Pac-Man Infinite

Pac-Man Infinite is a Pac-Man clone with procedurally-generated levels that grow larger and more dangerous as you accumulate score. It was made in a few weeks for an English class. Make it make sense.

It was the last project for the year and my friends and I wanted to do a presentation about the video game design industry. The requirements were simple: research about your chosen topic, and present that information with a neatly-designed trifold. That was vague enough for me to decide it was time to crack out Love2D and make a game. What better way to show we knew what we were talking about?

My two friends were in charge of designing the trifold, while I was the only one working on this game. I only worked on it during school hours using an underpowered school laptop, so a concise scope and performance were paramount to our project's success. I had one idea before landing on a procedurally-generated Pac-Man clone: Pong using two side-by-side laptops. But I think the school's network prevented any kind of networking through Love2D.

I had to seriously consider which tasks would be better to do by hand or to automate to make the best use of my time. In the end, Pac-Man Infinite uses an auto-tiling system to recreate the original mazes of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man faithfully while also accounting for tile combinations never seen in either of those games. The original ghosts' AI are implemented faithfully, with some changes made to help the ghosts navigate long distances without getting stuck.

This was a sort of "learn as you go" kind of project. I learned how to use shaders, coordinate plane transformations, and controller input. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a testament to the power of Love2D.