Pac-Man Grouping Tutorial

A tutorial explaining the various elements of my grouping strategy for the original Pac-Man arcade game. Grouping (a.k.a., freestyle) play involves using the enemy pathfinding logic to the player's advantage by directing the four ghosts to converge and move as a single unit through the maze. Once together, the ghost group is lured to an energizer where all four are eaten for maximum score. Grouping techniques are used for all boards where the ghosts are edible (1-16 and 18).

General overview:

- At the start of each board, park Pac-Man in a hiding spot and wait until the ghosts stop reversing direction.

- Consume enough dots to trigger the first bonus fruit to appear and eat it.

- Group the ghosts together and lure them to the energizers, eating all four for maximum score. Eating very few dots before luring the ghosts to all four energizers is to ensure that Blinky (red) doesn't start moving faster than the other ghosts too early (once that happens, grouping becomes more difficult).

- Re-group the ghosts after the last energizer hit and maintain control of the group while clearing the board of the remaining dots and eating the second bonus fruit. Starting on board 9, Blinky will start speeding up early enough in the clearing process as to require employing additional tactics to keep him together with the group.