KC Munchkin

[PAC-MAN-RED]

*UPDATE*

 

One death animation frame changed to a more frightened I'm-gonna-die! look.

The Munchers Up and Down frames modified to add missing antennae.

Changes to the 2nd frame of animation for the Munchkin.

 

[timdu]

Also (in 2008) here on AA "atari2600land" Chris began a port of KC MUNCHKIN to the 2600 utilizing BATARI BASIC on the Atari 2600.

 

When I was fiddling around and tinkering with BATARI BASIC, I found looking at Chris' code to be helpful in understanding how

he accomplished the playfield and making KC move etc.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/133394-kc-munchkin/?hl=%2Bkc+%2Bmunchkin&do=findComment&comment=2414172

 

Ports are great, but there's nothing like the real thing. I still like to pop in my KC MUNCHKIN cartridge into my Odyssey² console

and it seems like I am magically teleported back to being a 14 year old again back in 1981, basking in the greatness of this game!

 

 

Tim

[Mr SQL]

Cool thread! Looking forward to seeing KC hit the 7800

 

Great KC inspired port Tim! KC was also my favourite O2 game, inspired the KC character in Dodge It Panoramic Adventure for the 2600.

[Bakasama]

*UPDATE*

 

One death animation frame changed to a more frightened I'm-gonna-die! look.

The Munchers Up and Down frames modified to add missing antennae.

Changes to the 2nd frame of animation for the Munchkin.

 

That looks nice but it not scared enough for me. Maybe you could change the eyes a bit. Also, I was wondering if you can add an inbetween frames when the character is moving. If you're going to update the character designs might as well update the animation frames.

[Stun Runner 87]

This game reminds me more of Mouse Trap2600 than Pacman....

 

Ive never owned an O2 so i havnt played this game, but it looks fun....

I hope this game is completed. Would be a great addition to the 7800.

 

PMR is appreciated for his efforts.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Stun Runner 87

[Jinks]

Whos KC anyways? Kentucky Chicken?

[darthkur]

Really looking forward to this. An updated KC would be awesome.

[PAC-MAN-RED]

*UPDATE*

 

An even more scared look for the Munchkin death animation.

The Munchkin is now 4 frames instead of just 2 frames.

Slight colour modification to the Down facing Muncher.

 

 

 

[ZylonBane]

I hope this port also includes KC's Crazy Chase, as KC Munchkin by itself wasn't a terribly interesting game. It was actually kind of annoying, when it got to the point in each level where you're chasing that last dot. Crazy Chase, on the other hand, had more original play mechanics and was one of the very few O2 games that would have been difficult if not impossible to do well on the 2600.

 

Whos KC anyways? Kentucky Chicken?

Wikipedia is your friend:

In North America for the Odyssey² it was called K.C. Munchkin!, an inside reference to then president of Philips Consumer Electronics Kenneth C. Menkin.

[Jaynz]

Zylon > Other than getting this done eventually, I'm making no promises. This is a learning endeavor for me, to get me back into this level of coding after being absent from it longer than some of the posters here have been ALIVE. And on that note...

 

Day 1: Build 0.00

It's not so much that ASM is really hard so much as that it's finicky and exacting. To do ASM for any system you pretty much need an "instructions guide", and while reading Bob's code helps quite a bit, it's not doing a whole lot to get me started. Sadly, the links from AtariAge to 'getting started' sites are mostly dead - long dead, in fact. I couldn't find much in explanatory materials to get this puppy going. Okay, fine, I'm really just looking into the 6502, which is new to me (having largely done 6803 and 6809 code in the far distant past)... so I go off to look up some 2600 information just to get started. Dead links. Dead links EVERYWHERE, including from AtariAge. Nothing like playing links to links to links to dead code as your favorite in browser game. I have ordered a couple of 6502 books, though, but they just ain't here yet...

The next step is the obvious, grab Bob's PacMan code and start looking over it in more detail. This isn't an IDEAL solution, but hopefully I can get a little bit out of it to get the first successful build of anything. Optionally, are there any of these old development sites that actually work? Even the forums here kinda skip that whole "what you need in a bare-bones 7800 app" step...

