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Kurt_Woloch

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Posts posted by Kurt_Woloch

  1. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 29th through November 4th) on modern games...

     

    Visual PinMAME:

    Baby Pac-Man - 50 min. in 2 sessions

     

    I played some more Baby Pac-Man in Visual PinMAME because I was looking for a formula describing the correct flipper behavior in order to implement it for the Atari 7800. There's one trick called "Post pass" where you pass the ball from one flipper to the other by releasing the flipper for a short time, and by pressing it again the ball is deflected by the bumper above the flipper, going back to the lane leading to the flipper and rolling over the flipper onto the other one. Sadly, this trick doesn't work on my version of Baby Pac-Man because the bumper's too far receded for that. But it also doesn't work in Visual PinMAME either as I found out. ;-) Anyway, I tried to get the flippers to work as realistically as possible.

    • Like 4

  2. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (October 29th through November 4th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Lunar Lander - 2 min.

    Super Burger Time - 17 min. in 2 sessions

     

    Visual PinMAME:

    Baby Pac-Man - 50 min. in 2 sessions

     

    This week I played a bit of Super Burger TIme because I've been playing the regular version recently, and I also tried Lunar Lander because it's one of the games that are now featured as easter eggs in the new release of Tesla's firmware, so you can play it in their cars. Well, 2 minutes was enough to know what's going on.

     

    Then I played some more Baby Pac-Man in Visual PinMAME because I was looking for a formula describing the correct flipper behavior. There's one trick called "Post pass" where you pass the ball from one flipper to the other by releasing the flipper for a short time, and by pressing it again the ball is deflected by the bumper above the flipper, going back to the lane leading to the flipper and rolling over the flipper onto the other one. Sadly, this trick doesn't work on my version of Baby Pac-Man because the bumper's too far receded for that. But it also doesn't work in Visual PinMAME either as I found out. ;-) Anyway, I tried to get the flippers to work as realistically as possible.

    • Like 7

  5. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch

    OK, I see... then I will have to rewrite the nudging part completely (also to the left and right). I've already something in mind that COULD work... let's see if it works the way I think it does. So if I get this right, in order for bumping to work, the ball has to be in the vincinity of some object it would collide with if it moved into the opposite direction of the nudge. Which is the same as if it would roll one or two pixels to the left / right / down at high speed and collide with the object.

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    What do you mean by that? Does one nudge move the ball too much, or should that much nudging not be allowed?

    I did not include a "Tilt" test since I don't think this belongs to the ball physics, or does it? I only included how the balls react to nudging... do you think that one's correct?

     

    Guys, this is so incredible... :lust:

    Just a note, the bumping 'up' of the table seems too generous :

     

    attachicon.gifBaby Pac-Man _the bumping up of the table_.wmv

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    Here's another small update... I'm working towards the point where I'll be giving it back to Bob, and he will then continue to work on it. But before I do that, I've also fixed some little bugs that were in the last version I posted:

     

    - Amended the bumper behavior a bit... when I attempted to make the Post Pass work, I introduced a little bug where the ball, if it touches the lowest corner of the bumper in a flat angle, was deflected in a strange manner (towards the lane below the bumper).

    - Amended the target detection... in the last versions, the ball sometimes took down the wrong target or even changed a different part of the playfield if it hit the far left or right side. Now it should always take down the correct target (if it's still up), and it does a little sound doing so (which probably will be changed later).

    - Took out the color changes depending on what the ball collided with... those color changes were there for debugging purposes.

    - Capped the speed at which the upper ball can go back up again if it already went all the way from left to right or vice-versa, in order to prevent scoring two power pellets at once.

     

    This is probably the last binary I will post here before Bob takes over, unless you report some bugs that still should be fixed. Other than that, I'm now starting to clean up the code, removing routines that in the end weren't used and commented out, improving the names of some variables, adding a lot of comments to parts of the code that might be unclear so that Bob is better able to understand them etc. But this shouldn't result in a change to how the code works or to the resulting binary (well, maybe some code will be shifted around, but it still shouldn't change its functionality anymore).

