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New pacman for atari 2600


DINTAR816

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...And I think the design of the monsters could be improved, they look too blocky like PacMan4K's did.

I disagree. I think they are the best looking ghosts and best looking PacMan yet.

Praise and honor for making PacMan facing up not symmetrical, but more detailed! Great choices!

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If the game was expanded to 8k I would like to see the power pellets color fixed with an unwound kernel. If no expansion is going to take place I'd be glad to try and help create more room. I took a look yesterday and found 37 bytes that could be freed over the last posted version. That doesn't sound like much, but it is considering how well written and efficient the code is. In other words the program is well written so you have to fight to find every single free byte.

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If the game was expanded to 8k I would like to see the power pellets color fixed with an unwound kernel. If no expansion is going to take place I'd be glad to try and help create more room. I took a look yesterday and found 37 bytes that could be freed over the last posted version. That doesn't sound like much, but it is considering how well written and efficient the code is. In other words the program is well written so you have to fight to find every single free byte.

That makes 155 bytes free, or 3.78 percent!

Three and three-quarter percent sounds like a lot! :D

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I guess I'm outnumbered on the design of the monsters, maybe the eyes could be just a little larger like on the arcade version. They just look blocky and not cute enough.

 

As for speed I compared it to my Mame Puckman rom and the closest Dinar's version comes to the first speed of the Mame rom is starting on the apple stage. When the game was popular in the 80's I think a lot of operators in my area (NE Oklahoma) set their Pac-Man cabinets to the hardest speeds to get short games, so I'm so used to a speedy version. I bet a lot of them were probably redone Galaxian or Rally-X cabinets, and some even had the hack kits with the turbo button.

 

I'm just nickpicking little things here. This could released on cartridge the way it is now.

Edited by WildBillTX
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I guess I'm outnumbered on the design of the monsters, maybe the eyes could be just a little larger like on the arcade version. They just look blocky and not cute enough.

 

I heard that he's working on a version that will have all of the cuteness and excitement of this Pac-Man Cereal commercial:

 

youtu.be/O_ItcOaiMIE?t=4m26s

 

Every Atari 2600 box will even contain a packet of Pac-Man Cereal that has been replicated by Albert using a 3D Food Printer. :D

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Without reading through all of the posts I have found a few (bugs) . If they have already been mentioned I apologize . Also ... is there a way to clean up the loud static / ticking noise in the background ? Easier to hear when your not moving or eating (dots) .

 

 

I noticed that too, I was playing on real hardware.

 

 

I don't notice noise like that in other games. Just fired it up in Stella and it occurs there as well. I suspect a glitch in the routine that decodes the audio data..

Yes, it's a bug in the sound code, I fixed it. That was because the code wrote in "AUDFx" twice with 2 different values ​​due to an error. ;-)

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Without reading through all of the posts I have found a few (bugs) . If they have already been mentioned I apologize . Also ... is there a way to clean up the loud static / ticking noise in the background ? Easier to hear when your not moving or eating (dots) .

 

 

I noticed that too, I was playing on real hardware.

 

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If the game was expanded to 8k I would like to see the power pellets color fixed with an unwound kernel. If no expansion is going to take place I'd be glad to try and help create more room. I took a look yesterday and found 37 bytes that could be freed over the last posted version. That doesn't sound like much, but it is considering how well written and efficient the code is. In other words the program is well written so you have to fight to find every single free byte.

This may be difficult. The power pellets have blue tops and bottoms because the walls are blue and they share playfield graphics with pellets. The fact that the designer got solid outer walls is really amazing. There is no easy solution with the power pellets. Either power pellets look like ice cream sandwhiches or they have it the same height of regular pellets, only blinking like in Pacman 4k. Or a third option, make the gap in the walls 3 pixels tall so your pellets don't look like ice cream sandwiches. Third option would make the maze look terrible IMO.
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Yes, it's a bug in the sound code, I fixed it. That was because the code wrote in "AUDFx" twice with 2 different values ​​due to an error. ;-)

I wonder if thats what the issue is with some homebrews for the 7800 . Anyways did you address the issues with the dots disappearing before you eat them and the top ones not disappearing after you do eat them ?

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@everyone complaining about the speedup / lack thereof: The new version actually appears more balanced than 4k, which was sped up, at least vertically. The slow start is not neutered. It's all well and good that some players can make it to the apple/galaxian/bell/key whatever stage before the difficulty becomes apparent.

 

PRO TIP: Use the fruit selector if you think the starting level is too easy.

