maze

maze.py is a program that creates a maze that looks like any picture.

WARNING: this program is very slow! Making a maze that from an n x m image will take O(n² m²) time!

Here are some example inputs and outputs:

Input	Output
	(this maze was created with the -invert option)
(this image was edited for higher contrast and brightness)

Here are some examples of typical usage:

python maze.py lenna.png -resolution [64,64] -out lenna_maze
python maze.py -v pictures/lenna.png -channel blue -wallcolor blue

Boolean Options:

-v            verbose: prints runtimes for each part of the program.

-invert       inverts the brightness values of the image, so dark
              parts become light and vice versa.

-l1           makes the program use the l1 distance instead of the
              euclidean (l2) distance when generating the minimum
              spanning tree. This means that the maze will look
              more grid-like (I think... I'm not sure though).

String Options:

-in           denotes the input filename. By default this argument
              is not necessary, and the first string in the list of
              arguments that is not part of any other argument will
              be used as the input filename.

-out          denotes the output filename. As with -in, by default
              this argument is not necessary, and the second free
              string in the list of arguments will be taken as the
              output filename.
              NOTE that the argument to -out should not include an
              extension (like .png), since if output is requested,
              it will be generated to two different files, an .eps
              file and a .png file, with the same name before the
              extension.
              ALSO NOTE that if no output filename is specified,
              the program will not produce an output file, and
              will instead only display the maze on screen.

-channel      denotes the source channel for the brightness values
              used by the program.
              Options are: brightness, red, blue, or green.
              Default value is '-channel brightness'.

-wallcolor    is the color for drawing the walls of the maze.
              Default value is '-wallcolor black'.

-bgcolor      is the color for drawing the background of the maze.
              Default value is '-bgcolor white'.

Integer Options:

-wallwidth    is the width of the maze walls when drawn.
              Default value is '-wallwidth 5'.

-hallwaywidth is the width of the maze hallways when drawn.
              Default value is '-hallwaywidth 8'.

-borderwidth  is the width of the maze border when drawn.
              Default value is '-borderwidth 20'.

Other Options:

-resolution   is the resolution of the maze, meaning that if the
              maze is completely full of maze (i.e. if the image
              was completely black), and if the resolution is [n,m]
              then the maze will have n-1 vertical columns and m-1
              horizontal rows.
              WARNING: this is the part that scales poorly, i.e.
              if -resolution [n,m] is passed, then the program will
              run in O(n^2 m^2) time. And if the -resolution
              argument is not included, then the resolution of the
              maze will default to the resolution of the input image
              which could be very large!

-randomness   is an argument that makes the maze look a little more
              random and natural. If -randomness 0 is passed, then
              the output maze will look very homogeneous along the
              edges.
              WARNING: if the randomness is set too high, then it is
              possible for an unsolvable maze to be generated!
              Default value is -randomness 0.1, which in practice
              has not created any unsolvable mazes yet.

-help         prints the help dialog.