There a well known, long-established patterns for beating Pac-Man’s mazes, up until the ninth Key, as Buckner & Garcia sang. Still, Pac’s adversaries exhibit behaviour that, if not exactly tactical, is still complex.
Earlier this year, five students from the University of Central Florida had to design a networked, text-based multiplayer game for their programming class. This, amazingly, is what they came up with.
There is no way in hell I could ever “play” it – my programming days ended with BASIC. But Corewar always intrigued me, because it was the closest thing to real-life Tron I could imagine.
Alright, this post should make clear the provocation for yesterday’s digression into Pac-Man’s bathroom habits. While Fletch and I were pondering the question, we both came across this site, where programmer Don Hodges says he has fixed the glitch that caused Pac-Man’s split-screen bug at board No. 256.
I am against “Homebrew” game development.
Not the activity nor the concept — I participate in the Atari VCS development scene. I enjoy making games for the machine, and I teach it in my classes. I am against the word. Or more properly, the frame it evokes. Let me explain.
