Jump to content
IGNORED

Baby Pac-Man


PacManPlus

Recommended Posts

 

Yeah the quality of the "monsters" visual design was always part of the hypnotic appeal to Pac games to me. Even after I was out of quarters, I would stare at the attract mode endlessly. The pin is hard. The short table makes the ball a real problem in terms of ball control and the key targets put the ball in a constant position to drain. I want to put some more time into it before I put together a video strategy/beginner's guide for the game's pin mode.

That's exactly what I was taking about! I remember taking my grandmother over to a department store Ms Pac-Man machine, while Mom was in line checking out. I know she didn't care, but I kept going on about how the monsters were smart. Lol. I told her they looked where they were going, but my Atari version wasn't that smart.. At that time, I think I believed they could see Pac/Ms. All great memories. Hypnotic was a great choice of words.

 

Thanks for sharing!

Edited by darryl1970
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi guys.

 

Still working on that "through the wall" issue. It only seems to happen once in a blue moon, so it's difficult to track down. It's not limited to location, or if the monsters are blue. It can happen anywhere, at any time. If you are at (for example) a three-way intersection and start moving the joystick madly in all directions, chances are you will end up going through the wall at the 4th direction.

 

@gorfcadet: Thank you for the kind review. Love the use of the Linn LM-1 drum machine in the music background. Very early 80s. Always wanted one of those.

Maybe put a invisible portal to warp Baby Pacman out of that room as a failsafe just in case someone did manage to get in that room to get around tracking down that difficult bug. I usually put those in my games, just in case someone managed to get out of bound.

 

I been following this thread. I'm really glad you are able to complete this game. And Kurt was able to help you with the Pinball part of the game and Defender_2600 helping you with the graphics part of the game. It's good to have a team of people seperate ability to help complete a game.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tossing out an idea re: the through-the-wall bug. This is going to make a ton of assumptions about how the code behaves (and I haven't reproduced the bug here, so am going strictly from other folks' descriptions of it), so if I'm off-base on any of this, please correct me.

 

For the sake of explanation, let's go with a scenario where the player is travelling East to West directly above the monster pen, and intending to turn South immediately after the monster pen.

 

As the player nears the Western edge of the monster pen, they pull down on the joystick to turn South. The game registers the stick movement and checks to see if South is an 'open' (no maze wall in the way) or 'closed' (maze wall blocking) route to the player. In this case, the player's X-axis position may be used as a point of reference for the open / closed check, since they're intending to turn South into the Y-axis.

 

If the open / closed check is, for some reason, reading slightly in front of the player's X-axis position, it may see the open route to the South ahead of the player's actual location, thus allowing the player to turn South through the wall of the monster pen and become trapped in it.

 

Like I said, I don't know if this is a feasible scenario or not, and certainly only covers one possibility regardless. But it doesn't sound totally beyond the bounds of possibility.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You basically just explained (for the most part) how cornering works for the player (so to speak - there's a table for the vertical/horizontal offsets that apply when the player is turning). I adapted that code directly from the Ms. Pac-Man source. Which baffles me even more on why this happens... I know it doesn't happen with Ms. Pac-Man (retail)… oh God... I hope Pac-Man Collection doesn't do this... I used it for that as well...

Edited by PacManPlus
  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You basically just explained (for the most part) how cornering works for the player (so to speak - there's a table for the vertical/horizontal offsets that apply when the player is turning). I adapted that code directly from the Ms. Pac-Man source. Which baffles me even more on why this happens... I know it doesn't happen with Ms. Pac-Man (retail)… oh God... I hope Pac-Man Collection doesn't do this... I used it for that as well...

Pacman Collection has been available for how many years? I think if it were an issue, it would have been reported by now. Also sometimes certain bugs and exploits don't show up unless the stars and the planets align just so. A lot of speed runners use exploits not discovered for many years after release. Often, you need to press a specific input on a specific frame when your character happens to be aligned at a specific pixel and traveling in a specific direction. Such bugs are rarely reproducible by human players, so if it might happen to a casual player once or twice a year, he/she can just start over. If odds of triggering are one in a million, then a player's chances of seeing it more than once are slim.

 

In games that do not save, a bug or glitch might break a perfect run or cause weird behavior. So do dirty cart pins, etc. It's more an issue if the game has save capability and is able to save in a glitched state. Like when I glitched under the castle and beat Ganon on Link to the past. My save returned me to the hilltop with it still raining like in the opening sequence, and I had 3 hearts. Most of the map was inaccessible because I didn't have the weapons or upgrades necessary to unlock this region or travel out of it, but here I am. :P

 

What I am saying is don't beat yourself up too much over this unless it is very frequent. And I second the idea of putting a warp target in the ghost chamber to prevent getting "stuck". You could even make this area (if accessed by Pacman), warp the player back to the Pinball portion of the game or even take the hyper loop. Hell even make a secret room if spare ROM space allows it. It would make a cool little Easter Egg without completely breaking the gameplay. :thumbsup:

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You basically just explained (for the most part) how cornering works for the player (so to speak - there's a table for the vertical/horizontal offsets that apply when the player is turning). I adapted that code directly from the Ms. Pac-Man source. Which baffles me even more on why this happens... I know it doesn't happen with Ms. Pac-Man (retail)… oh God... I hope Pac-Man Collection doesn't do this... I used it for that as well...

