Killer Clans (1976) Movie Review

Killer Clans (1976) (IMDB)

Killer Clans movie poster

When I saw this movie and read it contained a labyrinth scene I assumed it was a kung fu movie. That is when I learned about wuxia movies as I had never heard the term before. Martial art movie with fantasy mixed in taking place in China is my general overview. This particular movie features feuding clans who do much of their fighting with swords and plenty of double crosses, so this is not the type of movie that lends itself to distractions while watching. As far as the labyrinth scene, there is an underground canal system that becomes part of the plot and is mazelike. Nothing special. Nothing terrible. A movie you catch on tv one day and you are too lazy to change the channel.

I give it a 5.8/10.

Maze Comic Book Cover #74 - STING

Issue #74 in my comic book cover series is called STING and features the maze of a scorpion. I had been wanting to make a maze of a scorpion for awhile and am glad to present this one. The only problem with it is the size of a scorpion makes the maze very easy to solve because of the tight pathways.

My comic book cover mazes can be found in 2 places:

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 1 (Issues #1-53)

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 2

Scorpion Maze Comic Book

To receive a book of my first year of comic book book mazes (Volume 1 with mazes #1-53) you can sign up for my book alerts - any time I launch a free maze book, or paid book (on Amazon), I will send you a note about the new book launch.

Maze of the Week 75 Redux - Peter B Lewis Building (MOTW#178)

I think the first version of the maze was fine. I made it with shadows and in color which used to be the typical changes I would make on a maze to improve it. But now that I know how to texture items I thought it could use an update. Here is the original post:

Maze of the Week #75 - Peter B Lewis Building Maze

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Added Texture. And a lot of it. I added new texture on the bushes, to the sidewalk, and to the stone wall on the bottom right next to the entrance windows. All to make the maze look more realistic. Using a slightly different finish, I also added stone finishing to seated area in front of the bushes.

2. Fixed 2 Mistakes. I reworked the shadow off of the bottom left bushes which had bled in to the original maze. I fixed the sky bleeding into the sidewalk on the right side. Oops.

3. Widened Pathways. I changed pathway cuts from 1.5 to 2.5, so +66% larger so the maze is easier to both see and solve.

4. Color change. I de-blued the sky a bit.

So not many changes, but enough to make a difference…maybe ?

Here is the before and after:

It actually looks very similar, but if you were to download and solve it it will be much more enjoyable.

Some data: The new file is 830MB from 130MB. Much bigger.

I will be replacing the maze on the homepage with the new maze going forward. You can find the maze download there !

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

Happy maze-ing !

AI is Really Great at Solving the Marble Maze

I have written over 20 blog posts where I test AI text to image generators to see how they do making mazes (poorly). It is a lot of fun, and I have gone back and re-tested some of the same generators to see if they improved year later (they did). If you have an AI generator you like, I may have tested it. If you want a topline view of this project check these 3 main posts out where you can find links to the other posts:

Comparison of 12 AI generating websites - Who did mazes the best ?

What I learned using AI to make maze art

Making Mazes with AI - One Year Later

All of that was a set-up for something a bit different, but the same. So, while AI does a poor job making mazes, it is excellent at solving them ! And not just excellent, world record breaking ! The maze in question is the very challenging marble maze. You may have had one as a child. I have never been able to beat it. Well an open source AI robot, the CyberRunner AI robot apparently is a whiz at marble mazes. To be fair it did get 6 hours practice before the record run. Can you imagine setting a world record of ANY KIND after just 6 hours of practice ? Check out this video featuring the record vs. expert human competitors. The AI even learned to cheat (later corrected so it stopped cheating) to solve it faster using clever shortcuts.

So this makes me wonder, what things AI will be able to solve next ?

Nature is also good at solving mazes:

So a Liquid Can Solve a Maze How Exactly ?

Here are so other Marble Maze posts I have done: