imstarryeyed Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 Hey Bob that manual looks so colorful! I like the way its laid out.. Just a few tiny corrections if you have not found them yet.. Page 1: 4th Bullet point line.. " the monsters act like he do in the arcade. " Just change "he" to "they" Page 3: 3rd Paragraph .. " you will be spot a center arrow and awarded points" (the word spot is all over the actual arcade game manual and maybe confusing. I would suggest this instead.." this will spot (light up) the next center arrow and be awarded points." I figure just defining the term Spot once will help on its use later. Great job on explaining what just might be one of the most complicated arcade games to explain without being there or a video! You did a great job, wayyyy better than the actual arcade machine manual! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 5, 2019 Author Share Posted February 5, 2019 Thank you for the kind words, and for catching those errors. I have fixed them here... Baby Pac-Man Manual.pdf 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 5, 2019 Author Share Posted February 5, 2019 (edited) BTW, the background gradients are meant to match the maze colors (pages 1 & 6 are the maze one colors, pages 2 & 5 are maze two colors, and pages 3 & 4 are maze three colors). EDIT: found another typo. Page 1, bullet 4 - the word 'start' is missing: "In Video only mode, you always a maze with all energizers, and the fruit advances with each cleared maze". Need to fix that when I get home. Edited February 5, 2019 by PacManPlus 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 Possible grammar correction... Beginners might want to select 5, which the experts could start at 2. The default is 3. Perhaps this should be changed to "while" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Karl G Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 Great manual! I only found a couple of minor issues that haven't already been mentioned: (i.e. one or two players, the starting number of lives, etc.). This should be e.g. here instead of i.e. Also, "turns" and "lives" are used interchangeably in a way that might be confusing to some. I would personally stick with one term or the other. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 (edited) OK, Quality assurance here. (I'm doing that in my company as well from time to time... I'm a great tester!) I've read through the manual and found quite a few things I would improve. Since the list would be very long, I've attached a RTF version of it where I've marked my changes in color. Basically, the red color means a changed or inserted word or spelling, pink means that something in between the pink letters has been deleted, and blue means that something is unclear, but I'm unsure how to correct it. I've made it an RTF file so that you can use Wordpad (or ClearSwipe) to display it. This should be available on every Windows computer, and it still supports color. Some notes: It's not only turns or lives, there are more words used interchangeably for this... "extra baby", "turn", "lives", "balls" and "player". "Player", actually, is only used in the actual game where it says "Bonus player" at the end of the 3rd maze. You said you did that because there aren't the letters for "You win an extra baby", but even in the manual it says "You earn a bonus baby", not a "bonus player". I think "Bonus baby" on screen was proposed here before, and after reading the manual it's obvious to me that it should be "Bonus baby" on screen as well. The word "turns" actually is used if multiple players take turns playing the game, and this reminds me of the fact that it isn't mentioned how two-player mode works, especially when the players are supposed to take turns. If one "turn" also comprises the play time on any extra babies, then it does mean something else, though it doesn't explicitely say so in the manual. Oh, and it also doesn't mention that you can serve the ball again up to two (or three?) times if it hit nothing but the left saucer. In general, the term "baby" seems to be the best for me because the "babies" seem to be the "master clock" for lives in that a turn (or life) always ends on dying in the maze, while it doesn't end on draining a ball (unless in pinball only mode). The "number of lives" mainly refers to the setting in the title screen. Maybe it should be called there differently as well, e.g. "turns" or "babies", and renamed accordingly in the manual. About the copyright notice: You included the fact that it's sublicensed to Atari Corp. Did this licence ever expire? Or in other words, is it actually Atari which still owns the exclusive licence to port any Pac-Man game to home consoles (and maybe computers as well) on cartridges? If not, then what point does it make to mention this if you're not actually affiliated with Atari, so if you were to acquire a licence, you'd have to talk to Namco, not Atari (with Namco already having proved not to respond to such inquiries)? I'm not discussing the actual copyrights here, just the wording... as you may know, actually this game was put out by Bally Midway, who at the time had the rights to distribute Namco games in the USA, without Namco's approval, as in fact was Ms. Pac-Man (but that was at least based on Namco's Pac-Man hardware). I think Namco even revoked the rights from Bally Midway because they did that multiple times. The other corrections I did, I think, speak for themselves. But in general, I think it's a well made manual, very professional looking! Baby Pac Man Manual Quality control.rtf Edited February 5, 2019 by Kurt_Woloch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted February 5, 2019 Share Posted February 5, 2019 I wonder who submitted this to Wikipedia...