I Coded Pacman but it's Procedurally Generated 

What do you guys think of my avatar?

Nice! It'd be cool to have a mode where after you eat all of the dots, it generates a new map and you start playing it immediately

About accuracy of Pac-Man's stuff: *ABOUT GHOSTS* Names: Red - Blinky (Shadow, Oikake, Chaser) Pink - Pinky (Speedy, Machibuse, Ambusher) Cyan/Light blue - Inky (Bashful, Kimagure, Fickle) Orange - Clyde (Pokey, Otoboke, Feigned Ignorance) Target AI: Ghosts calculate the position to the target and take the closest one to go. If the targets have the same distance, they go in this order: Up, Left, Down, Right. The ghosts cannot turn around 180 degrees (it has some exceptions). *SCATTER MODE* The corners for each ghost is ordered like this: Blinky - Top right Pinky - Top left Inky - Bottom right Clyde - Bottom left Blinky rotates around its corner clockwise-only and Pinky turns around counter-clockwise only. Inky and Clyde can turn around in either direction depending on from what part of the maze they went from. *CHASE MODE* Blinky's AI is right, it puts a tile above Pac-Man. Pinky's AI puts its target tile ahead of Pac-Man (like Blinky), but it gets moved 4 spaces ahead of Pac-Man's direction, thus, Pinky's attacking Pac-Man from the front, while Blinky's chasing Pac-Man's tail. Inky's AI is the most complex of them all, cuz it's target tile is connected to Blinky's position and a little bit of Pinky's mix. So, the funny ghost target tile is like Pinky's, but it's 2 tiles ahead, and the target tile inverts Blinky's position from that tile, and this is where the target tile of Inky's is. Clyde has the name off, but the target tile of his is the same as Blinky's unless if it's 8 tiles away of Pac-Man. If Clyde is within the range, it's target tile is placed the same as if it was in Scatter Mode. *FRIGHTENED MODE* When entering or exiting Frightened Mode, the ghosts turn around 180 and turn blue. Their AI is picking random direction (see Target AI about turnaround rule). When Pac-Man touches one of them, they give the points in ascending order (200, 400, 800, 1600), and turn into the eyes, then they go inside the Ghost House on high speed (located in the middle of the maze and blocked by the pink door). While they are in the "Eaten" state, they do not turn blue when entering Frightened Mode. *SOME OTHER INFO* There are two funky parts in the maze (i'll call them areas) that are located to force ghosts to not turn up and go straight to the path. These areas are located above the Ghost House and the Pac-Man's starting area.

Really cool. But, I have a suggestion: there still feels like there is a lot of wasted space with the generation algorithm. You might be able to better use the space by using a different approach. Currently, your algorithm seems to kind of just make paths, and connect them up where they just so happen to connect. I think you could get way better results if you use a method that _focuses_ on how the paths connects and has rules on how those connections occur. I highly recommend taking a look at the “Wave Function Collapse” algorithm, as it’s one of the most powerful and used methods for randomly-generated environments.

don't each of the ghosts follow slightly different AI's?

Also, regarding different ghost behaviour: there's a great video by Retro Game Mechanics Explained that shows how the ghost AI's aren't _that_ complex. Not easy, mind you, it would still be work. But not too difficult either, specially give you already implemented a pathfinding algorithm the only think you needed to do was give them different objectives.

I love how your avatar has cinammon and sugar instead of some sauce, because I like my noodles with some sugar and cinammon as well sometimes, that's a very nice and unique way to represent yourself as noodles

Man, despite the fact that this is only your 3rd video, this is great stuff. Keep it up, I enjoy seeng more of what you do! :)

I love content like this, it’s fascinating but also simple to understand. Hope you Keep em coming!

