PacManPlus Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 (edited) Well the ROM news seriously puts my interest in this project to basically, zero. Guess Kurt (whose put a lot of work in) gets no say on that? I would think he would WANT to prevent anyone from making unauthorized copies of the game. Don't get upset with me, get upset with the people who do this crap. (...and BTW, this was my project from the beginning. I picked it up again when Kurt decided to help with the pinball part. He is getting half the royalties for that). Edited January 16, 2019 by PacManPlus 17 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Also, and I've been meaning to post this, I won't be posting any more final versions of the ROM (for the first time ever). I've been seeing reproductions being made on eBay too much (by one particular person especially, and they don't comply when I ask to stop selling them). Albert / AA is the ONLY person / site I want distributing the games I do. Please point me to these when you see them. ..Al 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 (edited) No problem - I will from this point forward. EDIT - just did a quick look. Of course, at the moment there aren't any. Edited January 16, 2019 by PacManPlus 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Well the ROM news seriously puts my interest in this project to basically, zero. Guess Kurt (whose put a lot of work in) gets no say on that?Oh well.Check out the pile of games Bob made already and provided roms and source code.. Can he not keep one finished version to himself? If your not interested move on. This game took lots of work and looks amazing! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Ok, let's not derail the thread into yet another piracy discussion. Bob has spoken, end of story. 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blainelocklair Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Any idea how much the cart version of the game will cost? Hope to see it up on AA soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Any idea how much the cart version of the game will cost? Hope to see it up on AA soon! Well I don't know the hardware specifics but I would imagine it would be priced similar to other new releases with box and manual. This might be the first Pac-Man game I end up buying in quite some time. I'm not a huge pac-man player or fan and I honestly stink at this game too. Especially the pinball sections have me at a loss as I simply couldn't get any control of the ball. But this game doesn't exist on any other home console as a port and that makes it quite unique in this case! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Wow! I've been absent for a while and now I find a ton of updates! A big thanks to Bob and Kurt! Really impressive work and superb addition to the 7800 library. I love it. Bob, just like a minor graphic suggestion, in the example below, I added some light blue pixels as antialiasing. Thanks again for your kind attention. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Nice. EDIT: As you can see in the MCP Cart Logo (or avatar), I know all about anti aliasing, took me and my wife combined days of pixel pushing. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 Ok, I've added that change, although two things about that: 1. The bottom-right blue pixel, nearest Ms. Pac-Man, is dark blue instead. I can't help that with the swapping of palettes I'm doing for colors. 2. The *white* pixel, nearest the third added blue pixel down (on either side), I cannot add. I needed to get rid of that because it would require an entire tile that I did not have for that one pixel. Thank you, as always for your help. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Well I don't know the hardware specifics but I would imagine it would be priced similar to other new releases with box and manual. This might be the first Pac-Man game I end up buying in quite some time. I'm not a huge pac-man player or fan and I honestly stink at this game too. Especially the pinball sections have me at a loss as I simply couldn't get any control of the ball. But this game doesn't exist on any other home console as a port and that makes it quite unique in this case! I've been wondering what controller method people have been using for the pinball part. I imagine there is the painline controller, the europad, the various Edladdin controllers and, now, Curt's controller. I've been using the 4-way one below, which has worked pretty well, left thumb from the front on the left button and right thumb from the back on the right button. Only thing is, that it is not very conducive to bumping with the joystick, except to bump down. It makes me wonder if there is a gamepad adapter for the 7800 that uses the shoulder buttons on an SNES or some fancy Genesis controller as L/R buttons. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 I LIKE that controller!!!! I need to get two of those and mod them for 7800 specific buttons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+-^CrossBow^- Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 I've been wondering what controller method people have been using for the pinball part. I imagine there is the painline controller, the europad, the various Edladdin controllers and, now, Curt's controller. I've been using the 4-way one below, which has worked pretty well, left thumb from the front on the left button and right thumb from the back on the right button. Only thing is, that it is not very conducive to bumping with the joystick, except to bump down. It makes me wonder if there is a gamepad adapter for the 7800 that uses the shoulder buttons on an SNES or some fancy Genesis controller as L/R buttons. I have an order for one of Curt's controllers paid for but requested the shipping be delayed just before Christmas as I was going to be out of town but to ship just after the first of the year. I'm still waiting for it to arrive... