The design and implementation of Multi-Maze

Issue title: Selected papers from the ISCA International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering, and the ISCA International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering, 2015, and Invited Papers

Guest editors: Takaaki Goto and Narayan C. Debnath

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Liaw, Heh-Tyan^a | Jou, Chichang^a | Liou, Ay-Hwa Andy^{a; *} | Debnath, Narayan C.^b

Affiliations: [a] Department of Information Management, Tamkang University, Taiwan | [b] Department of Computer Science, Winona State University, Winona, MN 55987, USA

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Ay-Hwa Andy Liou, Department of Information Management, Tamkang University, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 2 2621 5656 2985; Fax: +886 2 2620 9737; E-mail:liou@mail.tku.edu.tw

Abstract: Maze puzzle usually has only one user. This research has adopted network technology to develop a maze game, called Multi-Maze, which allows multiple players competing across the network concurrently. It contains three sub-systems. The Maze Editor is capable of building 3, 4, or 6 degrees multi-component maze and supporting automatic, semi-automatic, or manual construction of the maze. The contour of the maze can be configured freely and the process of building a maze is recorded for replaying. The Maze Runner supports single-user or multi-user mode. In multi-user mode, teammates communicate with multi-view display and real-time chats. Foot prints, marks, flags are used for avoiding repeated movements. The maze can be shown as wall or channel map. The Maze Manager allows editing, upload, download, and grouping of the teams. Before coding the Multi-Maze, two important utility tools have been developed: Multi-view Graph Library and Network Communication Module. Formulas for calculating the coordination for different degrees has been presented. Algorithms of spanning tree have been used for building a perfect maze. The adding and deleting of walls allow the maze to be separated into components and forming circuits. The state diagrams, data structures and class hierarchies are presented for related application projects.

Keywords: Maze, multi-user, multi-view, network communication

DOI: 10.3233/JCM-160686

Journal: Journal of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering, vol. 17, no. S1, pp. S135-S145, 2017