Kurt_Woloch Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 OK, thanks for the feedback, that's what I'm looking for. Yup, the scoring for the pinball part isn't implemented yet. As for the spread between flippers, the table was designed by Bob (with some help probably) and it would be difficult for me to try to change it. What I can change, however, is the collision detection on the flippers. Actually, I'm a bit unsure how to properly calculate the boost the flippers give to the ball... I know it's supposed to go the more to the side the closer the ball is to the edge of the flippers, and that doesn't seem to work really well so far. Anyway, here's another update. I've tweaked some things. Based on your feedback I closely looked at the collision map and I made it more generous regarding the flippers... I think there's now only one or two pixel columns in the middle where neither of the flippers is able to reach the ball. I also fixed the right bumper, the right upper curve and the right wall of the playfield, though there's yet some work to be done around the right saucer. I also capped the speed the flippers are able to give to the ball, this should also improve the handling a bit. What do you think about this version? BabyPac.A78 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 When I have designed the graphics / animation of the flippers, I thought the ball was 8 pixels wide, therefore I left 10 pixels of _minimum_ width between the flippers. Currently the ball is 7 pixels wide (odd number), however I do not think it's a significant difference. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 Thank you for continuing to work on this! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 Based on your feedback I closely looked at the collision map and I made it more generous regarding the flippers... IMHO, it seems too generous now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted October 12, 2018 Share Posted October 12, 2018 IMHO, it seems too generous now... Thats what she said. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted October 13, 2018 Share Posted October 13, 2018 Thanks to everybody helping to continue this hybrid videogame pinball! I never thought about having both in just a videogame. Remembering back to playing this as a teenager, who also played pinball, the pinball was fast and hard to keep in play due to it being a small square space! I’ve played the pinball in the last post and that’s already way beyond acceptible! Fine tuning the pinball program will just be adding to an already great game! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted October 13, 2018 Share Posted October 13, 2018 OK, thanks for the feedback, that's what I'm looking for. Yup, the scoring for the pinball part isn't implemented yet. As for the spread between flippers, the table was designed by Bob (with some help probably) and it would be difficult for me to try to change it. What I can change, however, is the collision detection on the flippers. Actually, I'm a bit unsure how to properly calculate the boost the flippers give to the ball... I know it's supposed to go the more to the side the closer the ball is to the edge of the flippers, and that doesn't seem to work really well so far. Anyway, here's another update. I've tweaked some things. Based on your feedback I closely looked at the collision map and I made it more generous regarding the flippers... I think there's now only one or two pixel columns in the middle where neither of the flippers is able to reach the ball. I also fixed the right bumper, the right upper curve and the right wall of the playfield, though there's yet some work to be done around the right saucer. I also capped the speed the flippers are able to give to the ball, this should also improve the handling a bit. What do you think about this version? BabyPac.A78 Amazing work! This getting pretty close. Ball seems to stick to the left flipper and right flipper cannot seem to get the ball to go any more left than straight up. sometime there is a fatal delay in the right flipper moving (delay did not happen with another joystick), but the kinetics of the ball and flippers are looking pretty good 90+% of the time. I would guess that the flipper collision space near the center should be about half way between your original setting and the current setting. Edited (italics new) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted October 13, 2018 Share Posted October 13, 2018 Just my observation of owning a Baby Pac man.. For anyone who has not played Baby much, one thing you will get lots and lots and lots of... hitting the center Blue target and the ball going straight down the center.. This happens soooo often its scary.. the game has a tendency, since its a small playfield, for the ball to really be fast most of the time.. there is a strategy to the actual flippers on the machine but I don't want to spoil it here so.. Spoiler below warning Spoiler below in White text.. Highlight to see The flippers in Baby Pacman are really interesting.. the games tends to act certain ways.... if you hit the ball with the middle part of the flipper you will hit the center field targets and quite often the blue one.. quite often at the highest speed... that blue one will almost always drain the ball down the center, that blue target usually needs to be hit by the side to not drain the ball. The sweet spot on Baby is the edge or tip of the flipper.. if you hit the ball with the end of the flipper it will often go into those every desirable park your ball areas to go back up the pacsulator once you have earned at least one power pellet. If you hit the ball closer to the butt of the flipper you