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 7

  9. Posted

    Here's another update... I've tried to improve the flipper behavior in order to make at least some of the tricks work that appear in the video above. I've looked at all of them, and here's the result...

     

    Bounce pass... works
    Death save... doesn't work (no lower lane)
    Drop catch... works (but you have to get the timing right)
    Live catch... works (basically)
    Post pass... doesn't work (Bumper too far receded)
    Bang back... doesn't work (no lower lane)
    Cradle seperation... doesn't work (no multi ball)
    Dead bounce... works
    Flick pass... maybe works (don't have quick enough fingers for that, flippers snap back immediately)
    Tap pass... works (if you get the timing right)
    Shooter lane cradle... doesn't work (no shooter lane)
    Shooter lane juggle... doesn't work (no shooter lane)
    The Alley Pass... works (if you get the timing right) (same as Tap pass?)

     

    In addition to that, the upper ball now works roughly as intended... it's only a bit strange that it's possible to hit it so hard that it will someitimes go to the other side, bounce off it and get back again, which would give 2 power pellets with one hit. I don't think it ever does this on a real machine, does it?

     

    After this, I think it's now time to clean up the code and then give it back to Bob. If you find any errors or mistakes, I can still do something about it.

     

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 9

  10. Posted

    OK, guys, small update:

    I have to admit I got somewhat sidetracked from working on this over the last week. There were some important things to do at work which have to be done by the end of October, and also I've now got a credit card which enables me to take part in e-scooter sharing, now that Lime, Bird and Tier have entered Vienna with their scooters. So I've spent some hours riding them over the last days.

     

    But another reason why I didn't do as much as planned is the flipper physics... it worked somewhat OK in the last update, but, as Gorfcadet pointed out, some tricks do not work in my version. Honestly, I think the bumpers are in a bit of a bad position to allow for a proper Post Pass, but I'm trying to incorporate it. However, I'm at a bit of a loss how to properly do the flipper physics since obviously they still leave some things to be desired. I've now downloaded some Javascript code from CodePen (https://codepen.io/lonekorean/pen/KXLrVX), where the flipper physics seem to be more realistic than in my implementation, and I'll try to take some clues from there how to properly implement this. I still will have to translate the principles of it into 6502 assembly though...

     

    I've still attached my latest binary to this post, but I don't think it's a real step forward. I've tried to implement it so that the flippers have the ball flying backwards (i.e. left for the left flipper and right for the right one) if activated in their upper part, but I think it still looks a bit unrealistic and erratic. Also, the upper ball now appears in an awkward position due to the fact that I've now implemented a proper positioning routine for it, but the position table and the routines to move the upper ball aren't there yet. But I will continue to work on it over the next days...

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 7

  11. Posted

    The only modern game I played this week was:

     

    PC (Visual PinMAME):

    Baby Pac Man - 12 min.

     

    I guess riding Lime's shared e-scooters doesn't count as gaming... this I did for 158 minutes in total. Actually it reminds me a bit of the battery powered amusement park rides for children where you put in a quarter (or a dollar these days) and they go for a few minutes, but this time it's for adults, you pay with your credit card (by the minute) and the area you can ride in is a big part of Vienna. I'm actually unsure how far you can take the scooters outside the business area as long as you bring them back into it at the end of your ride.

    • Like 4

  12. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch

    Here are my times for this past week (October 22th through 28th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Burger Time - 17 min.

    Super Burger Time - 22 min.

     

    Atari 2600:

    Chaotic Grill - 13 min.

    Super Cobra - 4 min.

     

    Visual PinMAME:

    Baby Pac-Man - 12 min.

     

    This week I played three installments of Burger Tiime - the original Arcade one, the port "Chaotic Grill" on the Atari 2600 which is still WIP, and the arcade sequel "Super Burger Time". Apart from that, I played a bit of Super Cobra for the Atari 2600, and Baby Pac-Man on Visual PinMAME (same configuration as before). I also continued to work on Baby Pac-Man for the Atari 7800 where I actually struggle with a believable formula for the flipper physics. Somebody requested that some pinball tricks should work on my version, but I doubt they even work on the real thing. I didn't get them to work on Visual PinMAME anyway.