I wonder if there is a seed that generates the original maze

Pac-man is my favorite arcade game next to dig dug. I like to view this as the "Pac-man 2" we never got. Also I like your avatar.

improvement to procedural map generation: - start with the ghost house where you want it, surrounded by empties 1 randomly select a square with 0 or 1 open sides - randomly select an unconnected side to connect - if connecting this side would create four squares all connected together in a square arrangement, (a "quad") go to 1 - remove the wall - if any square has less than 2 open sides, go to 1 (it's possible to deadlock by creating a map with squares needing more opens that will have to lead to a quad, if that is encountered, just reset and start over) this will generate a board with no quads and all track accessible, but there are probably isolated tracks, and lots of track without forks. also the ghost house will be on its own isolated track. - use your pathing method to identify and label the squares on separate tracks 2 randomly select a square that has an adjacent square that's on a different track - if removing the separating wall would create a quad, go to 2 - remove the wall - combine the tracks - if there are still multiple tracks, go to 2 now all squares are conected on a single track, but there are probably several dead ends and many long runs of unbranching track. if that doesn't bother you, you're done. to open things up, continue: - count all remaining walls 3 randomly select a square with a wall - randomly select a wall to remove - if removing the wall would create a quad, go to 3 - remove the wall - decrement wall count - compare the wall count with some function to adjust "open-ness" of the map. if not open enough yet, go to 3 there may still be areas of the map with only one outlet, but it should be much more open I can't think of a quick way to test for areas of track with no outlets. it's also unnecessary to vary the location of the power pellets or the starting point since there is always track there.

Some suggestions to make the game better (If you don't like some of them or you think that not all players would like them, make it so you can enable and disable them in a settings menu): -Make time freeze for a little bit after you eat a ghost. -Make vulnerable ghosts flicker when they are about to turn into regular ghosts. -Add a level editor.

Fun fact: you inspired me to make my own multiplayer snakes game! Keep up the awesome videos, I love 'em!

Very cool to see Pac-Man get some love. I made my own clone of Pac-Man, "Pac-Man Infinite" my senior year of high school in which more and more level-sized chunks would be generated as you progress, connected where the tunnels would be. I wanted to use the same tile graphics as the original Pac-Man and discovered that you only needed to distinguish between in-bounds areas, walls, and out-of-bounds areas. Each tile would check a 3x3 area around itself and compare that to a list of which area configuration pairs to which tile. It was surprisingly easy to get the ghosts to navigate very long levels, too.

fun fact: each ghost has different ai, blinky (shadow) follows you like a shadow, pinky (speedy) follows the tile in front of you, inky (bashful) is basically pinky but works with blinky, clyde (pokey) when in an 8-tile radius with pac man he turns around.

You should add a level editor to be able to costumize basically everything even lives and maybe the amount of ghosts but there will have to be a limit and maybe you should add time so yea hope you like it

I would recommend adding a function that looks for corners of the map to place the power pellets, that way you decrease the chances of getting flanked at those parts of the map. Another idea would be a function that creates branches that connect others together to add more maneuverability to pac man's ability to evade ghosts as having a large square path with not power pellets is a huge risk as you can easily be surrounded by the ghosts.

this is really cool, now all you need to do is write an ai that can play procedurally generated Pacman

5:23 - love how you call it a “Super dot”

Does the classic pacman grid generate on any select seed, like seed 0 produces classic?

rand() is only bad if it is critical for the number to be actually random like in cryptography or if you want specific distribution patterns (rand has no guarantees as to how random it is. Used to be a problem in old compilers but isn't really anymore). If it isn't you can use it no problem.

What next? An Ai to play this version?

It would be nice if each ghost had its signature unique behaviour so they don’t just become recolours of each other

This would be perfect for Wave Function Collapse like in Townscaper... then the mazes would likely feel more Pac-Man-esque!

This is really cool but, wouldn’t it be cooler if every time you clear the map it’ll generate a new one? You could have options for this such as; Autochange upon clearing, ask to change when cleared or don’t autochange.

I didn’t realize this was your 3rd vid. good job!

thanks for the idea, thanks to this video I also create a procedurally generated pacman but in python but with ghost that moove randomly and with an other map generator that create less hole and I think that it is better

"Wave Function Collapse" is an algorythm which could be usefull to generate more "realistic" pacman maps without some issues you had (except for understanding and implementing it tho)

codenoodles: prevents branches from touching other branches also codenoodles: lets sub-branches do the exact same thing

Your channel is underrated af

Fun fact: 3x3 tile connection systems also exist for more complicated setups!

