104 replies to this topic

[Big Player]

All I can say is that thanks to opcode's great work, I need to buy myself a Colecovision.

[birdie3]

Just out of curiosity.. What games are going to be included in the collection?? So far I have read Ms. Pacman and Pacman. Will there be any of the other Pacman titles included as well?

Either way, this looks bloody wicked and I am looking forward to seeing the final cut!!

[SS]

Big Player said:

All I can say is that thanks to opcode's great work, I need to buy myself a Colecovision.

You soooo need to pick up a copy of "Space Invaders Collection" too!

[opcode]

birdie3 said:

Just out of curiosity.. What games are going to be included in the collection?? So far I have read Ms. Pacman and Pacman. Will there be any of the other Pacman titles included as well?

Either way, this looks bloody wicked and I am looking forward to seeing the final cut!!

Hi!

Since the original Pac-Man took "just" 24KB, plans are to have Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man Plus included. And of course Pac-Man will be available in two different versions, US and Japanese.

[NE146]

Hey Opcode.. since I haven't chimed in here yet, lemme do that now. You know what I'm thinking already... this looks badass!

[opcode]

NE146 said:

Hey Opcode.. since I haven't chimed in here yet, lemme do that now.  You know what I'm thinking already... this looks badass!

Hi NE146!

Long time don't talk to you, eh?!
I am glad you liked it. Now, don't tell you are a Pac-Man expert too!

BTW, I finally checked the PSX Namco Museum version of Pac-Man yesterday, and much to my surprise it doesn't follow the correct arcade patterns (the attract mode plays differently).

[NE146]

opcode said:

NE146 said:

Hey Opcode.. since I haven't chimed in here yet, lemme do that now.  You know what I'm thinking already... this looks badass!

Hi NE146!

Long time don't talk to you, eh?!
I am glad you liked it. Now, don't tell you are a Pac-Man expert too!

hahah No, I'm definitely far far FAR away from the champion masters of the game you find out there. Although I guess I've spent a respectable amount of time on Puck-Man machines so I can hold my own somewhat When it comes to Pacman though, I definitely like to use patterns. Hey, patterns aren't a bad thing.. it was what the original game was all about! (imho)

Quote

BTW, I finally checked the PSX Namco Museum version of Pac-Man yesterday, and much to my surprise it doesn't follow the correct arcade patterns (the attract mode plays differently).  

Yeah forget about using the original arcade patterns on ANY released Pacman ports. There may be one I'm not aware of, but I kind of gave up on finding any commercially released Pacman that is faithful to the general patterns. Yours might be the first!

[Dav]

Quote

Yeah forget about using the original arcade patterns on ANY released  Pacman ports. There may be one I'm not aware of, but I kind of gave up on finding any commercially released Pacman that is faithful to the general patterns. Yours might be the first!

I believe Opcode's is the second. I got an email from a guy a while back that was working on the same project for something called a SAM coupe. Whatever the heck that is. I think maybe you have to be British or else I wasn't paying attention.

http://homepage.ntlw...wen/sam/pacemu/

[Xot]

Dav said:

Quote

Yeah forget about using the original arcade patterns on ANY released  Pacman ports. There may be one I'm not aware of, but I kind of gave up on finding any commercially released Pacman that is faithful to the general patterns. Yours might be the first!

I believe Opcode's is the second. I got an email from a guy a while back that was working on the same project for something called a SAM coupe. Whatever the heck that is. I think maybe you have to be British or else I wasn't paying attention.
http://homepage.ntlw...wen/sam/pacemu/

That's an emulator, though, running the Pac-Man ROMs. This project was written completely from the ground up, right?

[Dav]

Xot said:

Dav said:

Quote

Yeah forget about using the original arcade patterns on ANY released  Pacman ports. There may be one I'm not aware of, but I kind of gave up on finding any commercially released Pacman that is faithful to the general patterns. Yours might be the first!

I believe Opcode's is the second. I got an email from a guy a while back that was working on the same project for something called a SAM coupe. Whatever the heck that is. I think maybe you have to be British or else I wasn't paying attention.
http://homepage.ntlw...wen/sam/pacemu/

That's an emulator, though, running the Pac-Man ROMs. This project was written completely from the ground up, right?

He's calling it an emulator, I wouldn't since it runs the code natively. The roms are patched to drive the computer hardware instead of a pacman board.