will often get a softer ball that often goes anywhere from targets area or sometimes the outer lanes to upgrade the speed of the tunnels or upgrade to the next fruit. Hitting the top flip flop ball for an instant power pellet does happen with some frequency, in fact I will say scores more pellets than spelling pacman on the drop targets, but you have to hit that ball pretty hard and right square center or it just wont work.. That shot happens with the center of the flipper too, so there is a risk to hitting center... but any new player will be hitting center all of the time and losing the pinball really fast... a lot.. ha ha.. One more last observation when the ball shoots out of the center for play and it does not hit or score any points at all, it will shoot out again.. and again.. and again.. until at least some points are scored.. that is why that blue target drains so fast, dead center shot, scored points and down the drain.. ha ha I am packing my machine up to storage soon, but if you have any questions about how the pinball field plays please let me know and I will boot up the machine and check it out or make you a video. Of course if you were to add a little randomness to this game play as well, I am sure you will create something really great! OK that turned out to be longer than I thought.. I hope these observations are a little helpful.. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted October 14, 2018 Share Posted October 14, 2018 (edited) Thank you for the feedback. Just to address some of the points: @Defender_2600 + Jinks: Yes, it was probably too generous. @Swami: There's no such thing as a simple "setting" for the collision detection... in the first version I was assuming that the flippers were always ending at the same column. I amended that for the second version, but now it was basically assumed that the lower two flipper positions were ending at the same column as the 3rd one counted from the bottom (which extends the farthest and has the smallest distance between the flippers). I've amended it again now so that if the flippers really are at that position, they do deflect the ball, but this only happens for one frame... on the other frames, they don't extend that far. You're correct about the right flipper inconsistency, which actually was a label mismatch in the code on my part. @Imstarryeyed: Thank you very much for your feedback! I'd have one specific question for you... if you hold the flippers in the up position so that the ball slowly rolls towards their upper end, how fast does it actually roll? I.e. how long does it take from the middle of the flipper until it comes to a stop because it also hits the ramp to the side of it? So... here's another update. I amended the collision map for the flippers again, as well as fixing the ball sticking to the flippers and the inconsistent behavior of the right flipper. I've also tried to bring the flipper behavior closer to what Imstarryeyed described in his spoiler. The right saucer should also work better now, though there do seem to be some glitches still, especially that the ball under some circumstances sticks to the "sharp edge" of the right saucer (left and down from the "1"). I will try to fix these in the next days. Can you find any others? Other than that, I think the physics should be pretty much complete, except for the upper ball which is one big challenge left. What do you think about this update in general? Is the flipper behavior better now? BabyPac.A78 Edited October 14, 2018 by Kurt_Woloch 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 Just my observation of owning a Baby Pac man.. For anyone who has not played Baby much, one thing you will get lots and lots and lots of... hitting the center Blue target and the ball going straight down the center.. This happens soooo often its scary.. the game has a tendency, since its a small playfield, for the ball to really be fast most of the time.. there is a strategy to the actual flippers on the machine but I don't want to spoil it here so.. Spoiler below warning Spoiler below in White normal text.. Highlight Hit "show" button to see. The flippers in Baby Pacman are really interesting.. the games tends to act certain ways.... if you hit the ball with the middle part of the flipper you will hit the center field targets and quite often the blue one.. quite often at the highest speed... that blue one will almost always drain the ball down the center, that blue target usually needs to be hit by the side to not drain the ball. The sweet spot on Baby is the edge or tip of the flipper.. if you hit the ball with the end of the flipper it will often go into those every desirable park your ball areas to go back up the pacsulator once you have earned at least one power pellet. If you hit the ball closer to the butt of the flipper you will often get a softer ball that often goes anywhere from targets area or sometimes the outer lanes to upgrade the speed of the tunnels or upgrade to the next fruit. Hitting the top flip flop ball for an instant power pellet does happen with some frequency, in fact I will say scores more pellets than spelling pacman on the drop targets, but you have to hit that ball pretty hard and right square center or it just wont work.. That shot happens with the center of the flipper too, so there is a risk to hitting center... but any new player will be hitting center all of the time and losing the pinball really fast... a lot.. ha ha.. One more last observation when the ball shoots out of the center for play and it does not hit or score any points at all, it will shoot out again.. and again.. and again.. until at least some points are scored.. that is why that blue target