Ahbeef is doing a retrospective on all of the pacman games and has a pretty interesting color corridinated graph explaining his thoughts on each map in the games. He's up to pack mania, check it out Also, this reminds me of world biggest pacman, but that was user created levels

i always thought the moral of the story was to find out a way to make the chunks smaller and for the branches to spread more and to figure out how to get the weird bleep thing out of your vocal cords so you can say swear words correctly

Music choice is giving me Code Bullet vibes

A little inaccurate on ghosts but wouldn't expect you to re-code it after all that work. Scatter mode means each ghost goes to its corner (Orange "Clyde" to bottom left for example). You probably already know each ghost chases Pacman differently. As for Ghost movements, if you know which way they are going, they only need to make a decision when they can turn at an intersection. They never turn around 180 degrees unless a power pellet is eaten, or when switching between chase and scatter. Ghosts always have a target tile unless frightened, which is in the corner during scatter mode. Whichever turn brings them closest to the target tile using a linear line (a^2 + b^2 = c^2) is the one they pick. They prioritize up, then left, then down, then right if distances are equal, iirc - something like that anyway. TLDR it's a lot harder to simulate pacman then it looks, you did a great job!

what if after eating all pellets you have to leave through a gate/the looping end, going out of bounds into the next level seamlessly

this is really cool, but I would like to see an actually procedurally generated pacman because currently it isn't procedurally generated its randomly generated, procedurally generated is when it is constantly generating new terrain as you move making the map infinite, like in Minecraft, but you would have to make a set number of dots you have to eat to proceed to the next level, you could also just run away from the ghosts into the distance but this wouldn't be a big problem because you can't avoid winning the level and will spawn back in the middle of the map again and the ghosts will get faster than you, rendering this method useless.

I thought the scatter pattern made the ghosts go to their respective corners and then move randomly within it, until the timer runs out

This has me thinking about making a maze like Pac-Man rpg that has different items around a dungeon that is made up of a set number of generated levels and a final fantasy or undertale like combat system and navigation to the next room is done by entering the hallways on the edges of the maze and the pellets could be a currency with many different types of ghosts with different movement patterns and combat abilities with like giant ghost bosses

This is really interesting I just wish you actually made the ghost ai how they did in the arcade game rather then just whatever sounded right During chase mode The red one paths straight for pacman The pink one paths 2 spaces ahead of pacman The blue one is weird, it paths to how far the red one is from the pink ones target doubled relative to pacman, something about trying to corner pacman The orange one paths straight for pacman, until he gets within an 8 tile radius of him then he goes for the bottom left During scatter mode The red one goes to the upper right The pink one goes to the upper left The blue one goes to the bottom right The orange one goes to the bottom left

Amazing video

"and it somehow did" made me laugh hard 🤣

10/10 video i loved it

you should optimize the ghost sprites with only body and eyes, probs even further with color shifts

that tile tip was really good

While this is absolutely a cool idea... you forgot that each ghost has its own specialized AI, so they're all acting the same. A win for programming, but a loss for personality.

If I remember correctly, fangames like this are considered fair use as long as you use a different name, unless you monetize them. You could name this game "Puck-Randomizer". Pac-Man's original name was Puck-Man, but people vandalized the machines to replace the P with an F, so they changed the name of the game & its titular character, & the "Puck" in the name I suggested for your game is an homage to Pac-Man's original name, which isn't copyrighted anywhere in the world, except maybe Japan. So yes, you can release this game, as long as you don't make people have to pay to download or play it, and make any & all DLC that you may release in the future free.

Would love to see a version 2 of this

CodeBullet would be proud 😂

Im actually into this stuff but in minecraft command blocks I made a lot of stuff with command blocks like infinity stones , peashooter and PVZ etc and weirdly enough , TIME LOOPS

It would be neat if seed '256', generated a broken map, similar to how the original arcade game's map broke if you surpassed level 255.