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Pac-Man#Ports Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 5, 2019 Author Share Posted February 5, 2019 (edited) I wonder who submitted this to Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Pac-Man#Ports That would be me... Kurt- I made all of the changes in the RTF file. Thank you for that. I did the copyright notice the same way I did all of my 'Pac' related games. I have a feeling that is what is helping me not get a C&D from anyone. I did the 'Atari' copyright because when this game came out in 82, Atari did have the license to those characters and the game mechanic at that time. If I am thinking wrongly about this, someone let me know. I have replaced all occurrences of 'Turns' with Baby/Babies, and have replaced the in-game text as 'Bonus Baby' to be consistent. Edited February 5, 2019 by PacManPlus 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 6, 2019 Author Share Posted February 6, 2019 (edited) Updated manual. RC12 binaries to follow soon. Baby Pac-Man Manual.pdf Edited February 6, 2019 by PacManPlus 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 PacManPlus, Very nice manual. Thanks for mentioning me! I only offered suggestions. Now that the completion of this baby is in sight, I lovingly joke, “We now have reports of the successful birth of 7800 Baby Pac-Man! All involved are well, despite delivery nearly killing the parent.” We’re all proud of your beautiful new baby! -iesposta 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+darryl1970 Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 Updated manual. RC12 binaries to follow soon. Nice manual. I found a flyer that uses a lot of the common terminology for the day. "Energy Pills" should be "Energizers", if you want to be true to the time. Hope this is helpful. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+x=usr(1536) Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 Updated manual. RC12 binaries to follow soon. Very cool One thing I picked up on in the manual: Use of 'energizer' vs. 'power pill': there are three places (two on p.6 under 'Scoring' and one on p.2 under 'Playing the Game (Maze Mode)) where the energizers are referred to as power pills (though one entry on p.6 uses the term 'Energy Pill'). For the sake of consistency and accuracy, my suggestion would be that references to power pills be changed to energizers; this is what they are primarily referred to in the rest of the manual as well as what they were called on the instruction card on the original Pac-Man bezel. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 Shouldn't they be vitamins? 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 Looking all good my dude^_^ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 6, 2019 Author Share Posted February 6, 2019 (edited) Thanks, guys. Replaced everything with 'energizers' (well not everything, that would make for a weird manual). All references that state Power Pills and the like were changed to energizers. I have also added 'imstarryeyed' to the list of thanks both in the manual and in the game screen. It was a MAJOR oversight on my part and I am sorry. Everything will be posted soon; I'm actually working on something else that has bugged me for quite a while. I don't want to say what it is, because again, if it can't be done the way I want to get it done I may leave it. Edited February 6, 2019 by PacManPlus 14 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 (edited) Thank you for posting the flyer! I read through it, and I found an interesting point near the end where it says "Completing a maze will spot an arrow.". I wasn't aware of this rule, so I checked it in Visual PinMAME, and the original game indeed does that while the Atari 7800 version doesn't... unless it's been changed with the last release candidate which I forgot to download before trying it, but at least it doesn't say so in the manual. So... yet another difference to the arcade original. I guess this also means that you can earn a bonus baby at the end of a maze if all center arrows were already lit (or two if it's the third maze as well). But I also guess that in this case, the "extra baby" light in the pinball section gets lit so you can't earn another baby until you've lost one. Nice manual.I found a flyer that uses a lot of the common terminology for the day."Energy Pills" should be "Energizers", if you want to be true to the time.Hope this is helpful. Edited February 6, 2019 by Kurt_Woloch 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted February 6, 2019 Share Posted February 6, 2019 @Bob Thank you for the credit, it is an honor to work you and this team. I am so happy and proud I can help a tiny bit in making such a wonderful game that is very much needed and very close to my own heart! 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 7, 2019 Author Share Posted February 7, 2019 Hi guys. Ok, I was able to take care of the thing that was bugging me. The side tunnel. In the arcade, once the player or the monsters went out the side of a tunnel, there was a second (56 frames to be exact) before you / they would appear on the other side. This one had it show up immediately. I have changed that, and believe me, this was a big one. I had to make multiple changes to the movement, collision, bitmaps, and timing for this to work. I'm hoping I didn't break anything... Please note there is a SMALL chance you might pass a monster at the edges of the tunnel if you switch sides in the exact same frame as the monster. Should happen VERY infrequently, if at all. (This was always the case in the 7800 version). Also, I did a little trick at the edge of the maze - the objects disappear much more smoothly than before. Being that, in 320B, the characters are 4 bytes in