color in 2600 pac man?

[Major_Havoc]

I really don't care about the flicker. Heck, it's the vcs and it's expected.

 

But NUKEY!!! Oh man NovaXpress is right when he says the SIMPLE change of just the colors MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

 

Everyone here try it? All he did was change the colors and VCS Pacman magically transforms into PACMAN. Or at least what the market would have realistically expected of a VCS Pacman when the game was released.

 

I mean it's still the same game, but the aesthetic appeal makes all the difference. I'm sure that if the game was released with just those simple colors it would have made a world of difference in the way the kids of the day and history see the game. It would have been seen as the VCS version of Pacman proper. i.e. flawed but it is what it is for the vcs. But instead it's looked at as something far and away from what was expected.

 

Someone outta post a screenshot

[AncillaryDrone]

Nukey, which colors were changed? Making the background black would be a big freakin' plus!! The sound effects vary wildly from the arcade game as well.. I agree with what's been said, it's almost like any opportunity to make it different than the arcade was taken.. Surely this was willfully done and not the result of lack of memory. I mean even the simplest things, like the "escape hatches", why are they at the top and bottom instead of the sides? I dont think Tod's a bad programmer but it's as if he had never played Pac Man in his life and was given a written description of the "rules" of Pac Man and told to build a game from the ground up based on only that. Ghosts start in the center, Pac starts below the ghosts, bonus inbetween, power pills in the four corners, ghosts chase pac man... GO! Oh and that maze... why are the four corner boxes repeated all up and down the sides? And the rest of the maze is another strange, repeating pattern. Maybe with the nature of 2600 playfields that couldnt be helped at the time?

 

And it's not just the game itself that is the problem, it's the whole package (literally, the box and manual). I remember reading the manual after I first got the game. I specifically remember the references to things like "wafers" and the damn "vitamin" in the center of the screen. What game am I playing again???? I cant believe that they couldnt have drawn a half-decent piece of fruit in the game and called it a cherry. And the artwork on the box and cartridge... no wonder this kid on here thinks the ghosts are one color, they're ALL pink right on the front of the damn box!! Yes, truley this is Pac Man. With PINK ghosts. And Atari didnt even give the ghost their proper names.. or ANY names! BLAH!!! Now I ask you - what does that have to do with programming? How did they get Namco to agree to this? How can it really be called Pac Man? Maybe Atari was afraid they were going to lose the license, I suppose Pac and the ghosts could be changed a little and they could've called it something else. (look at games like "Alien"). Now I played Pac Man a helluva lot at the time, so it's not that bad of a game to me, but it is not an attempt to re-create the arcade experience of Pac Man, it is not an attempt at doing a faithful conversion, and the lack of memory does not explain the myriad of differences such as the color changes and the simplest of things such as the "vitamin" , ooooh that bothered me when I was a kid.. damn vitamin. Almost as much as the puke colors and the BLUE background. It's BLACK, BLACK, BLACK!! Space Invaders has a black background, why cant Pac Man have one? And a BLUE maze to go with it??? Grrrr.. I had no idea I was still upset about this... what.. 23 years later? :wink:

[Big Player]

I guess I wasn't too clear on this...sorry.

 

Tod's first attempt was to do a variable flicker kernel like in Ms. Pac-man. This technique chops the screen into zones and only flickers the players when they're in the same zone (i.e. alternates players per frame).

 

He states that he had the kernel working and went to management to ask for 8K so he could put it in the game. Management said no so instead of seeing the variable flicker we see the ghosts alternating per frame.

 

You were clear, I just read your first post too quickly (or not well enough.)

 

Thanks for the explaination on the variable flicker kernel though. I always wondered how they did it in Ms. Pac-Man.

[DEBRO]

I know it seems like I'm defending this game but I've had a look at it so I can answer some questions...

The sound effects vary wildly from the arcade game as well.. I agree with what's been said, it's almost like any opportunity to make it different than the arcade was taken..  Surely this was willfully done and not the result of lack of memory.

Maybe and then again maybe so. Pac-man is jammed pack with opcodes. I believe it had 3 free bytes left. Maybe it could have been written better but from what I've heard and read no one else wanted to do it. The TIA has limited sound capabilites. There have been some wonderful things done with it though (i.e. Paul Slocum's handy work) but remember this was 1981. They were still learning the system even then.

 

I mean even the simplest things, like the "escape hatches", why are they at the top and bottom instead of the sides?

Take a look at it from the way the VCS processes video.

