Skip to main content
added 374 characters in body
Source Link
bta
  • 8.2k
  • 15
  • 29

You can get the same general result easier if you think about it in a slightly different way. The rooms in your maze are normal, static rooms. The connections between them, however, aren't.

The simplest example would be to imagine a tower with one room per floor. Floors are accessed via an elevator (fully automated, no accessible controls). When you leave a room, you get in the elevator with no idea where it will take you. You can visit rooms in any order, perhaps visiting some rooms more than once or not at all. Rooms can be reset and re-stocked while they're idle. The end result is a completely unpredictable experience, even if the rooms themselves are mostly static.

You don't need a fancy automated elevator system for this. Connecting rooms via stairwells/hallways/lobbies with heavy access doors and remotely-controllable locks would also work. You'd likely want some kind of signage or signal light to direct your victim hero to the next open door, to avoid the hassle of having to check a hundred doors just to find the one that's unlocked.

I did something similar back in the late 90's when working a haunted house that was built in an old office complex. We would adjust the flow by opening or blocking doors while visitors were in a room, allowing us to dynamically route traffic flow based on which rooms were ready and which were still resetting. We did it manually (so no fancy technology needed), but you can make it as high-tech as you want. I was very surprised at how well this technique could turn what was originally a bland set of rooms along two parallel hallways into something that felt like a sprawling, disorienting maze. Change up the décor a bit while the victim is in a room and it's even hard to detect that you're walking through the same hallway again.

For the theme park angle, this also makes it easy to dynamically adjust the difficulty by swapping out difficult rooms for easier ones and adjusting the number of rooms required to finish. For enhanced replayability, you can have hidden puzzles that change the room sequence when solved. An attraction that follows an overarching plot could thus have multiple endings.

You can get the same general result easier if you think about it in a slightly different way. The rooms in your maze are normal, static rooms. The connections between them, however, aren't.

The simplest example would be to imagine a tower with one room per floor. Floors are accessed via an elevator (fully automated, no accessible controls). When you leave a room, you get in the elevator with no idea where it will take you. You can visit rooms in any order, perhaps visiting some rooms more than once or not at all. Rooms can be reset and re-stocked while they're idle. The end result is a completely unpredictable experience, even if the rooms themselves are mostly static.

You don't need a fancy automated elevator system for this. Connecting rooms via stairwells/hallways/lobbies with heavy access doors and remotely-controllable locks would also work. You'd likely want some kind of signage or signal light to direct your victim hero to the next open door, to avoid the hassle of having to check a hundred doors just to find the one that's unlocked.

I did something similar back in the late 90's when working a haunted house that was built in an old office complex. We would adjust the flow by opening or blocking doors while visitors were in a room, allowing us to dynamically route traffic flow based on which rooms were ready and which were still resetting. We did it manually (so no fancy technology needed), but you can make it as high-tech as you want. I was very surprised at how well this technique could turn what was originally a bland set of rooms along two parallel hallways into something that felt like a sprawling, disorienting maze. Change up the décor a bit while the victim is in a room and it's even hard to detect that you're walking through the same hallway again.

You can get the same general result easier if you think about it in a slightly different way. The rooms in your maze are normal, static rooms. The connections between them, however, aren't.

The simplest example would be to imagine a tower with one room per floor. Floors are accessed via an elevator (fully automated, no accessible controls). When you leave a room, you get in the elevator with no idea where it will take you. You can visit rooms in any order, perhaps visiting some rooms more than once or not at all. Rooms can be reset and re-stocked while they're idle. The end result is a completely unpredictable experience, even if the rooms themselves are mostly static.

You don't need a fancy automated elevator system for this. Connecting rooms via stairwells/hallways/lobbies with heavy access doors and remotely-controllable locks would also work. You'd likely want some kind of signage or signal light to direct your victim hero to the next open door, to avoid the hassle of having to check a hundred doors just to find the one that's unlocked.

I did something similar back in the late 90's when working a haunted house that was built in an old office complex. We would adjust the flow by opening or blocking doors while visitors were in a room, allowing us to dynamically route traffic flow based on which rooms were ready and which were still resetting. We did it manually (so no fancy technology needed), but you can make it as high-tech as you want. I was very surprised at how well this technique could turn what was originally a bland set of rooms along two parallel hallways into something that felt like a sprawling, disorienting maze. Change up the décor a bit while the victim is in a room and it's even hard to detect that you're walking through the same hallway again.

For the theme park angle, this also makes it easy to dynamically adjust the difficulty by swapping out difficult rooms for easier ones and adjusting the number of rooms required to finish. For enhanced replayability, you can have hidden puzzles that change the room sequence when solved. An attraction that follows an overarching plot could thus have multiple endings.

Source Link
bta
  • 8.2k
  • 15
  • 29

You can get the same general result easier if you think about it in a slightly different way. The rooms in your maze are normal, static rooms. The connections between them, however, aren't.

The simplest example would be to imagine a tower with one room per floor. Floors are accessed via an elevator (fully automated, no accessible controls). When you leave a room, you get in the elevator with no idea where it will take you. You can visit rooms in any order, perhaps visiting some rooms more than once or not at all. Rooms can be reset and re-stocked while they're idle. The end result is a completely unpredictable experience, even if the rooms themselves are mostly static.

You don't need a fancy automated elevator system for this. Connecting rooms via stairwells/hallways/lobbies with heavy access doors and remotely-controllable locks would also work. You'd likely want some kind of signage or signal light to direct your victim hero to the next open door, to avoid the hassle of having to check a hundred doors just to find the one that's unlocked.

I did something similar back in the late 90's when working a haunted house that was built in an old office complex. We would adjust the flow by opening or blocking doors while visitors were in a room, allowing us to dynamically route traffic flow based on which rooms were ready and which were still resetting. We did it manually (so no fancy technology needed), but you can make it as high-tech as you want. I was very surprised at how well this technique could turn what was originally a bland set of rooms along two parallel hallways into something that felt like a sprawling, disorienting maze. Change up the décor a bit while the victim is in a room and it's even hard to detect that you're walking through the same hallway again.