PelletPursuit

Pellet Pursuit

A JavaFX maze game — collect dots, dodge ghosts, chase high scores. Any similarities to well-known arcade games are strictly coincidental.

The engine compiles and launches, but the maze is invisible and the player doesn’t move yet — your job is to implement the gameplay across four phases, from basic movement to ghost AI to a persistent high-score leaderboard.

Running the game

Press the green Run button in IntelliJ, or in the terminal:

./mvnw javafx:run

First run only: if the run dialog shows “module not specified” under Build and run, click that drop-down and select 24 to set the JDK (Java Development Kit). You only need to do this once.

You may see WARNING: sun.misc.Unsafe lines in the console — ignore them. They come from the graphics library, not your code, and don’t affect the game.

Controls

Key	Action
Arrow keys	Move
SPACE	Pause / Resume
ENTER	Start / Restart

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What you’re building

Work through the four phases in order. Each one has a guide in docs/.

Phase	Focus	Key files
1	Player controls, wall collision, maze design, tile drawing	Player.java, GameMap.java
2	Ghost personalities, collision detection, difficulty tuning	Ghost.java, Patrol.java, Shy.java, Ambush.java
3	Custom bonus item, collection logic, score file I/O	BonusItem.java, ScoreTree.java, GameApp.java
4	Recursive BST insert and leaderboard traversal	ScoreTree.java

Once the gameplay is working, personalize your game — name it, theme it, tune it. See the Personalizing your game section in docs/FinalProject_Starter.md.

Going further

Three options once the base tasks are done — pick one:

• Add-ons — per-level layouts, custom pathfinding, sprite images (+5 pts bonus)
• Early finisher — build something new in Java if you finish all four phases
• Custom project — build a different project instead of Phases 2–4, by approval after Phase 1 — see docs/FinalProject_CustomProject.md

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File guide

src/main/java/game/
  Sprite.java       — base class: position, size, speed, helper methods
  Player.java       — player input, movement, dot eating
  Ghost.java        — abstract ghost: BFS, frighten/dead states  ← read me
    Shadow.java     — WORKED EXAMPLE: complete chooseTarget()
    Patrol.java     — TODO: implement chooseTarget()
    Shy.java        — TODO: implement chooseTarget()
    Ambush.java     — TODO: implement chooseTarget()
  GameMap.java      — tile maze, dot/power-pellet tracking
  LevelConfig.java  — difficulty values per level  ← edit me
  BonusItem.java    — abstract bonus item + Cherry example  ← extend me
  AudioManager.java — synthesised sound effects (no files needed)
  ScoreTree.java    — BST high-score table
  ScoreNode.java    — BST node
  GameApp.java      — JavaFX Application, game loop, HUD  ← customize me

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Documents

The guides in docs/ are Markdown files (.md) — plain text with light formatting. To read them with formatting in IntelliJ, open the file and click the Preview icon in the top-right corner of the editor.

You can also read all the guides online:

https://sbhs-computer-science-academy.github.io/PelletPursuit/docs/

If IntelliJ or Maven gives you trouble:

https://sbhs-computer-science-academy.github.io/PelletPursuit/docs/Troubleshooting

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