Tiny Pacman

Level one of Tiny Pacman. Here, the player is temporarily invulnerable after eating a '$' power pill.

Level two of Tiny Pacman.

Program listing on 48K Spectrum.

Text Listing

1 BORDER 0:
 POKE 23693,1:
 CLS :
 DIM p(10):
 FOR l=0 TO 4:
 RESTORE :
 READ w,s,m$,m$:
 FOR t=1 TO 10:
 LET p(t)=85-9*t:
 PRINT AT t,0;m$(t*w-11 TO t*w):
 NEXT t:
 LET m$(p(1)+1)="":
 LET k=113-CODE INKEY$:
 FOR a=1 TO l+2:
 LET g=p(a):
 LET i=4*RND-2:
 LET i=(a=1)*((k=1)-(k=2)+w*((k=16)-(k=0)))+SGN i*(1+11*(i*i<1))*(g<>p(1)):
 LET c=CODE m$(g+i+1)-45:
 LET p(a)=g+i*(c<2)-i*(m$(g-i+1)<"O")*(c>1)*(a>1):
 PRINT AT g/w+.5,g-w*INT (g/w);m$(g+1);AT w,0;l*58+s;AT p(a)/w+.5,p(a)-w*INT (p(a)/w); INK 7-a*(t<1);"©@@@@@"(a):
 LET t=t-1+(c=-9*a)*(37-t):
 LET s=s+(a=c):
 IF a=1 OR p(a)-p(1) OR t>0 THEN NEXT a:
 POKE (s<56)*23620,w:
 NEXT l:
 DATA 12,1,"OOOOOOOOOOOOO...O......OO.O..OO.OO.OO.OO...$.O.OO....OO....",m$+m$(w TO )+m$

About the game

The game consists of a 12x10 pacman type maze. The player must clear five levels and achieve a score of 280 points in order to complete the game. The first level has one ghost, the second level two ghosts, and so on up to the final level, level five. Due to space limitations of the one-liner contest, the ghosts simply move in a random direction one square at a time, and nothing like true Pacman type ghosts. This makes the later levels quite awkward, as the ghosts can often hover over the few remaining dots. Again, Einar Saukas was able to provide invaluable optimizations and ideas to improve the game greatly. Firstly this freed up enough space in the code to allow for two powerpills per level - which make pacman temporarily invulnerable. The other major change was to allow the ghosts two movement attempts per iteration. This made them far more maneuverable than in the original version. (There's also an intermediate version put together by Einar, which has better AI than the original instead of powerpills).

Rules of the Game

The Ghosts

GhostNameComments
@SpeedySpeedy appears as the sole ghost in the very first level. He is the fastest ghost in the game during level 1, but only because the game slows down on the later levels.
@SwampyFirst pops up in level two. Swampy likes to save the environment, and that means killing you reckless eater of dots.
@DandyNow things start to get a little bit tricky. By the time Dandy turns up, there are three ghosts in the maze and they really start to get under your feet.
@KennyBy the time Kenny turns up on level four, the game really starts to slow down. Grabbing the last few dots can now become very tricky, particularly in the dead-end parts of the maze.
@ShadowMaster of stealth, the best kept weapon of "tiny pacman" does not reveal himself until the very last level. Watch out carefully for this ghost, as he is the same colour as the maze, and can catch you unawares.

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