Wilson's Algorithm

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Maze Generation AlgorithmsWilson's AlgorithmRandom Walks

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Maze Generation Algorithms

Wilson's Algorithm

Random Walks

The post shares an interactive visualization of Wilson's Algorithm for generating mazes, sparking discussion about related algorithms and resources.

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01Story posted
Oct 11, 2025 at 9:35 AM EDT
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Discussion (9 comments)

Showing 9 comments

bigjobby

3 months ago

1 reply

This is what I come to HN for. Bravo

leakycap

3 months ago

Was it the example or the text for you?

jmpeax

3 months ago

1 reply

The description of the algorithm is frustratingly confusing.

"Now pick another random black dot to start from and color it white too. From this black dot" from which black dot, the white one?

"single step in a random direction, coloring the new dot white and drawing a line between the two dots". How big of a step is we need to draw a line? Ok, so where not talking about pixels, and where drawing black and white dots on a background of... let's imagine grey?

"backtrack along your path until you’re back at the dot that you were trying to color white" does this algorithm ever terminate in any tractible time?

realaleris149

3 months ago

I always had problems understanding algorithms from such descriptions. Even from pseudocode I find it difficult to understand. What I usually do is search for an implementation, even in a language I am not familiar with is still better. When you have code you can run it, test it, debug it - not so much with descriptions and pseudocode.

tromp

3 months ago

Wilson's algorithm is based on so-called loop-erased random walks [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop-erased_random_walk

butlersean

3 months ago

many examples of of maze generation algorithms (with source code) here. https://www.jamisbuck.org/mazes/

i bought his book totally worth it http://mazesforprogrammers.com/

fn-mote

3 months ago

Here is one article in an excellent series of articles on make generation:

https://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/1/20/maze-generation-wilso...

andrehacker

3 months ago

Any discussion about Maze algorithms cannot be complete without a reference to the 1982 endless Maze algorithm used in the "Entombed" Atari game.

Many great articles about this can be found like:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/01/the-endless-maze-alg...

https://ieee-cog.org/2021/assets/papers/paper_215.pdf

drob518

3 months ago

This page has similar visualizations and explanations of multiple (wildly different, in some cases) maze generation algorithms. It’s hypnotic to watch them run.

https://professor-l.github.io/mazes/

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