     

    "Oh, und ich hoffe, ich brauche nicht neunundzwanzig Jahre, um das verdammte Spiel fertigzustellen. ;-)"

    • Like 6

  13. Posted

    Speaking of levels, I just noticed that there are some differences between the level layout in your version and the arcade version:

    Level 1: The order of ingredients is wrong on some of the burgers. In the arcade, all four burgers go Top bun - Salad - Patty - Bottom bun.

    Level 2: The order of ingredients is wrong again, on all of the burgers the salad needs to be switched with the cheese. Also the chef's starting position is one platform higher than it should be.

    Level 3: There's one letter in your version that shouldn't be there... it's in the middle of the bottom row going up from the chef's starting position.

    Level 4: There's a ladder missing from your version, it's in the middle of the screen going from the 4th to the 5th platform counted from the bottom.

    Level 5: No visible errors. I just noticed that there are some scanlines on the bottom where the foreground is displayed in blue instead of white although there are no platforms on that scanline, only ladders.

    Level 6: No visible errors.

     

    I've also noticed that on starting a new screen, the screen seems to jump for a frame, I suppose it takes too much time for initialization so it's some scanlines late with drawing the screen. Maybe if you need that much time for initialization, it would be better to blank the screen for a frame.

    Also, I noticed that if multiple parts of one burger fall down at once due to enemies riding them, those parts seem to be too close together in your version. In the arcade version, they seem to be about one platform away from each other, falling onto the completed burger at a rate of about 47 frames apart from each other.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    This is all getting very confusing now. I will try to answer all the posts in one:

     

    @Imstarryeyed: Thanks for the kudos!

    @gorfcadet: I will look at the techniques and see which ones already are supported and which ones can be supported. Do you know which ones of those work on a real Baby Pac-Man machine?

    @PacManPlus: I don't know what to say here... in principle I have no objections, but somehow it seems to me like you don't want me to finish my work on the pinball part, but to give it back to you right now so you can include your stuff and demo it. Is that what you want?

    Actually, I just started implementing the upper ball, but this is a bit more involved... I think I could do it by the end of the week if nothing else comes in between. Then it would probably take another week or so to clean up the code and properly comment it in order to prevent Bob from dropping dead on the floor if he sees my code... and after that, he could start doing his changes, and implementing the things that should be in the Youtube demo... so it would surely take some more weeks to get this point, unless we take some shortcuts by, for instance, not implementing the upper ball. What do you think would be the right way to go on with this?

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    Now here is another small update. I haven't changed the flipper behavior because it seems correct to me. However, the ball now takes out each target it hits, and if it hits one, it comes back down at full speed while it still gets slowed down to half speed if it hits the wall behind the targets. The targets that have been taken out never come back up though... I'll leave that part to Bob since it's not part of the ball physics, as well as adding the proper game logic tied to the targets such as scoring and advancing the lights.

     

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 3

  16. Posted

    @Swami:

     

    Thank you for the video. What it shows, in my eyes, is physically correct, though one could argue if the ball is supposed to bounce off in that way on a real pinball machine or if its bouncing should be somewhat dampened by that rubber. In this case, however, I would need a different deflection matrix for that part. Is there a video showing how a real Baby Pac-Man machine behaves if somebody does that trick? I do admit, though, that the ball is generally a bit "bouncy" since the engine actually doesn't know the concept of rolling, so everytime you see the ball rolling, it's actually bouncing in small steps.

     

    @Imstarryeyed: I'll see what I can do about the targets. This, however, means I would have to do a small part of the logic which Bob actually intended to do, which is taking down the targets if hit by the ball. I need to do that because afterwards the upper ball will be implemented, and it can only be hit if the target in the way is cleared.

     

     

    Okay, I shot this slow-mo vid of it. If this looks normal to you, then maybe it is normal for this game and I'm just being anal. I'm used to seeing the ball stay in contact with the flipper in pinball games.

