Producing a Pacman Style Game

The major assignment involves producing a Pacman style game with Clara using the Greenfoot files that are given to you.

The essence of the game – is to make Clara eat all available leaves, while avoiding collisions with ghosts chasing her. Clara is to be controlled by a player through keyboard. Apart from leaves, there are also mushrooms available in Clara’s world, but unlike the practicals, Clara is unable to push them around, but instead she can eat those mushrooms and gain superpowers (for a short period of time she will be able to eat ghosts). Ghosts always start at their home base (also known as Ghost Healer) that is always marked by a think red dot. Somewhere close to a Ghost Healer there is always a ghost wall (represented by a square surrounded by dotted red line). The ghost wall can be penetrated by ghosts, but not by Clara, making the ghost base protected from invasion.

When Clara eats a mushroom, ghosts change their colour and would start running away from Clara. This mode when Clara is able to eat ghosts is called “scared” mode. In the “scared” mode ghosts run away from Clara rather than chasing her and if a collision between a ghost and Clara occurs while in this mode – the ghost would change into an almost invisible creature that moves from the collision location to the base and then resurrects once the base is reached. If a collision happens between Clara and a ghost in any other mode – then Clara looses and the game is over.

In solving the major assignment you will not be entirely on your own, as the steps involved are broken up in this assignment brief. During practical classes your tutors will explain you the basics in completing these steps. Before we start, there will be an explanation of all commands available in both Clara and the Ghosts vocabularies