MadMaze-II Now Hosted on Vintagecomputing.com
February 19th, 2013 by Benj Edwards
In 2006, I wrote about a version of the classic Prodigy game MadMaze that had been adapted for the web by Russell D. Brown, an electronics engineer based in Rome, New York.
Just today, a commenter on that original post (thanks Joshua) let me know that Russell Brown passed away last year on July 1st. That means his implementation of MadMaze-II is now offline.
(Please note that the original author of MadMaze, Greg Costikyan, is still alive and kicking as far as I know.)
Luckily for all of us, I asked Russel Brown back in 2011 to share his MadMaze-II code with me in case his version of the game ever went down. He complied, and I have just now set up a fresh copy of his adaptation on this web server at the following address: http://www.vintagecomputing.com/madmaze/.
The game still requires Internet Explorer 5 or up, and it seems to work in IE 9 for me. Brown programmed the game in such a way that obfuscated its function to prevent cheating (he even incorporated a copy protection scheme), so at the moment I have no idea how to successfully modify it if players find any bugs. But if you encounter any problems, please feel free to let me know, and I'll have a look.
Have fun in the maze. And may Russell Brown rest in peace.
February 19th, 2013 at 8:04 pm
Sad news about Russ if true, but great work on the hosting. I'm happy to report that saving past the Twisted Temple on Level Two is now possible, so whatever save issues occurred with the game previously may have been host-related (and, sadly, understandably so).
A bit of advice for those making their own maps: There's a typo in the game at the Hermit's Cave in Level Two. It says you're continuing to the north, but you'll actually go east. This appears to be intended, since the directions you can get from the hermit match leaving his cave to the east (and the map doesn't look right if you draw it assuming you've gone north).
Good luck to all and a big thanks to Benj for hosting!
February 21st, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Don't work on IE 10
March 28th, 2013 at 8:06 am
not working with Chrome
Sad news about Russ as well…