Pac Go

About

Pac-Man is a 1980 maze game developed and published by Namco for arcades, in which the player eats every dot in a maze while avoiding four ghosts. Pac Go is a terminal-based Pac-Man clone written in Go that uses emojis for its graphics. It was built as a step-by-step tutorial for learning Go, covering input, output, functions, pointers, concurrency and terminal escape sequences. Each step has its own folder with explanations and a working version of the code.

How it differs from the original

It runs in a text terminal and uses emojis instead of arcade graphics.

Getting started

Install Go, then follow the tutorial steps, or run the finished code from any step. It has been tested on Linux and macOS; Windows may need a terminal emulator such as Git BASH, and the VS Code terminal is known to render the game incorrectly.

History

The tutorial has also been given as a conference talk, including at Google Cloud Next UK '19, GothamGo 2019, GoWayFest 3.0 and London Gophers.

Known issues & limitations

• compatibility: Terminal rendering varies with configuration; known issue that VS Code terminal does not render the game correctly.

Licensing & legal

• MIT-licensed.