Hack of a hack: "Mr. Pac-Man"

[El Destructo]

Based on my suggestions in this thread, scottith and I have been hacking on Rob Kudla's "Towards a Better Pac-Man" hack to make it look and play even closer to the arcade.

 

scottith cleaned up the "PACMAN" logo & added the dash, and changed the ghost's "sheet-tails" and "eyes" to look like Jr. Pac-Man.

 

I fixed the ghost colors to match their personalities, and re-designed the maze: thinner walls, more dots to eat, and the lower corners are twisty, in the spirit of the original. It's a little more challenging as a result.

 

To keep it distinct from Rob's version, I have named it "Mr. Pac-Man", to reflect how we collectively started with Ms. Pac-Man and made changes.

 

Let me know what you think! I hope you like it.

 

mr._pac_man.zip

[MegaManFan]

I like it, but I have a z26 question - does anybody here a high pitched "BEEEEEEEEEEP" noise any time you die or between levels of the game besides me?

[Albert]

Great! I look forward to trying this out. May I add this to our Hacks Page? I'm moving this thread into the Hacks forum.

 

..Al

[El Destructo]

I think it's due to a shortcut in the game code. Instead of silencing the sound channels, it sets the pitch to 0: almost, but not quite, beyond the range of hearing.

 

p.s. Thanks for trying our hack!

[El Destructo]

Great! I look forward to trying this out. May I add this to our Hacks Page? I'm moving this thread into the Hacks forum.

 

Don't add it just yet, please, this is the first time anyone's seen it and I'd like the opportunity to incorporate suggestions and improvements.

 

Thanks!

[NE146]

hmmm I like it a lot! But just a thought.. would it be possible to provide a copy of your hack but without the maze change? (perhaps as just an alternative option in roms? ). I do like the ghost graphics alterations and the correction of the colors (and the little change to the cherries)

 

Actually hmm.. yknow this brings up another idea. Maybe there should be a hack of MsPacman, keeping it as Mspac, but with 4 new mazes. That'd be a fun one wouldn't it? It'd be sort of like Ms Pac Attack in the arcades/Mame

[Albert]

Don't add it just yet, please, this is the first time anyone's seen it and I'd like the opportunity to incorporate suggestions and improvements.

 

No problem, I have a large queue of hacks to add and maybe by the time I actually get around to adding them you'll have incorporated those improvements.

 

..Al

[Channel 2]

I really like the name Mr. Pac-Man.

 

I'm getting the same high pitched beep here. It's really loud and annoying. Is a shortcut in the sound code really needed?

 

My suggestion for an improvement (don't know if it's doable): make the dots white, like in the unreleased Ebivision version, the one Pesco is derived from. They make the playfield white and don't show the maze on those scanlines. I think the gaps in the maze actually make it look better.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Don't add it just yet, please, this is the first time anyone's seen it and I'd like the opportunity to incorporate suggestions and improvements.

You should change the copyright date into 2003.

 

I don't know how the mazes are encoded, but maybe it's possible to write a simple (graphical) editor and patch the user defined mazes into the ROM.

 

Then everybody could design it's own mazes and the discussion about most correct mazes would have an end too.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

No problem, I have a large queue of hacks to add...

Hm...

[El Destructo]

Here's an alpha (read: broken ) version of Mr. Pac-Man with some new changes:

 

Copyright year changed from 1999 to 2003, per Thomas' suggestion;

 

Flipped the cherries to face left: more like the arcade, and one less thing to remind me of 2600 Ms. Pac-Man; and

 

I composed a new startup tune with double the note resolution! Trouble is, it breaks all the other sounds. Try eating ghosts or dying to hear what I mean.

 

Double the resolution means twice as much note data to cram into the ROM, which means disassembling and rearranging code. But, in the meantime, I wanted to share the tune.

 

So turn it up!

mr._pac_man_new_start_tune.zip

[snorlaxnut]

Played the new version. Music sounds good.

[raindog]

Yeah, you guys are doing an awesome job on this. The music is just about exactly how I would have done it if I could have at the time.

