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Ms.Hack (edit of Hack'Em)


Nukey Shay

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New (working) demo of this. Still needs quite a bit of work, and it's pretty buggy.

 

It looks cool so far. It's nice seeing a translation of Ms. Pac-Man closer to the original, though the official 2600 one is quite nice too. Is Ms. Hack 2 going to end up like Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man Plus or stay as a Pac-Man Plus style Ms. Pac-Man with the boards from the original Ms. Pac?

Edited by BrianC
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Is Ms. Hack 2 going to end up like Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man Plus or stay as a Pac-Man Plus style Ms. Pac-Man with the boards from the original Ms. Pac?

 

That's the problem. Arcade Ms.Pac Plus (aka Ms.Pac Attack) operates the same way as the "non-plus" game...it just offers different mazes (even the hard-coded fruit movement tables are unchanged, I'd gather). In this game, the opposite is true. No additional maze sets, but the Pac-Man Plus features are present (tho still broken at the moment).

 

 

Here's a playable version that (hopefully) doesn't have any major bugs (besides the "plus" deal).

It includes arcade-ish fruit patterns...and even an attract mode demo game 8)

MsHack.zip

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Is Ms. Hack 2 going to end up like Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man Plus or stay as a Pac-Man Plus style Ms. Pac-Man with the boards from the original Ms. Pac?

 

That's the problem. Arcade Ms.Pac Plus (aka Ms.Pac Attack) operates the same way as the "non-plus" game...it just offers different mazes (even the hard-coded fruit movement tables are unchanged, I'd gather). In this game, the opposite is true. No additional maze sets, but the Pac-Man Plus features are present (tho still broken at the moment).

 

Edit: It looks like I was wrong. Ms. Pac-Attack has the same mazes, but in a different order. Still, the Ms. Pac-Man Plus rom available on the net certainly isn't the "Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man Plus" I remember from arcades. The game I played in arcades had similar bonus items to Pac-Man Plus and the leaf ghosts like Pac-Man Plus. I don't recall specifics on behavior, but I remember "Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man" being a bit harder than the original Ms. Pac-Man.

Edited by BrianC
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  • 2 weeks later...

I wasn't aware that they were different games...I always thought that "Ms. PacMan Plus" was just another name for "Ms. Pac Attack"? :P :?

 

 

Latest version (actually, a color experiment...since I'm not sure that I care for the extra flicker). It works well in some cases (like the salted pretzel...or the jaggy blue monster mouths)...but dreadful in most.

MsHack.zip

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I wasn't aware that they were different games...I always thought that "Ms. PacMan Plus" was just another name for "Ms. Pac Attack"? :P :?

 

Edit: I read a bit more about the Ms. Pac-Attack hack. It apparantly has the same mazes as Ms. Pac-Man Plus, but in a different order (and the different order is what confused me). Still, the version of Ms. Pac-Man Plus that I have seen available for download certainly isn't the same as the one I played in arcades.

 

If I remember correctly, the game I played had the words "exciting new" on the marquee. The Marquee at klov doesn't match the one I remember. The maze in the screen is the same as I remember, but the real game had a soda instead of a cherry in the bottom right. I don't remember specifics on behavior, but this "Exciting New Ms. Pac-Man" I played ran about the same speed as Pac-Man Plus, had the leaf ghosts, and had bonus items that went through walls (and, if I remember correctly, they moved in really crazy patterns).

 

Klov page for Ms. Pac-Man Plus:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=8783

 

According to a couple posts in these topics, and what I remember from arcades, the MAME Ms. Pac-Man Plus rom is definatly a fake and the game I played in arcades is Ms. Pac Plus:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...=68415&st=0

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70127

 

Interesting how Ms. Pac-Man Plus seems to be a bootleg and how at least two other hacks, Ms. Pac-Attack, and Ms. Pac-Man Champion Edition share the same boards. Interesting how Champion Edition has hearts instead of dots.

Edited by BrianC
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I have a feeling that the "feature" of fruits that pass through walls was just a bug due to the preset table patterns never being edited to follow the new maze layouts ;)

 

Yeah, I read that too. I also read that the ghost patterns weren't edited correctly for the new mazes either. I do like how there is a Ms. Attack mode in Ms. Hack now, though.

 

Have you played the Lynx or SG/NES(Tengen)/SNES Ms. Pac-Man? They include mazes not in the arcade game. The SG/NES(Tengen)/SNES version has scrolling mazes and small mazes along with the normal sized ones. The SG/NES/SNES Ms. Pac-Man also has two player simulateous co-op and competitive modes.

