Neuro Gaming Lab

Neuro-Adaptive-Ghosts-ML

Where nostalgia meets intelligence

Reimagining Pacman with adaptive ghost AI—coordinated pursuit, alpha pack hunting, RL, and evolution. Pygame + ML.

ML RL Ghost AI Coordinated agents

We reimagine Pacman as a living maze—where ghosts use ML to coordinate, pick an alpha leader, block escape routes, and evolve over time. Classic chase, reimagined with reinforcement learning, multi-agent coordination, and genetic evolution.

Adaptive ghost agents: role-based strategies (chaser, ambusher, blocker, patrol), alpha pack hunting when you’re close, optional PPO/DQN/A2C policies, and evolutionary behavior tuning. Pacman as a testbed for emergent coordination and playable AI.

From Pygame gameplay to trained models and in-game evolution, Neuro Gaming Lab explores how learning agents master and meaningfully interact with games. Reviving the past to build the future of playable AI.

Features

Coordinated ghost AI — Chaser, ambusher, blocker, patrol; pincer moves and escape blocking.
Alpha pack hunting — Closest ghost becomes alpha; others follow for a coordinated strike.
RL ghost policies — Train with PPO, DQN, or A2C (Stable-Baselines3 + Gymnasium).
Ghost evolution — Genetic algorithms evolve aggression, prediction, ambush, and risk tolerance.
Pacman powers — Teleport (Space), super speed (S), power-pellet “fart” shockwave. Procedural mazes (G).
360° play area — Torus wrap: exit top/bottom or left/right from any edge. Move North or South from any column.
3D sphere view — Optional --sphere-view: play surface on a 3D sphere, camera follows you; ghost hunting lines in 3D. Requires PyOpenGL.
Stack — Pygame, PyTorch, SB3, scikit-learn. Docker, Streamlit, HTML5 web version.

2D gameplay

Pacman ML gameplay 1 — coordinated chase — OBSERVE: Agentic Ghosts — coordinated chase

Pacman ML gameplay 2 — alpha pack — Alpha pack hunting & roles

Pacman ML gameplay 3 — power pellet — Power pellet & ghost evolution

Pacman ML gameplay 4 — maze — Neural pathfinding & maze

Listen

Neuro Adaptive Ghosts ML — Arcade Classics

3D sphere view

Run with --sphere-view to play on a 3D sphere: the maze wraps onto the surface and the camera follows Pacman. Hunting lines show ghost targets in 3D.

Pacman 3D sphere 1 — play surface — 3D sphere — play surface

Pacman 3D sphere 2 — camera follows — Camera follows player

Pacman 3D sphere 3 — hunting lines — Hunting lines on sphere

Pacman 3D sphere 4 — wrap and chase — Wrap & chase in 3D

Listen — 3D Spherical

Surviving Adaptive Ghosts ML in Spherical — Arcade Classics

Run the game

Clone the repo, install dependencies, and run the full game (Pygame) or the web version. Use --sphere-view for the 3D sphere playground (requires PyOpenGL).

Play / Run locally View on GitHub →