+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 (edited) When Tep392 and I were working on Pac-Man Arcade, I was checking out Atari Pac-Man to see how they did the bonus scores for ghosts. Basically Pac-Man and the ghost disappear and then the two players are combined to make the score. This means the score can be displayed horizontally in its entirety, without any crowding. Tep392 wasn't interested in going that far with changing Pac-Man Arcade at the time, so we don't see that there. It's good feature of Atari Pac-Man though. So I was thinking last night about hacking Atari Pac-Man to see how things could be improved. I think there are quite a few things that can be done. I've just done a couple things so far. 1. Changed the score size to be more arcade realistic. 2. Set GPRIOR so the playfield (maze) doesn't have display priority over the scores (I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea in the first place). 3. Improved the ghost eyes returning to the pen. I haven't changed the size of the points for the fruit bonuses yet. I'm not sure what other things can be done, maybe improve the looks of the fruits some, possibly tweak Pac-Man and the ghost sprites, and change a few colors. Atari Pac-Man is still a good game, and I think it'll be fun to play around with it a bit. Here's a preview ROM: Pac-Man.rom Edited September 17, 2015 by MrFish 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 (edited) Interesting; I don't know if I had noticed this before, but it's a bug in the original cartridge. I guess I just noticed here because I was being more attentive to what's going on graphically. When a ghost is eaten and the bonus points are displayed, the "remaining Pac-Man's" at the bottom of the screen, on the top scanline of their graphic, turn the same green as the ghost point score. This must be due to a miscalculation on setting the a DLI color change for the players. I'm guessing they're reusing several players for the remaining Pac-Man graphics. They need to be kept yellow, so there has to be a DLI down there, and it was probably set for that line rather than the previous line as it should have been. This shouldn't be hard to fix at all (if this is in fact the case)... just change two values in the display list. Anybody else ever notice this? Now I wonder if it's present in the Datasoft version... Edited September 17, 2015 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 It's present in the Datasoft version as well. This must have been known after all this time. I don't remember seeing it mentioned here before though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 As suspected, it's in the 5200 version as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 There were a few bugs in the 5200 version, not sure if there are in the 8-bit version: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/67940-5200-pac-man-bug-fixed/?hl=%2B5200+%2Bpac%26%238208man+%2Bbug+%2Bfixed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 There were a few bugs in the 5200 version, not sure if there are in the 8-bit version: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/67940-5200-pac-man-bug-fixed/?hl=%2B5200+%2Bpac%26%238208man+%2Bbug+%2Bfixed Thanks. I don't know if they are either. Is there a thread somewhere that details the levels where these bugs occur? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PacManPlus Posted September 17, 2015 Share Posted September 17, 2015 (edited) The 'Single Flash' was happening where the monsters were supposed to flash four times immediately: 1st Apple, Both Melons (or grapes), and 1st Bell The 'Forever Blue' was happening on the 5th key, and the 7th key onward. With the speed ramp, it would only happen when working your way up to the level. i.e. if you started on the first Apple, your speed was fine. If you worked your way up to the 1st Apple, the speed wouldn't increase until the 2nd one. Hope this helps. Edited September 17, 2015 by PacManPlus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 Thanks. I don't remember there being a problem on the 5th/7th key with staying blue. The other problems I'm not sure of. I'll have to check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 (edited) Actually you can see the DLI problem affects more than just the Pac-Mans remaining, as there is color change that occurs late for the Galaxian on the right as well. My memory is coming back, and I do recall observing both of these before now, but I never cared to mention or do anything about them at the time (was probably too busy with other things). Edited September 17, 2015 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 (edited) In this edition, everybody gets a little bit more round looking (as they should). This wasn't possible with the ghosts (no problem with Pac-Man himself) in Pac-Man Arcade, due to a limitation of using the missiles/5th player for white eye color. No problem here, but of course the eyes can't be as detailed as Pac-Man Arcade/Ms. Pac-Man either. Never the less a few adjustments to the eyes were done here as well (namely positioning and size). Pac-Man.rom Edited September 17, 2015 by MrFish 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 17, 2015 Author Share Posted September 17, 2015 Actually you can see the DLI problem affects more than just the Pac-Mans remaining, as there is color change that occurs late for the Galaxian on the right as well. dli problem.png My memory is coming back, and I do recall observing both of these before now, but I never cared to mention or do anything about them at the time (was probably too busy with other things). I should say "Atari Logo" instead of "Galaxian" here. In the arcade it's a Galaxian of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FifthPlayer Posted September 18, 2015 Share Posted September 18, 2015 (edited) Just out of curiosity, how do you get the white eye color in Pac-Man Arcade by using the missiles? I had always assumed the 5th player was being used for Pac-Man or one of the ghosts, and so missiles weren't