Pacman4K

[Cybergoth]

Probably should ask before you go hacking someone's homebrew...

I did.Thanks

 

You sounded as if you didn't. I actually wanted to post a similar comment than Bob, but forgot about it then

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

Breakpack sent me a PM asking it was okay to do this and I was okay with it. I meant to post in the thread but forgot...sorry.

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

A number of you have played Pacman4K and I'd like to hear from you. What would you like to see in an expanded version? And don't say a Pac-man Collection. I'm not interested in doing anything like that.

 

I haven't spent a lot of time on the expanded version because the challenge for me was to get a faithful version done in 4K.

 

I'm not saying I'll do all suggestions but I'd like to hear what you would like to see. So far we have...

1) Variable flicker

2) Title screen

3) Opening music

4) Intermissions

5) Vertical speed to match horizontal speed

 

Anything else? What about game play? Are you okay with how it plays?

[sandmountainslim]

Dennis,

Are you going to be able to sell this in cart form in the store or would you want to do that?

WP

[Breakpack]

What about stereo sound effects in some way,for ones with stereo 2600 mods?

[espire8]

Just as a note - the ghosts don't slow down in the tunnels while blue in the arcade version, either, but that's because the blue ghosts always go at the same speed that the non-blue ghosts go through the tunnels.

 

This looks and plays really great anyway. (Though, to be quite honest, I rather prefer the 5200-style ghosts of the original kernal demo)

 

=DS=

 

 

This is a great version of Pac-Man for the 2600. Amazing what can be done in 4k. A lot of nice touches.

 

Here's my 2 cents:

 

1. My vote is for eyes like the 8-bit/5200 version. There aren't enough pixels available to make a lot of details here. It ends up taking away more than it adds. In this case, "less is more".

 

2. There seems to be a slight difference in speed when moving side-to-side as compared to up-and-down. This tends to take away from the controllability. It becomes more difficult to judge your movement in relationship to the ghosts.

 

Ok,I edited the ghosts back to the '5200' look.I am partial to this look as well.It gives the 2600 'Atari 800 power' feel to it

 

Based on the latest bin posted by DEBRO

 

Debro, first of all let me tell you that this is such dream come true for me as much as it is for you and everyone else who has an appreciation for this old cherished platform.

 

Now, I have a question and I don't know if this was addressed earlier in this tread, so sorry if it was -but anyway, you said you're trying to get a faithful version done,.. my question, which version? is this 2600 version of pac-man suppose to be a port of the 800/5200 version or of the original arcade? If it's the arcade then I want to make a comparison of the ghosts next to it's arcade counter part.

The top row is what seems to be clamoured for as far as the look of the ghosts in breakpack's hacked example.

The third row is alot closer to the arcade, even with the limitation of a single color sprite. Whoever designed it did an admirable job and it is more appropriate to the arcade version.

As for the reason I think others are suggesting 5200 ghosts, it's the maze you presently have that do resemble that of the 5200 and I know that can't be helped (I think it looks fantastic regardless) but I believe this is why some individuals are feeling the pull to opt for the 5200 ghosts, and I can understand that. It's sort of the same kind of attachment and clamour most people had for the "ducks" in 2600 adventure that have influenced the look of the dragons in 5200 Adv II. Let me not confuse the issue here, as it boils down to which version you want to be faithful to, and if it be the arcade, I suggest you stick with what you presently have.

Of course, you can do whatever you please, but my vote goes to the arcade style ghosts.

 

On another note, I found your pac-man character sprite as you now have in place as in the top row don't exactly match the arcade. I have an eye for these kind of details and I doctored it by cutting back the size of the jaw in each frame as seen in the very bottom row giving it the same width as the ghosts (7 pixels wide). It also helps give a more round look as oppose to being oval.

Furthermore, the look of the dying pac animation don't match up as well to the arcade either. I did'nt have time to make a compare but I can fix that if you want me to.

 

Finally, as for the game play, I think the horizontal pac and ghost speed is fine as you have it now. It seems slow on the first maze but the speed picks up noticeably on the second and fourth mazes if anyone can get that far!

I think players are just judging the first maze speed as if the whole game played that way. They ought to patient enough to play the later levels -which is faster.

