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Pac-Man, but you're the ghost

120 pointsby mindracertoday at 4:18 AM57 commentsview on HN

Comments

jader201today at 12:09 PM

This reminds me of a lesser known and underrated game on the GameCube, Pac-Man Vs. [1]

It worked by having one player operate use a GameBoy Advance (connected to the GameCube with an adapter) to (privately) operate Pac-Man while the other three players use GameCube controllers to operate ghosts.

Additionally, to give Pac-Man a better shot at winning, the three ghosts play from a third-person 3D perspective, rather than top-down.

It was a great couch 3v1 game.

The WiiU had similar mini-games in Nintendo Land [2], with one player operating the Wii U gamepad, while the others played from the TV.

I miss the era of couch multiplayer games.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man_Vs.

EDIT: ^HN strips the necessary period (.) from the end of the link.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Land

geontoday at 10:59 AM

You should add inky and pinky so you can corner pacman. Their movement is dependent on blinky, so you would be in control of all 3.

https://pacman.fandom.com/wiki/Maze_Ghost_AI_Behaviors

beezlewaxtoday at 10:17 AM

If you go left or right as the first move on mobile you can't get out of the box. Pretty frustrating.

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onionytoday at 11:14 AM

I'm making a version where you're a pellet.

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hauntertoday at 7:58 AM

The less dots there are the easier to "freeze" the game https://files.catbox.moe/g03iwa.gif

pmontratoday at 5:31 AM

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.

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InvisibleUptoday at 7:18 AM

Seems the solution is to immediately leave and follow Pac-Man to the bottom-right (by alternating right-down) and chase him across the long corridor on the bottom. Keep following him and you'll just catch him, since he never goes for the power pellets.

atarutoday at 7:09 AM

Pacman can escape more easily now that there's only one ghost.

foo12bartoday at 7:12 AM

For 400+ lines of html, not bad, even if it is AI generated: https://github.com/garritfra/pac-hunt/blob/main/index.html

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kristopoloustoday at 10:53 AM

the ghost is slightly faster which makes the game winnable. thanks for that. I noticed

paolomontoday at 11:40 AM

cool idea, good start!

Teknomadixtoday at 4:36 AM

Cool idea. Horrible controls. Reminds me of how frustrating playing pacman on my 2600 was as a kid.

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3-cheese-sundaetoday at 5:49 AM

"Think about it. It's like Kafka wrote a Lovecraft story."

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

akoboldfryingtoday at 9:47 AM

What about: Pac-Man, but you're a dot. Time passes, ghosts pass through you occasionally, then suddenly: inky blackness.

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Chazprimetoday at 8:15 AM

I’m struggling to even leave the ghost pen on iOS.

asadmtoday at 5:15 AM

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.

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sixothreetoday at 7:47 AM

The ghosts are unable to reverse direction in Pac-Man. You should have your agent read this: https://pacman.holenet.info/

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tommyphamtoday at 5:17 AM

haha just played so cool. I'm thinking of making online multiplayer game for this haha

lowleveltoday at 6:01 AM

I had this idea a very long time ago.. well before AI... so it was fun to see. Thanks... too easy tho.

VectorLocktoday at 5:20 AM

Cool AI slop but the lack of corner easing like the original game makes it less fun.

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dfordptoday at 5:57 AM

kind of like the movie pixels :)

purple-leafytoday at 7:08 AM

should call it Nam-Cap

deadbabetoday at 6:07 AM

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.

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