     

    Edit: The first event is right at the beginning, then it seems dead for a while, but second event starts at 46 seconds.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    I think I can do that with the targets... at the moment, the targets aren't implemented at all, the ball just hits the upper wall behind the targets, and there it loses half its speed. How does it behave in reality if it hits the wall behind a target that's down? Does it also come down that quickly then or does that only happen if it hits a target that's up? I could implement it so that if the ball hits a target that's up, it gets deflected at full speed (as it's the case with the bumpers' main surface). Do you think it would be correct this way?

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    Here are my times for this week (October 15th through 21st)...

     

    sorry, I didn't really play anything this week. The question is, did I? I mean, I was working on Baby Pac Man for the Atari 7800, and I'm constantly testing it. The question is when that testing becomes playing as the test object (the pinball part) becomes more and more playable. As of now, it's pretty much playable, only the upper ball is missing and some fine tuning is needed, and there's no scoring and the rollovers and targets aren't working, as does the return to the maze part. So I'd still call it "testing" instead of "playing", thus no times for this week.

    • Like 6

  20. Posted

    OK, let's get back to business... I've got another update for you, but I will also adress some points and questions...

     

    @imstarryeyed:

     

    About the hole... I know that the posts next to it aren't really there, and this is not really easy to fix since the graphics design of the table is limited by the tile layout. There are certain things that could be done to reduce the "guide area" leading to the hole with only minimal work on the tiles...

    1. The lower extent of the "guide" could be reduced by about 8 pixels, that is, it could end a bit higher

    2. The space above the hole could be reduced by about 3-4 pixels by making the blue area above it end that much lower. Also, the surface on this part could be changed from a straight horizontal to a slight diagonal so that it would deflect the ball a bit outwards, away from the hole. Don't know if that would help much though..

     

    Do the lights on the drain also blink immediately after having left the maze? According to a Youtube video, after leaving the maze part the screen says "Use right flipper to put ball in play", so I thought you have to eject the ball by hand every time. Or does it auto-eject again after the first unsuccessful run? Anyway, this is currently incorrectly implemented since you have to push down instead of the right flipper button.

     

    I did play real pinball machines (I even had three toy pinball tables, the first of which I attempted to build myself), and I think I also played Baby Pac-Man when it was put up in the arcade, but that was back in 1982 or 1983.

     

    @Swami:

     

     

    The bouncing off of the ball coming from the right side was due to unequal programming. It basically bounced off from the continuing of the line you see disappearing below the flippers, and it even did so in a wrong angle (corresponding to the angle of the lane leading to the flipper next to it instead of the slightly steeper angle below the flippers).

     

    The ball appears on top after draining due to a programming bug... there's already a glitch when the ball is still just fully visible on the lower end of the screen (which extends a bit further than the actual picture of the pinball table). There seems to be something wrong with the way the ball coordinates are translated to the display on those lower lines, but I didn't really investigate that one yet since it's 7800-specific.

     

    That being said, I prepared another update which contains quite a few bug fixes and also improvements based on your feedback:

    - Fixed the "hanging" of the ball on various objects (most notably the right saucer and the target area)

    - Fixed a bug where at one position the ball fell through the left flipper (which was introduced in the last version by the "stop zone").

    - The ball is now called "drained" when it touches the lower line of the screen instead of bouncing back quite often

    - The hole now behaves a bit nastier in that it sometimes deflects the ball if it's not being hit straight on, which makes it a bit harder to hit

    - The flippers now take the ball more upwards and less to the left/right, which makes it hit the center targets more often and the hole/curve area less often

    - The ball speed after having been shot out of the upper holes has increased by about 25-50% (it's now 1.5 through 2.5 pixels per frame instead of 1 through 2 pixels).

     

    I think the physics now work pretty well, and I didn't see any major issues where the ball does something very unexpected... what do you think?

     

    Still to do is mainly the upper ball, and then the proper reactions to the spinners, rollovers and holes together with sound and scoring, at which point Bob will probably take over again (unless something very catastrophic happens)...

     

    BabyPac.A78

     

    • Like 3

  21. Posted

     

    Any feedback would be appreciated, since I know nothing about this one beyond what Kurt wrote. What versions of Windows are required?