Also, because of the maze being streched out, the speed is a little faster on the vertical, but at least the dots that are lined up closer together horizontaly are eaten at the same pace as those that are slightly further apart verticaly, and I think it should be kept that way. If the vertical and horizonal speed were adjusted to be the same, the sound f/x of dots being eaten will be out of sync and that would bother me because that also affects the pace of dots eaten as well. That means pac will be moving at a little faster pace than the ghosts while eating dots on the horizonal than on the vertical. And as for control, it's great as is for all the levels I got to so far. Presently that's not a problem even as the game play gradualy picks up in speed. However, if pacman runs the same speed up and down, left and right, know that the faster pac-man runs, the less time and control the player has, so what happens if pac is made to run as fast as in the vertical in all directions? Well, there will be less time to navigate turns from off the horizonal (especialy in the later faster levels) in an already tight maze design, and that affects the whole game play alot. Players need to think about this.

I really wish folks would take to account and understand the adverse consequences to the gameplay before suggesting such changes.

 

P.S. I'd also like to see an arcade style title screen, opening music, a more arcade realistic dot-munching sound f/x and all three intremissions w/ the backgound music too. Also, a closer to the arcade sound f/x of pac-man dying and dissappearing with that memorable "pop-oboink" sound would be nice as well.

 

..and may I add, the highest score acheived to be displayed at the game over screen? everything else so far is really looking fantastic, can't wait for the 8k, keep at it!

[espire8]

Here's a hack with the arcade style ghosts back in place in addition to a more cleaned up pac-man animation with all frames more closely matching that of the arcade including the disappearing pacman death sequence. Doing the hack was faster and easier than creating a compare pic.

pacman4k_new_death_ani.bin

I also made the ghost's eyes that travel back to the ghost pen more defined, though it caused a small graphical bug during pac's death departure. Hope it can be remedied.

 

As a note, while I were play testing, it seems to me the slow tempo of pacman's mouth movement while navigating the maze seems to create that illusion of a slow traveling player sprite. Maybe speeding up pac's mouth animation will help deter that slow moving feeling?

 

Dennis, one more suggestion for the 8k, is a two-player alternating game possible?

[Breakpack]

Another thing I'd like to mention: when Pac-man is heading to another direction,if you tap that other direction as opposed to holding the direction to move,Pac-Man will stop,but will turn in the direction tapped.This is of course if Pac-Man is heading for a direction that contains a stop point (a wall).

[+SpiceWare]

I think your list pretty much sums it up.

[+Nathan Strum]

I agree, the list so far is a good one. A couple of suggestions:

More of a "wakka-wakka" sound when eating dots, if possible. Not sure how close the 2600 can get to the original arcade sounds, but the more of those that mimic the original, the better.

I'd also like to see points displayed where you eat a monster or fruit. There's something very gratifying about seeing that "1600" after nailing a fourth monster.

[NE146]

Another thing I'd like to mention: when Pac-man is heading to another direction,if you tap that other direction as opposed to holding the direction to move,Pac-Man will stop,but will turn in the direction tapped.This is of course if Pac-Man is heading for a direction that contains a stop point (a wall).

 

If that gets in there that would be amazing That's an arcade behavior I dont think I've ever seen put into ANY home version of Pacman (or MsPac).. and yet it's a part of the whole Pacman arcade game to me..

[Nukey Shay]

The 4k version already has visible points displayed for eating monsters

 

 

Regarding the expanded version:

Possibly a two-player option? I dropped the ball on this one in the hack, since it's totally doable when switching players on a per-level basis instead of per-life. Pretty much the only requirement is the 5 nybbles needed to hold the other score (which is already there if you involve a high-score function for single-player mode), and the 2 bits to hold the alternate number of reserve lives.

Maybe some difficulty settings?

Also, eating more than a single monster on a frame results in only the higher point value being shown. The arcade game pauses for each one. A possible stumbling block to this solution is collision detection.

 

 

More difficult suggestions would be trying to use missile sprite(s) for the energizers (so they could be larger than the dots), or shrinking the width of the center walls by using the ball sprite instead (done in Mouse Trap).

[+Nathan Strum]

The 4k version already has visible points displayed for eating monsters

I must have an older binary then.

