Nukey Shay Posted January 26, 2005 Author Share Posted January 26, 2005 Problems: Out of time in the program area...there are some jitters when both the fruit and energizer are active at the same time. Need to clean up the program area a bit (there's a LOT of JSR's being used, using redundant routines will probably correct this - I've got plenty of space to burn). I removed player hardware collisions in order to get the fruit sprite to work (i.e. so that the ghosts cannot kill you by touching the fruit), but now you may be killed if you go through the tunnel when ghosts are in the horizontal center. This still needs a solution. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari-Jess Posted January 26, 2005 Share Posted January 26, 2005 but part of me want to keep the maze unchanged (so that it is clearly a hack of Atari's game). The way I see it Nukey Shay, this is more than a hack, but a correction. The Ms. Pac-man to Pac-man conversion thing was a hack. You're doing so much more. I vote that you push for accuracy rather than clinging on to Atari's mistakes in reproducing what the label clearly describes itself as "Pac-Man" At least. it does on my cartridges. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 26, 2005 Author Share Posted January 26, 2005 Nope...it's not a correction, but an expansion...since I still have no idea what Tod's original Pac-Man concept was (does anyone?). Besides, changing the maze would involve almost completely rewriting the game engine, and that's pretty much out of my league. The original kernal is still there, I'm just throwing things on top of it to see how far it could have gone. Interesting to note that some things were already done right (like the independant sprite colors, which have always been there), but not even noticed back in the day. Besides, I'd already been there Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted January 26, 2005 Share Posted January 26, 2005 Can intermissions be added? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 26, 2005 Author Share Posted January 26, 2005 Yes...I never added them before because it wasn't keeping track of level #'s. The program jumps to bank1 to draw the display. By performing a simple test first (like checking for a bit that has been flagged), this can be bypassed to run an alternate display in bank2 instead. When an intermission finishes, it would just reset any pointers used in the intermission to what they would have been following bank1's routines, and then jump right where bank1 returns. Similarly, a title display can be added by making a custom display right where cart initialization occurs (near the START vector address...just following ram clear). I removed a few subroutines here and changed them to standard routines...which gathered enough cycle time to correct those jitters. The program is still pretty messy (with subroutines constantly being imbedded and return vectors being PLA'ed off), so it takes a while to weed through them. I still need to correct the tunnel problem. Right now, it's sort of like Asteroids' hyperspace...with a fair chance of being killed when ghosts are near the horizontal center pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 27, 2005 Author Share Posted January 27, 2005 Adding intermissions: To save cycle time, I just checked if the current maze is a multiple of 4 (so the 3 intermissions appear following the 2 oranges, Galaxians, and bells). They still need a bit of editing (like 3 ghosts in the first one and the misplaced nail in the second). There's also a slight hiccup once the intermission finishes that needs correcting pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 27, 2005 Author Share Posted January 27, 2005 Hiccup and 1st intermission corrected...2nd intermission and tunnel still need fixing. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted January 27, 2005 Share Posted January 27, 2005 Wow...ask and ye shal receive. I'll check this out when I get home from work this afternoon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted January 28, 2005 Share Posted January 28, 2005 Tunnel problems notwithstanding, this hack is getting better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted January 28, 2005 Share Posted January 28, 2005 It really is good. A fun version of Atari Pac-Man. Whoda thunk it? This is going to need a Packrat release when it's done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 29, 2005 Author Share Posted January 29, 2005 2nd intermission corrected. Killed the dot sound following intermissions. Added an animated title screen. I also changed the players in reserve to be little pacmen. They don't change sides when the players switch, so to keep things clear, I used the score color of the corresponding player for each. Bluetimes have been altered to be closer to the arcade values (besides keys, which end with #4 giving no bluetime instead of #5). Something else that I discovered that Tod did right was that this game allows for differing flash times (higher levels on the arcade have quicker changeback following the regular bluetime). The timing is still a bit off tho. Dumped the SECAM palette (does anyone even use this??) in favor of better PAL colors pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 Damn...wrong version posted (sorry!) Garbled intermissions corrected...and now they follow the correct order: #1 following strawberry, #2 following 1st apple, and #3 following 1st Galaxian and 1st key - with bluetimes being increased following them. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 Test version releases ghosts from the box before the bluetime is up. There's a couple of bugs to iron out. pactest.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 Screen jitter corrected...but the death animation might play twice (if you die while an energizer is active). You will still only lose 1 life when this happens tho, so it's not a serious bug. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 Hm...I wonder if that addition should only be used in Expert mode (where B = still hold the ghosts until the timer runs down)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 30, 2005 Author Share Posted January 30, 2005 Overlooked bug corrected: When player 2 scored an extra player at 10k, this was being shown added to player 1's reserves (although player 2 would still be able to use it). This has been fixed. BTW I forgot to mention a couple of builds ago that player 2's reserves are right-justified now Anyone playing this on hardware? Any jitters/rolls? pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NE146 Posted January 30, 2005 Share Posted January 30, 2005 Just wanted to say again, Nukey you are amazing. This is one of my most favorite hacks ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 30, 2005 Share Posted January 30, 2005 Just wanted to say again, Nukey you are amazing. What, is this some kind of a "Sponge Bob" thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Bleh...it's a good thing I'm not Bob Updated the game kernal to allow 6-digit scoring (Atari's Pac-Man uses only 5). While this eliminated the empty sprites used for spaces, it allows the game to keep track of higher scoring. I also added "8k" to the logo Game selections might look a bit strange tho (Game 1 appears as 000001). Also, doing so wrecked havok with the "player-up" variables used to swap colors (they occupied the same ram locations as the score digit pointers). So I just kept player1 on top and player 2 on bottom at all times. To indicate which player is up, at first I did a flashing score. This appeared to be more seizure-inducing than the sprites...so instead, I animated the reserve lives of the player that is up. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 BTW there were placeholders of that 6th digit in the original game's score display loop. Since the last digit in the arcade game is always zero...and the last digit in Atari's game was used for game selections...something tells me that it was intended to have 6 digits, but was just unfinished I just had to change the setup routine a bit, and alter this: LD459: LDY Temp ;3 LDA #$00 ;2 STA GRP0 ;3 ?? STA GRP0 ;3 ?? ...to this: LD459: LDY Temp ;3 LDA (DigitPointers+8),Y ;5 (6th digit/100k) STA GRP0 ;3 Cycle count stayed unchanged Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 31, 2005 Author Share Posted January 31, 2005 Ghosts now move up out of the box, and Pac-Man starts closer to it already moving toward the left. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATARI TROLL Posted January 31, 2005 Share Posted January 31, 2005 Simply amazing Nukey! Love the intermissions on this one as well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bcprs1 Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 This just keeps getting better and better. I can't believe how much I am enjoying playing pac-man again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted February 1, 2005 Share Posted February 1, 2005 Ideas for things to add: Flashing maze when board is cleared. Reversing ghosts when an energizer is eaten. Can Pac-Man be slowed down when eating dots? Again, just ideas to make a great hack even better! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted February 7, 2005 Author Share Posted February 7, 2005 Tunnel problem corrected (I think) When moving through the tunnel, I figured out that the object direction would have bit 5 set. So just by checking the status of that bit in both the player and the ghost, the program can decide when to skip over the collision routine entirely. This should make it impossible to die inside the tunnel. pacman8k.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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