Pac-Man

1
Pac-Man

• Shant K. Karakashian
• CSE 476/876 Optional Course Project

2
Introduction

• Pac-Man is a classic video game
• Icon of the 1980s popular culture
• Environment is a maze with dots fruits
• Pac-Man is an agent that eats the dots fruits
• Ghosts are agents that attack the Pac-Man

3
Project Overview

• Design implement algorithms to
• control the Pac-Man
• control the Ghosts
• Algorithm
• Input
• the maze, location of dots fruits
• location of the agents (Pac-Man Ghosts)
• Output
• Next move of the agents (left, right, up or down)
• Objectives
• PacMan avoid the ghosts eat the dots fruits
• Ghosts attack the PacMan

4
Algorithms Heuristics

• Implementing a rational agent requires
• An algorithm to enumerate future states
• Heuristics to evaluate future states
• To prune the search space
• To choose among alternatives

5
Resources

• Programming environment provided by Derrick
  Stolee. It includes Java classes for the GUI and
  the basic classes for the agents
• Animated front-end simulating the original
  game-display provided by Derrick Stolee and the
  animation enhanced by Shant Karakashian
• Algorithms for the Pac-Man and the Ghosts from
  last year's competition
• Discuss with Shant (shantk_at_cse) and/or Derrick
  (dstolee_at_cse)
• Resources available from 
• http//seneca.unl.edu/wiki/index.php/S09-476-
  876-PacMan

6
Why do the Project

• Get a better understanding of AI
• Grasp the effectiveness of the search algorithms
  and the different heuristics
• Have a notion of the complexity that arises even
  from simple problems
• Compete against your colleagues through your
  intelligent agents in a public event
• Check the photos of last years party