Freight Mode
Basics
It wouldn't be a Pacman game if Pacman couldn't eat the ghosts. After they have been eaten, the ghosts need to be able to respawn or it would be a pretty boring game if there was permadeath. This section is all about giving Pacman a fighting chance. Since he's able to eat the pellets he can now eat the power pellets and chase the ghosts around who are now trying to get away from him. We'll start this section off by introducing the FREIGHT mode which leaves the ghosts vulnerable to being eaten by Pacman.
The ghosts currently have two modes that they can be in: CHASE or SCATTER. These modes have timers and switch back and forth when their timers expire. The ghost gets this from the MainMode object we defined earlier.
FREIGHT mode, however, is a mode that can happen at any time. Well, it can only happen four times during a level since there are only four power pellets. This is what I like to call an interrupt mode. When Pacman eats a power pellet the ghosts can be in either SCATTER or CHASE mode. When this happens we force all of the ghosts into FREIGHT mode whether they are in SCATTER or CHASE mode. FREIGHT mode also has a timer and initially only lasts for 7 seconds. This timer decreases as the levels increase to the point where it's practically non-existent. In our game though, it will never drop below 1 second. When the timer for FREIGHT mode expires the ghosts will go back to either CHASE or SCATTER mode depending on which mode the MainMode object is in.
Also, in FREIGHT mode, the ghosts move a lot slower. They move about 50% of their maximum speed and they choose directions randomly so they don't have a particular goal that they're trying to reach. It's almost as if they are dazed and confused.
In this section we'll send the ghosts into FREIGHT mode by eating a power pellet, but we still can't eat the ghosts. We'll have to take care of another mode before we can do that.
