Overview

This course features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. In this course, you will dive into the exciting world of procedural maze building. You will explore a variety of maze generation algorithms and gain practical experience using Unity 6. As you progress, you will learn to design modular mazes, create walls and corridors, and implement several maze algorithms, including Drunken Crawl, Randomized Prim’s, Wilson’s, and Recursive Depth-First Search. Each algorithm offers a unique approach to maze generation, providing a deeper understanding of procedural generation techniques. The course takes you through hands-on exercises to ensure you not only understand the concepts but also gain practical experience. You will start by defining basic maze structures and move on to advanced topics like debugging maze generation algorithms and exploring the maze through a first-person character. With each new concept, you’ll be refining your skills in real-time through interactive challenges and problem-solving. This course is perfect for game developers, hobbyists, and enthusiasts interested in learning procedural content generation. No prior experience in Unity or maze algorithms is required, but familiarity with basic programming concepts is helpful. The course is accessible to beginners and gradually builds up to more complex topics. By the end of the course, you will be able to generate functional, interactive mazes in Unity, implement various maze-building algorithms, debug and optimize maze generation code, and explore mazes in a first-person perspective. This knowledge will be invaluable for game development, procedural generation, and algorithm design.

Syllabus

Introduction

In this module, we will introduce you to the course instructors, Penny and Mike, as they outline their sections and what you can expect from their teachings. You’ll also learn how to join the H3D student community for peer support and how to update your project to Unity 6 to ensure compatibility with the latest version.

Generating a Basic Maze

In this module, we will walk through the process of generating a basic maze, starting with the creation of foundational cubes and data structures. We’ll then explore maze crawling algorithms, tackle challenges to refine the path generation, and finally place a border wall for proper maze containment. Additionally, you will learn how to explore the maze from a first-person perspective to simulate player navigation.

Exploring Maze Algorithms

In this module, we will dive into various maze generation algorithms, starting with basic neighbor counting and progressing through advanced methods like Randomized Prim's Algorithm and Wilson's Maze Generator. You’ll also learn recursion techniques with Depth First Search to randomize maze paths and refine your algorithms. Throughout the section, we’ll debug and optimize the maze generation process to achieve smooth and unpredictable maze designs.