ChamberMaze

In-game screen.

Initial map screen.

Program listing on 48K Spectrum.

Text Listing

1 CLS :
 DIM m(862):
 READ n,p,d,z,j,q:
 FOR f=USR 7766^0 TO 25:
 LET m(f*j)=1:
 NEXT f:
 FOR g=7 TO 8:
 LET p=p+d:
 LET m(p)=1:
 POKE 22462+p,g:
 NEXT g:
 LET d=CODE "d$CE"(RND*4+.5)-68:
 LET d=d-2*d*m(p+d+d):
 POKE (m(p+d+d)<(p+d>64)*(p+d<800))*n,6:
 LET p=64*INT (RND*12)+2*INT (RND*15)+66:
 POKE (f<205)*n,15-3*m(p):
 PRINT PAPER 2''">":
 LET k=CODE INKEY$:
 POKE (k<32)*n,18:
 LET u=(k=55)-(k=54):
 LET z=z+u*(j-z*u):
 LET j=z*(1025*(z*z=1)-1)/32:
 LET q=q+2*z*(k=57)*m(q+z):
 CLS :
 IF q<>672 THEN PRINT ,">v^<"(2+z/32+(z>0)):
 LET k=k*(k<32)+5-4*m(q+j*((k=15)-(k=1))+z*(k=7)):
 DRAW 2*CODE "XP\\PDfhPbP>bhnHPDP\\:Pn2//2nP"(k)-160,2*CODE "X}R-DfPlP4PPP2X}R-Df}ZFPPZF#"(k)-160: POKE n,27-9*(k=28):
 DATA 23620,672,-1,1,32,130

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The Story
After all your interstellar adventures in Labyrin3D and 3D Maze, you got rich enough to return to Earth and move into a brand new mansion with 180 rooms (still unfurnished), but when you wake up the next morning you can't remember anymore how to get out of the house!
Your last recollection is that you just bought this mansion and, after such a long time in space, you spent your first night back on Earth celebrating rather too wildly. Now you find yourself with a quite serious hangover, and a vague memory of the front door located somewhere on the east side. All you have to go on is a sense of direction provided by the morning sunrise to the east (barely visible through the ceiling skylights), and a will to get some much needed fresh air!

Instructions

Escape the maze via the exit located somewhere on the eastern side. When you first RUN the game, a maze will gradually be generated until the screen fills up. Blue squares denote rooms, and black squares denote connections between rooms. Study this map carefully whilst you have the chance, because in this game you cannot look at the map again once you have entered the maze. Afterwards, press SPACE to start playing. Keys are 6 - turn left, 7 - turn right, 9 - move forwards, or Sinclair joystick. In this game, there are no turns or time limit. Unfortunately you cannot see beyond your current room which makes things more difficult. Also, only 3 walls at a time are visible depending on the direction you are facing. However, you can still remember that the mansion entrance is located somewhere on the East side towards the rising sun, which you can barely see through the small skylights on each room (the sun direction is indicated by an arrow at the top of the screen). To win the game, escape the maze and the program will end with the usual 0 OK message.

About the game

This game was developed after Labyrin3D and 3D Maze, and can be considered more difficult than those games due to the player only being able to view the room that they are currently inside. This game uses a maze generator developed and implemented by Einar Saukas, which is guaranteed to produce perfect, solvable mazes. The room drawing routine was initially developed by Digital Prawn, using a separate ZX Spectrum BASIC program to allow the room to be created via a simple form of Computer Aided Design. This allowed easy exporting of the room dimensions in the one-liner friendly form of compact BASIC strings. Refinements to the room design were made by Einar Saukas in order to correct the perspective. Many further changes, ideas and optimisations were provided by Einar Saukas and Dr BEEP in order to fit this program into a one-liner. Thanks also to bigjon for suggesting the idea of POKEing the attributes file to draw the map of the maze. This was a compact solution which also allowed the maze size to be increased slighlty by using the bottom part of the screen. Further thanks to Einar for developing the backstories for all three of the games in this series.

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