3D Monster Maze
Developer(s)	Malcolm Evans
Publisher(s)	J. K. Greye Software
Platform(s)	Sinclair ZX81
Release date	1982
Genre(s)	3D first-person adventure
Mode(s)	Single player
Media	Compact audio cassette
System requirements	16 KB memory expansion
Input methods	Keyboard

3D Monster Maze is a computer game developed by Malcolm Evans in 1981 for the Sinclair ZX81 platform with the 16 KB memory expansion. A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual that creates Video games A developer may specialize in a certain video See Malcolm Evans for other individuals with the same name Malcolm Evans (born April 10 1944 is a British computer JK Greye Software was a British software company set up by John K In Computing, a platform describes some sort of Hardware architecture or Software framework (including Application frameworks, that allows The Sinclair ZX81 Home computer, released by Sinclair Research in 1981, was the follow up to the company's ZX80. Events December 27 - Starcade, a Video game Television Game show, debuts on TBS in the United States See also [[Game classification]] Video games are categorized into Genres based on their Gameplay interaction 3D computer graphics (in contrast to 2D computer graphics) are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer In video gaming, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session Digital media (as opposed to analog media) usually refers to Electronic media that work on digital Codes. The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound A kilobyte (derived from the SI prefix Kilo -, meaning 1000 is a unit of Information or Computer storage equal to either 1024 In Computing, a keyboard is an Input device partially modelled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys A personal computer Game (also known as a computer game or simply PC game) is a Video game played on a Personal computer, rather See Malcolm Evans for other individuals with the same name Malcolm Evans (born April 10 1944 is a British computer Events November - The British video game magazine Computer and Video Games (C&VG starts The Sinclair ZX81 Home computer, released by Sinclair Research in 1981, was the follow up to the company's ZX80. The game was initially released by J. K. Greye Software in early 1982 and re-released later the same year by Evans' own startup, New Generation Software. JK Greye Software was a British software company set up by John K Events December 27 - Starcade, a Video game Television Game show, debuts on TBS in the United States A startup company or start-up is a Company with a limited operating history New Generation Software was a firm famous for the computer games with innovative graphics it produced for the Sinclair ZX81 Rendered using low-resolution character block "graphics", it was the first 3D game for a home computer. Image resolution describes the detail an Image holds The term applies equally to Digital images film images and other types of images 3D computer graphics (in contrast to 2D computer graphics) are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer A home computer was a class of Personal computer entering the market in 1977 and becoming common during the 1980s (BBC 2002)

3D Monster Maze puts the player in a maze with one exit and a hostile monster, the Tyrannosaurus rex. A maze is a complex Tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route Tyrannosaurus ( or, meaning 'tyrant lizard' is a Genus of Theropod Dinosaur. There, the player must traverse the maze, from the first-person perspective, and escape through the exit without being eaten. In video games first person refers to a graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character

New Generation Software went on to become a well-known software firm with the Sinclair platform and continued to pioneer the 3D gaming technology for ZX81 and the later model Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Sinclair Research Ltd is a consumer electronics company founded by Sir Clive Sinclair in Cambridge, England (originally as Sinclair Radionics in 1961 to The Sinclair ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal Home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd The press immediately gave the game a title of a "firm favourite" of the ZX81 users. Decades later, it became popular with the retrogaming community, inspiring remakes and fueling ZX81 emulation projects. Retrogaming, also known as classic gaming and old-school gaming, is the Hobby of playing and collecting older computer, video, and An emulator duplicates (provides an emulation of the functions of one System using a different system so that the second system behaves like (and appears to (Cowley 2002)

Gameplay

The game uses a 16 by 16 cell maze which is randomly generated. Randomness is a lack of order Purpose, cause, or predictability (Edge 2006) (Sinclair User 1983) Initially the T.  rex lies in wait. Once the player starts moving, the beast begins hunting. Thereafter, the T.  rex may either calm down (if the player goes into a part of the maze that is far enough away), or become more active as the player comes closer. If the T.  rex gets a direct view of its prey, the monster will run directly at the player. (Edge 2006)

Screenshot from the introduction of 3D Monster Maze with the opening of the game legend scrolling by. In Computer graphics, Movies, Television, and other kinetic displays scrolling is sliding text images or video across a monitor or display