[mos6507]

If it stays one player I would explore using AtariVox for both more accurate sound and high score saves.

[Lord Helmet]

It would be cool to have an "attract mode" in addition to the title screen already suggested.

[DEBRO]

Hi there,

 

Thanks for the suggestions.

Are you going to be able to sell this in cart form in the store or would you want to do that?

At this point I'm not sure what will be come of this. I just feel like I've left some of you hanging by stopping at my 4K limit.

Debro, first of all let me tell you that this is such dream come true for me as much as it is for you and everyone else who has an appreciation for this old cherished platform.

It's nice to fulfill a childhood dream. I like the game as it is but I thought it would be nice to hear from the communityand get input from you as to what you would like to see. I'll do my best to do them.

Now, I have a question and I don't know if this was addressed earlier in this tread, so sorry if it was -but anyway, you said you're trying to get a faithful version done,.. my question, which version? is this 2600 version of pac-man suppose to be a port of the 800/5200 version or of the original arcade? If it's the arcade then I want to make a comparison of the ghosts next to it's arcade counter part.

My intent has always been to create a version that was faithful to the arcade. My rendention of the monster behavoir from the arcade is in this version...well, except for Clyde. He moves randomly through the maze so I could get all I wanted in my 4K limit.

 

The monsters were done by ZylonBane. I like their look but I know a number of you like the look of the A8/5200 monsters. That was my first approach until I got his sprites.

On another note, I found your pac-man character sprite as you now have in place as in the top row don't exactly match the arcade. I have an eye for these kind of details and I doctored it by cutting back the size of the jaw in each frame as seen in the very bottom row giving it the same width as the ghosts (7 pixels wide). It also helps give a more round look as oppose to being oval.

Thanks, I'll plug it in and play around with it.

Furthermore, the look of the dying pac animation don't match up as well to the arcade either. I did'nt have time to make a compare but I can fix that if you want me to.

Sure, thanks. My sprites were the best I could do from Eduardo's sprites from his Pac-man Collection. IIRC his version has 11 frames of animation and so did I.

Finally, as for the game play, I think the horizontal pac and ghost speed is fine as you have it now. It seems slow on the first maze but the speed picks up noticeably on the second and fourth mazes if anyone can get that far!

So does the game move too slow to begin with? The speeds come from the 7800 version of Ms. Pac-man but increased slightly based on other suggestions. I'd like to look at my "Cruise Elroy" speed too. Sometimes it seems Blinky moves too fast and get be unfair at times.

As a note, while I were play testing, it seems to me the slow tempo of pacman's mouth movement while navigating the maze seems to create that illusion of a slow traveling player sprite. Maybe speeding up pac's mouth animation will help deter that slow moving feeling?

I might can speed that up a bit. I slowed down the animation because of the 20Hz flicker.

Dennis, one more suggestion for the 8k, is a two-player alternating game possible?

Don't know about this one. I sould seriously have to look into RAM usage. As it stands if I did a 2 player game I would need to use SARA to hold the alternating dot array. Nukey Shay may be able to come up with some RAM tricks for that

Another thing I'd like to mention: when Pac-man is heading to another direction,if you tap that other direction as opposed to holding the direction to move,Pac-Man will stop,but will turn in the direction tapped.This is of course if Pac-Man is heading for a direction that contains a stop point (a wall).

I'll add it to the list as a nice to have.

More of a "wakka-wakka" sound when eating dots, if possible. Not sure how close the 2600 can get to the original arcade sounds, but the more of those that mimic the original, the better.

I'll do what I can. Maybe I can look into Bob's Pac-man Collection for his dot eating sound

I'd also like to see points displayed where you eat a monster or fruit. There's something very gratifying about seeing that "1600" after nailing a fourth monster.

The monster points are displayed now in the latest 4K version. I was excited to find the space needed to get them in. I've added the points for the fruit in the expanded version I'm playing with now too. I was concerned that the number wouldn't be recognizable in 8 bits but they came out fine.

Possibly a two-player option?

I will be getting in touch with you on that

Also, eating more than a single monster on a frame results in only the higher point value being shown. The arcade game pauses for each one. A possible stumbling block to this solution is collision detection.

I didn't know that I do pause for a bit after eating a monster. I'll check into that.

