John Harrison's Journal: Pacman game

Nobody will read this, and even if someone does, they won't post!

That said, I have a new version of my Pacman-inspired game up. It is improved over the version that has been linked to in my sig for a while now.

If anyone has any suggestions for power-ups or other interesting features (make sure to play through three levels first), please post below. There is a good chance your suggestion will make it into the game.

Also if it doesn't work for you, let me know, so I can fix it.

I read it

[TekZen]

unfortunately I have wasted enough time this morning reading Slashdot journals for me to play Pacman.

though I am going to bookmark it for later ;)

Well, I went to bookmark it and played for a while. But I couldn't beat level three (and it never said game over).

-Jackson

Re:I read it

[John Harrison]

I should probably have given some context. The game is not finished. There is no set number of lives. You can see how it has changed over time by starting at Day 0 [angelfire.com] and clicking through each day. It isn't any fun until Day 6 though.

Level 3 might be too large and too fast. It is however, the most interesting as far as potential power-ups go. Also, I think that it shows that the ghost is too smart, since a single ghost that is slower than you are is pretty effective at killing you. Imagine if there wer

Slashdotted??

[FortKnox]

Looks like the page is slow or slashdotted.

But if it was either applet or flash, I can't play it till I get home (stupid work proxy). I'll give ye a hollar later on when I have a chance to play.

Re:Slashdotted??

[John Harrison]

It is a Java applet. Thanks for trying. I hope you enjoy it when you get a chance to see it.

funky screen size

[gmhowell]

The screen is a bit too large. I have Mozilla on WinXP. If I got rid of an extra bar here or there, the screen would barely fit. Remember that the aspect ratio you chose is one that was picked with the monitor rotated 90 degrees. I see a few fixes: rotate your maps 90 degrees; make all 'pixels' smaller; shrink everything in the Y axis only.

Oh, or ignore me:)

Re:funky screen size

[John Harrison]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will rotate the screen for the next version. I would guess that most people run their screens at a lower resolution than I do and therefore couldn't fit the whole maze on at once.

Re:funky screen size

[gmhowell]

FWIW, I run 1024x768 on a 17" monitor.

Re:funky screen size

[John Harrison]

good to know. I wanted to make it taller than it is wide since that shape of maze would remind people of PacMan, but I'll try a more horizontal approach on the next release.

Re:funky screen size

[John Harrison]

You might want to try this one [angelfire.com]. It is horizontal and has a few other changes.

Re:funky screen size

[gmhowell]

works for me.

Cool

[On Lawn]

not bad, seems fun.

not bad

[subgeek]

actually pretty good. i like the random maze generation. keeps it from getting too dull. that's the problem with kpacman on my zaurus. it's always the same maze.

occasionally the ghost gets stuck in complex mazes. it seems like it's going for a the line that is most directly towards the pacman instead of finding a path through the maze at times. also seems to get slower the more complex the maze is.

Ghost intelligence

[John Harrison]

If you check out Day 6 [angelfire.com] of the project you'll see an even dumber ghost. It got stuck quite frequently. I could make the ghost have "perfect play" but in most cases it is too smart as it is. The AI of the ghost is explained in the text below the game and of course the code is linked to above the game if you REALLY want to see what it does.

Having two ghosts even on the larger board would become very difficult. I might throw in a hueristic to discourage the ghost from revisiting the most recently visited

Re:Ghost intelligence

[subgeek]

You must have played it a bit to notice the ghost getting stuck. :)

it's a video game. i'm a sucker for video games.