PacManPlus

wait...

Actually with this one, no. I added the 'real' Ms. Pac-Man Plus (and Ms. Pac-Attack). I had to sacrifice something, so I figured something that never really existed would be the one to go.

Thanks for the kind words, guys... Yes, it does have Pac-Man Plus. I can't leave my namesake out!

Hey Guys Perry did an amazing job with the Yamaha sound... no BIN yet, but here's a video:

Thank you... Although I'm quite pleased with how everything came out, including the graphics, so I don't think I'll be making changes to that at this point. (But thank you)

hmm.... Trying to figure out a way to leverage this for PMC_XM... I might be able to... Thank you for this!

Done.

Thanks guys (Just as a side note, I did try the 'pupil' thing - but without the white - at first. The screen shots in the very first post show this; it made them look 'zombie-like'. Defender_2600 had the great idea to do that with the white, and between the two, I think this looks better. The white would have to be done the same way regardless). I use the A7800 emulator with the 'screen' settings (like Trebor uses in his video as well as the ones I posted) and you hardly notice it. Thank you so much guys - @Trebor thank you (as always) for the comprehensive video. I like the screen transitions! Also, I fixed the graphic bug that you noted with the vertical tunnel. I promise; no more Pac-Man after this is done. There is a game I started a while back that I want to continue on...

Yep - due to the limitation of the way the 7800 handles the third color with transparency on, that had to be done. In that mode, I only have two palettes with three colors each to work with. two of the colors (the white) have to have a different color next to them in order to show up (i.e. not the same color and not transparent). So I really had 2 colors in 2 palettes to freely work with, and one color in each palette that was restricted.

Thanks guys @sramirez2008 - You know that those are TIA sounds (not Pokey), right? @TrekMD - I know what that is. It's the special joystick combinations I put in for the Flashback Joysticks. Left+Right = Select (which takes you back to the menu), Up+Down+Left = Reset, and there's another combination for Pause that I can't remember right now. A7800 must not let you press 'invalid' joystick directions at the same time, whereas ProSystem does.

Hey Guys: After a LOT of work (especially with the 'Random Mazes' function). I am posting my WIP of Pac-Man Collection XM. It is a 128K game (so far) but the Yamaha sound might push me to have to make it 144K. I'm trying to avoid that so I'm not there yet. Just in time for the 40th anniversary! This is what I have left: - Yamaha sound implementation (working on that now) - 'Largest Pac-Man' (at the moment it plays regular Pac-Man) There will be two differences though: * The maze will not change color like the arcade, as it affects Inky and the 'Blue Monsters'. * There will be no two player simultaneous option. Believe me, this was a hard one to let go of. I don't have the sprites available, as there started to be 'disappearing acts' - Possibly adjusting 'scatter times'. Hopefully there won't be any bugs with this, but if there are, let me know. Special thanks to @RevEng who taught me how to use the debugger in A7800. It's awesome! @Trebor... You know what to do Thanks, guys! EDIT - BTW, this game is compatible with the Flashback joysticks (i.e. start, etc.)... at least it should be... PMC_XM.A78 PMC_XM.BIN

It's the 'Hyperspace' function. Pulling down on the joystick (or the down arrow on the keyboard) 'Hyperspaces' your ship to a different part of the screen. There was supposed to be a sound effect as well, but I forgot

Ok, so I had an idea: I took the 'waitvbl' out of the end of the loop and the game sped up like crazy. I *think* that means that my main loop isn't taking longer than 1 frame to complete, as it started to do more than 1 iteration of the loop per frame... I think that's correct...

ok cool - thank you. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Thanks!

Thank you so much again! I'm sorry about all of the questions, but... If I increment 'frameskip' at the start of a loop, and decrement it at the beginning of the end-of-screen interrupt: if the iteration of the loop takes too long (it's supposed to only happen once per frame), the interrupt will happen and decrement the 'frameskip' before the iteration of the loop is finished. After the interrupt PC comes back to whatever part of the loop it hadn't finished. Once the iteration of the loop is finished it waits for vbl (where the end-of-screen interrupt happens). Doesn't that mean that 'frameskip' will actually be -1 once the interrupt hits again?

Yes - thank you so much for showing this to me. Is there a way I can use the debugger to tell if I'm using too much CPU time per frame? (i.e. my routines that should happen within one frame are actually overrunning into another frame)... Thank you so much! Bob

oops... guess I should have seen that huh? (sorry) anyway, thank you - and it's still running!

Thank you RevEng - although this one seems to be worse; it crashes *every* time, and looking at the trace (and the memory locations) it seems to return all variations of %XXXXXX00 when ANDed with $03 (in this case). I think I need to somehow put some sort of safety in there when this happens. What it's doing in this section is randomly choosing a maze shape, and seeing if the 'cells' are free to place this shape. i.e. it's looking at row3, column4 and seeing if a left-down elbow ┐ will fit. So it checks the 'cell' to the left and the 'cell' below. If it won't fit, it goes back to the routine and randomly chooses another shape. Each 'column' has it's own set of shapes to choose from, depending on the 'row' it's on as well (that 5x9 one from above). EDIT: Update - so I did an 'ADC RTLOCAL+1' (the frame counter) and then a 'CLC' in between 'NOEOR' and 'STA RAND' above and it seems to work so far. After all this I don't trust that completely though. I'll still need to figure out some sort of safety net when doing this. EDIT2: Been running for about an hour... so far so good!

