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Why doesn't Pac-Man eat the dot? Berkeley's AI course 188
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[QUOTE="QuantumQuest, post: 6195889, member: 554291"] As far as I remember - I was about fifteen years old when I played the original pacman game, we had something we called "system of moves" - translated from my language, cheat in common parlance, which had different moves for the first four stages - if I remember the number well, as they were easier and then for the fifth level on, it had a different cheat that was kept the same for all the stages after fifth as well - till ghosts were moving so fast that your eyes could not help anymore or you had become so tired that could not go on anyway. Now, the interesting thing has to do with the evaluation function mentioned in the video. Playing in the unique way of cheats, you had to move back and forth and not eat a dot in several instances during playing, until "Oikake" (the red chief ghost in the original 1980 version) came close to your pacman - dragging the other three ghosts with him as well, and so you had to go in a unique path which at the same time it guaranteed that you would "eat" even all the fruits appeared and you would use the bigger dots that changed the ghosts to "eatable" poor creatures in an optimal way and of course, you would eat all dots without losing a pacman. Also, a very crucial part was utilizing the two exits with the purpose of fooling the red ghost ("Oikake" again) and consequently the other ghosts as well. The moves were very specific and should be executed in very specific ways. One small mistake, delay etc. and pacman was dead. Needless to say that we had to memorize all these. I think that the evaluation function which will give the directions to a potential optimal algorithm for pacman, has to take into account both maximum score including the bigger dots that change ghosts which, ideally, must be "eaten" (all four of them), four times in each and every stage (with the progressive score given by the game) - besides the simple dots, [I]and[/I] following a secure path which is guaranteed only if you always manage to fool the red ghost and attract it, so it is chasing you along with the other three, always from behind. This second thing again guarantees a progressively maximum score as it ensures that pacman is staying alive, so it goes every time to the next stage but it's obviously a different issue compared to the first one. In other words, just following a greedy approach of a maximum score in and of itself, obviously, doesn't get you far. On the other hand the way you can fool ghosts is unique - if I remember well, and I guess that it was a way used by the programmers of the game in order to test it and see how it goes for a big number of stages, so this was transferred as a gift, in some way, to a player and then learned by a lot of others. One of the extra difficulties is that ghosts run faster from a point on, so this effectively changes the optimal path which guarantees both being alive and getting maximum score. Obviously, if there was no cheat, or if the ghosts were allowed to move in completely random ways, it would be very difficult for a human player - if at all, to beat the ghosts. [/QUOTE]
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Why doesn't Pac-Man eat the dot? Berkeley's AI course 188
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