length ($1C in the DL), I can add one as they move off the screen, reducing the width as they move. ...and yes, I did add the 'arrow spot' when you clear a board. BabyPac.A78 BabyPac.BIN Baby Pac-Man Manual.pdf 13 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gorfcadet Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Hi guys. Ok, I was able to take care of the thing that was bugging me. The side tunnel. In the arcade, once the player or the monsters went out the side of a tunnel, there was a second (56 frames to be exact) before you / they would appear on the other side. This one had it show up immediately. I have changed that, and believe me, this was a big one. I had to make multiple changes to the movement, collision, bitmaps, and timing for this to work. I'm hoping I didn't break anything... Please note there is a SMALL chance you might pass a monster at the edges of the tunnel if you switch sides in the exact same frame as the monster. Should happen VERY infrequently, if at all. (This was always the case in the 7800 version). Also, I did a little trick at the edge of the maze - the objects disappear much more smoothly than before. Being that, in 320B, the characters are 4 bytes in length ($1C in the DL), I can add one as they move off the screen, reducing the width as they move. ...and yes, I did add the 'arrow spot' when you clear a board. Can't wait to give you my money!!! I've been playing with my Saturn pad; I may have to hack a pad to have buttons one and two on L/R trigger locations. Congrats on another masterpiece! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Wow, Bob, that is quite the attention to detail! Glad you were able to figure out how to fix that! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 8, 2019 Author Share Posted February 8, 2019 (edited) Hold on guys... The Pacscalator has an issue. It crashes right after. Damn. I'll be back... EDIT - Ok, don't know why that suddenly changed, but I had to reduce the ending slide by two pixels. Weird. Probably has something to do with the side tunnel thing I did. RC12 attached. ...and thank you for the kind words... EDIT2 - Ok, one more time. Found another issue, this time with adding to the center arrows after clearing a board. BabyPac.A78 BabyPac.BIN Baby Pac-Man Manual.pdf Edited February 8, 2019 by PacManPlus 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Thank you for posting yet another release candidate. Nice changes, I think this also makes the tunnels a bit harder. Now for a bit of tunnel theory... I actually think it's not a certain number of frames it takes to reappear on the other side, but rather a certain distance travelled in the tunnel. I think this has to do with the numbers just wrapping around. You see, in the original Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man games by Namco / Bally, the maze is 28 characters wide, which is 224 pixels since a character is 8x8 pixels. Now I guess that the game just keeps incrementing or decrementing the position value which eventually overflows while in the tunnel. This means that there are 32 more pixels in the tunnel which are invisible (between the borders). Since Pac-Man is 14 pixels wide in the original version, there are a total of 18 possible positions in the tunnel where Pac-Man or a monster is invisible. Now Baby Pac-Man has got a different resolution due to Bally not using Namco hardware, but an off-the-shelf video chip, the TMS9918A or TMS9928A which has a resolution of 256x192 pixels (and monochrome sprites). It's basically the video chip from the TI-99/4A home computer which was also used in the Colecovision, Creativision and MSX systems.Only here it's used on an upright monitor, so the display is 256 pixels high and 192 pixels wide. If you wrap around the numbers in the tunnel like you did in the original game, that leaves 64 pixels in the tunnel which are invisible. So the 56 frames you see actually correspond to the time it takes to travel 64 pixels minus Baby's width through the tunnel, which sounds believable at a speed of a bit over 1 pixel per frame. And I guess it will be the same thing for the monsters. Now this logic falls apart on the 7800 version because there the maze is 256 instead of 192 pixels wide (in 320 mode) leaving no room in the tunnel which would be invisible. But since the position values are actually pixels in 160 mode, this corresponds to a maze width of 128 pixels. So to reproduce the tunnel length of the arcade machine, you would have to calculate 2/3 of 64 pixels which would be 42.67 pixels or roughly 43. I guess this wrapping around is also how the monsters sometimes block the tunnel entrance (at least in the original arcade version) because if Baby's farther apart than 128 pixels (which would be two thirds of the maze width in the original version), they "see" Baby on the other side and try to follow him to that place. At least that's my theory about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted February 8, 2019 Author Share Posted February 8, 2019 I think something is missing in these calculations, as I shortened it to 44, and it seemed WAY too short to be in the tunnel, almost like it was before. So I met it half-way. Seems to be better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arenafoot Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 What emulator does this run on? I've tried EMU7800 and it doesn't work on that one, and the A7800 emulator doesn't work on my Win7 PC. Just wondering if there is any way to emulate this without real hardware..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fluxit Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 It seems to run fine in MAME. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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