 

The complaints people have about the high pitched whine apply to the original Ms. Pac-Man and my hack as well, unless there's something I missed in this hack in my experimentation with Stella under Linux. The shortcut with pitch 0 was on the part of Atari's guys, not us.

 

Some of the other requests people have had (in particular the white dots) would require a total rewrite of the kernel, I think. Not to say it'd be that hard nowadays, but I had no way to disassemble and subsequently reassemble an 8K game back then (and I still don't know how now.) I hand-assembled the hundred or so bytes of new code I added and patched it in like the rest of my changes with a hex editor.

 

The maze editor is definitely doable and I thought about doing some VB thing back then, but you also need to figure out how many dots will display in your layout and change the "number of dots to complete the board" byte in the ROM. Piece of cake but I was too lazy at the time and it's kinda low priority for me now.

 

Anyway, great going, it'd be cool if someone came up with something generally available that's visibly better than that infamous uncirculated Ebivision game

 

Rob

[NE146]

You know.. I sort of like how it turned out where it flashes and plays the little fanfare snippet from the intro whenever you eat a ghost or fruit! It kinda makes it more lively! Good stuff

 

I'm still torn whether I like this maze better or the maze from Rob's.. hmmmm. Or do I like them both. errghh such decisions

[ATARI TROLL]

NICE........VERY NICE. ABOUT THE CLOSEST TO THE REAL THING YET!

[Vic George 2K3]

The second version of the Mr. Pac-Man hack is a bit annoying with the portion of the Pac-Man intro theme playing every time you ate a fruit prize or a ghost. Otherwise, it's an excellent job, and an interesting alternative to the original Pac-Man Arcade hack.

[El Destructo]

As I said above, I posted it early so everyone could hear the music. I know it's broken. Don't worry, Vic, it won't be that way for long. In fact, I've already made progress; not only am I putting the sound effects right, there is potential for improving them to the same level as the start tune.

[El Destructo]

I've found a way to squeeze the doubled sound information into the cart: double only the main voice. The new code plays one note on voice 2 for every two notes on voice 1.

 

No more bits of start tune playing instead of sound effects; they are now distinct, the maze flashes only after it's cleared instead of during the start tune, and getting caught by a ghost resumes the current maze per usual rather than advancing to the next maze.

 

Two curious side effects remain: Pac-Man spins during the beginning of the start tune, and eating ghosts sometimes shortens or lengthens the energizer time. My modified sound playback code is probably to blame.

 

Anyway, almost everything is back to normal. Once that's done, I plan to work on the following improvements:

• Take advantage of a seemingly large block of empty space to present the complete set of Pac-Man fruits, including the Galaxian;

[*]Display the orange, lime, galaxian, and bell fruit for two mazes each;

[*]At higher levels, reduce the energizer time to zero (ghosts reverse direction only).

• This project will be on hold while I move, but after a week or two I'll be back on it. I'm having too much fun with it to put it down!

[Video]

That's a cool looking game. Here's a curiosoty.

 

Would it be possible to take the maze, and make a smaller version in black to overlay the original blue one? I don't know if I'm explaining it right, but What I'm talking about would allow the walls of the maze to have the hollow vectorlike look of the arcade game. Or just program the wall with a hole in it.

 

Not important, and won't affect how the game plays, but would be interesting anyhow.

[MegaManFan]

That's a cool looking game.  Here's a curiosoty.

 

Would it be possible to take the maze, and make a smaller version in black to overlay the original blue one?  I don't know if I'm explaining it right, but What I'm talking about would allow the walls of the maze to have the hollow vectorlike look of the arcade game.  Or just program the wall with a hole in it.  

 

Not important, and won't affect how the game plays, but would be interesting anyhow.

 

Even with my limited knowledge of 2600 programming, I think I can safely say that achieving that result would be (A.) impossible or (B.) so flickery as to induce massive epileptic seizures.

[Video]

Aww Oh well, worth a shot asking. Maybe someday someone will find a way, but it's still col though. I just ordered Pac-Man Arcade, and am looking forward to playing it the right way after playing the other verson 20+ years now.

[Breakpack]

Any progress ?