Pac-man Update for Atari 8-bit

[José Pereira]

I worked up the beginnings of a title screen last week. The artwork is derived from the original cabinet. I didn't use too many color changes, as I wanted to stick to the original simple color scheme. You're welcome to use it for your version if you like.

 

 

Looks nice MrFish, but I'm trying to go for arcade original, like this. No title needed. That would work nice on a cartridge label.

 

 

How about this?

 

 

 

 

Great, now there's no need for those stupid Blue on the Eyes.

 

Who said that wants Blue on the Eyes?

Oops!... I said that? O.k., I just want to have things close to the Arcade version ...

Now, new idea:

What about trying to have Eyes one pixel Black on the ghosts also during the game?

Edited December 10, 2011 by José Pereira

[+MrFish]

How about this?

 

 

 

What about trying to have Eyes one pixel Black on the ghosts also during the game?

 

Actually, I had already done this last week and sent it to Tep. Here you go though... with the arcade hi-res score and some ideas for the edibles as well.

 

 

 

Also, here's some slight changes to the Info screen. Fixed some errors in the hi-res lettering and changed the low-res "W" and "K" to be closer to the style of their hi-res counterparts.

 

Edited December 10, 2011 by MrFish

[tep392]

How about this?

 

 

 

What about trying to have Eyes one pixel Black on the ghosts also during the game?

 

Actually, I had already done this last week and sent it to Tep. Here you go though... with the arcade hi-res score and some ideas for the edibles as well.

 

 

 

Also, here's some slight changes to the Info screen. Fixed some errors in the hi-res lettering and changed the low-res "W" and "K" to be closer to the style of their hi-res counterparts.

 

 

I like the layout of the info screen and will be implementing your fruit in the near future, but the eyes are going to be a problem in gameplay. The monsters and pac are multiplexed, single color players and the eyes are done with the missiles. Each monster uses one 2 pixel wide missile at 4x width, so each missile pixel is as wide as 4 player pixels. It's basically a rectangle, as wide as the player, that sits behind the player and shows through the eyes. This is why I can't alter the outline of the monsters as you have. The eye color shows at the left and right edges. Doing what you have shown is going to take a major rewrite of the code and that is beyond the scope of this project.

 

I really appreciate your input though. I could still use some help refining the colors to better match the arcade game. Does anyone have a color chart program that I can run in hardware to evalute on my monitor? The colors in Atari800win don't look very accurate.

Edited December 11, 2011 by tep392

[José Pereira]

How about this?

 

 

 

What about trying to have Eyes one pixel Black on the ghosts also during the game?

 

Actually, I had already done this last week and sent it to Tep. Here you go though... with the arcade hi-res score and some ideas for the edibles as well.

 

 

 

Also, here's some slight changes to the Info screen. Fixed some errors in the hi-res lettering and changed the low-res "W" and "K" to be closer to the style of their hi-res counterparts.

 

 

I like the layout of the info screen and will be implementing your fruit in the near future, but the eyes are going to be a problem in gameplay. The monsters and pac are multiplexed, single color players and the eyes are done with the missiles. Each monster uses one 2 pixel wide missile at 4x width, so each missile pixel is as wide as 4 player pixels. It's basically a rectangle, as wide as the player, that sits behind the player and shows through the eyes. This is why I can't alter the outline of the monsters as you have. The eye color shows at the left and right edges. Doing what you have shown is going to take a major rewrite of the code and that is beyond the scope of this project.

 

I really appreciate your input though. I could still use some help refining the colors to better match the arcade game. Does anyone have a color chart program that I can run in hardware to evalute on my monitor? The colors in Atari800win don't look very accurate.

 

What an interesting use of the 4Missiles that at a first see I didn't guess where they are.

I was thinking that PF3 would be the Pac-Man Yellow as 5th Player 4Missiles joined. I didn't thought in running the Monitor.

Now I see, they put the Eyes lines one scanline down to be in the 8pixel ghosts part.

 

Interesting, PRIOR1 and 4Players above the 4Missiles (if they are 5th player) and all the PMs above all PFs.

Great idea and probably usefull to get something in future ideas, at least we can get, this way, 4 just hardware sprites in 2 colours (a down version of the 3colour Multicolour PMs but we double the nº of Players available).

Edited December 11, 2011 by José Pereira

[José Pereira]

Just a new idea now that I ran the Monitor:

PF2 it's (9,2) and used as the walls colour.

 

When the ghosts turn into dark luminance they still use P0,P1,P2,P3 but they get (9,2) same colour as the walls.

