THE EVOLUTION OF: 3D MONSTER MAZE

“The easiest thing to do was have a smallish monster that got bigger as it walked towards you. But not randomly, he would actually go for you!”
MALCOLM EVANS

Programming is a young man’s game. At least that was what thirty-something microprocessor scientist Malcolm Evans was advised when he looked into changing disciplines. Malcolm chose to ignore this guidance, however, and in 1981 – after unwrapping a birthday present from his wife – he took matters into his own hands, as the pioneering developer explains. “I was in the aerospace industry doing hardware, and I was keen to get into doing software, but it was difficult,” Malcolm sighs. “So what happened was that my wife bought me a ZX81, and I thought: ‘Now what the hell can I do with this?’ So I wrote an algorithm that created a random maze. I did that in 2D, but then I wondered: ‘What would it look like if you walked around it?’”

Malcolm’s solution for rendering first-person perspective tours exploited the ZX81’s ability to rapidly switch between full-screen graphics. He used these as frames of animation depicting 3D sections of his maze, which subsequently became home to a monster. “You could build up frames and then switch them, so I was doing that,” Malcolm notes, “and then I was talking to a friend who said: ‘Why don’t you put something into the maze and make it a game?’ So I thought: ‘How do I get