Remember there is no screen RAM so the screen had to be refreshed each frame. Moving the the tunnels to the top and bottom saves time in the kernel. Tod sets the playfield registers and then starts readying variables for the maze layout.

 

Oh and that maze... why are the four corner boxes repeated all up and down the sides?  And the rest of the maze is another strange, repeating pattern.

Having a simple maze like this saves on ROM space.

 

I cant believe that they couldnt have drawn a half-decent piece of fruit in the game and called it a cherry.

Well that would have taken a 15 hertz flicker game to a 12 hertz flicker game. Or you would have seen Pac-man flicker ever other frame.

 

Now I played Pac Man a helluva lot at the time, so it's not that bad of a game to me, but it is not an attempt to re-create the arcade experience of Pac Man, it is not an attempt at doing a faithful conversion, and the lack of memory does not explain the myriad of differences such as the color changes and the simplest of things such as the "vitamin" , ooooh that bothered me when I was a kid.. damn vitamin.

You're right that lack of ROM space does not make up for the coloring scheme. We also don't know what was going on while this was programmed either. I do remember segments of Once Upon Atari where drugs were mentioned Also I think this game was done in 6 months or less.

 

Now the "vitamin" that was a programming constraint. That is made of the ball and missile objects. Notice how the outside is the same color as the maze and the inside is the same color as Pac-man?

 

Remember the VCS has...

Playfield graphics.....maze and dots

Player0...................ghosts

Missile0...................energizers

Player1...................Pac-man

Missile1...................inside of vitamin

Ball.........................outside of vitamin

[atwwong]

Arrrgggghhh!!!! I can't believe how much better it looks with just a simple colour change. Just goes to show things should not be rushed and that management really doesn't care (most of the time, anyways )!

[AncillaryDrone]

Remember the VCS has...

Playfield graphics.....maze and dots

Player0...................ghosts

Missile0...................energizers

Player1...................Pac-man

Missile1...................inside of vitamin

Ball.........................outside of vitamin

 

Yeah, you know I have read some about the ins and outs of the 2600 over the years and I should be more sensitive to the inherent constraints of programming a 4k version of Pac Man. Still though... the fact that there's an entire topic about the colors of Pac Man... I'd really like to know why the colors had to look that way. Well I'm sure they didnt HAVE to look that way, there must be some reason behind it. Drugs? So you're saying the background represent blue windowpane?

[Nukey Shay]

Regarding the colors, I suppose that nobody will ever know the real reason behind it. Perhaps because he couldn't do the game the way that he wanted to do...so he tried to distance it from the arcade game as much as possible? I dunno. During development, a black background was at least conceptualized (there's mock screenshots that show the VCS maze on a black background). Once the background was shifted to blue, it was no longer an option to use darker sprite colors (because they wouldn't be very visible on a television)...so each one was given nearly the highest brightness - and at that shade, they appeared less unique from one another.

And also it was true that Ebivision had made their game more faithful, but it's also true that they had much more time to develop it (and not be working in the corporate atmosphere anyway). It's also true that their game is only 4k (same as Pac-Man)...but some of the techniques might not have been as well known at the time Atari produced their game.

 

So I guess the real question is why management forced it to be a 4k game, when the programmer told them that he needed 8k to do it right? Since Atari stood to make millions either way due to advance sales, maybe management just didn't care

[Nukey Shay]

Oops...forgot to mention that since all of the monsters "act" the same, there was even less reason to make them look different.

[DEBRO]

Regarding the colors, I suppose that nobody will ever know the real reason behind it. Perhaps because he couldn't do the game the way that he wanted to do...so he tried to distance it from the arcade game as much as possible?  I dunno.  During development, a black background was at least conceptualized (there's mock screenshots that show the VCS maze on a black background).

Maybe it was the play testers. I say this because Ms. Pac-man has a blue background too. Maybe they thought it would be hard to see the other objects

[Nukey Shay]

Maybe...

Though even programming Basic games back in the day, I could tell you that things show up better against a black backdrop

[Breakpack]

Maybe...

Though even programming Basic games back in the day, I could tell you that things show up better against a black backdrop

 

DUDE!!!That looks awesome.I gotta d/l that and try it out on my XBox

[Dav]

A black background would have been more contrasting and made the flicker look worse. I don't think it's that bad of a game, considering. I remember at the time I wasn't disapointed, we didn't expect much back then.

[Nukey Shay]

Does it? I don't have a Supercharger, so I can't see how it looks on a television.

 

Anyone? Do they appear to flicker worse or better or the same?

[+SpiceWare]

I'll try it when I get home. I'll post a photo too.

