How the Pac-Man ghosts think

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Interesting read!

GameInternals - Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior

TL;DR: All these years and the ghosts in Pac-Man are still smarter than The Covenant.

[Armando]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

First time I see this site, but I had come across the Pac-Man Dossier a couple of months back. It was a really interesting read and goes to show how much effort was put into Pac-Man - both by developers and the fans. My mind was fucking blown when I first read it. Since then I've been able to tell bad Pac-Man clones from good ones.

Part of what made Google's Pac-Man logo neat was that as far as I could tell, they got the mechanics down perfectly - I was able to do the exploit where you get the pink one to turn away from you at intersections. One time a ghost went right through me, too. The trick for locking them in the ghost house worked as well.

[jenova_9]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

that is very interesting mew! videogames are more complicated to make than I thought. I thought it would almost be as easy as colorforms.

[Malacite]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

That was pretty cool.

I dunno about them being smarter than the Covenant though

[Firewind]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

I actually read something like this years ago but it wasn't quite as detailed as this so it was interesting to read.

The bot AI on Team Fortress 2 is much more impressive than the Convenant IMO. I've seen bots use the exact same tactics as players who know their class very well. It has elements of utter fail at times but then again so do human players.

FFT also had some pretty impressive enemy AI (using reflect to boost the range of spells for example) as well as your FFXIII team mates who were much more intelligent then your AI team mates on the Persona games. (FFXIII party members stop spamming useless spells and abilities one you know a mob's strengths and weaknesses which is not something you can say for Persona 4)

[Armando]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

Red in Pokemon HG/SS also has some pretty efficient AI - in the case that multiple moves will finish you off, he'll always pick the weakest move guaranteed to do the job (to conserve PP.) If all moves would do poor damage he seems to go for status ailments. I'm guessing this AI is shared by the Elite Four as well, but I wouldn't know; only reason I noticed was because I was trying to fight him at level 50 and my multiple failed attempts yielded some obvious patterns.[quote]FFT also had some pretty impressive enemy AI (using reflect to boost the range of spells for example)/quote]Fucking Elmdor.

[Malacite]

Re: How the Pac-Man ghosts think

Not trying to be a Halo fanboy here, just being fair - The Covy AI on Reach's Legendary mode was pretty scary. I loved the little quip about constant assault from the enemy lol, that's pretty much CoD in a nutshell - non-stop action to the point where it's mind-numbing.


To this date though, I don't think I've ever been as impressed by any game's AI more than the Metal Gear Solid series on the hardest difficulties, especially 2 & 4. They go from being a total joke on the lower settings to total ball busters using real life U.S. military tactics.