Leet More 2010 Time Traveller writeup

A scientist who worked on the issue of space-time continuum, suddenly disappeared.
He left only a mysterious drawing in a notebook.
There is a suspicion that he traveled back in time. In what year did he travel? And what is his name?

There are only 2 breaks in this maze. Let’s try to find the way. Ascii of lines length don’t mean anything, but turns do. Each turn is a bit. Just experiement to find that turn right = 1, turn left = 0. Here is a script to collect bits:

<?php

    $im = imagecreatefrompng($argv[1]);
    if (!$im) die("can't open image\n");
    
    $right1 = 1; #if turn right = 1
    $sx = $sy = 512;

    #start coordinates
    $x = 256;
    $y = 246;
    $angle = 270;
    
    $key = '';
    while (1) {
        $cos = intval(cos(deg2rad($angle)));
        $sin = intval(sin(deg2rad($angle)));
        $c = imagecolorat($im, $x+$cos, $y-$sin);
        if ($c) #clear pixels for doctor's name
            imagesetpixel($im, $x+$cos, $y-$sin, 0x30);
        if (!$c) {
            $ar = ($angle + 270 ) % 360;
            $al = ($angle + 90 ) % 360;
            $xr = $x+intval(cos(deg2rad($ar)));
            $yr = $y-intval(sin(deg2rad($ar)));
            $xl = $x+intval(cos(deg2rad($al)));
            $yl = $y-intval(sin(deg2rad($al)));
            $cr = imagecolorat($im, $xr, $yr);
            $cl = imagecolorat($im, $xl, $yl);
            
            if ($cl && $cr)
                die("Picture failish\n");
            if (!$cl && !$cr)
                break;
            if ($cr) {
                $angle = $ar;
                $x = $xr;
                $y = $yr;
            }
            else {
                $angle = $al;
                $x = $xl;
                $y = $yl;
            }
            $key .= (!!($cr) ^ $right1) ? 1 : 0;
        }
        else {
            $x += $cos;
            $y -= $sin; //axes differ
        }
    }
    
    $a = str_split($key, 8);
    foreach ($a as $b) {
        echo chr(bindec($b));
    }
    echo "\n";
    
    imagepng($im, "out.png");
    
?>

$ php solve.php traveller.png
Th1RtY_e1gHT_5ev3nTY_0Ne_A.D.

out.png contains a shadowed path and we can see the scientist’s name:

So, the answer to Time Traveller 2 was “Dr Leet”