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Most game players don't just play the game once (start game, yay, play, win a little, die, never play this game again).

I'd have to disagree, as both a Game Player and Game Developer. Gone are the days when Sonic or MegaMan sat in your console for weeks while you tried endlessly to beat it. Today's game players are EXACTLY like what you describe. That's why we have to baby them & lead them into playing the game -- They have many other options, a virtually endless supply of games to Try and fail at until one lets them win.

I sit "average" gamers of all age ranges in front of the games from yesteryears and the majority do exactly what you describe when given a choice to switch between any classic game on the shelf. They play the longest on familiar or easy to play titles.

PacMan is HARD. Rarely will you find a decent arcade with 5 lives instead of 3, and longer power-up periods (selectable via dip switches or .conf files). However, people don't play games to beat them, now they play to be entertained, and an unforgiving game that eats your quarters or $50 at once can't compete with the free casual games of today.

I think some balance can be found -- A short introduction to get you interested in the mechanics and/or story, followed by an increasingly engaging experience, but there's a fine line between too steep a learning curve and too boring of a game.

As for whether or not PacMan is NP Hard, I'd say that since it's 100% fully deterministic it's actually not. It's easy as hell to map out then play perfectly every single time afterwards, especially if you have the source code "running" through your brain and can can predict exactly what the Ghosts will do. Also, the same damn level over and over again is quite boring... That's why when I was required to learn JavaScript I created my own rendition that was non deterministic (pseudorandomly so) as well as had many differing levels.

I once got bored of the same old pac-man levels and made a clone called Snack-Man in JavaScript (before canvas, w/ ms paint).

When the levels are always the same, you can make certain optimizations to the AI, but when the levels can change a lot, it does add another layer of complexity. I once trained a neural network for each of the 20 levels of the clone -- the AI was as good as I was, but change the level, and it had to be re-trained.

Looks like Snack-Man it's still being hosted, IIRC, it used to work in Firefox and some version of IE, never did work all the bugs out (hence "epsilon"), oops, looks like I left the enter key = reset ghosts on too. Oh well, I've always used an honor system anyhow (game speed is controllable).

Man, just listen to those crappy MIDI tracks... (brings back memories of Y2K), at least the volume controls still work.

Ah yes, if you paste this into the address bar while paused it turns off the, er, noms, while leaving other sound effects in place...
javascript:void(NOM_NOM_NOM_NOM = false);
(I guess I never did upload the version with that option toggle.)

Entering: javascript:void(debug = true);
in the address bar, then using "new game" will show the ghost's "vision" boxes.

Yep, looks like the exponential ghost-point glitch never got fixed either.
Each ghost you eat while they are "scared" doubles the point value of the next ghost you eat. So, all you have to do is keep at least one ghost edible while the others respawn, then eat more diet pills, ghosts & 1ups, and you can max out the score on the second level.

Been so long since I coded any JS... I might try to port this over to Android and give it a face lift.

Oh, back on topic -- It's pretty neat to watch TFA's AI vs AI, but IMHO, even crappy AI is good enough to best most humans.

The first incarnation of my clone used a dynamic heuristic shortest-path algorithm for the smartest ghost instances, and other techniques for the other ghosts, but it really was too hard to be enjoyable for most everyone, and the JS engines circa Y2K were too slow to run the advance AI unless you have a very fast rig. It's still pretty tricky with just "dumb magnetic" attractors -- I even had to add blind spots, and make it so the ghosts never reverse directions (unless they have to) before anyone ever got half way through.

Sometimes fun is more important than clever AI -- I guess in today's very complicated shooters and strategy games the AI would have a much harder time catching up to human opponents, but Pac-Man should be a breeze.

Or just replace the pellets with cookies and call it Snack-Man.

you don't provide any kind of a response to the question as to why people should be interested in html5.

I did say:

They don't require a browser plugin (like java or flash) to play.

If you want Android and iP*d, and many Linux users to be able to play...

Perhaps your definition of "any" is not the same as mine.

Also note: The numbered sentences in my first post are valid reasons NOT to use HTML5 + JS.

I was pointing out my position: Games with HTML5+JS are possible (thats what I used to make a pacman clone), but performance is poor. I choose to keep my eye on it (and test it by using it) rather than completely ignore HTML5.

I see that a richer web is where we are heading, and suggest to others that they stay in touch with the technologies that will takes us to our destination (HTML5+JS).

