Terahnee Maze Puzzle

[bnewton81]

If you have read the last book of the Myst series, you will perhaps remember Terahnee and the maze that had spinning floors or rooms. It was an enormous puzzle, said to be capable of keeping visitors lost for days in it. I was just wondering if anyone had ever thought of reproducing that puzzle or could give me any insight as to the logistics of such an undertaking.

My reference for this is from MYST The Book of D'ni pg.253-261.

[Sirius]

Very interesting maze, yes. Doing it in Uru should be possible...

I think I'll re-read this part of the book.

But if you have to recreate it, please don't use the Relyimah as the energy source .

[bnewton81]

Oh, I wouldn't try to make a perfect copy of it. I would however like to show the common thread of thought between different cultures sharing the same heritage in an age i create. Everything would be fresh and original.

[Tsar Hoikas]

MercAngel made an age called "TheMaze" many years ago that dynamically generated mazes each time you visit the age... I don't know if it's quite as complete as the Terahnee maze(s) though.

[bnewton81]

Oh really? That sounds very interesting. How would one dynamically create mazes? I guess with scripts.

[Sirius]

Yes, I remember visiting this Age. Clicking the panel that generates the maze simply freezed my computer for 15 minutes (my computer was really slow).

IIRC it wasn't as complete as Terahnee's because it was just composed of a ground and wall put in squares (these ones dissapeared or not when you clicked on the panel). However the idea was quite nice and it seems pretty hard to generate a maze like this.

How would one dynamically create mazes? I guess with scripts.

I guess so. Attrib a sceneobject list to the script, and for each object in the object's list, use a random function to disable or not this scene object. I don't know if it is how it was done, as it might lead to an impossible maze.
EDIT: in fact it works a lot more clever and better. The python file is written so as to makes sure there is an exit, and more possible ways.

However, making a maze in which doors can close/open and rooms can move whith a 10 sec choosing time would be a nice challenge...

[bnewton81]

I went and visited the maze age. I liked that you couldn't cheat the maze. If you flew up (drizzle), you couldn't see the walls of the maze. Probably accidental, but still cool. Yeah the terahnee maze was a bunch of rooms with doors and you had to make a choice which door to take within 30sec. All the while, the rooms were spinning and the maze was reorganizing itself. The key to the puzzle was to go in a straight line, but that was made hard because everything was spinning.

[Sirius]

Yeah, I went back to this Age as well. Quite nice. The floor didn't have a lot of friction on my avatar though .

Another fact is that Terahnee's maze also had many floors. I'm not sure, but it seems some rooms could also rotate so as to place the opening in the ceiling or on the floor... That would be really funny.

I wish I could play such a maze... I'll get back to Blender to try at least to model a few rooms... I'm not really good at it however