SemiAntics

I’m working on a Java clone of Pacman, I’m going to call it something cool. It’s NOT Pacman, it’s similar, but not the same. You’ve probably heard of NJam, it’s also a clone. I just want to do a better clone.

Update 8/11/2008

So I have the game pretty much working. The ghosts move, pacman moves, it adds up the score, the yellow dots that turn the ghosts edible work, the ghosts have variable speeds, etc. There is still a lot to be done, but it’s actually playable at this point. I’ll add a new screenshot to the screenshots page.

Update 8/9/2008

So, today I added another screen shot. I got the game running. You can direct Pacman around the map, he teleports like he should, and he eats dots and orbs (those things that make the ghosts edible). Once he eats a dot, it disappears and once he eats an orb it also goes away, but then the ghosts are edible. If he gets close to a ghost (within 16 pixels, to be exact!) the ghost simply turns blue. Later I will make it do cool things.

I also added some bug fixes to the map builder program, and I now have the default map completely made with my very own map builder. It took about half an hour. I think making a completely new map is going to be easy, but you’ll want to draw it on paper, or use a spreadsheet to color cells. It’s best to make all the cells in the spreadsheet square. I used a “grid” of 16 so that I can have lines be 16 pixels wide and the paths are 32 pixels wide. It makes the map about the size you’d expect. If you do 15, it’s hard to snap to the middle of 15 (is it 7 or 8?), so beware how you set it up. I would say, stick with an even number.

7/25/2008

Currently, I have the game rendering and stuff. I’ve also implemented a map builder that uses xml files to represent its entities. That should be cool. It’s a GUI, so you can enter stuff and see it draw as you enter it. There is even an undo feature if you enter something incorrectly.

Once I get the map builder done, I will build the default map with my new map builder, and then I will have the xml file for it. Then the game itself will parse the DOM and create the map which will then be rendered. All the ghosts and stuff will refer to the map for their movement rules, so it will be fairly general. That is, you can make your own map, as big or small as you like, load it and play pacman (no, something like pacman).

These two programs will be fully documented by the time I’m done using javadoc. I will probably write a tutorial on how to create a map also, if it’s difficult to understand.