I'm not sure what Opcode's doing, but to be frame perfect he's either working from the roms or the source. Either way the results are the same.

[Nukey Shay]

So how do you get that thing working? All I get is a message stating that the roms must be combined into a 16k file and imported into the .dsk file. Doing so seems to have no effect.

[Dav]

I don't know I never tried it myself, I'm just taking his word for it. I have enough problems making mame work w/o leaning new emulators. He emailed me asking why the attract mode was different, I told him and he said he added the 8k into upper memory and it fixed it.

Dave

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

Dav said:

I got an email from a guy a while back that was working on the same project for something called a SAM coupe.

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but who are you knowing so much about Pac-Man internals? Dave Nutting himself?

Greetings,
Manuel

[opcode]

Cybergoth said:

Hi there!

Dav said:

I got an email from a guy a while back that was working on the same project for something called a SAM coupe.

Maybe I missed it somewhere, but who are you knowing so much about Pac-Man internals? Dave Nutting himself?

Greetings,
Manuel

I was going to ask the same thing...

[Dav]

I did the mspacman driver for Mame. I'm not a dev but I send them code occasionally. Mostly I break encryption for them, rather than write drivers. I did the 2 player simultaneous hack (mr & mrs pacman) that's in misfit mame. I designed the 96 in 1 pacman multigame that I've since sold to someone else. http://home.everestk...le/multipac.htm It includes such hacks as a top 10 hi score list, player 2 control of the red ghost and pacman with 32 mazes. I helped Mike at www.fpgaarcade.com with his pacman on a chip testing. I've ported pengo to pacman hardware, done about 5 or 6 homebrew games for pacman hardware. I've probably dissasembled the entire mspacman at one time or another, I don't keep very good notes though. I have seen the original source code for ms pac too

I've been hanging over here for the past few weeks because some friends asked me to work on an atari project, it's almost done. I just haven't decided what to do with it yet.

[Godzilla]

Will it have pacmania as well? :-)

[opcode]

UPDATE June 22nd

- I am now testing Pac-Man in a real ColecoVision and have played it a lot. Gee, I love this game!
- Starting preliminary work on Ms Pac-Man. I am finishing the game artwork and doing some coding. Since both games wil use the same engine, I think I will have a easier time with Ms. Pac-Man. Now my biggest challenge will be figure out a good bank switch scheme.
- Pac-Man will be fully playable at CGE2K4!

[opcode]

UPDATE: Artwork for first maze

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[DEBRO]

opcode said:

- Pac-Man will be fully playable at CGE2K4!

opcode said:

UPDATE: Artwork for first maze

[opcode]

UPDATE: Ms Pac-Man intro screen

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[opcode]

UPDATE: June 28th

- Additional work done to the sprite engine #2 (actual sized sprites). Now intermissions #2 and #3 look arcade perfect.
- Several timing bugs corrected. Now the game plays correctly on a real CV.
- Blinders added to the sprite engine #2, so it now perfectly simulates the arcade screen border and sprites going thru it.

TO DO:
- Add shape routines to the sprite engine #2. It's required to a more accurated simulation of the opening and intermission #1.

[opcode]

UPDATE: June 29th

Since I have both Namco and Midway versions of Pac-Man included in Pac-Man Collection, I was thinking about a similar treatment to Ms Pac-Man.
In the first I thought about a fake Namco version for this game, just to keep consistency. However I think I came up with a better idea: if you take a close look at Ms Pac-Man graphic char set (using MAME) you will find the GCC logo in there. So I decided to pay homage to the original creators of Ms Pac-Man and included a "fake" GCC version of this game with Pac-Man Collection.

Check the screenshot bellow and let me know that you think.

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[DEBRO]

opcode said:

Check the screenshot bellow and let me know that you think.

I like it!

How do you find and code these things so quickly?

[Nathan Strum]

opcode said:

=So I decided to pay homage to the original creators of Ms Pac-Man and included a "fake" GCC version of this game with Pac-Man Collection.=

How about using the Crazy Otto graphics for it?



Look near the bottom of this page for more about Crazy Otto.

[opcode]

Nathan Strum said:

How about using the Crazy Otto graphics for it?

Now that would be nice, but where can I find the ROM set?

BTW, great website.