The T.  rex anxiety level, reported to the player as a statement in the status line, provides an indirect clue to the player's relative distance from the monster. These statements are: REX LIES IN WAIT, followed by HE IS HUNTING FOR YOU, FOOTSTEPS APPROACHING, REX HAS SEEN YOU, and RUN! HE IS BESIDE YOU or RUN! HE IS BEHIND YOU. The player's speed is faster than the monster's, thus it is possible to escape by running (unless the player is trapped in a dead end). (Holdsworth 2005) The player can manually map the maze on a piece of paper with each step, but this becomes increasingly difficult as the pace increases. The fast pace can also lead to hard keyboard presses, which, in turn, can shake the computer/16K memory expansion connection, and lead to a sudden reset with several minutes worth reload time. (BBC 1999)

Points are awarded for each step made by the player any time the dinosaur is on an active hunt. In a Game the score refers to the amount of points achieved by a player or team Since the player runs faster than the monster, it is possible to accumulate points by running around in circles with the monster just a few steps behind. Points are also given upon successfully getting away through an exit and into another maze. (CCVAG 1983)

When the game ends, the player is informed about being "sentenced to roam the maze forever", and then can either "appeal" or continue playing again in the last maze. In Law, a sentence forms the final act of a Judge -ruled process and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function If the appeal is attempted, it is rejected with 50% probability, in which case the player is sent back to roam the previous maze again. Probability is the likelihood or chance that something is the case or will happen An appeal which is accepted effectively results in the computer self-reset via BASIC's NEW statement. In Computing, booting ( booting up) is a bootstrapping process that starts Operating systems when the user turns on a Computer system In Computer programming a statement can be thought of as the smallest standalone element of an imperative Programming language. (Edge 2006)

Development

Malcolm Evans

3D Monster Maze was the first game designed and developed by Malcolm Evans. (Bourne 1984) He worked in the aerospace industry, first in aircraft design, and then as a microprocessor scientist at Sperry Gyroscope at Bristol, United Kingdom. Sperry Corporation (1910-1986 was a major American equipment and Electronics company whose existence spanned more than seven decades of the twentieth century Bristol ( ˈbrɪstəl is a city, Unitary authority and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located He received a ZX81 from his wife for his thirty-seventh birthday in April 1981. Malcolm developed the game to test what the computer was capable of, and completed it by November. Friends persuaded Malcolm that the game was of high enough quality to sell and it was eventually released by J. K.  Greye Software in February 1982. (CRASH 1984)

When soon after that the Bristol branch of Sperry Gyroscope closed, Malcolm made a decision to concentrate fully on computer gaming. The firm New Generation Software he had founded kept producing 3D games for the Sinclair Research computers, and became synonymous with 3D gaming on this platform for some time (Gilbert 1983). Some of his games were hailed by the gaming scene, but some titles occasionally drew criticism from reviewers for their fancy graphics but poor game plot. After releasing 3D Defender and Breakout for the ZX81 (Garrett 1982), Malcolm switched the development efforts from ZX81 to ZX Spectrum as the latter model hit the market. In addition to republishing the 3D Monster Maze, the new firm also released such game titles as Escape, Tunnel, 3D, Knot in 3D, Corridors of Genon, Trashman and Travel with Trashman, Light Magic, Jonah Barrington's Squash, The Custard Kid and Cliff Hanger. (van der Heide 2005)

Impact

The game had a significant impact on home computer gaming, as it brought in the three-dimensional graphics and the first-person perspective. This made it a landmark game in the history of computer and video games, a first both on a home computer and on the ZX81 at the same time. Video games were introduced as a commercial entertainment medium in 1971, becoming the basis for an important entertainment industry in the late 1970s/early 1980s in the United (Sinclair User 1984)

Landmark 3D games for other platforms that came before 3D Monster Maze were Atari's Battlezone (1980), an arcade 3D video game built with specialized vector graphics hardware, and its predecessor Spasim (1974), running on graphical terminals of a big multi-user university computer. Events Notable releases Mattel releases the Intellivision Video game console. An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in businesses such as Restaurants Pubs Video arcades and Family Entertainment Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points lines, Curves and shapes or Polygon (s which are all based Hardware is a general term that refers to the physical artifacts of a Technology. Spasim (abbreviation of 'space simulation' was a 32-player 3D networked game by Jim Bowery involving 4 planetary systems with up to 8 players per planetary system released Events The number of copies of Pong (or commercial clones of PONG) exceeds 100000 units A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into and displaying data from a Computer or a Computing Star Raiders, a space game for the Atari 8-bit family of computers was released in 1979. Star Raiders is a Video game for the Atari 8-bit family of computers released in 1979 and programmed by Doug Neubauer The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit Home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992 Events Notable releases Richard Garriott creates Akalabeth, a Computer role-playing game for the Apple It featured a moving star field effect, creating an illusion of 3D. This article is about visual perception See Optical Illusion (Album for information about the Time Requiem album However, no actual 3D scene rendering took place in that game; single frames gave no feeling of depth. Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model, by means of computer programs