CodeNoodles - You need to develop this further; the maze should be a little more detailed pathwise, you could retrofit the missing PacMan elements (like the fruit), add in stuff from the other games (bouncing fruit, random picking a seed based on Ms. Pac Man multiple mazes, the super prise from PacMan Plus, stuff from PacMan Jr., etc.)

Tbh, i didnt understand over 50% what ya saying in this video but still find its fun somehow

Have you ever thought of using quantum wave function collapse to generate PAC-man mazes? I think it would work more nicely than noise or the branching that you implemented in the video. It would allow for all generated mazes to resemble the original pac-man maze.

I’m sure at least one other person has said this but there is a specific algorithm for each ghost during chase mode that is pretty different from what you used, here is a link to a video I watched that explains it ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ataGotQ7ir8.html

5:29 it's not almost done, each ghost acts differently

very upset that he did not code the individual ghosts' pathfinding techniques :(

Woah dude, that concept sounds fun. What software did you use to make this? Unity? Cause it seemed like a fun project to try and learn. Please tell.

Awesome 😎👍.

This is so creative I love it

If you ever need any music for your games, just let me know.

Good video! I just thought it would be a game that would infinitely generate.

The next step is turning it into a roguelite

Bro I’m coding right now

that bleep made my ears hurt subscribing but keeping notifs off

The ghosts each have unique AI that make the real game play very differently from this

You can… you can turn around before reaching a fork…

Wish I could code like you

Fun fact : each ghost has a different behavior

your avatar is making me hungry

Nice

Are you sure your are a bowl of noodles? You look like a bowl of bolognese pasta with parmesan

You’ll probably not see this, but I’m curious. What c++ game engine are you using?

Finally. The new PAC-MAN 2.

8/10 imperfect ghost AI.

Every copy of Pac-Man is personalized.

Why does your avatar look like he was possessed and experienced the most traumatizing event at the same time

I’m upset that the Pac-Man animation didn’t have all three frames it usually does

Nice work.

This is e[pic, a simple and fun looking way to play pacman, what if you could use pipes (off the end of the screen) to join procedurally generated map?

Shoulda made it so that the levels were randomized after each clear

What about the unique behavior for each ghost, they all have some simple differences to create a technical game play loop

Procedural-man

is this guy the new codebullet.... lol even with the same music... im down lol

Niiice

are the ghosts in Pacman actually ghosts? I mean yes they're clearly ghosts but Namco never really said that they're ghosts until Pacman and the ghostly adventures series, which is the series that gives Pacman teeth and fingers so I don't consider it cannon

Now make an unbeatable player program and make the ghosts stronger with each level

2:33 I swear it almost says "OUCH" 😆

I think the actual Terraria uses the same method your clone uses.

Avatar is cool love ur games can you help me and my friend make a game this has been a project and dream of his for a long time, again love the vids and the script

There is actually a game like that but instead people make the levels. Its called worldsbiggestpacman

did he actually make the ghosts behavior properly, or were they all copy and pasted red's?

I guess you could say everything you make is Spaghetti code

I created a PM maze generator in 2012, but my comment keeps getting deleted by RU-vid if I put a link in the comment, so I can't show you. Oh well. The gist is that it creates a blank grid of whatever size you want, then places a ghost home randomly, as well as tunnels if you wish, then it creates walls randomly if there is a surrounding path until an awesome random PM maze is created. Let me know if you want the code. I'm never going to turn it into a game... it just creates an infinite number of mazes that would be great for making a full game.

Now make it INFINITE

so i'm trying to play procedural pacman myself, i got it off your github, but when i try to open the Exe file, the window is just way too big for my screen, and it only shows me the top left corner of it, so i cant see anything, is there any way known to fix the issue?

Second :)) Its gonna be a good vid

Good, now make a level editor 😏

A question, if C# is Object oriented or what ever is called, how i can make a script to control other objects?