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without any kind of cross browser compatibility in prospect

Standardized audio and video tags and the API to control them via JS is a huge "cross browser compatibility" win!

I can call audioElement.play() on it and trust that the element will have the .play() method/function. That is "cross browser" enough for me.

I don't care what plugin or built in system plays the audio (neither does HTML5) as long as my code can access it via a standard API.

HTML5 is not concerned with which audio/video formats websites and browsers adopt.
It's a weakness in the web, but that's between browsers (HTML5 implementations) and
the sites they display -- not the markup language.

Doh! Sorry; Link had one to many dots... Here's a working link.

Eliza needs an AI-optimized Firefox to run the JavaScript program for artificial intelligence.

AI Mind is a more advanced artificial intelligence at the Saint Stephen AI Project.

Mind.html is a Tutorial Artificial Intelligence that will work properly only if JavaScript works as well in Firefox as in Internet Explorer.

Artificial Intelligence is coming a lot sooner than 2020.

The Singularity Timetable predicts True AI in 2006; an AI landrush in 2007; human-level AI by 2008; and Superintelligent AI by 2012.

AI has been solved in both theory for neuroscience and software for robots.

A theory of artificial intelligence has been implemented in Forth for robots and in JavaScript for tutorial artificial intelligence.

AI in Forth is free, open-source artificial intelligence for robots.

JavaScript for Artificial Intelligence describes how even a simple language like JavaScript is ideal for instructional artificial intelligence tutorials.

The Joint Stewardship of Earth will be in effect long before the year 2020.

Turing Store Books tells you all about the very most important writings by human beings about the coming artificial intelligence.

Mind.html in JavaScript has an enormous installed user base and can no longer be stopped from engendering a global AI Mind by 2020 if not sooner.

Robot AI Mind.Forth goes beyond mere jumping and gives a robot the smarts for thinking like a human being.

Artificial life for robots is the joint development of a sound mind in a sound body for jump-for-Joy robots.

The Joint Stewardship of Earth lets robots jump into a position of equality with human beings in running the planet Earth.

Technological Singularity by 2012 will be the Great Leap Forward in the co-evolution of intelligent humans and superintelligent robots.

JavaScript for AI describes how even a simple language like JavaScript can leap into action with tutorial artificial intelligence for amateur robot-makers.

Turing Store Books are all about the Great Leap to artificially intelligent robots.

JavaScript Mind.html is the tutorial version of the Robot AI Mind.Forth.

Mind on a flash drive? You could carry it around with you on your keychain and talk to it once in a while through the USB port.

Another AI Mind is also available as we approach the Technological Singularity.

What good is a robot without an artificial mind?

DIY AI is now out on the Web and freely available for Do-It-Yourselfers (DIY) and robot enthusiasts to adapt to their favorite pride-and-joy robots.

The Singularity Is Near!

True AI has arrived.

Thank you for your brilliant idea for an experimental test of the hypothesis that one of a certain number of forms of time travel will be invented in our future light cone, in the form of the "first" time travellers convention.

I have a suggested improvement to your experiment.

As Marvin Minsky has estimated, the smallest form with a level of mental complexity similar or greater than our own (representing say 10^15 bits of information changing at 10^12 bits/second would be about (10^4 nm)^3 or (10 micron)^3, i.e. about the size of a single cell. The time travel vehicle would presumably be a little larger.

Furthermore, as he has suggested it might be very much energetically advantageous to send a much smaller vehicle and passenger back. Finally, hundreds to thousands of years in the future of human beings, the optimal size of humans may be engineered to be much, much, smaller in any case as one of only a few possible solutions to the malthusian problem of overpopulation, and the second order problem of loneliness (see http://anotherview.memebot.com/ ) for a little more on this.

Therefore, the coordinates of your convention are insufficiently precise, for the most likely attendees. Rather, the "convention center" should be scaled for attendees of various sizes Therefore, I propose the following modification of your experiment: 1. place (at least) a light microscope in your convention hall 2. advertise the (4-local) spacetime coordinates of its specimen stage widely, but make the precision and accuracy of these coordinates relative to the size of the entity coming to visit, e.g. for organisms of size 1-3 meters, the resolution of coordinates you have given seem to be fine. For smaller organisms/entities advertise more precise coordinates.

Regards,

Seth Goldberg