Nukey Shay Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Looks like the thread for the as-yet unnamed clone got a little sidetracked I fixed up a couple of errors...the monster reversal frequency and the siren speed. And I also corrected the bug of dots being missed when you use the upper or lower tunnels. There was also a busted branch instruction which made it impossible for 2 monsters to stay lethal in the plus mode...that's been corrected as well. I tried using a home corner routine, but I ran over my cycle time limit Corrected the bug of the maze staying the same on 5th key...now it will alternate mazes like the rest of the game. Bank 2 still has nearly 2k of free space if anybody who's savvy on sound wants to throw a ditty in. All the graphics are in bank 1, so it's no help to the display Though even the smallest additions (like the home corner checks) seemed to run over the available time, so I'll declare it finished. Another first for the 2600 (I don't know of any Hangly Man ports on other consoles). Update... Added the Pac26 tune. No whine tho...I fixed that. Updated the death sound effect as well...still a bit off. hanglyman.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atwwong Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 All I can say is that this is an incredible masterpiece!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATARI TROLL Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 Nukey this rocks. To die playing this is cool. This one keeps getting better and better. How much more can you tweak this?? This kicks ass! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 9, 2004 Author Share Posted May 9, 2004 Not much more...if at all. Unless ways can be found to further optimize, I'm nearly out of free cycle time outside of the display. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lost child Posted May 9, 2004 Share Posted May 9, 2004 NUKEY SAY THIS: ... if anybody who's savvy on sound wants to throw a ditty in. Maybe you could disassemble the Mr Pacman hack, rip the music code, and incorporate it into your hack. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 9, 2004 Author Share Posted May 9, 2004 Maybe, but both PacMan and Ms.Pacman's music sounds like crap IMO. Getting the expanse of time to run the tune is no problem (just do it while the long timer is still at zero...and skip ahead to the display while it runs - bypassing all of the sprite updates). When board 2 or life 2 begins, reset the long timer to 1 instead of zero. There's enough space to add in up to nearly 2k of music data...but I suck at sound. Edit: 1 click on the Longtimer is equal to 4.2 seconds...the intro tune to Pacman is about 9. So I'd need to use 2 clicks to hold the music, and reset the timer to 2 when the game is running. 3 bits of the longtimer are used to hold the number of monsters eaten (I need to allow this to go up to a value of 4 - to get the correct point value in the plus version)...that leaves the longtimer variable to hold anything from 0 to $1F (31) - plenty of range to allow the loss of 2 clicks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad2600 Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 Though I suck at it, I like the final version nukey! I'd love to try it out on a console if you ever get around to doing that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SS Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 I'd love to try it out on a console Looking forward to that too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 Those with Superchargers (modded or not) can still load the 4k version. No additional mazes, but the games play the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjk7382 Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 I like it. It plays great on actual hardware. Some slight jumping of the picture when hitting select and reset. All around a great hack. I am playing the 8k version btw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 Interesting...I'll have to take a look at the debounce routine. Thanks for the warning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 BTW something else that I realized is that the maze changes could be done on a single level. So that when an energizer is eaten, the maze changes...or when the timer hits a certian limit...any number of variables. The dot data would need to be able to exist in either maze (no dots in walls)...but it would make the hack into yet another unique game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 Yikes! That would add even more challenge to the game! When energized, all the dots in the maze are covered up by the walls (so you can't eat them while energized. Talk about a hard game! Dunno if I'd want to attempt that, but it's totally possible to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 NUKEY SAY THIS: ... if anybody who's savvy on sound wants to throw a ditty in. Maybe you could disassemble the Mr Pacman hack, rip the music code, and incorporate it into your hack. I ripped it right from Pac26. The sound will allow up to 256 seperate notes (right now it's only using 16)...played for that total duration. Needs a bit of work to get it to sound closer, and having data tables that have a range of 256 frequencies for each voice can be an advantage there. I still have a lot to learn when it comes to programming music tho. How it works... I zeroed out the long timer when the score is cleared. Once the game begins, it is redirected to the sound routine...located right at the end of the program area...which plays notes until it gets a negative value. At that point, it throws a value of 8 in the long timer, and the game updates this timer with ADC #$10's...keeping the total number of monsters eaten uncorrupted as well as this music flag. I also corrected the harmony, which was skipped over before when F0 = 0. Still needs just a bit of tweaking...but it sounds pretty good. Death sound effect changed too. A tad closer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lost child Posted May 10, 2004 Share Posted May 10, 2004 This is excellent! The music is great, and the death sound is much closer. Maybe I'm delusional, but it seems like the gameplay is a little tighter too. Bravo! :-) NUKEY: Yikes! That would add even more challenge to the game! When energized, all the dots in the maze are covered up by the walls (so you can't eat them while energized. Neat idea! Maybe the maze could change when fruit is eaten. Dots could be covered under the original maze as well. The only way to get these dots would be to eat fruit to skip back and forth from screen to screen and would make each level much more difficult to pass. You'd probably need to reconfigure the game so that fruit pops up more frequently though. Then you could also make it so that ghost monsters speed up over time. So if a player is taking too long on a level, the ghost monsters will ruthlessly eat him up. In the tradition of sadistic hacks... I envision it being called Sad-Man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 10, 2004 Author Share Posted May 10, 2004 Maybe the maze could change when fruit is eaten. Dots could be covered under the original maze as well. The only way to get these dots would be to eat fruit to skip back and forth from screen to screen and would make each level much more difficult to pass. You'd probably need to reconfigure the game so that fruit pops up more frequently though.Yup...that's totally possible to pull off (in fact, the target used to run on a timer). Eat the fruit, and the maze flipflops. It would mean researching an entirely different maze scheme tho...the walls would always need to fall into specific columns (the movement tile map is x20 by