Introducing Masking

Introduction

Let’s take a little break from new maze algorithms and try to get a feel for what we’ve currently got in our toolboxes. At this point, we’re pretty comfortable making rectangular mazes. Our aim is to take it to the next level and learn how to make mazes that fit into arbitrary shapes. Let's look at an example.

The secret is a remarkably simple little technique called masking, which constrains a maze to fit within an arbitrary shape. It’s got its own limitations, but on the whole, it’s a really useful tool.

We’ll begin by using masks to forbid certain areas of a grid, causing the maze algorithm to skip over those areas we define. Then, we’ll see how to use that to fit a maze into different geometric designs and eventually shape our maze in the form of letters and words using image templates! But first, we need to talk about what exactly these masks are and how they work. ...