Pac Man Free Move - WIP

[letoff]

Hello all--

I'd been inspired to create a Pac Man engine that emulated the movement of the original game better than I'd seen it in other example files here on the forums and downloaded elsewhere. You'll notice that movement is continuous, and the player need only press a direction when they want to turn. This engine uses no extensions, and is rather simple to implement. Although it started as a turn-based grid engine for TGF, there's no longer anything grid-based about it. Alterable Values are used, but it could easily be modified to work with Flags instead.

That being said, it is not perfect. But you'll see in the MFA that it's undergone several revisions, each one more true to the source than its predecessor. I'd say that version 3 is not only my most recent development, but also the most accurate to the original: with predictable movement emulation and no "speed-up" when going around corners and the like. Version 3 also eliminates any glitches that make the character stuck in walls/backdrops (now you can at least begin moving again).

This MFA is heavily modified from a grid-based engine I found at nivram's example site on Castles of Britain (thank you for collecting such an exhaustive archive, nivram!). AC Donovan contributed some general testing... Thanks, man!

Some things I'm still concerned about:
- At times, the character will bounce slightly to its left and right while encountering gaps in the respective walls while traveling on straightaways. It has to do with the detectors pushing the character along the path. I have an idea what I'd like to try next, but I was wondering if anyone else could think of something to try.
- At times, the character will stop and face a wall if the character is moving along a straightaway and the player presses in the wall's direction (they won't become stuck, however). This is directly related to the bouncing issue referenced above. I suspect if issue 1 is sorted, then this one will also disappear.

If anyone has some way to suggest fixing the above, and/or ways to make this engine even smoother, please post info here in this thread. For example, maybe there's some way to put character graphics on top of the current character sprite, and modifying the event structure so that the character doesn't bounce around. Any ideas?

Otherwise... Enjoy!

[letoff]

I've since updated this engine for a game I'll be finishing in the next few weeks. The latest version includes:
- Less of a "bounce" effect than previous versions. I addressed this by re-ordering some of the events in the event editor.
- Enemies that randomly move throughout the maze, turning at intersections and/or randomly if they've been moving in the same direction for a long time.
- Basic graphics and sound effects, indicating triggers for certain effects: picking up pellets/candy or "power cupcakes", teleporter, etc.
- The classic "teleporter tunnel" that moves the player and enemies from one side of the maze to the other.

[letoff]

I've finished with this engine, and released an example game with it: Doctor Larson's Death Gauntlet.

You can play the Flash version of it here:

http://www.let-off.com/software/dldg/dldg.html

You can download a ZIP with everything you might need at the following link:

http://www.let-off.com/software/dldg/dldg.zip

I did not attach it to this thread, as it's too large and was not permitted.

The downloadable ZIP file contains all the assets for the game:

• the SWF file I created for my example game, Doctor Larson's Death Gauntlet (DLDG)
• the MFA with the pac-man engine and all previous versions
• several screen shots of DLDG
• a readme file explaining the contents of the archive
• the html export file I edited and posted to host DLDG
• the stand-alone EXE of DLDG

Any questions? Have you improved on the engine? Please share in this thread.

Thank you's go to nivram for his examples archive, and to Clickteam for their awesome program.

Thanks, and enjoy!

[KLiK-iT]

Pretty nice, thank you!

[pidr]

hey letoff, i did email u but Ill ask here too. I dont know why my pacman gets stuck on the left side. Any ideas?

[letoff]

A few things to check.

To start with troubleshooting, make sure you have everything Visible. Either check the Object's "Visible at start" box, or disable any events that make the Objects invisible during play. This is most important for the wall detectors and player object, which in my example are all invisible while the player plays the game.

Once everything can be seen, play through the game a couple times and observe what happens when your character becomes stuck. I've noticed these things happen before, and they likely cause problems:

1 - Wall detectors are focused on the player sprite instead of the player detector. This is a problem because the sprite may be different sizes depending on the direction it is facing, causing the wall detectors to move around and generally cause overlapping and detection problems.
To fix this, change the event structure so that the player sprite is centered on the player detector, and the wall detector objects are centered around the player detector. AND make sure your player detector is a plain square. It's going to be invisible anyway, so there's no reason to give it fancy graphics. You'll be overlaying the player sprite (the pac man or spaceship graphics or whatever) on top of this.

2 - The player is moving too fast and the wall detectors can't compensate for this.
To fix this, you can try a few things:
- Adjust the thickness of the wall detectors, so that no matter how far into a wall the player will jump, the wall detector won't miss the wall.
- Adjust the "bounce back" effect of the walls, making sure that it's equal or slightly more than the speed of the player.
- Make sure that the sprites for your wall detectors do not overlap one another. You can slightly adjust the shape (length or width) so that no two detectors will overlap.

As a general rule, don't try to fix problems with your game when you have set some things to be invisible, like wall detectors. You need to see what's going on to determine how to solve issues that arise. You can always set them back to invisible after things are running smoothly.

Hopefully these fixes and what I sent back to you in email can solve your problems, pidr! Please keep us all posted on how you've worked out your game.