y11). A lot of editing and test-running there Then you could also make it so that ghost monsters speed up over time. So if a player is taking too long on a level, the ghost monsters will ruthlessly eat him up.Not a chance. What you see is the maximum speed available (the eyes can move faster because not as much code is used to move them around - no collision detection, no trying to match the player, etc.). And the lack of ram makes it impossible to add in a speed variable for each monster - right now, the speed is based on their color. If it's zero, they are eyes (moving @ 60hz). If it's a positive value (normal color), they move at 45hz. If negative, they are vulnerable (moving @ 30hz). Additional routines would be needed to expand on the 45hz section...dropping 1 frame out of 5 or 1 frame out of 6 for example (instead of the normal 1 frame out of 4)...and I'd run over the cycle time when the program is moving them around.Making the characters slower is always an option...but that just makes the game easier. Intermission possibilities: Since the program will skip to the musical interlude when the long timer is @ zero, I could put an additional check in there to determine what level the player is on...and subsequently switch the tune. In bank 1 (the display kernal), I have over 100 bytes free...which could also jump to a seperate display when the long timer is @ zero and the score is non-zero (i.e. the game already in progress). Instead of displaying the score, the maze, and the lower line of extra men...flip to this spare area and build a seperate display there (nothing complex, just a lot of blank lines and 2 sprites...plenty of cycle time since the kernal isn't complex...which can be used to determine what the sprites are doing - differing intermissions). That's the theory anyway. I know nothing about display kernals...so I'm at square 1 with that idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad2600 Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 I played the latest bin and I still couldn't clear the board without getting killed. Very challenging for me. I like the effect where the board goes dark and you can only see the dots and ghosts. Is this what Pac-Man on the 2600 should have been? It certainly looks and sounds better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lost child Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 Is this what Pac-Man on the 2600 should have been? Until Nukey started working on this hack, I had thought that the hack of MsPacman was going to be the closest incarnation of Pac-Man we'd ever see on the VCS. @Nukey: Thanks for proving me wrong. :-) This hack is far better than what I would have ever expected to be released from a commercial game company back then. Is this version so close to the original that releasing something this good for home use might possibly have hurt arcade profits? I would expect that more hours have gone into this (including programming the original kernal) than were ever available to commercial programmers back then. I could only expect this kind of quality from another classic gaming fanatic. Nukey is truly amazing! I don't have anything against the version of Pacman originally released for the VCS. I do think that it is different enough from the arcade that with some minor sprite changes it could have taken on a new name of its own. What does bother me a bit is the shift from fruits, dots, and power pellots to wafers, power-pills and multi-vitamins. Seems shifty to me. Whose side was Atari taking in the then new War On Drugs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 Is this what Pac-Man on the 2600 should have been?Until Nukey started working on this hack, I had thought that the hack of MsPacman was going to be the closest incarnation of Pac-Man we'd ever see on the VCS. @Nukey: Thanks for proving me wrong.IMO Jr. is still closer (but a much more difficult game). The whole idea was to see if it could be done in 4k. I still believe that it could be (besides the graphics that is), but I don't know enough about programming to pull that off. I managed to get the game a lot closer to the original, that is certian...but it's far from being totally faithful. It could be even closer in the 4k version if I dropped the alternate game modes...but it just seems to play better when you have more than one game variation This hack is far better than what I would have ever expected to be released from a commercial game company back then. Is this version so close to the original that releasing something this good for home use might possibly have hurt arcade profits?I doubt it. The CV's games were also frighteningly close to the arcade games...but the arcades were only victim to the era eventually - just like all video games of the time. I would expect that more hours have gone into this (including programming the original kernal) than were ever available to commercial programmers back then.Programmers who worked for corporations had to bend their efforts to fit within the company restrictions...there's no way that I would have been able to stand that kind of pressure. I could only expect this kind of quality from another classic gaming fanatic. Nukey is truly amazing!Not as amazing as the people who build games from scratch (like this hack is based on). Trying to improve upon something that already exists is simple by comparison. I don't have anything against the version of Pacman originally released for the VCS. I do think that it is different enough from the arcade that with some minor sprite changes it could have taken on a new name of its own. What does bother me a bit is the shift from fruits, dots, and power pellots to wafers, power-pills and multi-vitamins. Seems shifty to me. Whose side was Atari taking in the then new War On Drugs?The names were changed to fit within the limitations of the port (you forgot "ghosts"). I am also guilty of this when doing the 4k version...for changing the target names and GFX (though as mentioned, dropping the alternate modes would have made this possible). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 What is this a hack of? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 Take a wild guess I thought it was fairly obvious Hint: It begins with the letter P made by a company that begins with the letter E. I promised that I'd not mention names, so that's as much as I can say in public. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 11, 2004 Share Posted May 11, 2004 Take a wild guess I thought it was fairly obvious Hint: It begins with the letter P made by a company that begins with the letter E. I promised that I'd not mention names, so that's as much as I can say in public. Oh! Duh... I was thinking 80's games and racking my brain on what game looked this good. I could only play it for a few minutes last night, but I am VERY impressed. You really need to release this on cart. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 11, 2004 Author Share Posted May 11, 2004 Releasing it on cart is still kinda up to E (they own the display kernal that it uses). But I can legally post the hack. Changed intermissions... hangly_intermission_test.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATARI TROLL Posted May 13, 2004 Share Posted May 13, 2004 I am all over this one if it goes to cart! The intermission is great. Your incorporation of the startup music and sounds are awesome Nukey! Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted May 13, 2004 Author Share Posted May 13, 2004 Title screen (hold the controller in any direction to skip ahead faster). hangly_intermission_test.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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