Back in the day, PAC-Man used to be one of the most-played games in the world! Game-play was pretty simple and straightforward - try to eat all the dots and fruit as fast as you can and without being eaten by a ghost. Everyone knew the rules, and people of all ages could play it.
Everyone also knew how the ghosts behaved more or less - they roamed around until they figured out your approximate location, and then started actively chasing you. How did they know however how to do that?
According to Chad Birch, "Each of the ghosts is programmed with an individual “personality”, a different algorithm it uses to determine its method of moving through the maze", but there is also a logic that all ghosts share (1).
More specifically, each ghost has what is called a 'target tile', which it tries to reach, and arriving to which is the basis for the ghost's behavior. "All of the ghosts use identical methods to travel towards their targets, but the different ghost personalities come about due to the individual way each ghost has of selecting its target tile." (1)
References:
- http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior
Image References:
- https://www.google.com/search?q=pac+man&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI6_eQraLQAhUJ7mMKHT4BBmcQ_AUICCgB#imgrc=ukfIYq6AlYNIJM%3A
No comments:
Post a Comment