Introducing Pea Man!

[Mmm]

Works perflecty on Mister and it's a blast. Having a great time. Thank You

 

[Swami]

On 10/17/2019 at 11:16 PM, Steve Jones said:

Definitely harder now, carrot seems way faster than the pea when it actually chases you, though on first level it seems to get stuck in the loop on the right side of the screen

so you can clear the rest of the maze no problem, but then clearing that last loop is very hard.  

Not sure what the method is for having the carrot chase you but it seems to get stuck most of the time until you get very close to it.

I feel like it should be more actively coming after you when you are on the left side of the screen.

 

This same caught-in-a-loop thing happens in pacman22 for the atari 2600.

[+atari2600land]

OK, the easy mode/hard mode thing is undoable (at least for me.) So I made it so whenever the carrot hits a wall, he moves in a different, random direction. Before, he could change direction mid-line but now he can't. What do you think?

peaman18.zip

[+Steve Jones]

That feels better, even if the carrot isn’t chasing you all the time at least he’s not getting stuck in little loops like before.

Have you considered adding more carrots as the levels progress? As a non programmer I have no idea what that would involve or how difficult that is to do?

[DragonGrafx-16]

This reminds me of some Pac-Man clone or hack where Pac-Man would poop if he ate too many pellets and it would block your way...

[+atari2600land]

I was planning on adding a second carrot in the later levels, like starting at level 9 when Peater gets back to Earth.

[+atari2600land]

Experimenting with different enemies for a little bit. The carrots will return in level 9. Here is level 8, where Peater travels through space. His enemies to avoid are two stars (because stars can burn you. And the carrots don't want to follow your lead and fall in space.)

peaman20.zip

[+Steve Jones]

like having 2 opponents in level 8, bring on level 9

[Sinjinhawke]

If only the Atari VCS project had this much development happening.  

[+atari2600land]

Spent a ton of time on level 9 trying to make a good-looking pyramid, which is hard to do since you can only have 2 colors in an 8x8 pixel part. I spent about an hour on it, and all I have to show for it is this:

[Swami]

6 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

Spent a ton of time on level 9 trying to make a good-looking pyramid, which is hard to do since you can only have 2 colors in an 8x8 pixel part. I spent about an hour on it, and all I have to show for it is this:

Looks really good. I'd say just needs a little black shaved for the tip to make it pointier.

[+atari2600land]

I can't due to the INTV restrictions of the 2 colors in one 8x8 square. I'd have 3 (blue, yellow, black), so I went with this.

[Gray Defender]

I'd say that thousands of years of erosion has taken it's toll on the tip as well as the rest of the pyramid.  I think it looks great and keep up the good work!

[+atari2600land]

Experimenting with three enemies. I think I fixed a bug where two enemies merged and started moving as one. I don't know why that happened, but I think I fixed it. So let me know if that happens. You'll notice there is no music for levels 8 and 9. I'll work on that next. You'll also notice the size of the file is over 32k. If someone can tell me what parts of the ROM I can't use, that would be nice. Right now in a Secret Waffle Project remarks, I have $c040-ffff, $7111-7fff, $4810-4fff. I think the biggest possible file I can have is about 64k. The Secret Waffle Project is about 50k, so I apparently still have tons of room left, which is good.

peaman22.zip

[carlsson]

You could always temporarily use a MOB to add a third colour to a 8x8 block.

[+atari2600land]

Began work on level 10. Peater finds himself in Europe. I don't know what I should do for Europe, so right now it's green and blue because originally I was going to make it a map of Europe but I couldn't because the enemies were just sticking to the border, which they would do since there's nothing to propel them to the center of the screen. So I decided for a more traditional maze. Nothing happens in the level 10 intro screen except for it displaying a really groovy (in my opinion) picture of the globe (the part that displays Europe, of course.)

 

I fixed a bug pertaining to the death of Peater if he touches carrot 1's green part. It doesn't happen now.

 

I also removed some level intro cheats to the title screen. Now only buttons 1, 8, 9, and 0 work. That part of the code was getting huge. Not that it will be in the final version, but it was bugging me anyway. Past the 32k mark!

peaman24.zip

[carlsson]

How about the world's ugliest version of the EU flag?

..################..
..#..............#..
..#.....*..*.....#..
..#...*......*...#..
..#............*.#..
..#..*...........#..
..#...........*..#..
..#.*............#..
..#...*......*...#..
..#.....*..*.....#..
..#..............#..
..################..

Edited October 30, 2019 by carlsson

[+Lathe26]

Perhaps a word play off of the nursery rhyme of "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" where a level or enemy is a pumpkin.  Just tossing a random idea out there.

