Pacman by David Reilly

With contributions by Andy Sommerville (2007)

Github project page: https://github.com/greyblue9/pacman-python

Personal project page: http://pinproject.com/pacman/pacman.htm

Thank you for your interest in my tribute to everyone's favorite Pac-Man games of yesteryear! Pacman features 12 colorful levels of varying sizes, bouncing fruit, A* path-finding ghosts, and, more recently, cross-platform support, joystick support, and a high score list. This was the first large-scale project I ever developed in Python, so the source is not the cleanest, but I would love to have your contributions! Feel free to slice and dice it up however you like and redistribute it; I just ask that you give me some credit and let me know about it, so I can enjoy your creation too! Have fun!

Installation

Pac-man requires Python 3.x (tested on 3.8), and the corresponding version of the Pygame library, freely available online. Make sure you install the matching (32- or 64-bit) version of Pygame as your Python installation, and the one compatible with your Python version number. The last I checked, only 32-bit binaries of Pygame for Windows were hosted on the official website, but there was a link to download unofficial 64-bit binaries of Pygame as well.

Running the Maze Editor

To run the maze editor in Windows 7 or 8, perform the following steps depending on your version of Windows:

Windows 7/8

Copy RICHTX32.OCX and COMDLG32.OCX in the libraries/ folder to your Windows SysWOW64 directory for 64-bit Windows, or System32 if you are running 32-bit Windows. The paths are typically "C:\Windows\SysWOW64" and "C:\Windows\System32" respectively. Second, open command prompt as Administrator (click Start, type "cmd" and right-click > Run as Administrator) and run the following commands, making sure to replace the path with the actual path to SysWOW64 (or System32 for 32-bit) on your machine:

• 64-bit Windows

  regsvr32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\RICHTX32.OCX regsvr32 C:\Windows\SysWOW64\COMDLG32.OCX

• 32-bit Windows

  regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\RICHTX32.OCX regsvr32 C:\Windows\System32\COMDLG32.OCX

Both commands should say the DLL was registered successfully. After that, run pacman/maze_editor.exe and you should be good to go.

Windows XP/Vista

I haven't tested it recently, but as far as I remember, the maze editor will work if you either copy the .OCX files to System32, or just copy them to the pacman/ folder (the same folder as maze_editor.exe). I never ran the regsvr32 command on these versions of Windows, so I don't think it is necessary. Please contact me if you know!

Windows under WINE

Haven't tested this combination, but please let me know if you have, along with any extra steps you had to take, and I will make the changes to this document.

Since the maze editor was written and built in Visual Basic 6, I do have some suggested steps that I've adapted from another app written in VB6, Heirowords. Some of the example commands are for a Ubuntu system, but a similar command should be available under any modern Linux system.

• Install Wine.

  sudo apt-get install wine

• Install and run winetricks to download the VB6 runtime libraries for Wine

  wget http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks chmod +x winetricks sudo mv winetricks /usr/bin/winetricks winetricks

• When winetricks opens, select the package "vb6run" and install it.

• Copy COMDLG32.OCX and RICHTX32.OCX from the libraries/ folder to your Wine system32 directory, probably ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/.

Please let me know if you have any luck with these steps, or have any suggestions, etc. Good luck and enjoy the maze editor!

Using the Maze Editor

Background and How it Works

Skip to the Quick Start section below if you're not interested in the technical details! :)

The maze editor will expect to find a res/ directory in the path to the maze editor executable; otherwise, it will not work. It should be set up this way by default. In addition to the contents of the res/tiles/ directory, it also looks for res/crossref.txt (for tile descriptions and code values), res/sprite (for fruit graphics), and will default the level open dialog box to the res/levels directory.

Each level is simply a text file with some level properties at the beginning, followed by a # startleveldata tag which introduces the level data itself, and then finally an # endleveldata tag and tag for # sprites (not used).

In the level data section, each line corresponds to one row of tiles on the screen, and each tile consists of the tile's numeric value as found in crossref.txt, separated from the next tile by a space character. If you're not sure what a particular tile number corresponds to, you can look it up in crossref.txt.

If you know what a tile looks like, but you're not sure of its number, you can click on it in the maze editor tile pallette, and some information will appear above, including the tile's name, description, and tile number. The latter is what gets used in the level description files.

Quick Start

Of course, the simplest way to make a level is just to use the maze editor and make heavy use of the "x-paintwall" special tile, which will paint walls with connections to adjacent walls, so you don't have to worry about it. The "x-paintwall" tile is shown here:

Set your level size to have an odd number of columns (x-width), and turn on "Symmetric editing mode" to make things really efficient. This technique was used in nearly all levels that come with the game.

Besides the walls themselves, there are several other tile elements required for a level to work properly. The easiest way to check this is to load an example level, such as 1.txt. The required elements are:

• Maze must be fully closed in, with the exception of doors
• Doors must have a "door-h" or "door-v" tile blocking the exit. This tells the game to teleport pacman to the corresponding door tag on the other side of the board.
• The ghost box itself must have room for 3 ghosts inside, and must have a ghost-door in the top middle, directly above/outside of which you should place Blinky (the red ghost). Inside, the recommended order is Pinky, Inky, Sue (pink, blue, and orange, respectively). See the ghost box in level 1.txt for an example.
• You must place Pacman! When the level starts, he will go to the right.
• You must place at least one regular pellet.
• Placing power pellets is recommmended, but not required.

If you want to edit the title screen, it can be found as level 0.txt. It uses a special tile to indicate where the game logo should be placed, which is found in the res/text/ folder (logo.gif).

Happy editing! Please send me your creations; I may put level packs together for the best ones I see and distribute them with the game.

Contributors

• David Reilly https://github.com/greyblue9/pacman-python
• bumjoon.park https://github.com/Wollala/pacman-python
• Hobbledehoy https://github.com/chelyabinsk/pacman-multiplayer

Coming soon

1. Ability to re-use same level sets, maze editor, and most of the res/ directory between both versions of pacman.

2. Consolidating pacman original (16x16) with pacman-large (24x24) into one source file, or set of source files.

3. Source for the Maze Editor (written in VB6)