[ZylonBane]

It might actually be a good idea to prototype in bAtari Basic. You could examine the intermediate assembly code that it generates to get a handle on how 6502s do things, and the TIA sound hardware. Then move on from that to tackle the 7800's video hardware.

Edited January 6, 2014 by ZylonBane

[R.Cade]

I understand the legal system is corrupt in some cases, but how on earth did Atari get an injunction against Magnavox for this? It's not Pac-Man at all... There were tons of games where you had to "eat dots" for all systems.

 

It really does feel more like Mousetrap than Pac-Man...

EDIT: I read through the case. It seems that it was awarded based on the assumption that the "average person would believe it to be Pac-Man".

Edited January 6, 2014 by R.Cade

[tep392]

A lot of good references on www.6502.org.

 

http://www.6502.org/tutorials/6502opcodes.html

[+Trebor]

This may help in providing at least an overview... https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-programming

[Jaynz]

I understand the legal system is corrupt in some cases, but how on earth did Atari get an injunction against Magnavox for this? It's not Pac-Man at all... There were tons of games where you had to "eat dots" for all systems.

It didn't take much. Remember that IP law for video games was in warm jello at the time, so a judge that sees something as 'close enough' could easily find for Atari. Also, remember that Atari wasn't suing over the arcade version of Pac-Man, but for the Atari 2600 version, where there are a bit more visual similarities. That doesn't make it a correct finding, of course, but it was easier to argue that Magnavox had cloned Atari's specific implementation of the game, which is all that they had ownership of anyway.

 

It might actually be a good idea to prototype in bAtari Basic.

Oh, I'll get it. This is just the first day I've had time to put to this and was surprised at all the dead links on AtariAge for the old resources. I can largely still read assembly, so it's not a lost cause... just going to be a bit of a hill to climb for a little bit. That's one reason that I chose a relatively easy, but still worthwhile, game.

[Jaynz]

Day 1: Build 0.01

Ah, a black screen never looked so good. This is my first successful build of A7800 code. It does, NOTHING! Well, that's not true, it gets the header and footer right along with Atari's start-up procedure. It successful detects as a A78 cart and doesn't cause anything to explode or crash. This may be meaningless to a lot of people on this forum, but this is a huge first step for me.

 

Making the Maze Maker: Okay, one big feature for the O2 version of the game is the inclusion of the maze editor. I would like to include this eventually but it would need to use the keypad in the secondary port for it to work. It wouldn't save, either, though the use of the HSC may work around this - haven't decided if that's a good way to go, but I'm way off from worrying about it now.

 

Krazy Chase: I'm putting this in the 'maybe' category for now. It's probably small enough to fit snugly, but there isn't as many resource overlaps as you would initially think. There's also VERY precious little information on the game out there, and the O2 emulators don't seem to have it right.

 

Voice: Okay, far, far off, this is an issue I'm going to have to tackle. Apparently both games can use the voice add-on for the O2. Sadly, I can't find examples of it actually being used anywhere and the emulators out for the O2 don't have the add-on working yet. If anyone has an idea what's included here, please post up!

[ZylonBane]

Making the Maze Maker: Okay, one big feature for the O2 version of the game is the inclusion of the maze editor. I would like to include this eventually but it would need to use the keypad in the secondary port for it to work. It wouldn't save, either, though the use of the HSC may work around this - haven't decided if that's a good way to go, but I'm way off from worrying about it now.

The KC maze is so chunky that you could probably bitpack it into a fairly short alphanumeric string.

[Jaynz]

It's just a set of on-off bits. (7x9x2)-4 positions that are editable, so that's just 120 bits. The borders add another 16 (I think, I'll recount later), bringing the whole map to 136 bits. So that's just 16 raw characters. Making it alpha-numeric puts it at 64 characters per map. Pretty easily done, really. Still going to have to use the Atari Keypad in the right slot to get it to work, though.

