Pac-Man Pattern Trainer (MAME)

[10yard]

Do you want to get good at the original arcade Pac-Man? The solution is here!

My "Pac-Man Pattern Trainer" plugin for MAME, will help you to improve your Pac-Man playing skills.
It's an interactive aid to learning common patterns for completing all of the boards.
You follow an on-screen path while playing regular Pac-Man and you’re assisted through each board - I suppose you could call it a Pac-Nav.



To master the patterns, you must stay on track, with frame perfect accuracy, anticipating the turns and steering early into the corners.

There are different pattern sets to help you achieve your specific goals. You may want to reach the 9th Key at level 21 - from which point all of the remaining boards play the same. You may want to complete the game by reaching the infamous split-screen at level 256. You may want to achieve a "Perfect Pac-Man" score of 3,333,360 by eating every pellet, every bonus and every ghost possible. You may simply want a new PB!



The trainer is really easy to install and use with MAME. See the project page for full instructions.

Features

- Select from 3 pattern sets (Pacstrats, Killerclown and Perfect_NRC)
- A HUD shows basic information: level number, pattern number and current status (ACE, OK or BAD).
- An interactive guide path. The colour changes from green to red when lagging behind and your status drops from "ACE" to "OK" and finally to "BAD". Following a red path does not guarantee success and you must be cautious.
- The trainer supports partial patterns. For these, you will be guided for a short time before the path ends (or turns yellow). The HUD will display "F/S" (FREESTYLE), and you will be on your own to clear the remaining pellets.

Link to my project page on github:
https://github.com/10yard/pactrainer

See below for an enthusiastic video review by GenXGrownUp.

 

[big10p]

Very cool! I've still got about 3 books for Pac-Man patterns and tips from BITD.

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

Pac-Man has always done my brain in! And after watching that first image/gif/fukk thing I want to punch myself in the face or worse! 😆🤘

Madness 😍🤘😍

 

[Kewydee]

Wow, that is the nuts.
Do you think this could be adapted to run on MiSTer FPGA?

Fancy having a go at a Mr Do! training guide?
40 different scene combinations in Do! A few more than Pac-Man.
But nowhere near as popular as the pill munching yellow geezer

 

[edget2000]

Love this great idea

 

[Georgian2]

One for Nibbler would be great too.
Nice ideea.

 

[Robotgreg]

Mr Do would be awesome as I always struggle past level 10. Did Dug would be another interesting one to see.

 

[10yard]

Wow, that is the nuts.
Do you think this could be adapted to run on MiSTer FPGA?

Fancy having a go at a Mr Do! training guide?
40 different scene combinations in Do! A few more than Pac-Man.
But nowhere near as popular as the pill munching yellow geezer

It’s not a traditional rom hack so adapting to FPGA or original hardware is not possible with my implementation.

Very interesting suggestion, to apply the trainer to Mr Do. The logic I used to generate and follow the pattern data could be applied to any rom under MAME. The game needs to have patterns that can easily be followed. I can also display timely onscreen information to alert you to press a button or do some action. PAC-Man is easy to follow because you are only moving stick.

 

[SnicklefritzG]

This is incredible!! Much appreciated to have a tool like this for improving on the game.
I’ve got a few questions I could use help with:

1) are there settings you recommend in mame for running Pac-Man on a pc laptop with a usb joystick? I’m finding I’m getting behind to varying degrees depending on which pattern set I’m using. Will changing joystick threshold, deadlzone, etc help at all?

2) I’ve been able to reach a personal best using the killer clown patterns, getting up to level 10. I have a harder time with pattern 2 where there are some straight sections right away. I do better once I get to pattern 3 where there is a ton of turning. Does this suggest a lag issue on my computer/joystick?

3) I enjoy using the Pacstrars patterns and find them more intuitive but there are times the lines are green but I run into ghosts anyway. Could there be an issue with my laptop?


I’m really enjoying your plugin and am hoping I can figure out the challenges so I can get to the key levels which is my next goal

 

[councilface]

This is very cool

 

[Body pop]

That is class ,I still think I’ve no chance of remembering patterns .
Love Pac-Man ,have never got bored of it

 

[10yard]

This is incredible!! Much appreciated to have a tool like this for improving on the game.
I’ve got a few questions I could use help with:

1) are there settings you recommend in mame for running Pac-Man on a pc laptop with a usb joystick? I’m finding I’m getting behind to varying degrees depending on which pattern set I’m using. Will changing joystick threshold, deadlzone, etc help at all?

2) I’ve been able to reach a personal best using the killer clown patterns, getting up to level 10. I have a harder time with pattern 2 where there are some straight sections right away. I do better once I get to pattern 3 where there is a ton of turning. Does this suggest a lag issue on my computer/joystick?

3) I enjoy using the Pacstrars patterns and find them more intuitive but there are times the lines are green but I run into ghosts anyway. Could there be an issue with my laptop?


I’m really enjoying your plugin and am hoping I can figure out the challenges so I can get to the key levels which is my next goal

Thank you! and good luck with improving your Pac-Man play.

If you're using an analog joystick, I'd recommend switching to a simple digital/arcade joystick. I have a 4-way stick but 8-way would work ok too.