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Nice. EDIT: As you can see in the MCP Cart Logo (or avatar), I know all about anti aliasing, took me and my wife combined days of pixel pushing. There are some things, like that animation of your MCP Cart Logo, that remind me that I'm just a little mortal man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Ok, I've added that change, although two things about that: 1. The bottom-right blue pixel, nearest Ms. Pac-Man, is dark blue instead. I can't help that with the swapping of palettes I'm doing for colors. 2. The *white* pixel, nearest the third added blue pixel down (on either side), I cannot add. I needed to get rid of that because it would require an entire tile that I did not have for that one pixel. Thank you, as always for your help. Thank you so much, Bob! P.S. I noticed that when you launch or loses the ball there is a light blue line that cuts the sprite (however during the game it is almost imperceptible). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 There are some things, like that animation of your MCP Cart Logo, that remind me that I'm just a little mortal man. No, your art is amazing, in fact I have recommended you, for a high profile homebrew, if it happens. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Obligatory cart pic... 20190115_195130.jpg Nice, cart looks phenominal. Congrats Bob! Also thank you for adding back in pin only / maze only modes. More ways to play is always a good thing. I am always happy to buy games at the AA store. And I don't have ways of playing ROMs of 7800 games currently, but I've bought many physical games I have tested out on Harmony. I respect the decision regardless. Homebrew piracy is low enough. Pirates who build games to sell without permission are scumbags. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 And I don't have ways of playing ROMs of 7800 games currently 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 OK, seems like I'm late to the party again, and someoine already said we should stop it, but I still want to say somehting BECAUSE I'M KURT... While I do agree that making unauthorized copies of the game and especially selling them is bad, I think the measures you take in order to prevent this are far overblown and deprive many other people of the fun they could have by downloading the ROM and playing it on emulators (without having any commercial interest in it). I'm actually very angry about this happening... when you said "someone else can finish this", I thought I would really be the one who finishes it, and I would have continued to post binaries right until the final version. But that was reverted pretty quickly... I actually didn't foresee this coming since previously you released binaries and even the source code for all of your games. But maybe it was just the fact that I "took the source code and ran with it" that made you think twice about sharing any more of your work... I have been raised with a mindset of sharing... now that my mother is dead, my father even wants to have joint money with me. Back in the day, I hardly bought any software for the C-64 which I had back then, but I still accumulated a collection of hundreds of disks with basically pirated software, and I basically did the same with any computer that came after it. When the Internet came about, and with it MAME and other emulators, I jumped all over it because I actually was looking for ways to re-experience all those old games, and with emulators I could do so, while especially for arcade games, most of the old ones have long since disappeared from the arcades we have here in Vienna. But I always felt guilty for playing all those games without paying for them. On the other hand, the same thing happened to me when I produced CD+G Karaoke backing tracks which I found to spread wildly (at least the really popular songs), and there has also been instances, and that's when it really gets nasty, where there was an agreement that I would get paid for doing songs someone else wanted to have, but in the end that someone bowed out of paying me one way or another despite of me having done the work properly. In my contribution to Baby Pac-Man, I saw a way to give something back to the community which has supplied me with so many games to play basically for free, and I didn't think it would end up in a game where just this way of playing is being blocked. If I had known this, I probably wouldn't have even started making contributions. Actually I regret having taken part in this thread at all, and I've also considered doing the same thing Bob has done... closing my account and leaving Atariage for good. But this would probably take it too far, I guess, so I probably won't do this, but I do consider stopping to play video games totally. What would we do if the actual copyright owners of this game, Namco and Bally, were enforcing their copyright like this? They could easily send cease-and-desist letters to Bob or Al in order to prevent them from selling unauthorized ports of THEIR game. (OK, so Bally isn't around anymore, but Namco is, and they at least own the Pac-Man character). In the end, they could decide only to do what's commercially viable for them, which