31 replies to this topic

[sandmountainslim]

I wondered if anyone would be willing to try and make the Pac Man Arcade hack a bit more accurate so that the red ghost rather than the blue ghost is the aggressive one??  
I don't know how it ended up getting switched in the hack but it throws me off.
I have no clue how to do this myself but thought maybe one of u wouldn't mind looking and trying.

Thanks
Wp

[Nukey Shay]

Color locations are listed right in the accompanied text file

Quote

0b82? 26b85846 yep, that's the ghosts 385A169A

So I just changed it to 9A 5A 16 38.  Note that the "home corner" routine is still the same as Ms.Pac's (so Pinky goes to the opposite corner, etc...and doesn't always happen on startup).  More extensive changes would need to be done to fix those.  Also, it's possible to add a couple rows to the display to make the maze more-faithful (I found ram that can be reclaimed when hacking the white dot version).  None of those other changes here, but I added a couple of branches to clean up the sound effects...since that only altered 4 additional bytes.

Attached Files

•  Pac26b.bin   8K   95 downloads

Edited by Nukey Shay, Fri Apr 15, 2011 2:02 PM.

[sandmountainslim]

Thank U Nukey!
U are THE man   

Great update, the sounds are improved and Inky no longer is oddly aggressive.
Plays like Pac Man now.
Pac-Man Arcade Enhanced!
Wp

Edited by sandmountainslim, Sat Sep 11, 2010 3:05 PM.

[Lucky Man]

I have to agree. Nukey is the MAN!

This has always been a great hack, but some of the sounds were pretty awful. Much better now.

Thanks!   

[Lucky Man]

Nukey, I was playing this hack again last weekend and I noticed that Blinky and the cherries are orange instead of red. Any chance you could fix this also?

[Nukey Shay]

Something like the above edit?

[Lucky Man]

That's perfect! Thanks again, Nukey!

BTW, I know you've worked on a lot of different versions of this game, but if you have the time, I'm sure there are quite a few of us who would love to see this hack with a more faithful maze and if possible, a better "waka-waka" sound for Pac-Man.

Edited by Lucky Man, Tue Apr 5, 2011 1:21 PM.

[Lucky Man]

Nukey, yesterday I only took a quick look at it, but tonight I had a chance to play the game a little more. For some reason, the strawberries are now pink.  

[Nukey Shay]

...and the orange is orange, the apples are red, the grapes are green, and bell is yellow

[Lucky Man]

Nukey Shay, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 12:36 AM, said:

...and the orange is orange, the apples are red, the grapes are green, and bell is yellow

Are you saying that's correct? They aren't pink in the arcade game.

[KevinMos3]

Lucky Man, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 10:06 AM, said:

Are you saying that's correct? They aren't pink in the arcade game.

If you don't like it, then change it.  Nukey was already nice enough to re-post the instructions that were already included in the accompanying text file about all the colors.  It's as simple as reading the darn readme and hex editing where it says to edit, or opening the game in Hackomatic 3 and going to the addresses listed in the readme to make the changes.  Either way is simple enough that you could easily do it with a little bit of effort and a tiny bit of initiative.

Nukey works VERY hard and is VERY helpful to all of us in the community.  His patience with your demands are evidence of that.  There appears to be a lack of appreciation here.  Let me re-iterate: you have all the necessary information to make some minor color edits yourself.  I suggest you give it a try by following the instructions provided, THEN if you need further help, we can assist you.

Edited by KevinMos3, Wed Apr 6, 2011 9:33 PM.

[almightytodd]

KevinMos3, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 9:32 PM, said:

Lucky Man, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 10:06 AM, said:

Are you saying that's correct? They aren't pink in the arcade game.

If you don't like it, then change it.  Nukey was already nice enough to re-post the instructions that were already included in the accompanying text file about all the colors.  It's as simple as reading the darn readme and hex editing where it says to edit, or opening the game in Hackomatic 3 and going to the addresses listed in the readme to make the changes.  Either way is simple enough that you could easily do it with a little bit of effort and a tiny bit of initiative.

Nukey works VERY hard and is VERY helpful to all of us in the community.  His patience with your demands are evidence of that.  There appears to be a lack of appreciation here.  Let me re-iterate: you have all the necessary information to make some minor color edits yourself.  I suggest you give it a try by following the instructions provided, THEN if you need further help, we can assist you.

...or for the ultimate Nukey Shay Pac man experience, try playing "Hack 'Em" - Nukey's brilliant hack of the 2600 game, "Pesco".  As it says in the description, "This is what Pac-man should have been on the VCS".

[KevinMos3]

almightytodd, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 9:50 PM, said:

...or for the ultimate Nukey Shay Pac man experience, try playing "Hack 'Em" - Nukey's brilliant hack of the 2600 game, "Pesco".  As it says in the description, "This is what Pac-man should have been on the VCS".

Ah, yes... by far my favorite "Pac-Man" for the 2600.  Dennis Debro, (I hope I got the name right), made Pac-Man 4k in which the ghosts' behavior is more faithful, but IMO Hack'em is still the definitive Pac-Man at this time.  For the best experience, put both difficulty switches in the "A" (or Advanced) position.

[Lucky Man]

Kevin, I'm sorry if my request came off as unappreciative. That was not my intention. I have nothing but thanks and appreciation for all of you who are able to program these games. I can barely find my way around this site, let alone figure out how to program an Atari game. Perhaps one of these days I will make an attempt, but I'm letting you know now it's not going to be pretty.