While some sources (Macdonald 2000) consider 3D Monster Maze to be the original first-person shooter home/personal computer game, this is somewhat incorrect, as the player does not shoot or otherwise interact with the environment outside of navigation. A first-person shooter ( FPS) is an action Video game from the Shooter game The initial development of Maze War The game is better described as a first-person adventure. A true 3D first-person shooter personal computer game was not created until ten years later—Wolfenstein 3D (1992), the immediate predecessor of Doom. Events Notable releases Namco releases Suzuka 8 Hours, Bakuretsu Quiz Ma-Q Dai Bouken, Doom (officially cased DOOM) is a 1993 Computer game by Id Software that is a landmark title in the First-person shooter

Reception

Teeth fill the screen as the player is eaten. . .

The game was sold domestically in the UK and overseas, and became a hit shortly after it was released:

"Writing for the new generation" (1983-10-18). The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain,is a Sovereign state located Home computer weekly (October 18): 43.   . . . when the ZX81 had just been launched, software standards were generally pretty low. One exception to this rule was a program called 3D Monster Maze, which has been a firm favourite with ZX81 owners since it first appeared. . .

Even though it did not use the undocumented hi-res graphics feature of the ZX81, and rendered the scene with pseudo-graphics characters (available in the standard ZX81 character set), the game was considered to be a remarkable achievement, utilising the machine's capabilities to its best:

"3D Monster Maze" (1983-12). ZX Computing (December): 163.   If I had to choose just one programme to impress an audience with the capabilities of the ZX81, then 3D Monster Maze would be the one without a doubt.

Pretty soon, however, the Sinclair platform users began switching over to the newer ZX Spectrum, which had better graphics resolution and color, bigger RAM and ROM, as well as sound capability and a sleeker look and feel. Some people still continued to use their ZX81, and even the Spectrum users gave credit to the 3D Monster Maze as the game that brought the 3D aspect into the home computer gaming:

(Gilbert 1983) Even those critics who dismissed the ZX-81 as a child's toy, had to admit that the program was innovative and well-presented. Monster Maze marked the rise of the use of 3D techniques on microcomputers as small as the ZX-81 and Spectrum.

Monster Maze's praises brought recognition to Malcolm Evans and his firm, New Generation Software, which continued releasing further games that further improved the 3D gaming experience. Even when later hit games by N. G. S. , such as Trashman, were covered by the gaming media reviews, 3D Monster Maze was remembered as the landmark impressive start:

(CRASH 1984) From the outset New Generation and Malcolm Evans have become synonymous with 3D graphics. Trashman is a Computer game developed by Malcolm Evans for the ZX Spectrum and released by New Generation Software in 1984 . .

Decades later, with the ZX81 games played mostly in emulated environments by the retrogaming community, it still fetches enthusiastic reviews, even while modern high-end gaming consoles and home computers provide much richer capabilities for one's immersion into a first-person 3D game:

Lee's Peek n Poke. See also Presence (telepresence Telepresence refers to a set of Technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present to give the appearance Issue four: "Look for the green head" (2005-09). Retrieved on 2008-03-30. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common Events 240 BC - 1st recorded Perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. Best of the old games we played this month. . . The best thing about 3DMM was strangely the silence as you moved around. . . . This added to the atmosphere. This also added to the scares. There was nothing worse that heading down a corridor and in the distance seeing the start of the dino heading towards you. Because the graphics were slow to draw the dino came at you in a few steps. Turning around and sprinting the other way was a manic dance across the keyboard, while you looked stunned as the screen filled with teeth. It was truly a pants wetting moment.

Technology

Screenshot from 3D Monster Maze. The monster, a Tyrannosaurus rex, is two steps away. Tyrannosaurus ( or, meaning 'tyrant lizard' is a Genus of Theropod Dinosaur.