Edited by BrianC
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Hi:

 

I actually worked on a 'Ms. Pac-Man Plus' hack for the arcade (with Dave Widel - he did most of the work, I changed the graphics and added the incremented point value table for the 3200 point monster) It basically is now Ms. Pac-Man, with the exact same differences that Pac-Man Plus did to Pac-Man (I even changed the maze colors as well). :) I've never seen it in the arcades that way...

 

Nukey, there is one issue with Ms. Hack - it doesn't work for me on the real thing! (a 7800). I get the title screen, and then it just goes black. :(

 

BTW, I absolutely *love* what you did to get muticolored sprites, they look SOOOO good now. What is it every other frame you display one shape, and then the other in the alternating frame? What a great idea - you are a genius!

 

Bob

Edited by PacManPlus
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Hi:

 

I actually worked on a 'Ms. Pac-Man Plus' hack for the arcade (with Dave Widel - he did most of the work, I changed the graphics and added the incremented point value table for the 3200 point monster) It basically is now Ms. Pac-Man, with the exact same differences that Pac-Man Plus did to Pac-Man (I even changed the maze colors as well). :) I've never seen it in the arcades that way...

 

Nukey, there is one issue with Ms. Hack - it doesn't work for me on the real thing! (a 7800). I get the title screen, and then it just goes black. :(

 

BTW, I absolutely *love* what you did to get muticolored sprites, they look SOOOO good now. What is it every other frame you display one shape, and then the other in the alternating frame? What a great idea - you are a genius!

 

Bob

 

I agree with you Bob, Nukey is a genius at the Atari VCS, I looked at Ms. Hackem with a red bow, and couldn't believe my eyes, I was feeling like how did he do this that is suppose to be impossible to have a red bow her entire top of her head should be red how did he do that!!!?

Now I know how he did it, wow Nukey showing over and over again he doesn't know the word impossible he will find a way if it can be done, Amazing!!!!

 

Wade

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I have a feeling that the "feature" of fruits that pass through walls was just a bug due to the preset table patterns never being edited to follow the new maze layouts ;)

 

 

Yes, they didn't bother to fix them. I have a program I wrote around here somewhere in VB to let you make new paths, but it's not very user friendly. There's 4 entrance paths, 1 center path(around the box) and then 4 exit paths. The paths a re just a string of 2bits to indicate direction.

 

Ms pac plus in mame is definately fake, I know who did it too. I hate to pull games from mame though, especially one that's been in for so many years that there are real boards floating around with those roms now, I just marked it in the source.

 

I picked up a ms pac plus bootleg on a make trax board 8 years ago, unfortanetly a lot of the roms were bad. I did get 3/4 of the graphics though, so I have a pretty good idea what it was like.

 

A friend of mine found a "real" ms pac plus, I've played it, but I didn't get a chance to dump it before he got rid of it. The guy he sold it too converted it back to ms pac and doesn't know what he did with the conversion kit. :(

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Nukey, there is one issue with Ms. Hack - it doesn't work for me on the real thing! (a 7800). I get the title screen, and then it just goes black. :(

Still haven't nailed that problem...it's just the same old Hack'Em game, so I still haven't found what I did wrong :?

 

 

BTW, I absolutely *love* what you did to get muticolored sprites, they look SOOOO good now. What is it every other frame you display one shape, and then the other in the alternating frame?

Originally, it was. It worked OK for the player sprite...which is always displayed. However, all the other sprites are multiplexed at powers of 2 (like every 2nd frame...or every 4th...etc). So using the same method wouldn't work. You'd end up with monster faces floating in midair, for example. So I "fudged" the flicker coding to use every 3rd frame instead. This adds a bit more flicker to the player sprite, but it fixes the above problem. A real genius would know how to fix the flicker coding to avoid the problem entirely.

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  • 10 months later...

I have to say that this is awesome. I love to see this ancient hardware doing things I would have NEVER imagined before. This is an excellent port of Ms. Pac-Man. I still remember getting my first copy of 2600 Pac-Man. Mom was making hamburgers that night. We were eating in the living room, and my parents let me turn the Atari on so that I could watch it while I ate. I remember staring at it, wondering what the huge flashing things were in the center box. (I still played it like crazy, listening to "Pac-Man Fever" for sound effects!) I wonder how my life would have changed if I would have popped this game in? I am kind of glad it happened the way it did, else I probably wouldn't have the same appreciation.

 

GREAT WORK!!!

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  • 1 year later...

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