Pacman-ASM - x86 Assembly Edition

Overview

Writing a game in Assembly is a labor of love and a test of patience. Pacman-ASM is a project I built during Spring 2023 that reimagines the classic arcade experience at the register level. I was able to gain a deep understanding of how software interacts directly with the CPU and memory.

This project stands out as one of my most rewarding builds because it required managing every minute detail, from manual memory addressing to timing game ticks using hardware interrupts.

Technical Implementation

• Direct Memory Addressing: Instead of objects and classes, every pellet, ghost, and wall was managed through direct memory offsets and data buffers.
• Irvine32 Library: Leveraged the Irvine32 library to handle console output, color changes, and keyboard input polling without needing to write custom BIOS interrupts for every operation.
• Audio Integration: Implemented sound effects (
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  ,
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  ) by triggering system-level audio calls within the Assembly source, bringing the "arcade feel" to a low-level environment.
• Collision Detection: Managed through coordinate comparison logic within the
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  and
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  registers.
• Movement: Implemented using conditional jumps (
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  ,
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  ,
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  ) to evaluate user input and wall boundaries.

Project Highlights

| Feature | Low-Level Mechanism | | --- | --- | | Graphics | ASCII-based rendering using direct console buffer manipulation. | | Input | Real-time polling of the keyboard buffer to prevent input lag. | | Scoring | Integer arithmetic performed directly in registers with memory-mapped storage. | | Audio | Procedure calls to external Windows API functions through the Irvine linker. |

Reflections

This is easily one of the "nicest" things I've made because of the sheer craftsmanship involved. There are no "shortcuts" in x86; if you want a character to move, you have to manually calculate its new memory position, clear the old one, and redraw the pixel. It turned a simple game into a complex puzzle of registers and logic gates.

Repo Link

Repo : here