The graphical view, animated in real time at around 6 frames per second, is composed of 8×8 pixel black-and-white characters, so the view is roughly square, taking a 25×24 area on the 32×24 text screen. Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the measurement of the Frequency (rate at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames The In Digital imaging, a pixel ( pict ure el ement is the smallest piece of information in an image Sub-character resolution of the Sinclair pseudo-graphics character set makes the resolution doubled in each dimension (making the view consist of 50×48 "larger pixels"). Using the 6 pseudo-graphics with a dithering pattern also made it possible for the game author to incorporate a third color (gray) in the black-and-white picture. Dither is an intentionally applied form of Noise, used to randomize Quantization error, thereby preventing large-scale patterns such as contouring that are more objectionable Part of the screen is reserved for the score count, and a one-line status message is occasionally overlaid at the bottom of the graphical view. The player always runs along the corridor's centerline, and looks in the current direction only, which simplifies the rendering task.

The 22 pseudo-graphics characters used as the building blocks of the 3D picture. Box drawing characters, also known as line drawing characters, or pseudographics, are widely used in Text user interfaces to draw various frames and boxes

The game's 3D engine and the random maze creation code is written in Z80 machine code, produced with an assembler (Edge 2006). A game engine is a software system designed for the creation and development of computer and video games A maze is a complex Tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage through which the solver must find a route The Zilog Z80 is an 8-bit Microprocessor designed and sold by Zilog from July 1976 onwards Machine code or machine language is a system of instructions and data executed directly by a Computer 's Central processing unit. See the terminology section below for information regarding inconsistent use of the terms assembly and assembler This is augmented by several dozen BASIC lines for less critical tasks, such as the initial greetings and the game legend animation inter-line delay. Sinclair BASIC (taking its name from innovator Sir Clive Sinclair) is a dialect of the BASIC Programming language used in the 8-bit Home The machine code subroutines block is embedded into the BASIC line 0, beginning with a REM (BASIC comment) statement, making the interpreter step over it. In Computer science, a subroutine ( function, method, procedure, or subprogram) is a portion of code within a larger In Computer programming, a comment is a Programming language construct used to embed Information in the Source code of a computer program In Computer science, an interpreter normally means a Computer program that executes, i If, by accident, one tries to edit the line via the BASIC line editor, the changes will not be accepted since 0 is an invalid line number. A line editor is a Text editor Computer program that is oriented around lines Such code is typically created by first creating a line with a valid number, and then modifying the number field in the BASIC program area using direct memory manipulation, such as POKE. No copy prevention is embedded into the game; moreover, the magnetic tapes of the time being unreliable, one could reuse the save entry point in the BASIC code (that was used by the original developers to have the game auto-run upon being loaded by the user) in order to save another program copy to the tape (for archival/backup purposes). Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention, or copy restriction, is a technology for preventing the unauthorised reproduction The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a Magnetic tape sound In Information technology, backup refers to making copies of Data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a

The game is controlled by three of the keyboard cursor control keys (left, right, and forward, respectively 5, 7, and 8 on the ZX81 keyboard). In computing a cursor is an indicator used to show the position on a Computer monitor or other Display device that will respond to input from a text input or The game speed can also be controlled — according to the original cassette inlay, the BASIC line 370 has a hardwired constant determining a busy waiting loop delay. To execute instructions a Computer 's Processor must generate the control signals used to perform the processor's actions in the proper sequence A variable (ˈvɛərɪəbl is an Attribute of a physical or an abstract System which may change its Value while it is under Observation. In Software engineering, busy waiting or spinning is a technique in which a process repeatedly checks to see if a condition is true such as waiting for The constant initially is set to 5; by varying it from 0 to 9 the game can be adjusted from faster to slower tempo. (Holdsworth 2005) The 6 fps figure corresponds to the delay set to zero, while holding the "forward" key to run straight. A somewhat jerky motion is perceived at this slow framerate which gives a feeling of being jerked along with each step of a desperate heavy run.

See also

• Dungeons of Daggorath

References

External links

• NGS World — a tribute homepage of the New Generation Software titles, created and maintained by Malcolm's daughter Rachel; hosts downloads of the original game and a fan-contributed remake for MS Windows; features a J. K. Greye Software cassette inlay image of the game.
• A Review of Malcolm Evans' 3D Monster Maze
• 3D Monster Maze — the game page on the "ZX81 Software, Books and Hardware Collection" site, with the cassette inlay image of the title as republished by New Generation Software.