[Swami]

51 minutes ago, Lathe26 said:

Perhaps a word play off of the nursery rhyme of "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater" where a level or enemy is a pumpkin.  Just tossing a random idea out there.

Peas on Earth, Gouda wheel, two men

[wolfy62]

On 10/25/2019 at 3:57 PM, atari2600land said:

Spent a ton of time on level 9 trying to make a good-looking pyramid, which is hard to do since you can only have 2 colors in an 8x8 pixel part. I spent about an hour on it, and all I have to show for it is this:

This looks great,I just tuned into this thread.

Awesome work!?

[+atari2600land]

I'm working on this again. Found out that the merging problem between enemies happens again. Though I couldn't fix it, I did make it so they split up eventually. Changed "Europe" to Iceland. Tried to get the national anthem for Iceland in the game (or at least part of it, it's long.) Found some sheet music for a simple version of "Lofsöngur" and put it in there. Is anyone here from Iceland and can check to see how good my version is?

Brings me back to my school days and reminds me of having to write a report about something, like Iceland. They have blocks of ice scattered around.

Well, probably not, but they should. Because it is, after all, Iceland

peaman25.zip

[+Lathe26]

5 hours ago, atari2600land said:

 

 

 

Nice, you even have the western 3rd looking like a moose!

[timdu]

So cool...  all these levels! I like what you are doing here. Very creative!

 

Suggestion: If you are going to have ICELAND in the game, you may as well have PEA MAN travel to GREENLAND in a future level.

 

There will be a small inconsistency issue though, which you will have to decide upon how to address:

 

In actuality,  Iceland is green and Greenland has ice .....     ( see WorldAtlas.com )

 

So you may have to reverse things a little... 

 

 

Keep up the good work!

 

 

Tim

[bikeguychicago]

I've finally had a chance to look at and play the game at length. Overall, I find the game entertaining with a good replay value. That said I do have a few suggestions on the interface and play structure of the game itself:

 

Title screen / Options menu

• Based on other Intellivision games, I was surprised to find that the Enter key brings me to an options page. I would expect that one would traverse to this page either through an option on the title screen or through a different key press (maybe the '0' key).
  Generally, I expect the Enter key to advance one through the interface of the game. In this case: starting the game, either at the highest difficulty level or with default settings.
• Related to the above, I also expected that pressing the Enter key with the 'Exit' option selected on the Options screen would take me back to the title screen and apply the selections I made.
• You may also want to indicate on the title screen what key one needs to press to start the game
• From the graphic displayed on the title screen, it's hard to tell what the actual name of the game is.

Gameplay

• I'm conflicted on how the game controls. For some of the mazes, a control behavior that mimics Pac-Man would be more desirable. If you're not familiar, Pac-Man starts in a direction and continues in a direction until he hits a wall. If you press a direction before hitting a wall, Pac-Man will move in that direction when the opportunity presents itself and then continues in that direction until he hits a wall, etc. This scheme would work best for early mazes but isn't necessarily the best for later ones, where the current scheme works better.
  Maybe provide an option for this and let the user choose?
• Some of the boards are hard to see based on the color combinations chosen. The corn maze and the undersea ones are good examples of this. The colors should compliment each other without being garish or overpowering and also need to be different enough to allow one to easily identify the main character and adversaries. This should be no problem on a system with 16 available colors, right?
• When pausing the game, I would expect one would be able to resume the game buy pressing any key on the keypad, a side button or the disc. I shouldn't have to press 1&9 to resume.
• Currently, there isn't a way to avoid an enemy when it is tailing you. The enemy is always faster, almost always leading to the loss of a life. Maybe adjust the mazes so there's always at least one nook where on can possibly duck into to avoid an enemy
• When one clears a level, it isn't always obvious where the exit is. Maybe add a flashing tile for the exit, ala Boulderdash to make it more defined?
• When a game is over, it would be better to display a 'Game Over' message on the last screen one was on. If one presses a key or the disc once the game is complete, one should be taken to a high score table screen or back to the title screen
• In regards to the above, it would be nice to include a high score table for the game. If that's not possible, it would be nice to have the high score displayed for that play session on the title screen.
• The enemies seem to fast from the start. Maybe throttle the speed of the enemies as one progresses through the game?
• Also, enemies don't seem to have a set pattern for pursuing Pea-man. Is this intentional?

I hope you don't take the above as a slight to your game. I'm happy to be a part of the testing and am trying to help make the game the best it can be. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to DM me.

Thank you for the opportunity to test the game and for providing me with a fun distraction from the daily grind.

[carlsson]

Regarding enemy movement patterns, I believe he played with different solutions back and forth to find to avoid an algorithm where they wouldn't get stuck in one place. Someone might be able to help improving that.

Edited January 16, 2020 by carlsson