Pac-Man, but you're the ghost

(garrit.xyz)

45 points | by mindracer 2 hours ago

9 comments

  • pmontra 1 hour ago
    Sometimes I manage to make the ghost move on mobile but I don't understand how to do it in a consistent way. Maybe there should be a tap area of 90 degrees above the ghost (from -45 to +45) to move it upwards, 90 to the right to move it rightwards, etc.
    • arcastroe 41 minutes ago
      You just swipe in the direction you want to move (e.g. swipe up to go up). You can also queue up the move ahead of time. So even if you are nowhere near the turn yet, you can swipe up and trust that it will turn (up) when it reaches the intersection.
  • lowlevel 38 minutes ago
    I had this idea a very long time ago.. well before AI... so it was fun to see. Thanks... too easy tho.
  • Teknomadix 2 hours ago
    Cool idea. Horrible controls. Reminds me of how frustrating playing pacman on my 2600 was as a kid.
    • fphhotchips 1 hour ago
      > Horrible controls.

      Interesting! I found them mostly ok, but I was playing with a keyboard. They definitely remind me of the controls of Pacman games I grew up with where (as sibling comment notes), you have to decide where you're going before you get there.

      I wonder if tweaking the input buffering or adding some frames after the turn where you 'snap-back' would help, similar to ghost jumps in Mario.

      • vunderba 26 minutes ago
        I grew up playing Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man in dimly lit arcade parlors and bowling alleys.

        The controls in this version are, for lack of a better word, sluggish compared to the tight responsiveness of the originals on a four-way joystick or using a keyboard with MAME. Even when you press an arrow key to "move" the ghost, there’s a noticeable delay, almost like it’s polling for the key-up event instead of the key-down.

    • serious_angel 1 hour ago

          The code was written by Claude, unfortunately, and hence no controls were probably even considered, or no tokens were left.
          I jumped in with the love in mind, too, but when I checked the source repository, and saw the actual source... and then the contributors... it was... I am sorry... it hit hard...
    • omoikane 1 hour ago
      I find that you have to decide which direction to turn before the turn.

      Once I got that figured out, it was mostly a race to catch pacman along the long straight path at the bottom edge with the ghost's superior speed.

    • VectorLock 1 hour ago
      Yeah its AI slop without the corner easing. But maybe they can AI it better.
  • asadm 1 hour ago
    pretty nice. I had a multiplayer demo a decade back where one player would be pacman and rest would be ghosts. and it would swap as you cycle. Whoever collects most coins won.
    • vunderba 1 hour ago
      I think at one point Namco had a multiplayer Pacman Party Game which had a similar premise - whoever manages to eat Pacman gets to be him in the next round.

      EDIT: Found it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs%2E

      • ofrzeta 5 minutes ago
        Your link is cut off or something. EDIT: the dot at the end is being cut off by the forum software it seems
  • 3-cheese-sundae 50 minutes ago
    "Think about it. It's like Kafka wrote a Lovecraft story."

    https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2736#comi...

  • tommypham 1 hour ago
    haha just played so cool. I'm thinking of making online multiplayer game for this haha
  • dfordp 42 minutes ago
    kind of like the movie pixels :)
  • VectorLock 1 hour ago
    Cool AI slop but the lack of corner easing like the original game makes it less fun.
    • epcoa 37 minutes ago
      Are you talking about for the AI Pac-Man or the ghosts? Because the ghosts in real Pac-Man don’t have cornering.
    • ares623 47 minutes ago
      Taste and care? In my slop? How dare you sir.
  • deadbabe 32 minutes ago
    Why are people still upvoting obvious AI slop garbage?

    1. Claude couldn’t do a proper fence algorithm for the walls?

    2. Controls feel horrible.

    3. It’s literally impossible to catch Pac-Man? You do not move fast enough and the Pac-Man AI is programmed for perfection so it does not make deliberate mistakes for the human player to take advantage of.

    4. The tile based movement is not smooth, very stuttery.

    Fine for a prototype, but we could do so much better. This is not a particular hard game to code up in an afternoon or even an hour if you’re experienced.

    • Reubend 30 minutes ago
      > It’s literally impossible to catch Pac-Man?

      I caught him! So it's definitely possible. You move a little bit faster than he does so you need to anticipate where he's going.

    • csomar 28 minutes ago
      > 3. It’s literally impossible to catch Pac-Man? You do not move fast enough and the Pac-Man AI is programmed for perfection so it does not make deliberate mistakes for the human player to take advantage of.

      It's not impossible. I just did. You just have to corner the man into an impossible situation. But I agree on the AI-slop or lack of quality production.