probably isn't putting out a new game for a long-dead console. I can actually see that things are generally going in the opposite direction... in the early 2000's, record companies attempted to add copy protection to audio CD's in order to prevent them from being copied and shared, but that quickly went away. Lately, Youtube has started to auto-generate videos for just about all content that's available on digital platforms (you can usualy find those videos made by "#Artist# - Topic"), so now you can listen to just about anything that's available for sale on Youtube for free (with a bit of advertising). Which for me as a Karaoke singer is a godsend because there's now backing tracks for many songs which previously haven't been put out on Karaoke CD's. What's being done for Baby Pac-Man here goes into the opposite direction, sadly. As for the royalties, I never asked for a part of the royalties, but instead I would like the binary to be released. So I'm offering to relinquish the part of the royalties I'm offered on the condition that the ROM file be released for free download at the time the cartridge hits the AA store. You still can go after "douchebags" SELLING unauthorized copies of the game, I don't object against that at all. But... I agree that in the end it's Bob's project, so it'll probably end up as it often does with me... I get fed with a lot of money which I can't use because I already have enough of it, and the things I want don't happen. If this happens, I consider how to make it hard for Albert to send me my part of the royalties... I could refuse to give him my account number and have him send the royalties as dollar notes in an envelope by snail mail instead, because that's equivalent to how this game now gets distributed. This has been a "lesson learned" for me, and I guess I will never contribute to a project again the way I did here... I'll rather try to finish my own projects now. Yes, I've thought about this all night... Sorry for the long rant, but even if it's Bob's project, I think as a major contributor I'm at least entitled to rant... I would think he would WANT to prevent anyone from making unauthorized copies of the game. Don't get upset with me, get upset with the people who do this crap. (...and BTW, this was my project from the beginning. I picked it up again when Kurt decided to help with the pinball part. He is getting half the royalties for that). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 OK, seems like I'm late to the party again, and someoine already said we should stop it, but I still want to say somehting BECAUSE I'M KURT... While I do agree that making unauthorized copies of the game and especially selling them is bad, I think the measures you take in order to prevent this are far overblown and deprive many other people of the fun they could have by downloading the ROM and playing it on emulators (without having any commercial interest in it). I'm actually very angry about this happening... when you said "someone else can finish this", I thought I would really be the one who finishes it, and I would have continued to post binaries right until the final version. But that was reverted pretty quickly... I actually didn't foresee this coming since previously you released binaries and even the source code for all of your games. But maybe it was just the fact that I "took the source code and ran with it" that made you think twice about sharing any more of your work... I have been raised with a mindset of sharing... now that my mother is dead, my father even wants to have joint money with me. Back in the day, I hardly bought any software for the C-64 which I had back then, but I still accumulated a collection of hundreds of disks with basically pirated software, and I basically did the same with any computer that came after it. When the Internet came about, and with it MAME and other emulators, I jumped all over it because I actually was looking for ways to re-experience all those old games, and with emulators I could do so, while especially for arcade games, most of the old ones have long since disappeared from the arcades we have here in Vienna. But I always felt guilty for playing all those games without paying for them. On the other hand, the same thing happened to me when I produced CD+G Karaoke backing tracks which I found to spread wildly (at least the really popular songs), and there has also been instances, and that's when it really gets nasty, where there was an agreement that I would get paid for doing songs someone else wanted to have, but in the end that someone bowed out of paying me one way or another despite of me having done the work properly. In my contribution to Baby Pac-Man, I saw a way to give something back to the community which has supplied me with so many games to play basically for free, and I didn't think it would end up in a game where just this way of playing is being blocked. If I had known this, I probably wouldn't have even started making contributions. Actually I regret having taken part in this thread at all, and I've also considered doing the same thing Bob has done... closing my account and leaving Atariage for good. But this would probably take it too far, I guess, so I probably won't do this, but I do consider stopping to play video games totally. What would we do if the actual copyright owners of this game, Namco and Bally, were enforcing their copyright like this? They could easily send cease-and-desist letters to Bob or Al in order to prevent them from selling unauthorized ports of THEIR game. (OK, so Bally isn't around anymore, but