Wow, this is VERY odd. So, it's looking like my Pseudo Random Number Generator is skewed. I've used that same random number generator in every single game and this is the first time I've had an issue with it. Every single time it's picking either a variation of 3 or 7 (I do an AND #$07), both of which are invalid numbers. Very strange to watch happen. To be exact, it's picking these numbers in this order: $83,$AB,$2F,$DB,$0B,$E7,$F3,$DB,$CF,$AB,$7B,$27,$A3,$CB... and so on. If you look at the second nybble, you can see that it gives the pattern 3, 3, 7, 3, 3, 7, 3, 3, 7, etc. when ANDed with $07. This is my PRNG: ; RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR - BOTH MAKES A NEW ONE AND LEAVES IT IN A ; INPUT: NONE ; OUTPUT: NEW RANDOM NUMBER IN A AND IN NEWRAND ; USES: A, OLDRAND, NEWRAND RAND LDA OLDRAND ;PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER OF PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER ADC RTLOCAL+1 ;FRAME COUNTER ADC NEWRAND ;PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER PHA LDA NEWRAND ;PUT PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER INTO PREVIOUS PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER STA OLDRAND PLA STA NEWRAND ;NEW VALUE - LEFT IN A, AND STORED AS PREVIOUS RANDOM NUMBER RTS It looks like I'll need a better random number algorithm.

Question: In the debugger, how do I just show the contents of a RAM location? E.G. I just want to see what is in the address $40 while the program is stopped. Thanks!

ugh.... It's not doing it when I run it in debug either. But when I don't run it in debug... EDIT - ok - hold on... I got it to happen with debug ... but the file is almost 2Gb... I'll be back

Hey Guys! Ok, I have the random maze part completed. I actually had to manually create the side tunnels, and there are some rare instances where there aren't any! (It's ok, though, the fruit comes through the wall for Ms. Pac-Man) Anyway, I have a STRANGE issue that I'm dealing with: I turn off the screen when generating a maze (as to not display garbage on the screen while doing so). I use this routine (from GCC themselves): ; TURN THE SCREEN OFF WITHOUT ZEROING THE SCREEN SCREENNO JSR WAITVBL ;WAIT TILL VBLANK STARTED LDA #$7F ;TURN GRAPHICS OFF STA CTRL LDA #$00 STA SCRNSTAT ;ZERO SOME STATE RTS I'm finding that sometimes (I would say 1 out of every 100 times) the game crashes while creating a maze (while the screen is off). In troubleshooting this, I turned the screen back on to show some display statements. However, when I turn the screen back on, the issue *NEVER* happens. I've left it on for hours and it's fine. As soon as I take the call to turn on the screen out, it happens after a few runs (like I said, about 1 out of every 100 times it has to create a maze). This is the routine to turn on the screen: ; TURN THE SCREEN ON SCREENON LDA SCRNSTAT ;SEE IF SCREEN WAS EVEN OFF BNE SOOUT JSR LOADER ;INITIALIZE KERNAL STATE JSR WAITVBL INC SCRNSTAT ;SAY THE SCREEN IS ON LDA #KGRAPHON STA CTRL ;TURN GRAPHICS ON SOOUT RTS Now, I've tried just calling 'loader' and 'waitvbl' while the screen is still off, but that doesn't help. I have not tried this on the real thing yet... and I'm using A7800 to test with. WTH is going on? Thanks, Bob

I got the random mazes finally. Now it's just adding side tunnels (if needed) and dots: Took me two weeks (including a PTO day from work) to do this. ugh. Notes: - After this, the next step is adding the incredible sounds/music done by @tep392 - you guys are going to be blown away! - 'The Largest Pac-Man' is not going to be a 1:1 port. Namely: * No two player simultaneous play (alternate will still be there). I don't have enough sprites for that - we would start to get 'disappearing' acts. * No maze cycling color. It interferes with Inky's color, and the 'Blue monster' color as well. * I do want to keep the ever changing / bouncing fruit, the bonus screen at the end of the level, and the 'random' direction the monsters take when coming out of the pen... and as much of the other aspects of the game that I can. Then there's only: - Adjust scatter times - Rewrite monster 'destination tile' algorithm - Keep an eye on player moving through the monsters... it doesn't seem to happen as much now. It's almost time for a ROM. Bob EDIT... Maybe a ROM earlier than I thought. I'm going to need debug help with this one. There's *ONE* instance where the random maze fails. When it does, the screen goes black (because the maze piece picking routine is in an endless loop trying to fit specific pieces in the maze. I'm going to put some display debug statements in, as this is going to be VERY difficult to catch. growl. All I'll need is the numbers you will see on the screen.

Here we go again... Ok with this as a starting point: I believe I now have the 'Simple Model' Done. It's not quite as elegant as his, but it works: No empty cells. LEGEND: A = T FACING RIGHT: ├ B = T FACING DOWN: ┬ C = T FACING LEFT: ┤ D = T FACING UP: ┴ E = L FACING RIGHT: └ F = L FACING DOWN: ⌐ G = L FACING LEFT: ┐ H = L FACING UP: _| I = PLUS SIGN: ┼ J = BOX: █ K = 2 CELL HORIZONTAL LINE: - L = 2 CELL VERTICAL LINE: | M = OUTER MAZE EXTENSIONS INWARD (TOP AND BOTTOM) N = OUTER MAZE EXTENSIONS INWARD (LEFT AND RIGHT) O = SINGLE CELL WALL (LIKE THE 6 CIRCLES IN HANGLY-MAN) I'm ready to take this to the next step.

Ok, I've already changed a bunch of things since posting this...