Proto:MIDI Maze

This page details one or more prototype versions of MIDI Maze.

Starting in the mid-80s as a computer store, Xanth's software output began as demos for Atari computers. One such demo they produced, as sourced from New Power Generation's Demo CD #12, involves a non-interactive trip through a pseudo-3D Maze. Subtitled Multi-Machine Real-Time 3-D Point-of-View Maze Game Program Thingie, and dated Wednesday, ‎February ‎5, ‎1986, 7:07:54 PM on its MAZE.PRG file in the aforementioned compilation, it's quite clear that this is an early build of what became MIDI Maze, even having a "coming soon" to go with it.

When programmer Michael Park was asked about this demo in a 2022 interview about his work, he remarked, "That was just a teaser for making [...] games".

Differences

Demo	Final

• As this is an automatic demo of the view going through the maze, there's no gameplay yet, with the only interactivity being exiting on pressing Space. The mechanics of the player's movement are there though.
• The viewport resolution is almost identical, but its position on screen is centered as opposed to skewed left in the final.
• The floor is maroon and the walls are green in the demo. The final game goes for a blue-tinted gray instead, and deepens the sky color.
• The map layout, adapted to plain text .MAZ below, is unique to this demo. It also seems to be stored with some compression (around 0x511C in a MAZE.PRG unpacked with JAM Packer), as opposed to the final game's files being the raw thing in plain text.

12
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
X...X.......X
X.X.X.XXX.X.X
X.X...X.X...X
X.X.XXX.X.XXX
X.X.X.X.....X
X.XXX.XXXXX.X
X.......X...X
X.XXX.XXX.XXX
X.X.X.X.....X
X.X.X.XXXXX.X
X...X.......X
XXXXXXXXXXXXX

(Source: Original TCRF research)