Pac-Line x 8

[Thomas Jentzsch]

After my WIP got presented in last night ZPH show, you find the ROM attached.

Just like VROOM! this game allows up to 8 players simultaneously (with QuadTari, else 4 players) using paddle buttons.

Note: Make sure that Stella is aware of the paddles, auto detect won't work in 6.7 (this will change in 7.0).

 

Brief instructions:

• With SELECT you can select one out of four starting levels, with or without fruits.
• RESET or FIRE starts the game countdown.
• During the countdown players can register themselves for the game by pressing their FIRE button. Which makes their lines flash.
• All other players are controlled by the rudimentary and cheating AI. Just to make the screen busy.  
• After the countdown, the game starts. The gameplay follows the traditional Pac Man rules. Use the FIRE button to reverse direction of your Pac Man.
• With each level you complete, the game becomes more difficult. Pac Man gets faster and the ghosts get even more faster. So after a few levels they are faster than Pac Man. That's when tactics become relevant.
• In fruit games, a new fruit appears every 4th level. You must eat it before finishing that level, else it will disappear. But remember, you have only one life. Don't get greedy!
• You score 1 point per eaten pellet, 5 points for the power pill, 10 points for an eaten ghost and between 10 and 500 points for the fruits.
• During the game, the score and level of the leading player and its colors are displayed at the top.
• The game ends when the last human player dies.
• After the game is over, the score and level cycle between all human players (indicated by line number and color).

 

There are still quite some ToDos left. Sound is rudimentary, computer AI too, there is no death animation yet and I also plan to allow uploading high scores (PlusROM, SaveKey). And if this should ever go onto cartridge, I would have to change the theme of the game (name, graphics, sounds...).

 

Enjoy!

 

BTW: The biggest programming challenge in this game is not the 4K ROM limit, but the 128 bytes RAM. Having to keep track of pellets, positions and states of player, ghost and fruit, score etc. for 8 players turned out to be tricky. For almost all RAM bytes all bits are used. And many bits and bytes are reused multiple times. I even have to use the stack bytes when they are not required. Currently I have ~550 bytes ROM free, but only 4 bytes of RAM.

PacLines (NTSC) V0.1.bin PacLines (PAL60) V0.1.bin

PacLines (NTSC) V0.2.bin PacLines (PAL60) V0.2.bin

Edited yesterday at 05:50 PM by Thomas Jentzsch

[Silvio Mogno]

Really cool concept for an 8-bit party and also very enjoyable for a solo game.

 

My two cents:

1) when the ghost goes blue and go to the right side it seems skipping some pixels horizontally before getting stuck on the right edge

2) ghosts should wrap around at least based on game option and it would be very evil if they wrap around randomly (e.g. some times wrapping around and other times not wrapping around)

 

An istant classic!

 

Thanks,

 

Silvio

[CapitanClassic]

Not sure which control scheme people prefer, but perhaps both could be supported.

• Hold button to go left, release to go right.
• Press n Release button to toggle direction change.

I know James mentioned on the show that it was difficult to hold positions by quickly moving back n forth in place. I would guess that hold-left / release-right would make that easier.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

49 minutes ago, Silvio Mogno said:

Really cool concept for an 8-bit party and also very enjoyable for a solo game.

Thanks!

49 minutes ago, Silvio Mogno said:

My two cents:

1) when the ghost goes blue and go to the right side it seems skipping some pixels horizontally before getting stuck on the right edge

Good catch! Fixed.

49 minutes ago, Silvio Mogno said:

2) ghosts should wrap around at least based on game option and it would be very evil if they wrap around randomly (e.g. some times wrapping around and other times not wrapping around)

Hm, I think this would make the game too hard. And you would randomly die, not because of making own mistakes.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

13 minutes ago, CapitanClassic said:

Not sure which control scheme people prefer, but perhaps both could be supported.

• Hold button to go left, release to go right.
• Press n Release button to toggle direction change.

I know James mentioned on the show that it was difficult to hold positions by quickly moving back n forth in place. I would guess that hold-left / release-right would make that easier.

That's a good idea. I will definitely give this a try. Thank you!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

New version 0.2 attached to first post. The only change are the controls as suggested by @CapitanClassic (except that I reversed the directions).

 

I very much like the change, please let me know if you prefer it too. 

 

BTW: It saves 1 bytes RAM.  

[Silvio Mogno]

On 6/27/2024 at 7:58 PM, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Hm, I think this would make the game too hard. And you would randomly die, not because of making own mistakes.

You could add opening/closing "soft" gates on the edges (only for ghosts). So ghost wrapping capability could be clearly known. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

21 hours ago, Silvio Mogno said:

You could add opening/closing "soft" gates on the edges (only for ghosts). So ghost wrapping capability could be clearly known. 

Yes, but the ghost would still be able to hunt down the player without any chance of escape. Currently the borders are the player's only protection after the game has speed up.