The idea of a virtual mouse in a virtual maze came from previous year projects where a physical mouse was built using microchips. This mouse had to track itself through a physical maze. Due to the cost of this project for every student it was decide to hold the competition on the Virual Maze that could be put on the web. All that contestants had to do now would be to write an algorithm to solve the maze. They can then upload their mazesolver algorithm and the one that solves the maze faster would be the winner.

The focus of this project was not on building a complex algorithm to draw the maze or to move a mouse, so a simple maze shown below was used.

The aim of this game is to try and get through the maze as quickly as possible. At this stage a simple algorithm to move the mouse from the starting point (the opening of the maze) to the end point (the center of the spiral has been written and will be demonstrated in the next page. To upload your mazesolver you must type ftp://similo:[email protected]/ and this will take you to the folder of the files in the web server. Create a separate folder and put the original mazesolver in that folder. Then copy and paste your compiled mazesolver.class to this site. If you have any problems running your new mazesolver download the drawmaze.java source code, put it in the same directory as your mazesolver. Compile your mazesolver then compile the drawmaze.java then upload both class files to the server and it shuold work. This site is still underdevelopment and you will notice that on its first run the mouse will instantly solve the maze. When you use the back button to go to the second page from the applet then go forward to the applet again, your mouse will stall at the starting point. Once you minimise the applet page and maximise it again the mouse instantly solves the maze. All these faults are a result of the drawmaze class and not the mazesolver, they will be fixed in due course of this project. Thanks for viewing this page now check out the mouse!!!

Continue FIRST LOAD MAZESOLVER USING FTP!!!