Namco is, and they at least own the Pac-Man character). In the end, they could decide only to do what's commercially viable for them, which probably isn't putting out a new game for a long-dead console. I can actually see that things are generally going in the opposite direction... in the early 2000's, record companies attempted to add copy protection to audio CD's in order to prevent them from being copied and shared, but that quickly went away. Lately, Youtube has started to auto-generate videos for just about all content that's available on digital platforms (you can usualy find those videos made by "#Artist# - Topic"), so now you can listen to just about anything that's available for sale on Youtube for free (with a bit of advertising). Which for me as a Karaoke singer is a godsend because there's now backing tracks for many songs which previously haven't been put out on Karaoke CD's. What's being done for Baby Pac-Man here goes into the opposite direction, sadly. As for the royalties, I never asked for a part of the royalties, but instead I would like the binary to be released. So I'm offering to relinquish the part of the royalties I'm offered on the condition that the ROM file be released for free download at the time the cartridge hits the AA store. You still can go after "douchebags" SELLING unauthorized copies of the game, I don't object against that at all. But... I agree that in the end it's Bob's project, so it'll probably end up as it often does with me... I get fed with a lot of money which I can't use because I already have enough of it, and the things I want don't happen. If this happens, I consider how to make it hard for Albert to send me my part of the royalties... I could refuse to give him my account number and have him send the royalties as dollar notes in an envelope by snail mail instead, because that's equivalent to how this game now gets distributed. This has been a "lesson learned" for me, and I guess I will never contribute to a project again the way I did here... I'll rather try to finish my own projects now. Yes, I've thought about this all night... Sorry for the long rant, but even if it's Bob's project, I think as a major contributor I'm at least entitled to rant... Wow... First off, I am sorry that you feel this way. We are all eternally grateful for your contributions in this project. Please do not ruin it for all involved plus fans who want to pay for a cart, by withdrawing your support in the 11th hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 (edited) I don't plan on withdrawing my support... having the game not released at all is the last thing I would want since my work would then be for naught as well. I also didn't say I wouldn't want a cart release, I only think that the cart shouldn't be the only way to enjoy the game. Edited January 16, 2019 by Kurt_Woloch 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 I don't plan on withdrawing my support... having the game not released at all is the last thing I would want since my work would then be for naught as well. I also didn't say I wouldn't want a cart release, I only think that the cart shouldn't be the only way to enjoy the game. I know you contributed a bunch of math, that is way beyond most people's heads, I appreciate that as much as everyone else (maybe more). How about a medium, like "after 10,000 (obviously, I kid) copies are sold, ROM with non-custom bankswitching is released?", or something like that? Would that make you feel better about it? I am only speaking for myself, not on Bob's behalf. I really want the discussion about piracy to end. On a side note, I do not make my years of work, open source either. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Well, 10,000 is obviously a pretty high mark... but there have been schemes where the ROM was released 2 or 3 years after the sale of physical copies started, and I could live with that. From what Bob wrote, however, as I read it, it means there will NEVER be a ROM release. And this would mean that sometimes in the future, there would actually be people trying to find out how Bob's custom bankswitching scheme works in order to preserve the game for later generations. By the way, is bankswitching needed at all on this game? The Atari 7800 natively supports 48 K of ROM, doesn't it? And this game doesn't have more than that... and I took extra care not using up too much space for the pinball part in order to have it all fit in. So what would bankswitching actually be needed for, other than to prevent piracy? And I contributed a bit more than math only... I ended up supplying pretty much all of the code that controls ball movement (except for a basic routine which moves it based on given x/y velocities) and detects collisions and also the upper ball which works on a different scheme to the main ball. I think it was about 100 to 120 hours of work, all in all... I'd have to check how much it really was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted January 16, 2019 Share Posted January 16, 2019 Obligatory cart pic... 20190115_195130.jpg NICE!