[Nukey Shay]

Cool...maybe post a picture of Pac-Man as well...so that they can be compared side-by-side. But since the sprites are always 15hz, neither might look very good in a photo.

[+stephena]

They are different colors.  I took a bunch of snap shots using the Mac OS X version of Stella 1.4, then using the "Digital Color meter" I figured out which of the snapshots had different colors for the ghosts.  The colors are very similiar - would have been nicer if they made them more unique.

 

It's probably quite hard to get any idea of colors from flickering objects with snapshots in Stella since a snapshot is a single frame only. In the future, I plan to add some sort of TV/phosphoresence mode where the flickering it greatly reduced.

 

So I'm not arguing with anyone that the original Pac-man game is crap, but it does look worse on emulators ATM compared to on a real TV.

 

Steve

[JB]

Cool...maybe post a picture of Pac-Man as well...so that they can be compared side-by-side.  But since the sprites are always 15hz, neither might look very good in a photo.

You could do it with a proper setup.

Small aperture, long shutter time.

...

Of course, for a 1/15th second exposure, you'll need a tripod.

[Nukey Shay]

That's kind of to be expected, since AFAIK televisions have more "afterglow" than a monitor...bleeding the image from one frame to another. But even via emulation, the sprites seem to be better defined when a black background is there rather than the blue one.

[Nukey Shay]

Cool...maybe post a picture of Pac-Man as well...so that they can be compared side-by-side.  But since the sprites are always 15hz, neither might look very good in a photo.

You could do it with a proper setup.

Small aperture, long shutter time.

...

Of course, for a 1/15th second exposure, you'll need a tripod.

 

I think that you'll get more blurring in that case...the sprites are still moving. So take pictures when all 4 monsters are seperate, and just when they catch you (so that none of them will be in motion).

[JB]

Cool...maybe post a picture of Pac-Man as well...so that they can be compared side-by-side.  But since the sprites are always 15hz, neither might look very good in a photo.

You could do it with a proper setup.

Small aperture, long shutter time.

...

Of course, for a 1/15th second exposure, you'll need a tripod.

 

I think that you'll get more blurring in that case...the sprites are still moving.

Only PacMan will really suffer. Each of the ghosts will only have a quarter of the time, so they won't be in very bad shape.

 

Besides, the streaks are cool.

 

So take pictures when all 4 monsters are seperate, and just when they catch you (so that none of them will be in motion).

Good idea.

[Dav]

That's kind of to be expected, since AFAIK televisions have more "afterglow" than a monitor...bleeding the image from one frame to another.  But even via emulation, the sprites seem to be better defined when a black background is there rather than the blue one.

 

Yes, they're better defined against black. But that also means the flicker shows a little more. Less defined means the flicker is slightly less noticeable. My guess is they were desperate enough to do anything.

[Nukey Shay]

That's kind of to be expected, since AFAIK televisions have more "afterglow" than a monitor...bleeding the image from one frame to another.  But even via emulation, the sprites seem to be better defined when a black background is there rather than the blue one.

 

Yes, they're better defined against black. But that also means the flicker shows a little more. Less defined means the flicker is slightly less noticeable. My guess is they were desperate enough to do anything.

 

Ah...I see what you mean by that now. But if it's a case of noticable flicker vs. being able to see the sprites better, I vote the latter

 

I mean no amount of color saturation is going to help reduce the flicker to an unnoticable state anyway (unless the sprites are the exact same color as the background).

[Dav]

That's kind of to be expected, since AFAIK televisions have more "afterglow" than a monitor...bleeding the image from one frame to another.  But even via emulation, the sprites seem to be better defined when a black background is there rather than the blue one.

 

Yes, they're better defined against black. But that also means the flicker shows a little more. Less defined means the flicker is slightly less noticeable. My guess is they were desperate enough to do anything.

 

Ah...I see what you mean by that now. But if it's a case of noticable flicker vs. being able to see the sprites better, I vote the latter

 

 

I probably would also. Sounds like a decision the suits were involved in.

[NovaXpress]

Sounds like a decision the suits were involved in.

 

No way. How many times have we heard about how Warner didn't care what games were put out or how they looked, as long as they made a profit? There is no reason to think that the suits would have been involved with color decisions, a decision which has no financial implications as far as the technology goes. If the suits had been involved, I'm sure that marketing would have wanted a more accurate game to sell.

[Room 34]

Sorry to dig this up from so much earlier in the thread, but...

Frye's PacMan was the first dot eater for the 2600...