Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Maze Generation

Animation of Maze Generation

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 24 Nov 2010 at 01:26:38 (UTC)

**Original** - An animation of the generation of a 90 × 90 maze using a variant of Prim's algorithm starting from nine starting cells and then merging the nine regions thus generated. (click to view animation)

Reason: Strong encyclopedic value, being the only animation of a maze being generated in this method.
Articles in which this image appears: maze generation, Prim's algorithm
FP category for this image: Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Diagrams, drawings, and maps/Diagrams
Creator: Purpy Pupple

Support as nominator --Purpy Pupple (talk) 01:26, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: First, the image size is unnecessarily large and you can't actually see the animation unless you go to full resolution. Without the animation it's just a black rectangle and I don't think it would be a good candidate to put on the main page. Second, it's an animation of the maze being generated but it doesn't show how the algorithm works or what it's doing to generate the maze. So the EV seems lacking to me. Imo it would be better to have a much smaller maze (5 by 5 say) but somehow show the computations that are going on.--RDBury (talk) 04:45, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's a big black rectangle. I would have been totally confused if RDBury hadn't mentioned that you have to click on it (twice!) to get the animation to show up. Ozob (talk) 12:09, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- It seems that Wikipedia's current version of ImageMagick sometimes does not make the GIF thumbnails properly. I'm not quite sure how to fix this though... Purpy Pupple (talk) 12:13, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  You'll need to make a new image, small enough that it doesn't need to be a thumbnail. Other thoughts:
  - The walls are very thin. Can you make them thicker so that they show up better?
  - The animation shows many many steps happening at once. Can you show the steps one at a time? (I realize that that would be ridiculous on a 90×90 grid, but if it's 4×4 then you have only 16 steps to show.)
  - It's not clear how the algorithm works from the picture alone. How about something like this: Since this is a graph algorithm, in the background of the picture, show the graph that the algorithm is working off of. Use a dark color, say dark blue. At the first step, highlight a random dot for your starting position, say in light red. Next frame: Highlight all of its neighbors in light blue. Next frame: Highlight the neighbor you've chosen to extend the maze to (and the edge connecting it to the first dot) in light red. Next frame: Highlight all the potential places the maze can be extended to in light blue. Next frame: Highlight the neighbor you've chosen to extend the maze to (and the edge connecting it to the maze) in light red. Repeat until the maze is done. I think it would be clearer to work with just the graph until the very end. After the last step, pause, then display the maze underneath the graph, pause, and then display the maze alone. Pause, and repeat.
  Ozob (talk) 12:37, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Withdraw nomination -- thank you for your valuable feedback. I appreciate it. However, I have realized that in order for the picture to have sufficient encyclopedic value, it must be radically changed and I simply don't have time this year to do it. Nevertheless, whoever wants the source code for my maze generation algorithm so as to create a new and better version, feel free to leave a note on my talk page or something. Purpy Pupple (talk) 18:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted --J Milburn (talk) 00:03, 16 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]