With Killerclown patterns, If you're executing the turns well at the start, then you shouldn't be caught on the straight. Maybe there's lag in your setup. Can I suggest that you try to play with a keyboard to rule out any joystick issue. If that plays no better then your MAME could be lagging. Press F11 when you start MAME to see the running speed as a percentage, it should be at 100% when you play Pac-Man with the trainer.

The Pacstrats patterns are not forgiving at all. Ghosts can still get you when the lines are green. You cannot afford to drop a single frame when making turns, you need to anticipate the corners and execute them well every turn. It took me a while to become proficient with Pacstrats but it is the one I want to learn off-by-heart since there are only 3 patterns to complete the game. This one needs laser focus.

 

[Kewydee]

Pixel perfect positioning, or dead.
A lot of the classic arcade games are like this.
You're either in the right place, and alive.
Or feeding the coin-slot.

But, when you get it right, that's a great feeling.

 

[big10p]

2) Ghosts are slower at cornering than Pac-Man. It's a key tactic to use in evading them. Pac-Man is relatively slow when munching dots in a straight line.

 

[councilface]

Pixel perfect positioning, or dead.
A lot of the classic arcade games are like this.
You're either in the right place, and alive.
Or feeding the coin-slot.

But, when you get it right, that's a great feeling.

Yep that's where the beauty is

 

[SnicklefritzG]

Thank you! and good luck with improving your Pac-Man play.

If you're using an analog joystick, I'd recommend switching to a simple digital/arcade joystick. I have a 4-way stick but 8-way would work ok too.

With Killerclown patterns, If you're executing the turns well at the start, then you shouldn't be caught on the straight. Maybe there's lag in your setup. Can I suggest that you try to play with a keyboard to rule out any joystick issue. If that plays no better then your MAME could be lagging. Press F11 when you start MAME to see the running speed as a percentage, it should be at 100% when you play Pac-Man with the trainer.

The Pacstrats patterns are not forgiving at all. Ghosts can still get you when the lines are green. You cannot afford to drop a single frame when making turns, you need to anticipate the corners and execute them well every turn. It took me a while to become proficient with Pacstrats but it is the one I want to learn off-by-heart since there are only 3 patterns to complete the game. This one needs laser focus.

Thank you for your reply!! I really appreciated it. Yes, I’ve found pacstrats to be less forgiving .

I went back to kilkerclown and changed some of the parameters under “advanced”. I don’t understand what they do but I found a combination of settings that seem to improve the game. I was able to go from 30k up to 154k and get into the key levels (up to 19)

When I press f11 I get 98-99%

I do better in the early levels with the keyboard bit my fingers get tired after a while so that’s why I was hoping to do better with the joystick. It’s a Sansa style 8 way with a gate on it to turn it into a 4 way

On level 3 or 4 with killer clown, the lines go red after only a few moves, but not always. Sometimes I can get to the lower right side before it changes and other times I’m barely out of the gate and the line goes red.

What would all of this suggest?

 

[10yard]

Thank you for your reply!! I really appreciated it. Yes, I’ve found pacstrats to be less forgiving .

I went back to kilkerclown and changed some of the parameters under “advanced”. I don’t understand what they do but I found a combination of settings that seem to improve the game. I was able to go from 30k up to 154k and get into the key levels (up to 19)

When I press f11 I get 98-99%

I do better in the early levels with the keyboard bit my fingers get tired after a while so that’s why I was hoping to do better with the joystick. It’s a Sansa style 8 way with a gate on it to turn it into a 4 way

On level 3 or 4 with killer clown, the lines go red after only a few moves, but not always. Sometimes I can get to the lower right side before it changes and other times I’m barely out of the gate and the line goes red.

What would all of this suggest?

I’ll run tests on those killer clown levels to see if I can replicate the behaviour you’re reporting. Typically this would suggest sub-optimal cornering.

 

[SnicklefritzG]

I’ll run tests on those killer clown levels to see if I can replicate the behaviour you’re reporting. Typically this would suggest sub-optimal cornering.

Thanks. Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do on my end.

 

[10yard]

Thanks. Let me know if there’s anything you need me to do on my end.

I was able to complete stages 3 and 4 without issue. Now, these are not straight-forward patterns. At the start, there's an about-turn on straight section at the bottom. The 180 turn must be carefully timed to grab the pellet at the earliest moment. I assume this is were the pattern starts to break down for you. There's another of these 180 turns a bit later in the stage too.

What version of MAME are you running?
I'll record an .inp for you. You can play the .inp back using the plugin to verify that it completes on your setup. If it doesn't complete then this confirms your setup has a problem.

 

[SnicklefritzG]

I’ll run tests on those killer clown levels to see if I can replicate the behaviour you’re reporting. Typically this would suggest sub-optimal cornering.

One more thing, are there certain joystick settings that would help with responsiveness? Or would I need a different joystick?

I was able to complete stages 3 and 4 without issue. Now, these are not straight-forward patterns. At the start, there's an about-turn on straight section at the bottom. The 180 turn must be carefully timed to grab the pellet at the earliest moment. I assume this is were the pattern starts to break down for you. There's another of these 180 turns a bit later in the stage too.

What version of MAME are you running?
I'll record an .inp for you. You can play the .inp back using the plugin to verify that it completes on your setup. If it doesn't complete then this confirms your setup has a problem.

im running 0.280