drains so fast, dead center shot, scored points and down the drain.. ha ha I am packing my machine up to storage soon, but if you have any questions about how the pinball field plays please let me know and I will boot up the machine and check it out or make you a video. Of course if you were to add a little randomness to this game play as well, I am sure you will create something really great! OK that turned out to be longer than I thought.. I hope these observations are a little helpful.. Fixed that for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 Thanks Kosmic Stardust for the fix I could not figure out how to do that. Kurt I will boot that issue up for you tomorrow. Let me know if there address any others you would like to see as well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 @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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 @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? About the only two small things I notice now is with the flippers: 1) It is reasonably easy to catch the ball with the left flipper, but it is much more difficult to catch it with the right flipper. When I do catch the ball with the right flipper, it moves up the flipper from a standstill, against gravity, and will roll over the tip of flipper. 2) Sometimes I think the ball enters into the same space as the left flipper, but that may be part of the flipper graphical effect and not real. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 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 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Defender_2600 Posted October 15, 2018 Share Posted October 15, 2018 Always better! Just a note, the ball constantly trembles in this position (instead it should stop) : 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlidellMan Posted October 16, 2018 Share Posted October 16, 2018 I liked it, but it got locked in the pinball segments when both parts are chosen. Now I see why Bob gave up on it, though not for the same reasons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 (edited) @Kurt Sorry about the delay in response, I had to get to the machine in storage... Q1: ".. if you hold the flippers in the up position so that the ball slowly rolls towards their upper end, how fast does it actually roll? I.e. how long does it take from the middle of the flipper until it comes to a stop because it also hits the ramp to the side of it?" A1: It takes 1/2 second or so for the ball to slowly slowly roll from top of the flipper to the butt of the flipper.. Q2: "... 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." A1: Yes there are 3 areas, 2 at the top where you "park" the ball that let you go back to playing Video Mode Pac Man.. and a bottom drain.. When you enter pinball the ball shoots automatically from the center bottom drain and is shot left every time. If the ball was "parked" on the top holes, it will release from there once you start pinball.. The speed of the ball when they are released from these areas is consistent for the most part, it takes a 1/3 to 1/2 of a second for the ball to be released and to be near your flippers. Of course this will depend on the quality of your coils that kick the ball, but in the ideal kept machine it is about that fast. That trick about using the flippers for a ramp to cross to the other side and hitting the sensor for either the other fruit or tunnel does indeed happen on a real machine. The ball has to be moving very fast for this to happen and you have to have really good timing but it can be done, but is not something that easily happens too often. I hope these help you out... good luck on your programming.. Edited October 17, 2018 by imstarryeyed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurt_Woloch Posted October 17, 2018 Share Posted October 17, 2018 (edited) @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 Edited October 17, 2018 by Kurt_Woloch 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 @Kurt Your ejecting of the balls from the 2 top parks is very good.. I played it over and over again and I think you got the eject direction right. It seems to dump the ball into the correct positions, I would just speed up the rate the ball once it shoots it out.. on a Baby machine, once a ball is launched from one of the 2 parks, it is fast.. I would say if you can speed up the ball speed 25 - 40% once it is launched you might be in the right area of speed. (may have to play with it to tune that one just right) I also noticed 2 other details. I played the 7800 version for a while and I noticed I was able to hit the park areas really easily. On the arcade Baby the top plastic over the hole is mounted to the play field with 2 posts with rubber rings on them.. Those 2 pesky posts will reflect 80% of your shots from going into the park area. On the 7800 the bottom part of the park areas seems to have a flat area (the plastics with the cherry and the number 1) that seems to be acting as a guide for the ball to the hole. I was able to use this guide to the hole a lot, which resulted in me hitting that park area a lot more times then you would ever on the arcade. I don't know if 2 small dots or poles can be added or if your programming logic could require that to hit the park hole a dead perfect or maybe just a tighter shot but that would most likely fix that from being so easy to hit. I realize this might be a tough problem but I did want to at least bring it up to you and support whatever you do or do not decide to do. When playing the 7800 version I noticed that I did not hit the center targets very often, it seems the physics favor the giant X pattern of either hitting