A game similar to Pacman™, but where you are the ghosts.
You create an AI that controls one of the four ghosts. Initially you can't pass through other ghosts, so watch out for getting blocked in. You gain points by eating pellets, and by eating a super pellet you can eat other ghosts. The round is over when either the last pellet is gone or there is only one player left.
Original idea by Kepler.
Graphics are from http://pacman.shaunew.com/redmine/projects/pacman and licensed under the GPLv3.
- You can move up, down, left or right each game tick.
- You only move one square per game tick.
- If you don't send a new command until the new game tick starts your bot doesn't move.
- Each game tick the latest command sent by all players is handled in a randomized order (randomized for each gametick).
- If you try to move into a square that is already occupied by another bot the move fails.
- You win by having the most points at the end of the round.
- The round is over when there are either no pellets left, or only one player left.
- If you eat a superpellet (the big pellets) you gain the ability to eat other players for 100 game ticks (i. e. 100 moves).
- If you eat another player (i. e. collide with it when you have the superpellet powerup) the player dies and you get all their points.
- If two players collide and both have eaten a superpellet the superpellet is ignored and it is handled like a normal collision.
- If a game isn't over after 600 game ticks have elapsed, sudden death mode is activated.
- In sudden death mode a monster is activated (the yellow thing).
- The monster tries to eat all pellets as quickly as possible.
- If you collide with the monster you die but don't lose your points.
Please file an issue if there's anything unclear about how the game works: https://github.com/sandsmark/aicompo-tg17/issues
There are pre-compiled Windows binaries attached to the releases here: https://github.com/sandsmark/aicompo-tg17/releases
There are also automatically built and untested pre-release builds available here: https://iskrembilen.com/ghostly-win32/
The test bot used before the public release is here:
https://github.com/sandsmark/ghostlybot
It features some very simple Q-learning and is mostly of historical interest, I don't recommend anyone look at the code to learn anything. Other than what not to do.
- F5: Restarts round
- p: Pause
- ESC: Stop game
- Up: Go up.
- Left: turn left
- Right: turn right
- Down: Go Down.
The protocol is based on JSON. All "packets" (JSON objects) are sent in compact form, terminated with a newline. So to parse, read a line and unserialize the JSON. All transferred text is expected to be UTF-8.
To connect to the game, open a TCP connection to where the game is running on port 54321. When running on the same machine, just connect to localhost (127.0.0.1).
After connecting, send "NAME " followed by the name of your bot to set a name (for example: "NAME superbot\n").
--
When you connect you get a welcome message that looks like this when expanded:
{
"map": {
"content": [
"||||||||||||||||||||||||||||",
"|............||............|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|o||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||o|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|..........................|",
"|.||||.||.||||||||.||.||||.|",
"|.||||.||.||||||||.||.||||.|",
"|......||....||....||......|",
"||||||.|||||_||_|||||.||||||",
"_____|.|||||_||_|||||.|_____",
"_____|.||__________||.|_____",
"_____|.||_|||__|||_||.|_____",
"||||||.||_|______|_||.||||||",
"______.___|______|___.______",
"||||||.||_|______|_||.||||||",
"_____|.||_|||__|||_||.|_____",
"_____|.||__________||.|_____",
"_____|.||_||||||||_||.|_____",
"||||||.||_||||||||_||.||||||",
"|............||............|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|o..||.......__.......||..o|",
"|||.||.||.||||||||.||.||.|||",
"|||.||.||.||||||||.||.||.|||",
"|......||....||....||......|",
"|.||||||||||.||.||||||||||.|",
"|.||||||||||.||.||||||||||.|",
"|..........................|",
"||||||||||||||||||||||||||||"
],
"height": 31,
"pelletsleft": 240,
"width": 28
},
"messagetype": "welcome",
"you": {
"id": 0,
"x": 11,
"y": 13
}
}-- When the game starts, you will start to get "stateupdate" messages after each game tick has been processed, which looks like this expanded:
{
"gamestate": {
"map": {
"content": [
"||||||||||||||||||||||||||||",
"|............||............|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|o||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||o|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|..........................|",
"|.||||.||.||||||||.||.||||.|",
"|.||||.||.||||||||.||.||||.|",
"|......||....||....||......|",
"||||||.|||||_||_|||||.||||||",
"_____|.|||||_||_|||||.|_____",
"_____|.||__________||.|_____",
"_____|.||_|||__|||_||.|_____",
"||||||.||_|______|_||.||||||",
"______.___|______|___.______",
"||||||.||_|______|_||.||||||",
"_____|.||_|||__|||_||.|_____",
"_____|.||__________||.|_____",
"_____|.||_||||||||_||.|_____",
"||||||.||_||||||||_||.||||||",
"|............||............|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|.||||.|||||.||.|||||.||||.|",
"|o..||.......__.......||..o|",
"|||.||.||.||||||||.||.||.|||",
"|||.||.||.||||||||.||.||.|||",
"|......||....||....||......|",
"|.||||||||||.||.||||||||||.|",
"|.||||||||||.||.||||||||||.|",
"|..........................|",
"||||||||||||||||||||||||||||"
],
"height": 31,
"pelletsleft": 240,
"width": 28
},
"others": [
],
"you": {
"id": 0,
"x": 11,
"y": 13,
"score": 130,
"isdangerous": true
}
},
"messagetype": "stateupdate"
}There are also two other kinds of messages:
--
dead - You've been killed, and cannot expect more data until next round
{ "messagetype": "dead" }--
endofround - There's only one living player left. If you received the above message right before this one, that ain't you.
{ "messagetype": "endofround" }--
startofround - There's a new round starting.
{ "messagetype": "startofround" }To do something, send the appropriate command followed by \n, for example RIGHT\n. The commands are case insensitive.
The available commands are:
UP: Move up.DOWN: Move down.LEFT: Move left.RIGHT: Move right.
The different kinds of tiles in the map are:
_: A normal floor tile.|: A wall tile.-: A door tile..: A floor tile with a pellet on it.o: A floor tile with a superpellet on it.
The follow tiles only appear in the map file, not in the JSON messages:
#: A floor tile with a starting position for a player.@: A floor tile with the starting position for the sudden death monster.
It supports several command line arguments for more advanced usage:
Usage: ./ghostly [options]
Options:
-h, --help Displays this help.
--start-at <players> Automatically start the game after <players> (1 -4)
have connected, default 4
--tick-interval, -i <ms> Set the tick interval to <ms> milliseconds (10 -
1000), default 100
--quit-on-finish Exit the game after playing all rounds
--fullscreen Start the game in fullscreen
--rounds <rounds> Set the number of rounds to <rounds>, default 4.
Set to -1 to play forever.
--headless Run without showing the UI, e. g. for running on a
server. This implies the start-at and quit-on-finish
options.
--tickless Run without a timer, execute a game tick as soon as
it has received commands from all players
It also prints debug output to stderr, and informative messages to stdout, for automatic parsing.
Check out the code with git, install the development packages for qt5 declarative and qt5 graphicaleffects, and run: qmake && make.
For Windows, OS X, etc.
- Download and install the Qt SDK from https://www.qt.io/download-open-source/
- Start QtQtcreator after installing
- Go to File -> New File or Project -> Import Project -> Git Clone
- Use the repository URL https://github.com/sandsmark/ghostly.git
- Click the green play button.
PAC-MAN™ is the registered trademark of BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, which is not affiliated with nor endorses this software.