Pac-Man

A fully functional Pac-Man game with a graphical user interface, developed in Java as part of the BME "Programming 3" course.

About the Game

Pac-Man is a classic arcade game originally developed in Japan in 1980. You control a character called Pac-Man navigating through a maze. The goal is to eat all coins and fruits in the maze without being caught by the three ghosts that roam around. Each ghost has a different movement pattern. You have only one life -- avoid them at all costs.

Features

• Graphical User Interface built with Java Swing
• Object-oriented design with separate classes for game elements, characters, and controls
• Three ghost types, each with unique movement patterns (FastGhost, FoolGhost, TeleportGhost)
• Collision detection via a polymorphic collide() method on all game elements
• Save and Load -- save your progress to a JSON file and resume later
• Keyboard controls for movement and in-game actions

How to Run

Prerequisites

• Java JDK 21 or later
• IntelliJ IDEA (recommended)

Opening the Project

1. Clone this repository

  git clone https://github.com/fengxin02/Pacman.git

2. Open IntelliJ IDEA, select File > Open and choose the project directory
3. Wait for IDEA to index and configure the project
4. Navigate to src/Project/Main/Main.java
5. Click the green run button next to the main method, or right-click and select Run 'Main.main()'

The project includes the Gson library (lib/gson-2.11.0.jar) required for JSON save/load functionality. No additional dependency setup is needed.

Controls

Key	Action
W	Move up
A	Move left
S	Move down
D	Move right
G	Save current game

Note: pressing a direction key changes Pac-Man's heading. Pac-Man will keep moving in that direction until hitting a wall. You cannot change direction into a wall.

Menu

• Start -- begin a new game
• Load Game -- resume a previously saved game from saved_map.json
• Exit -- quit the game

Save System

The game state is serialized to JSON using Google Gson. The save file includes:

• The maze layout (2D grid)
• Current score
• Positions of Pac-Man and all ghosts

Press G during gameplay to save. Use the Load Game button on the main menu to resume.

Project Structure

src/
  Project/
    Character/     -- Game elements (Pac-Man, ghosts, coins, fruits, walls)
    Frame/         -- Application window and menu frame
    Layout/        -- UI layout managers
    Listener/      -- Keyboard input handling
    Main/          -- Entry point and image loading
    Panel/         -- Game rendering panel
    SaveGame/      -- JSON serialization and save/load logic
    res/           -- Image assets (sprites)
  com/google/gson/typeadapters/
    RuntimeTypeAdapterFactory.java  -- Polymorphic JSON adapter for Gson
lib/
  gson-2.11.0.jar  -- Gson library for JSON processing

Implementation Details

The maze is implemented as a 2D array storing GameElement objects. Each element (Coin, Wall, Ghost, Cherry, Strawberry, Pac-Man) implements the GameElement interface, which defines a collide() method for collision detection. When Pac-Man or a ghost attempts to move into the next cell, the collide() method on that element determines the outcome.

Ghost movement is managed by independent logic -- each ghost type overrides the base Ghost class to implement its own pathfinding behavior.

The rendering loop updates the game panel at a fixed interval, redrawing all elements based on their current positions in the 2D grid array.