the park hole or going to the fruit / tunnel upgrade lanes. If possible can you reduce that from a giant X to maybe a smaller more narrow X? A more narrow X pattern in my opinion will hit the center targets with a lot more frequency and possibly the top flip flop ball. The hitting of those middle targets is what keeps players on their toes as once you hit one, that ball comes jetting down towards your flippers or even the drain at the bottom.. the 3 center targets with the blue one being the meanest, almost always reflect your ball to the drain if they are hit straight forward.. those targets really need to be hit from a ball going up and sideways across the field to prevent them from draining. Even the best players hit those guys straight on and have to deal with a ball that needs to be nudged or hit by the tip of the flipper just to keep it alive. I love the work you have done on the ball going into play from the drain, it has a nice randomness effect with sometimes be perfectly launched to allow your flipper to reach it and others out of reach, the real machine for whatever reason likes to do that every so often too.. I did notice that I had to launch the ball but in the machine the lights on the drain blink and automatically launch the ball and if it only hits that rubber (which is not a score-able rubber) and drains it will just blink and pop out again and again until you hit the ball and score some points. In reference to the ramp trick, I see what you mean about timing, I tried it a few times and while it does not happen often due to ball speed it is not a timing thing like I mistaken said, my brain was thinking one thing and typing another, sorry about the mislead.. Your work is amazing and it is really starting to come together in the pinball area, I am just amazed on how you are actually doing this by not even having or maybe even have played a real machine.. astounding! As usual please let me know if I can be of any more help.. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 @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 This is looking really, REALLY sharp. My only questions at this point are 1) why does the ball usually bounce out of the drain when it enters from the right rolling fast down the right flipper (but not enough to bounce off the left flipper), but not when doing so from the left, and what is it bouncing against? It sound like maybe this happens sometimes on the actual machine, according to Imstarryeyed, but it seems to happen really frequently here, and only when moving right to left. 2) small thing: when the ball enters the drain for good, why does it appear up at the top near the other ball? Very nice work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted October 18, 2018 Author Share Posted October 18, 2018 (edited) Hi guys. I just hope you all can forgive me for the on-line 'breakdowns' I've been having. These past few years have been absolutely hell for me, coming to a head recently, and I am actually in therapy now. It is helping somewhat. I didn't realize how low my self-esteem / self-worth has reached, and how the things that you don't even realize affect it. That being said, I've been in talks with Kurt, and he's done a phenomenal job with the pinball section. He has agreed to revert the source code back to me once he's done so we can a) combine our changes (I've freed up more ROM space) and b) I can try and learn what he's done. He has put quite a few comments in the code so I can follow it, and I will re-read it over and over until I 'get' it. I can then work on the rest of the game (i.e. the pinball 'rules' - earning energizers, etc.) Once again, I apologize - please bear with me. Bob Edited October 18, 2018 by PacManPlus 46 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 Hi guys. I just hope you all can forgive me for the on-line 'breakdowns' I've been having. These past few years have been absolutely hell for me, coming to a head recently, and I am actually in therapy now. It is helping somewhat. I didn't realize how low my self-esteem / self-worth has reached, and how the things that you don't even realize affect it. That being said, I've been in talks with Kurt, and he's done a phenomenal job with the pinball section. He has agreed to revert the source code back to me once he's done so we can a) combine our changes (I've freed up more ROM space) and b) I can try and learn what he's done. He has put quite a few comments in the code so I can follow it, and I will re-read it over and over until I 'get' it. I can then work on the rest of the game (i.e. the pinball 'rules' - earning energizers, etc.) Once again, I apologize - please bear with me. Bob Bob, no apology necessary. This is a hobby that should be fun - you've created alot of fun for alot of people on this forum. We all have bad days, weeks, months. You did the right thing by stepping back and working on yourself. The world wont end if Baby Pac Man on the 7800 never gets to completion so its all good. Make sure you take care of yourself first - thats the most important game to finish 15 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TrekMD Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 Hey Bob! Glad to have you back and glad to see the team effort continue. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 No need to apologise man. Glad you are taking time to take care of yourself as that is all that really matters. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted October 18, 2018 Share Posted October 18, 2018 Welcome back, Bob! The 7800 world is a better place because of you! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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