GameInternals

I wrote a post specifically about the ghost behavior almost 9 years ago: https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior There's not really anything in it that the Pac-Man Dossier doesn't cover, but it's more focused and (hopefully) easier to follow for people just interested in that aspect. The "Retro Game Mechanics Explained" channel did a good video explanation a few months ago too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ataGotQ7ir8

That link is down, but you can see the full article at their homepage too: http://gameinternals.com/

They were hard codes paths. Not hard-coded paths, per se. It's more elegant than that. Each ghost has a distinctive deterministic movement algorithm based on Pac-Man's current position - some target the square ahead of him, some target the square behind, etc. That's why they seem so smart; it's like they're trying to surround/flank you. (If this seems underwhelming, I assume you it was a really neat trick back then - the ghosts had a level of personality and cunning not seen before. Combined with the cute, cartoony visual design of the ghosts themselves it was quite something.) http://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

"This is the heart of the game. I wanted each ghostly enemy to have a specific character and its own particular movements, so they weren't all just chasing after Pac Man in single file, which would have been tiresome and flat." — Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man creator https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

See also 2010 article about Pac-Man Ghost behaviour, its suprisingly complex for 1980, and each of the four ghosts have slightly different behaviour https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior

Cyan is actually much more complicated than that, it's goal is a combination of Pacman and Red's position: https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior Also all of them have "chase" and "flee" modes.

So fun. I like the AI logic, if he wants a fun addition he should add more enemies as the score increases and implement something like the pac-man ghost logic so that they all behave differently: http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…

I played it a lot as a kid, and only recently learned how complex the ghost behaviours were (compared to what I beleived about them): http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…

Do these attempts make use of the documented idioscynracies of Ms Pacman? http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…

Cool stuff! The game feels really smooth. If you're interested, this article has a cool explanation of the original Pac-Man's ghost logic: http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…

They'll want to update ghost movement http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…

This page: http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b… has even more on Pac-Man ghost behavior (and many fewer ads).

There's been a few interesting articles posted on HN about Pacman's internals and gameplay: http://www.donhodges.com/how_high_can_you_get2.htm http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b… http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html#Chapter_5 You can find the relevant HN discussion by searching HN algolia: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=pacman&sort=byPopularity&prefix&…

Cool but I'm pretty sure someone needs to read up on the algorithms used by the ghosts... http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man-ghost-b…