Wilson’s Algorithm III
This piece uses Wilson’s algorithm to generate a spanning tree of a canvas, then floods it with color so that hue encodes Manhattan distance from the root. The animation is rendered as a Canvas image using `d3.timer` and `context.putImageData`, with the maze generation offloaded to a worker thread. The code relies on D3’s `d3.select` and `d3.hsl` for styling and color, while the generated tree is visualized in a web page with a “wait” message.
AI-generated descriptionA spanning tree of the canvas is generated using Wilson’s algorithm and then flooded with color. Hue encodes Manhattan distance from the root of the tree. (This is not an optimal visual encoding, but it suffices and is pretty.)
Spanning trees can also be used to generate mazes. See a maze generated with Wilson’s algorithm flooded with color, and compare color floods of spanning trees generated with Wilson’s algorithm to random traversal, randomized depth-first traversal and Prim’s algorithm.