Nobody has noticed by now, it's probably nothing to be concerned with. I see a comment came through as I was typing this. Well said above by Kosmic Stardust.

 

IF this is the case, it's KIND of like the glitch that sends 2600 Pac-Man floating down the center of the screen. It's now a hidden gem. lol.

Edited by darryl1970
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You basically just explained (for the most part) how cornering works for the player (so to speak - there's a table for the vertical/horizontal offsets that apply when the player is turning). I adapted that code directly from the Ms. Pac-Man source. Which baffles me even more on why this happens... I know it doesn't happen with Ms. Pac-Man (retail)… oh God... I hope Pac-Man Collection doesn't do this... I used it for that as well...

 

Thinking out loud: the X/Y offset table may behave differently if the aspect ratio of the Baby Pac-Man maze is different to the ones in Ms. Pac-Man / Pac-Man Collection, or if the player's speed is significantly changed compared to the other two.

 

That said, if no-one has seen it by now in those games, it's doubtful that they will. I'm thinking this may be a mismatch between how the logic works correctly in those games vs. how it works in Baby Pac-Man - and it's probably working correctly in Baby Pac-Man, but with unintended consequences due to differences between where it was first implemented and where it's being used now.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, I've seen a couple times where the ball gets stuck bouncing on top of the triangle bumber and just decided it was funny/surprising and brightened my day once in a while, and can fix it with a quick bump ... but I should probably report it. :)

Yep, that's happened to me too. As you've stated, just 'bump' the 'table' and it will move. I've had similar things happen to me on an actual pinball table (i.e. ball just 'sitting' on top of something). So that makes this pinball mode even more real...

 

Thank you for letting me know.

Edited by PacManPlus
  • Like 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it happened to me as well... in this case the ball is in the one column where the surface is considered to be a horizontal line, so no left/right movement is added, and apparently here the ball has lost all of its left/right momentum. I also considered this to be realistic, so I left it in. It can also happen in other parts of the table in certain locations.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it happened to me as well... in this case the ball is in the one column where the surface is considered to be a horizontal line, so no left/right movement is added, and apparently here the ball has lost all of its left/right momentum. I also considered this to be realistic, so I left it in. It can also happen in other parts of the table in certain locations.

I like this. In every real pinball game I've played extensively there is always SOME place where a ball can get 'stuck' on a flat surface, even if it's only 1mm. Conditions have to be just right. It's kind of magical when it happens.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, I do consider the 'Classic' Monster AI the easier mode. The monster AI is like all the other versions of Pac-Man that we are familiar with, including the fact that they don't reverse direction... (at all, actually).

 

Thanks, guys

Edited by PacManPlus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Watching the video Bob, this looks fantastic, with the mix of maze and pinball. The sounds and playability of the pinball section are very appealing. perhaps the most impressive work Ive seen yet on 7800. I love the Pacscalater sequence, and the ghost AI appears just as infuriating as the original.

 

It might have just been because I used earbuds, but the siren seemed a bit on the loud side to me.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Cafeman - I will lower the volume of the siren again... it's at $05 now, so I'll do $04. It started out at $08, so it will now be half the volume than it was originally.

 

@x=usr(1536) - There are two tables (one horizontal, one vertical) for pixel offsets while turning corners. Being that the 7800 moves 'two' 320 horizontal pixels for every one vertical pixel, I move the player 2 pixels vertically to match the speed. The vertical offset table had a $01 in it to offset vertically while turning into a horizontal corridor. This can (rarely) create a possibility of being 'in between' the vertical spacing that the movement routine is expecting, so it returns that the player is at an intersection when they actually aren't. Changed it to $02 like it should be, and all is well.

 

Thanks, guys

Edited by PacManPlus
  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's one thing I noticed about the sound in the pinball section... In the arcade original, each sound starts to play, and they all cut each other off, that is, only one sound plays at a time, and if a new one starts, it cuts off any old one that's playing. This doesn't seem to be the case here, where some sounds seem to have a lower priority and don't play at all if a sound with a higher priority is playing. Specifically, the "Fruit" or "Tunnel" rollover sound seems to be suppressed by other higher priority sounds sometimes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think that's always the case. It seems the bumper sound (for instance) has a lower priority in the arcade as most of the other sounds... You don't seem to hear it too much. I did go through and try to make the prioritization of the sound similar to what the arcade does, with of course some exceptions. But we also have two channels here, so I dispersed some of them between the two channels to reduce the 'cutting off' of the sounds.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Holy crap! Breakpack! Where have you been? Good to see you back.

 

Also...

Still working on that same issue (through the wall). This one is a PAIN.

 

Oh man! I've been around albeit lightly. Been lurking to see what is up! Leave it to Baby Pacman to bring me out of hiding!!! So amazing the Pac stuff that happens here! YOU GUYYS ROCK!!!!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, I do consider the 'Classic' Monster AI the easier mode. The monster AI is like all the other versions of Pac-Man that we are familiar with, including the fact that they don't reverse direction... (at all, actually).

 

Thanks, guys

 

OK yeah, I figured as much. The only problem is that I stink even on Classic mode, either I need lots more practice or I should be spending my time elsewhere on games where I don't get killed instantly all the time. :lol:

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...