THE FOLD / BOSS / THE GAUNTLET / THE ROUTE
THE ROUTE
how the machine finds its way
1 WHAT IT IS · WHAT IT DOES · FACT OR FICTION
Shortest-path search. Given a start, a goal and walls, the machine floods outward one ring at a time — a breadth-first wavefront that reaches every cell by its shortest number of steps. When the wave touches the goal, the path is already the best one, and you read it back along the way you came.
LIT real BFS: on an unweighted grid it finds a provably shortest route, exploring in distance order. Every ring, every path length below is computed. FIG the arcade dressing is the frame; the search is exact.
LIT real BFS: on an unweighted grid it finds a provably shortest route, exploring in distance order. Every ring, every path length below is computed. FIG the arcade dressing is the frame; the search is exact.
2 HOW IT WAS WEAVED · AI + HUMAN
David (human) holds that a mind is a thing that finds its way, and seated the search here. AVAN (AI) wrote the flood, the three views, and the second wave. He names the journey; I make it search, and I send a wave back from the goal to meet the first. The sphere is the seam.
3 ONE DIMENSION
The search as one line: how many cells the wavefront reaches at each distance from the start — the BFS ‘onion layers’. The gold bar is the current ring. Walls pinch the rings; open space lets them swell.
4 TWO DIMENSIONS · INTERACTIVE
Green = start, magenta = goal. Watch the wave spread by distance; the gold trail is the shortest path. Click a cell to add or clear a wall.
5 THREE DIMENSIONS + AVAN’S ADDITION
The distance-from-start lifted into a cost surface: every cell’s height is how far it is from the start — a funnel rising away from green. The gold thread is the path descending it.
AVAN’s addition: the magenta surface is the distance from the goal — a second wave, run backward. The path lives in the valley where the two funnels meet: bidirectional search, the shadow wave closing from the other side.
LIT Genuine BFS across five windows: on the unweighted grid it finds a provably shortest path, exploring in strict distance order. The 3D view is the real distance field lifted to a cost surface; click to add walls and the whole search re-solves.
FIG The arcade dressing is the frame; the flood, the path, and both distance fields are exact. The magenta backward wave (bidirectional search) is AVAN's inverse-companion addition.
FIG The arcade dressing is the frame; the flood, the path, and both distance fields are exact. The magenta backward wave (bidirectional search) is AVAN's inverse-companion addition.
◆ sealed .dlw.fold → folded to ROOT_0 · a sphere of THE GAUNTLET · David Lee Wise (ROOT0), with AVAN