GoKawiilWhat can we learn from 8bitguy’s version of the famous C64 BASIC random maze …?
Say what you will about the 8-Bit Guy, but he just put out a fantastic take on the famous one-liner maze program. Even though I have typed that one-liner more times than I can remember, it still inspired me to write this post today, decades after I first learned it.
Yep, the 8-Bit Guy, controversial as he is, sent me down a proper several day rabbit hole. There are at least four genuinely useful tricks hiding in his final program, but his video does not have a written version from what I can tell, so let me take you through them here.
How the 10 PRINT Maze (Famous Version) Works
Here is the original:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Run that on a C64 and you get an endless, scrolling random maze. It looks like magic. It is actually one of the most elegant little hacks in 8-bit BASIC. Many people have “riffed” on it, which was probably best done by Robin.
The whole thing is based on this guy CHR$(205.5+RND(1)) .
RND(1) hands you a float between 0 and 0.999, so the result lands somewhere between 205.5 and 206.499. CHR$ ignores the fraction, so you get character 205 or character 206, at roughly 50/50 odds. Those two codes are the diagonal PETSCII graphics, the / and \ lines.
Print one or the other at random, let the screen scroll, and the diagonals join up into a maze. As 8 Bit Guy says, it looks a bit nicer on the Vic 20 font because it joins up better.
... continue reading