Why not have the luminance (... ,2) but the correspondant ghost dark luminance.

For example, you have the one as (3,6) it would be (3,2) and another one, lets say (1,6) would be (1,2) and so on.

This is the same the coder did but with the correspondant/appropriate darker luminance.

Edited December 11, 2011 by José Pereira

[+MrFish]

Actually, I had already done this last week and sent it to Tep. Here you go though... with the arcade hi-res score and some ideas for the edibles as well.

 

 

Also, here's some slight changes to the Info screen. Fixed some errors in the hi-res lettering and changed the low-res "W" and "K" to be closer to the style of their hi-res counterparts.

 

 

I like the layout of the info screen and will be implementing your fruit in the near future, but the eyes are going to be a problem in gameplay. The monsters and pac are multiplexed, single color players and the eyes are done with the missiles. Each monster uses one 2 pixel wide missile at 4x width, so each missile pixel is as wide as 4 player pixels. It's basically a rectangle, as wide as the player, that sits behind the player and shows through the eyes. This is why I can't alter the outline of the monsters as you have. The eye color shows at the left and right edges. Doing what you have shown is going to take a major rewrite of the code and that is beyond the scope of this project.

 

I really appreciate your input though. I could still use some help refining the colors to better match the arcade game. Does anyone have a color chart program that I can run in hardware to evalute on my monitor? The colors in Atari800win don't look very accurate.

 

Thanks. I put everything together pretty quickly, so there are some incongruities between the Info Screen and the Gameplay Screen -- namely the high-score text positioning. It shouldn't take too much effort to tweak it into shape.

 

@ Monsters Eyes:

I wasn't sure how they were achieving that exactly. It makes perfect sense why the eyes look the way they do, considering. They already look better than Atari Pac-Man, so it's still an improvement.

 

@ Colors:

I use the Xformer palette for NTSC colors in emulation. It's not accurate, but it's pretty close, at least in terms of the hues. I always hand tweak them on real hardware, and it's usually the brightness that needs adjusting. You should be able download a color chart from the A8 programming forum. I have one, but it seems to crash the machine after a few minutes some reason -- maybe a bad file.

 

The colors I used were geared strictly towards emulation. I can take a look at it on real hardware, and pass along my suggestions.

Edited December 11, 2011 by MrFish

[frogstar_robot]

I just played three levels on atari800 2.2.1 on an Ubuntu box. It played just fine with no graphical corruption here. The intermission worked well too. Atari800 has been actively developed over the last four or five years and it's core has diverged from Atari800Win.

 

I'll give Atari++ a try later.

[firestorm]

Please you can use this one colour chart, I compared emulators with real Pal Atari 800 and Pal 800xl and the most accurate is Altirra 1.9 with default Pal and using Pal quirks .

Colors.xex

[firestorm]

The problem with intermission after cleaning first board is only under Atari800win plus. On real hardware is OK.

[+MrFish]

There's a slight problem with the audio under a particular circumstance. When almost all of the dots have been eaten and the siren sound in the background goes up to it's highest pitch, if you eat a power pellet the siren sound will not change into the "eat the ghosts" sound, but will continue to play until at least one ghost has been eaten. At that point it will change to the proper "eat the ghosts" sound. I tested this on both hardware and emulation and the results are the same. Also, although I've usually only had one power pellet left when this happens, it has also happened with two power pellets left, as long as the siren sound is at it's highest pitch. This has happened since the first demo until the current one.

[Goochman]

There's a slight problem with the audio under a particular circumstance. When almost all of the dots have been eaten and the siren sound in the background goes up to it's highest pitch, if you eat a power pellet the siren sound will not change into the "eat the ghosts" sound, but will continue to play until at least one ghost has been eaten. At that point it will change to the proper "eat the ghosts" sound. I tested this on both hardware and emulation and the results are the same. Also, although I've usually only had one power pellet left when this happens, it has also happened with two power pellets left, as long as the siren sound is at it's highest pitch. This has happened since the first demo until the current one.

 

I noticed the same thing occurring multiple times under emulation

[tep392]

There's a slight problem with the audio under a particular circumstance. When almost all of the dots have been eaten and the siren sound in the background goes up to it's highest pitch, if you eat a power pellet the siren sound will not change into the "eat the ghosts" sound, but will continue to play until at least one ghost has been eaten. At that point it will change to the proper "eat the ghosts" sound. I tested this on both hardware and emulation and the results are the same. Also, although I've usually only had one power pellet left when this happens, it has also happened with two power pellets left, as long as the siren sound is at it's highest pitch. This has happened since the first demo until the current one.