[ZylonBane]

If it's 120 bits per playfield, Xxencoding should give a full representation in only 20 characters. I forget if the editor allows removing border segments, so those may or may not need to be stored as well.

Edited January 6, 2014 by ZylonBane

[R.Cade]

It didn't take much. Remember that IP law for video games was in warm jello at the time, so a judge that sees something as 'close enough' could easily find for Atari. Also, remember that Atari wasn't suing over the arcade version of Pac-Man, but for the Atari 2600 version, where there are a bit more visual similarities. That doesn't make it a correct finding, of course, but it was easier to argue that Magnavox had cloned Atari's specific implementation of the game, which is all that they had ownership of anyway.

 

 

But, KC Munchkin came out before Atari Pac-Man...

Edited January 7, 2014 by R.Cade

[Jaynz]

But, KC Munchkin came out before Atari Pac-Man...

Which, from Atari's point of view, was part of the problem. Yeah, it would mean that it was impossible for Magnabox to rip off the Atari, but Atari made the claim that they had the legitimate license. And, again, there's no way the case would have been settled the same way NOW, but this was 1980 and most judges had never SEEN Atari games, much less knew anything about the industry.

[PAC-MAN-RED]

Krazy Chase: I'm putting this in the 'maybe' category for now. It's probably small enough to fit snugly, but there isn't as many resource overlaps as you would initially think. There's also VERY precious little information on the game out there, and the O2 emulators don't seem to have it right.

 

Voice: Okay, far, far off, this is an issue I'm going to have to tackle. Apparently both games can use the voice add-on for the O2. Sadly, I can't find examples of it actually being used anywhere and the emulators out for the O2 don't have the add-on working yet. If anyone has an idea what's included here, please post up!

 

I'm using the O2EM emulator with the sound samples and Krazy Chase sounds awesome. The Krazy Chase manual states the voice enhancement but the KC Munchkin manual doesn't.

 

http://o2em.sourceforge.net/

[desiv]

Voice: Okay, far, far off, this is an issue I'm going to have to tackle. Apparently both games can use the voice add-on for the O2. Sadly, I can't find examples of it actually being used anywhere and the emulators out for the O2 don't have the add-on working yet. If anyone has an idea what's included here, please post up!

I don't remember Voice on KC Munchkin..

I'll go downstairs and check...

 

There's always the Atarivox for voice support for games..

 

D'oh.. My little TV downstairs died, and I can't easily hook up my O2 to the other RV in the house.

Time to composite mod my O2.. (I have a 1084s monitor I can use when it's composite)

So, probably not tonight..

 

desiv

Edited January 7, 2014 by desiv

[Devas]

"K.C. Munchkin!" doesn't include synthesized speech, so if you decide not to add "K.C's Krazy Chase!" , you won't have to worry about it. I think the latter can't be done without in-game speech: listening to "The Voice" shouting is part of the whole experience ("Watch out!", "Run!", "Hahahahaha, incredible!"). I would love to see both games in one cart (like Frenzy).

[Jaynz]

"K.C. Munchkin!" doesn't include synthesized speech, so if you decide not to add "K.C's Krazy Chase!" , you won't have to worry about it. I think the latter can't be done without in-game speech: listening to "The Voice" shouting is part of the whole experience ("Watch out!", "Run!", "Hahahahaha, incredible!"). I would love to see both games in one cart (like Frenzy).

I'm thinking a lot of the articles I'm seeing are pretty conflated. If I get the expertise to do this (again, I've got a LONG way to go and a LOT to learn) I'll consider the voice - but in game voices are tricky. If I use the 2nd port for the keypad, though, for map editing, then the AtariVox is going to be out of the question.

 

I also recently "saved a marriage" by effectively giving my 7800 to a friend (wife was a huge classic gamer fan, and this was a perfect anniversary gift... and I'm a big ass sap) so I wouldn't be able to test the AtariVox without emulation somehow, or to replace the 7800 in the short term. This is still pretty far down the road, though. I've got to get KC to show up on the screen, first!