    From the documentation of Visual PinMAME:

     

    "Visual PinMAME is a Windows COM object, and as far as we know will only work on Win9x,NT,2000,XP computers."

     

    I think it's a similar affair with Visual Pinball... the version I have was done in 2013, but there are tables included which were already made back in 2002.

    • Like 3

  22. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch

    @Imstarryeyed: Thank you for your explanation! If you look at the way the ball is released from the holes in my version, do you think I've got it roughly right?

     

    As for the ramp trick: What do you mean by timing? What does the player have to do for this to work on a real machine? In Visual PinMAME, all there is to do is, if you spot a ball coming down the side lanes fast, you hold up both flippers and wait for the ball to cross the ramp. Do you have to do more on a real machine?

     

    @Slidelman: The transition back from the pinball segment to the maze isn't implemented yet, so you can't return once you're in the pinball segment. I'm concentrating on the physics now, and I want to get this right before anything else like scoring, rules and return to the maze are done.

     

    @Defender_2600: OK, here's another update... I specifically tried to address the issue you described, the ball now should come to a complete stop in the correct position. ;-) Do you think it feel natural enough?

     

    Oh, and I think the ball now also goes around the curves on the lower left and right sides a bit more smoothly than before. That's all for this update though, since it already took hours to get the ball stopping right (actually, I defined a whole new object called "stop zone" for that).

     

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 4

  23. Posted

    Swami, thanks again for the feedback! I've now played around with the flippers quite a bit, and I think I fixed most of their odd behaviors. It should now be possible to catch the ball with the right flipper much like you would on a real pinball machine, and of course the ball doesn't go upwards against gravity anymore. The additional sounds are only there for debugging purposes to tell me which part of the flipper routine the ball triggered... no sound means it's on the straight part, a "dum" means it's on the tip where it rolls off, and if the dying sound is heard, it means that the ball has been deflected vertically from the edge of a flipper. ;-)

     

    Here's the new update... I didn't fix anything else than the flippers this time around though. What do you think of it?

     

     

    BabyPac.A78

    • Like 4

  24. Posted

    @Imstarryeyed: Thank you for investigating! What I'm also wondering about is the behavior of the holes... as far as I know, there are three of them, one of the bottom and two on the upper half of the playfield, and they will shoot out the ball at the start of each pinball session, or immediately after entering them if no power pellet was earned for that side. What I wonder about is how much variance there is in where and how fast they shoot the ball, i.e. which ranges are possible and what gets hit by the ball coming from the hole. In my last build I tried to reduce the variance to get closer to what the videos show, but I'm not sure if this is actually accurate.

     

    Also, there is a trick I often do in the Visual PinMAME version of Baby Pac Man... if the ball comes down the "tunnel" or "fruit" lane at high speed (after having gone through the upper curve); I often activate both flippers forming a "ramp" of sorts causing the ball to go down the lane, over the flipper ramp and up the other lane far enough to sometimes hit the rollover on the opposite side so that another "tunnel" or "fruit" gets earned (on the way to advance the center arrows heading for another extra baby). Is this trick possible on the real thing as well, or does it not work there?

  25. Posted

    Here are my times for modern games for this week (October 8th through 14th):

     

    Windows / Visual PinMAME:

    Baby Pac Man - 66 min.

     

    I didn't play very much this week because I'm still hard at work on the Atari 7800 version of Baby Pac Man. I played the version of it on Visual PinMAME, which is a bit difficult to describe and to file, so I'm not sure if it's actually eligible here or if it's a classic game instead... to explain, there's a PC program for Windows called Visual Pinball which is a similar to a modern version of Pinball Construction Kit. There are various tables for it, and it also has a function to pair with another program, Visual PinMAME, whose job it is to run the original ROM's of pinball machines and connect them to the virtual table. So the table for Baby Pac Man has been recreated in Visual Pinball, but it runs the original ROM, so if you play the maze part, it's pretty much arcade perfect. Don't know how to file this... but I think I played and named this one before somewhere in the last 10 years... possibly when there was no tracker for modern games yet.

    • Like 4
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