 

I noticed the same thing occurring multiple times under emulation

 

Thanks! I found the problem and will correct it in the next update.

[+therealbountybob]

Just has a pac-man arcade session on my 800XL

some things I noted (apologies if these already mentioned / intended features) this is in no way any criticism, it's such a slick game, especially when you go motoring after the ghosts! managed about 360K on orange

 

on 2 player it locks up (blank screen) at the end of the go

no sound for eating power pills

slight delay when dying

slight delay when getting power pill (perhaps fixed delay time and variable dot time makes this noticeable on some levels) ?

game over text displays a tad too quickly

doesn't return to title screen after go

if the 3rd fruit is an orange. make it orange colour!

on baby bear level still slight ghost movement surge but fine to play - I know a few people who would really like this easier level so perhaps make it have 2/multiple screens with slight speed increase as cherry is a big step up.

some flickering when several of you on same line (when fruit on?)

+high score feature!

 

Tried various levels so may not have seen all intermissions:

1st intermisssion horizontal movement looks a bit jerky

2nd intermission snagg effect and snap looks good but afterwards not sure about piece on right

key and one previou intermissions were identical?

 

[fibrewire]

If I may make a statement about Mr Fish's 'Cabinet Artwork' used as a splash screen...

 

The cabinet is a HUGE part of the experience in attracting potential gamers for arcade machines, and short of a cardboard cutout that goes around the monitor... I think a splash screen is a great way to maintain the arcade version nostalgia factor. Yes, it only needs to display once when the machine is powered on.

 

If that cabinet art wasn't a huge factor in the experience, then why would MAME go through all the trouble of integrating cabinet art into the interface?

[+therealbountybob]

perhaps make it an optional pre loader / use it for attract mode / have ATR ver with it during loading ?

 

must say that some of the recent artwork (checkout silly venture 2k11), and title screens from games such as Ocean Detox are pretty amazing (esp using the extended screen height)

 

[tep392]

Just has a pac-man arcade session on my 800XL

some things I noted (apologies if these already mentioned / intended features) this is in no way any criticism, it's such a slick game, especially when you go motoring after the ghosts! managed about 360K on orange

 

on 2 player it locks up (blank screen) at the end of the go

no sound for eating power pills

slight delay when dying

slight delay when getting power pill (perhaps fixed delay time and variable dot time makes this noticeable on some levels) ?

game over text displays a tad too quickly

doesn't return to title screen after go

if the 3rd fruit is an orange. make it orange colour!

on baby bear level still slight ghost movement surge but fine to play - I know a few people who would really like this easier level so perhaps make it have 2/multiple screens with slight speed increase as cherry is a big step up.

some flickering when several of you on same line (when fruit on?)

+high score feature!

 

Tried various levels so may not have seen all intermissions:

1st intermisssion horizontal movement looks a bit jerky

2nd intermission snagg effect and snap looks good but afterwards not sure about piece on right

key and one previou intermissions were identical?

 

 

Thanks for the feedback. No offense taken as I appreciate the help finding bugs and any suggestions as well.

 

- I will look at delay and no sound (no wacka-wacka right?) for eating the energizer

 

- Color needs work as I stated earlier in the thread.

 

- I'll also add the splash screen if MrFish can whip up an executible for me. Good idea.

 

- Havn't seen any lockups on two player mode. I'll have to dig into that one.

 

- For the delay when Pac dies are you talking about when the monsters disapear and he's facing up with mouth open? This is the same sequence as in the arcade version. My timing may not be exactly the same though as I didn't try to measure it. I attached a short video of it running on MAME.

 

- Can't do anything about the flicker when more than four players are on the same line. It's inherent in how the engine works and I'm not going to make any major changes to it.

 

- 2nd intermission snag effect should look similar to the arcade as well. I have a little less resolution to work with so it won't be exact.

 

- The third intermission should repeat after if first occurs with the Galaxian level. Did it not?

 

- As for jerky movement I might be able to use smoother speeds on the 1st intermission if it doesn't through off the timing too much. I'll have to look at it. The jerkiness at some speeds is due to the fact that I can only move an integral number pixel at a time, at 50/60 hz, and the resolution is low. There are a wide range of speeds during gameplay and some are smoother than others. For example, you might have Pac moving at 1,1,1,1 and a monster moving at 1,1,1,2. The monster will look a little jerky because of the extra pixel moved every 4th frame. I will look at tweaking the intermission speeds a bit to try and minimize it. I won't touch the in game speeds because I wan't them identical to the arcade version so game play isn't affected.