More difficult suggestions would be trying to use missile sprite(s) for the energizers (so they could be larger than the dots),

But then the energizers would be the color of the sprite.

or shrinking the width of the center walls by using the ball sprite instead (done in Mouse Trap).

I like that...I think it would look sweet but then I'd have to redo my maze logic and all. Still worth looking into.

If it stays one player I would explore using AtariVox for both more accurate sound and high score saves.

Hmmm....

It would be cool to have an "attract mode" in addition to the title screen already suggested.

What do you mean by "attract mode"? Do you mean a demo mode? I was planning on doing the monster names on the title screen but I don't know if I want to do that now. 48 pixels is not a lot of room.

 

Thank you all for all your suggestions. I'll keep you all posted on the progress.

[+Nathan Strum]

More difficult suggestions would be trying to use missile sprite(s) for the energizers (so they could be larger than the dots),

But then the energizers would be the color of the sprite.

Could you make an energizer that's two lines high, instead of one? Or does that make all of the dots in those rows two lines high also? Could they be padded out using the ball somehow?

 

If it stays one player I would explore using AtariVox for both more accurate sound and high score saves.

Hmmm....

Could you use the AtariVox for two-player support? Having it save and load the maze patterns and scores between players?

[espire8]

Could you use the AtariVox for two-player support? Having it save and load the maze patterns and scores between players?

Two players can alternate turns using the same left-joystick port with the AtariVox on the right port. I think it should work.

[Wanderlust]

Fired this one up as part of my "Hey, it's Pac-Man's birthday!" celebration. Just wanted to kick in my 2 cents...

 

The new ghost sprites are bloody adorable. The eyes make them look so cute, I almost feel guilty eating them.

 

On a bug tracking note... I'm not sure if I could reproduce it if asked, but I found that if I left Pac-Man waiting near the lower right energizer, hoping for a ghost to come by for a bite, the red ghost would get caught in a loop circling the ghost box. Not sure why that happened.

 

EDIT: Just tried it again... this time the red and pink ghosts got caught.

Edited October 12, 2007 by Wanderlust

[wrenchien]

Fired this one up as part of my "Hey, it's Pac-Man's birthday!" celebration. Just wanted to kick in my 2 cents...

 

The new ghost sprites are bloody adorable. The eyes make them look so cute, I almost feel guilty eating them.

 

On a bug tracking note... I'm not sure if I could reproduce it if asked, but I found that if I left Pac-Man waiting near the lower right energizer, hoping for a ghost to come by for a bite, the red ghost would get caught in a loop circling the ghost box. Not sure why that happened.

 

EDIT: Just tried it again... this time the red and pink ghosts got caught.

 

any screen pictures available yet?

[newcoleco]

Congratulations to Dennis Debro! The winner of the minigame compo 2007 in the 4k cathegory.

[ScottHuggins]

Congratulations, DEBRO!

 

Daniel, is your avatar a real screen shot of a CV image?

 

 

Congratulations to Dennis Debro! The winner of the minigame compo 2007 in the 4k cathegory.

[Cybergoth]

Well deserved, you're the best, Dennis!

[Big Player]

Congratulations Dennis! Now all we need is this game on a cart.

[DEBRO]

Congratulations Dennis! Now all we need is this game on a cart.

Thanks guys. BTW, I've found 7 more bytes since I sent the game

 

I would have never gotten this into 4K if it hadn't been for members of [stella]. Those byte saving tricks like undocumented opcodes and skipDraw really helped in that area. So thank you [stella]!

 

There are others that contributed to this too...

 

Clay Halliwell for the monster graphics.

Ebivision for showing it could be done

John Champeau for testing and listening to ideas I bounced a lot of ideas off of John.

Kurt Howe for a last look at optimizations and for pushing me to get the monster point sprites in.

Rob Kudla for the siren sound.

Robert DeCrescenzo for testing, some sound data, and the Pac-man graphics.

Tony Wong for testing on his VCS.

 

As for getting this on cart, I'm really trying to get myself motivated to do this. The problem is I've been more interested in getting games into at most 4K. Going over that has never been an interest of mine. I've started it but I can't seem to get back to it lately. Maybe things will change after the first of the year.