
Maze> delwall 3 1 west
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
| | | _ | | _ _ _ _|
| | | | | _|_ | | |_ |
| _|_ _|_ _ |_ _|_ | | |
| _| _ |_ | _ _ _| |
| | | _ _| |_ _|_ _ _| _|
| |_ _ _| |_ _ _ |_ |
|_ _ _ _ _|_ _ _| |_ _ |
| _ _ _ _ _ _ |_ _ _| |
| |_ _ |_ _ _ | | _ | |
| | _ _| _ |_ _| | | | |
|_|_ _ _ _ _|_ _ _ _ _|_ |
Maze> Terminating
$
When rendered with POV-Ray, this maze will look like this from the top...
...or like this from inside the maze...
<strike> You can get Pipmaze from its SourceForge page, or from its Subversion repository.
SourceForge project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pipmaze/
Subversion Repository URL: https://pipmaze.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/pipmaze/trunk/pipmaze
</strike>
The Pipmaze project is now defunct, but you can get a snapshot of the last revision that was in the Subversion repository (r20) as an ACSII-armored (base64), lzma-compressed tar-archive from here --> [Pipmaze_snapshot_r20].
You will also need to install...