MVI_0522.zip

[a8isa1]

I'm really enjoying this project. Thanks!

 

Question, will the final version fit back into a 16K ROM image? or will that be impossible?

[AtariGuru]

- I will look at delay and no sound (no wacka-wacka right?) for eating the energizer

 

 

I have not seen this problem on my 1200xl

[tep392]

I'm really enjoying this project. Thanks! Question, will the final version fit back into a 16K ROM image? or will that be impossible?

That was my original goal, but not for any particular reason. I was just looking at it as a challenge. I wanted this to be something Atari could have made with the standard 16k carts being used at the time. Adding the splash screen will push it well over 16k and require a cart with bank switching. My intention has always been to put this on a Maxflash cart so that I can save the high score, so going over 16k won't be a problem. I'll also make an xex available that will require a 48k machine to run. Edited December 14, 2011 by tep392

[+therealbountybob]

^{I meant no sound for eating the pill - maybe this is how it should be?!}

[firestorm]

So maybe it will be better off without splash screen

[a8isa1]

I'm really enjoying this project. Thanks! Question, will the final version fit back into a 16K ROM image? or will that be impossible?

That was my original goal, but not for any particular reason. I was just looking at it as a challenge. I wanted this to be something Atari could have made with the standard 16k carts being used at the time. Adding the splash screen will push it well over 16k and require a cart with bank switching. My intention has always been to put this on a Maxflash cart so that I can save the high score, so going over 16k won't be a problem. I'll also make an xex available that will require a 48k machine to run.

OK. I see.

 

Normally XEX files are what I prefer but it was fun to dust off an old homebrew cartridge and put your first image on it for a change.

[Bloodcat]

Project seems really cool! Its always nice to see classic games done better without any real cheating involved. Did folks just get better at programming, were tricks learned, or did THE MAN just rush things giving us more 2600 ET/Pac Man type things?

 

Makes a good system look better.

[tep392]

Just a new idea now that I ran the Monitor:

PF2 it's (9,2) and used as the walls colour.

 

When the ghosts turn into dark luminance they still use P0,P1,P2,P3 but they get (9,2) same colour as the walls.

Why not have the luminance (... ,2) but the correspondant ghost dark luminance.

For example, you have the one as (3,6) it would be (3,2) and another one, lets say (1,6) would be (1,2) and so on.

This is the same the coder did but with the correspondant/appropriate darker luminance.

I'm sorry Jose, but I'm struggling to understand your english. Are you suggesting that I change the luminance of the monsters to 2 when they are not in scatter (blue) mode? Who is "the coder"?

[José Pereira]

Just a new idea now that I ran the Monitor:

PF2 it's (9,2) and used as the walls colour.

 

When the ghosts turn into dark luminance they still use P0,P1,P2,P3 but they get (9,2) same colour as the walls.

Why not have the luminance (... ,2) but the correspondant ghost dark luminance.

For example, you have the one as (3,6) it would be (3,2) and another one, lets say (1,6) would be (1,2) and so on.

This is the same the coder did but with the correspondant/appropriate darker luminance.

I'm sorry Jose, but I'm struggling to understand your english. Are you suggesting that I change the luminance of the monsters to 2 when they are not in scatter (blue) mode? Who is "the coder"?

 

O.k. as you don't seem to understand I try again.

'Coder': the man that does the coding.

Walls are PF2 and their colour it's 8,2.

 

Each ghost it's a Player (P0->P3) and has it's own colour (Pink, red, yellow and Blue):

When you have the possibility to eat the ghosts then eachone is still using a Player (P0->P3) and they turn to darker.

It's here that their darker it's the same as the Walls PF2:

You would put the dark ghosts luminance in 2 or 4 or whatever you want but in the dark luminance of their colour (Pink ghost would be Dark pink, red into dark red and so on to the other two).

You're changing colour/luminance of the Players so why have them the same colour and luminance as the walls.

 

Now if you see other versions:

ARCADE: ghosts turn into a darker Blue but not the same luminance as the Walls:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uswzriFIf_k

MS PAC-MAN Atari 5200: ghosts turn into dark Blue but different from Walls colours:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRX1xjjhQkg

 

They are dark Blue but never the same as the Walls colours.

The ghosts be their colour in a darker luminance was an idea that I had in my gfxs conversion for the A8 version of Pac-Mania.

 

(P.s.- The 'coder' of the original version choose exactly the same Dark Blue that it's in the Walls when Atari has so many dark luminances and colours)

Edited December 15, 2011 by José Pereira