Classic, It's Pacman!

I came across this article written by GameInternals and it was super interesting. It is about the classic arcade game Pacman and specifically about the movement of the ghosts. I will keep my descriptions brief because everything is well explained in the original article.

Lets start with the names of the ghosts there is the red ghost Blinky. Blinky's character is refered to as "pursuer" or "chaser" and he almost always follows directly behind Pacman.

Pinky's personality is described as "speedy". Unlike Blinky that follows behind Pacman, Pinky tries to head where Pacman is going.

Inky is the blue ghost and

The orange ghost is Clyde and he appears to do his own thing in the game. Clyde has two modes that he swaps between in his pursuit of pacman.

The ghosts also leave the ghost house in a specific order. Blinky starts outside the house followed by Pinky, Inky and then Clyde.

The ghosts have three modes chase, scatter or frightened. The normal mode is chase where the ghosts pursue Pacman for most of the game. During scatter mode the ghosts move to separate corners of the maze. Frightened mode causes the ghost to turn blue and they pseudorandomly choose a path at every intersection. Ghosts can also be caught in this state and have to return to the ghost house.

Movement decisions are only necessary when the player is over intersection tiles which are featured clearly in the original article. Hopefully I have given you a high level overview and enough reason to read the link above.