available for eye coloration. I had always assumed that playfield graphics were at work to provide an underlay for the white eye color. Edited September 18, 2015 by FifthPlayer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 18, 2015 Author Share Posted September 18, 2015 (edited) Well, of course this is just a re-work of the Ms. Pac-Man game from Atari. The base sprite engine it unchanged. It uses a P/M multiplexer, and of course that's why you see flicker sometimes. So yes, the 4 missiles are combined as the 5th player, in order to get the white, but then they are used separately as underlays for each ghost as the eye color. They're all set at quad-width. I didn't know this myself until Tep392 told me I wouldn't be able to do just what I mentioned above. Edited September 18, 2015 by MrFish 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 MrFish, could you please tell me whether that version from September 17th, 2015 is the final one? Or do you plan more changes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted December 15, 2016 Author Share Posted December 15, 2016 Short answer: I plan to do more changes. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Adam+ Posted December 15, 2016 Share Posted December 15, 2016 OK, thanks for the answer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 22, 2023 Author Share Posted October 22, 2023 Atari Pac-Man gets some more love. Working from the 16K ROM version that was recently compiled from sources. Only negative (aside from the schmaltzy cut scenes) is it contains the same control bug found in the Datasoft versions, where you can't go right sometimes at the beginning of a level until you actuate another direction first. Usually doesn't affect gameplay, but it's annoying. AFAIK, the 8K version doesn't exhibit this bug. A lot of things updated in this version (colors, fruit/items, fonts, etc.). I still have some things to tweak, but it's generally where I was planning to take it. Since the intermissions are part of this version, I may end up hacking them; I never liked the oversized sprite characters they used. Probably won't mess with that for a while though. Eventually I'll get around to making an XEX version. [Note: If Pac-Man is green (or an overly greenish shade of yellow) on your screen, then you need to adjust your color pot. He should be lemon yellow here, as in the screenshot.] Pac-Man (16K) Update.rom 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DjayBee Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 32 minutes ago, MrFish said: Only negative (aside from the schmaltzy cut scenes) is it contains the same control bug found in the Datasoft versions, where you can't go right sometimes at the beginning of a level until you actuate another direction first. Atariwiki provides a unified source code which can create all versions. There you should be able to find the fix for this bug. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 22, 2023 Author Share Posted October 22, 2023 6 hours ago, DjayBee said: Atariwiki provides a unified source code which can create all versions. There you should be able to find the fix for this bug. Thanks. I do have these files already. I plan to look into the bug at some point. I'm actually quite surprised nobody has bothered to fix it in all these years -- and especially now that the source code is available. Can't say the source code is greatly documented, but it beats disassembly... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cx2k Posted October 22, 2023 Share Posted October 22, 2023 36 minutes ago, MrFish said: Thanks. I do have these files already. I plan to look into the bug at some point. I'm actually quite surprised nobody has bothered to fix it in all these years -- and especially now that the source code is available. Can't say it's greatly documented, but it beats disassembly... Since you're looking at Pac-Man, let me point out some source code I got from a former employee. Not sure if it's the same as what has been found already. Maybe you can tell? If not, maybe someone can add it to the Atari Wiki... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 23, 2023 Author Share Posted October 23, 2023 6 hours ago, cx2k said: Since you're looking at Pac-Man, let me point out some source code I got from a former employee. Not sure if it's the same as what has been found already. Maybe you can tell? If not, maybe someone can add it to the Atari Wiki... Thanks. I think I did see the disk that was posted there before, but haven't examined the contents yet. I'll check it out. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 23, 2023 Author Share Posted October 23, 2023 I found an omission that hadn't even crossed my mind yet. I never tested the 2 Player mode. So, I ended up with giant and small text mixed. Didn't take much time to get things adjusted. So, here's the updated, updated ROM. I'll put a date on these ROM's from now on, so things don't get confused. Pac-Man (16K) - Update 10-23-2023.rom Also, here's some more screenshots; I was lazy to post more than one last night. 5 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted October 23, 2023 Share Posted October 23, 2023 any realistic way to add the white to the eyeballs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 23, 2023 Author Share Posted October 23, 2023 3 hours ago, Goochman said: any realistic way to add the white to the eyeballs? Not without rewriting, or at least heavily modifying, the sprite engine. Pac-Man Arcade used Ms. Pac-Man code as a basis. Personally, I think Super Pac-Man has better looking sprites in the eyeball department. That reminds me, I want to do an improvement hack for Super Pac-Man. I think I can get that one looking real good. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted October 25, 2023 Author Share Posted October 25, 2023 On 10/23/2023 at 8:21 AM, Goochman said: any realistic way to add the white to the eyeballs? 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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