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted January 16, 2019 Author Share Posted January 16, 2019 (edited) OK, seems like I'm late to the party again, and someoine already said we should stop it, but I still want to say somehting BECAUSE I'M KURT... While I do agree that making unauthorized copies of the game and especially selling them is bad, I think the measures you take in order to prevent this are far overblown and deprive many other people of the fun they could have by downloading the ROM and playing it on emulators (without having any commercial interest in it). I'm actually very angry about this happening... when you said "someone else can finish this", I thought I would really be the one who finishes it, and I would have continued to post binaries right until the final version. But that was reverted pretty quickly... I actually didn't foresee this coming since previously you released binaries and even the source code for all of your games. But maybe it was just the fact that I "took the source code and ran with it" that made you think twice about sharing any more of your work... I have been raised with a mindset of sharing... now that my mother is dead, my father even wants to have joint money with me. Back in the day, I hardly bought any software for the C-64 which I had back then, but I still accumulated a collection of hundreds of disks with basically pirated software, and I basically did the same with any computer that came after it. When the Internet came about, and with it MAME and other emulators, I jumped all over it because I actually was looking for ways to re-experience all those old games, and with emulators I could do so, while especially for arcade games, most of the old ones have long since disappeared from the arcades we have here in Vienna. But I always felt guilty for playing all those games without paying for them. On the other hand, the same thing happened to me when I produced CD+G Karaoke backing tracks which I found to spread wildly (at least the really popular songs), and there has also been instances, and that's when it really gets nasty, where there was an agreement that I would get paid for doing songs someone else wanted to have, but in the end that someone bowed out of paying me one way or another despite of me having done the work properly. In my contribution to Baby Pac-Man, I saw a way to give something back to the community which has supplied me with so many games to play basically for free, and I didn't think it would end up in a game where just this way of playing is being blocked. If I had known this, I probably wouldn't have even started making contributions. Actually I regret having taken part in this thread at all, and I've also considered doing the same thing Bob has done... closing my account and leaving Atariage for good. But this would probably take it too far, I guess, so I probably won't do this, but I do consider stopping to play video games totally. What would we do if the actual copyright owners of this game, Namco and Bally, were enforcing their copyright like this? They could easily send cease-and-desist letters to Bob or Al in order to prevent them from selling unauthorized ports of THEIR game. (OK, so Bally isn't around anymore, but Namco is, and they at least own the Pac-Man character). In the end, they could decide only to do what's commercially viable for them, which probably isn't putting out a new game for a long-dead console. I can actually see that things are generally going in the opposite direction... in the early 2000's, record companies attempted to add copy protection to audio CD's in order to prevent them from being copied and shared, but that quickly went away. Lately, Youtube has started to auto-generate videos for just about all content that's available on digital platforms (you can usualy find those videos made by "#Artist# - Topic"), so now you can listen to just about anything that's available for sale on Youtube for free (with a bit of advertising). Which for me as a Karaoke singer is a godsend because there's now backing tracks for many songs which previously haven't been put out on Karaoke CD's. What's being done for Baby Pac-Man here goes into the opposite direction, sadly. As for the royalties, I never asked for a part of the royalties, but instead I would like the binary to be released. So I'm offering to relinquish the part of the royalties I'm offered on the condition that the ROM file be released for free download at the time the cartridge hits the AA store. You still can go after "douchebags" SELLING unauthorized copies of the game, I don't object against that at all. But... I agree that in the end it's Bob's project, so it'll probably end up as it often does with me... I get fed with a lot of money which I can't use because I already have enough of it, and the things I want don't happen. If this happens, I consider how to make it hard for Albert to send me my part of the royalties... I could refuse to give him my account number and have him send the royalties as dollar notes in an envelope by snail mail instead, because that's equivalent to how this game now gets distributed. This has been a "lesson learned" for me, and I guess I will never contribute to a project again the way I did here... I'll rather try to finish my own projects now. Yes, I've thought about this all night... Sorry for the long rant, but even if it's Bob's project, I think as a major contributor I'm at least entitled to rant... Et tu Kurt? Ok all. I've had enough. Here are the final BINs for the game. Although I have to say, this has left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm not sure if I will publicly do another game. If I do decide to at some point in the future, if I can't do it myself it won't get done. I do this because I enjoy it. This one, however, was not enjoyable. I don't need any more drama, as I've have enough in the past three years personally to last a lifetime. BabyPac.A78 BabyPac.BIN Edited January 16, 2019 by PacManPlus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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