Nukey, you have always been very kind and helpful when I have made any hack requests so I didn't think it was out of line to let you know that one of the fruit colors came out wrong when you fixed Blinky. It seemed like you were making a joke in your last post, but I wasn't quite sure what you meant. I guess I should have taken that as a hint to just let it go. I'm very sorry if I offended you.

[Omegamatrix]

Lucky Man is a good guy. I'm sure Nukey took no offense.

[wood_jl]

I have never seen "Pac Man Arcade" but I'm having trouble getting interested, because (as has been mentioned) Hack 'Em is lord of Pacman.  It's just incredible!  After getting the Harmony Cart and loading it up, I keep going straight for Hack Em!!!!!

[KevinMos3]

Lucky Man, on Wed Apr 6, 2011 10:48 PM, said:

Kevin, I'm sorry if my request came off as unappreciative. That was not my intention.

It's okay.  I don't normally post like that, but it really rubbed me the wrong way and I took it personal.  I felt like you were hounding a friend and I wanted to speak up.

The content of what I said is still legit though.  I encourage you to get Hackomatic and Bithacker and play around with them.  This hack is a good starting point since the text file included with the ROM tells you right were the colors are located.  Then you can move on to making sprite and color edits of other games.  There's very little skill or learning effort required to use these tools.  You'll find it's a lot of fun to tweak the sprites and colors of games in ways you'd always wanted.

-
[edit:] Further context... I have been quickly checking the forums periodically while sitting in class or in between classes.  For whatever reason, (probably because of the quick reading), I took these posts the wrong way.  I almost posted a response a day or so earlier, (in which I would have been a little more kind), but decided to let it go.  When I got home last night I read the more recent comment and said what I did.  I just now realized this topic is much much older than I thought and see the whole thing in a completely different context.  As I mentioned earlier, I don't normally post like that and I don't usually make such mistakes about topics in general.  That's what I get for reading so quickly while in class or in my very very limited free moments.

Edited by KevinMos3, Thu Apr 7, 2011 9:36 AM.

[NE146]

Hack 'em is one of the ultimate 2600 games.. although I think what would make it perfect is if a "pause" could be made whenever you eat a ghost like what happens in the arcade game. Although I guess at the end of the day while it just gives a more arcade feel.. it's really a minor thing even if it wasn't in there.

I do love the gameplay though of the original 2600 Ms. Pac, so the Pacman hack to it has that same great feel. This is another awesome hack finally fixing the ghost color problem. Yet more awesomness to add to the collection. Thanks Nukey!

[Nukey Shay]

A more-extensive hack of this hack is forthcoming (featuring a seperate dot color, monsters that look where they are headed, arcade level progression, etc...while retaining the original "flavor" of the game)...I'm bugfixing the remaining issues now.  I was at odds whether to expand the size of the maze for a while since I'd saved some more ram...but decided against it (for the same reason Pacman8k wasn't altered - been down that road already).  I dunno if I can squeeze the arcade intermissions into the game and still remain 8k, tho.

As far as the pink strawberry is concerned, I picked that color just to break up the monotony of using the same color for 3 of the first 4 fruits.

[Lucky Man]

Very cool! I should have known you were up to something. And if you like your strawberries pink, who am I to judge you?  

Can't wait to try this new version out!

[Nukey Shay]

The major stuff has been added...I just need to add Rob's changes and polish it up a bit (I'll stick it in a new thread once it's finished).  There's a timing glitch that happens occasionally too.  But here's a teaser of what it looks like so far:

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Attached Files

•  Test.bin   8K   100 downloads

[bomberpunk]

i have an odd request: hack any 2600 pacman game to use atarivox to create a constant "OM NOM NOM NOM" voice while dots get eaten. that would be hysterical.

[WildBillTX]

Awesome work Nukey, this could easily replace Hack 'Em as my favorite 2600 version of Pac Man.  About the only little thing I find missing is a signal at 10000 points for the bonus.

BTW I wonder if you could add all these features for a "Ms. Pac Man Expanded" hack in the future? Or how about a version of Pac Man with all the Ms. Pac Man mazes?

Edited by WildBillTX, Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:12 PM.

[procyon]

I second WildBillTX's request. Not that Atari's original Ms. Pac-Man needs much improvement, but I thought it would be wonderful to see what it would be like if you took all of these enhancements and folded them back into Ms. Pac-Man if it were possible. Things like the black background, the white dots, the ghost sprites and the point values. Just a request if you had any interest in working on that. Thanks for all your effort and hard work!

Edit: Now that I think about it, I guess one item on the wish list would be to correct the number of times each maze appears, from 2-2-2-2 to 2-3-4-4, but that's minor. Another thing that always bothered me was that the second maze is actually upside-down with respect to the arcade, but I don't think it's possible to fix that given the location of the ghost pen.

Edited by procyon, Wed Jul 13, 2011 9:18 PM.

[NE146]

That sounds like a great idea to me actually.   

On that note, a couple years ago I did try to think of some maze changes that would make the 2600 version a little closer to the arcade one.. but all I came up was this and pretty much petered out on the idea since it required more effort than I had in me   



     TO......  

I still think it might be worth a shot though by someone with better design skills than myself.   

Or heck, why not even completely new mazes (like the arcade Ms. Pac Attack, etc.). If it was easy to design a maze there could be a contest.