 

Some people can't play pacman that well. I usually die during the orange stages. Rarely I make it past the first apple to the second cutscene in the arcade version (playing the Pacman Collection 7800 homebrew since it is the most accurate Pacman port for classic console since I don't use MAME, or one of several Namco Collection ports), but that's okay because everyone is different. In fact, I would be okay with it if the developer added a teddy bear mode because there are people far worse at Pacman than I. My best friend sucks at Pacman and he is a pretty good gamer in other genres, but he can whup me good at 16-bit fighters. He also sucks at Tetris and puzzle games in general.

 

If this game does get expanded to 8k or 16k, I would like to see the developer go all-out: Do SARA Super Chip. Add a proper arcade title screen with "Insert Coin" message and a credit counter. Because Pacman does not use action button, RESET could add credits and FIRE could start the game. Player 2 FIRE button starts a two player game with alternating turns. Make it exactly like the arcade sans screen resolutions, etc...

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This may be difficult. The power pellets have blue tops and bottoms because the walls are blue and they share playfield graphics with pellets. The fact that the designer got solid outer walls is really amazing. There is no easy solution with the power pellets. Either power pellets look like ice cream sandwhiches or they have it the same height of regular pellets, only blinking like in Pacman 4k. Or a third option, make the gap in the walls 3 pixels tall so your pellets don't look like ice cream sandwiches. Third option would make the maze look terrible IMO.

Or, as suggested before, use missiles instead of the ball. Then the flickering colors would merge into one solid color.

 

This would work well without intelligent flicker. With intelligent flicker, the power pill color would probably change randomly.

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...but in that case, alternating between m0 and m1 provides a shimmering effect most of the time, when colors between the 2 multiplexed sprites drawn immediately beforehand are different hues. Fortunately, this is nearly all of the time...except when the sprites in question are 2 vulnerable enemies.

 

If you want a quick fix for the original posted version, try this:

NoSandwichesForYou!.bin

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...but in that case, alternating between m0 and m1 provides a shimmering effect most of the time, when colors between the 2 multiplexed sprites drawn immediately beforehand are different hues. Fortunately, this is nearly all of the time...except when the sprites in question are 2 vulnerable enemies.

 

If you want a quick fix for the original posted version, try this:

Well, at first I was going to use M0 instead of "ball" but I did not because the resulting color changes depending on the item bonus and when the ghosts are in fright (blue) mode, but now second thought ... maybe it will not look as bad. ;-)

 

About the sound, had modified the code to remove the background noise on the siren, but is still listening on real hardware, although stella v3.81 no longer does.

pacman2600_09092014.bin

 

Nosandwiches...

pacman2600_09092014NS.bin

 

These days I'm doing the music of the intermission and was testing the music of the 5200 version that could be as follows:
post-40010-0-75584300-1410292724_thumb.pngpost-40010-0-94458000-1410292730_thumb.png
New version of "sndatari" with modified colors:
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The Original Poster in this thread said,"I have been asked by the size of the rom, as you can see is 4KB, still has no intermission, I'm making music for intermissions too.

In this version I will put everything that can be done, but later I will make a version of 8K to include all title screen with the names of the ghosts, all intermissions, an inteligent flicker, messages of "game over" and "ready¡" etc."

 

So it seems he wants the challenge of 4K, and then the most complete game with 8K (or more).

I agree with Thomas Jentzsch.

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The Original Poster in this thread said,"I have been asked by the size of the rom, as you can see is 4KB, still has no intermission, I'm making music for intermissions too.

In this version I will put everything that can be done, but later I will make a version of 8K to include all title screen with the names of the ghosts, all intermissions, an inteligent flicker, messages of "game over" and "ready¡" etc."

 

So it seems he wants the challenge of 4K, and then the most complete game with 8K (or more).

I agree with Thomas Jentzsch.

 

Indeed, he did.

 

DINTAR816 (thankfully) made it clear he will go larger than 4K and make a version of 8K. Continuing to look forward to how DINTAR816 steers the progress with this port and the great positive input and sharing being provided by the community.

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Well, these days I've been making some changes to the code to improve the "dying sound", and other parts of the code to save space in rom.
In this version I've done the first intermission, but still does not have the right music, because the routine occupy more space than I expected. Although I could try to do it another way to save space to include music. :)

So it seems he wants the challenge of 4K, and then the most complete game with 8K (or more).
I agree with Thomas Jentzsch.

I'll start making a version with 8k to include everything that has the game, and I think probably would have free space on rom. :-D

 

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