8k Atari Pac-Man

[Nukey Shay]

Nooo...I don't mean that. The Pacman Atari should have gave us leans heavily to what has already been achieved with Hack'Em. Since I wanted to keep this game recognisable AS Atari's version, it kind of puts restrictions on changing too much. Otherwise, it's just reinventing the same wheel again (and that wheel is still broken too).

[Lucky Man]

Nooo...I don't mean that. The Pacman Atari should have gave us leans heavily to what has already been achieved with Hack'Em. Since I wanted to keep this game recognisable AS Atari's version, it kind of puts restrictions on changing too much. Otherwise, it's just reinventing the same wheel again (and that wheel is still broken too).

I agree. I actually wasn't so crazy about all of the changes that people recommended for this hack. I like that you were trying to keep it recognizeable as Atari's Pac-Man. In fact, I loaded all of the WIP versions you did, hoping to find one that worked well, but didn't have all of the extras like the intermissions and such, but they were all kind of buggy. The more I played them, the more I started liking the extras, so I decided to see if you had figured out how to fix those last bugs. Too bad.

[sukotsu9]

This hack is brilliant because it's all done in the spirit of "what could have been". Granted, Hack 'Em and the like are more faithful to the arcade version of Pac-Man, but considering programming of the time, Atari's Pac was a simple solution: maze, ghosts, chomping thing. But for one of the biggest games of all time, 8k was deserved. May not have staved off the Great Crash, but at least Atari would've kept some staying power (or credibility). Pac-Man could've been a U.S. Games release, as chunky as it was. Nukey's refinement has escalated the original closer to where it belongs.

 

Gotta say, though, the colors are faithful, but I have a really hard time playing the game in the daytime (dark blue on black)!

[Nukey Shay]

No dots around box...

pacman8k.zip

[kirin jensen]

Y'know between this hack and Hack'em, you've definitely demonstrated what Pac-man could've been. Amazing work. Definitely a demonstation of the 2600 at its best.

 

Great work! I'm checking for your other hacks.

[Vic George 2K3]

Compared to the lemon that was the 2600 Pac-Man, this is more like lemonade with the right amount of sugar.

Edited May 6, 2006 by Vic George 2K3

[Pac Munchkin]

Nah...I haven't really been getting all the labelling done and such. Just picking at it for the hell of it. Current problem is trying to get the sound routine to read more than 4 notes without pausing for a long stretch (that part of the code is currently commented out, since I can't figure out where that delay is coming from).

 

Current things fixed:

The eyes are now always white, and the copyright notice has been changed into a logo.

 

And yeah, RORG's are being used. Much easier than trying to keep track of things in seperate assemblies. Here's the current one so far, and the current binary...sure wish that Edit was enabled

 

 

.byte $28 ; |XXXXXX | $FF2B Clyde

.byte $38 ; |XXX XX | $FF2C Blinky

.byte $88 ; |XX XXX | $FF2D Inky

.byte $58 ; |XX XX | $FF2E Pinky

.byte $84 ; | XXXX X | $FF2F blue color

.byte $0E ; | X XX X | $FF30 flash color

.byte $1A ; |XXXXX XX| $FF31 pacman color

 

 

That was in the source code this is what I found.

 

0f2b |X XX |

0f2c | XX X |

0f2d | X X XX |

0f2e | XX X |

0f2f | XX X X |

0f30 | X X X |

0f31 | X X X |

 

totally different and it seems nothing to do with color since I tried changing them.

Did you move the colors in finished 8k pac man?

 

Wade

[Nukey Shay]

The "source code" is Distella-generated and then edited manually. So all of the addresses shown are where Distella found them -in the original game- (at least until I actually get around to editing them). Because these are preceded by a semi-colon...it doesn't matter if they ever reflect an actual address. A semi-colon instructs Dasm to ignore everything that follows on that line. You can discover where labels actually exist by having Dasm create an equate table for you (or manually by using ORG statements).

[Nukey Shay]

By request...

I added the option to disable intermissions for those that find the screen roll annoying. Doubtful if I'll ever get around to rewriting the kernals to avoid this glitch

 

Also, a bug that didn't reset the number of monsters eaten has been corrected (below tag LF5A9 in the assembly).

 

 

Both versions + assembly:

Pacman8k.zip

Edited April 28, 2007 by Nukey Shay

[bigdcaldavis2k]

By request...

I added the option to disable intermissions for those that find the screen roll annoying. Doubtful if I'll ever get around to rewriting the kernals to avoid this glitch

 

Also, a bug that didn't reset the number of monsters eaten has been corrected (below tag LF5A9 in the assembly).

 

 

Both versions + assembly:

 

I just tried this on Stella 2.4.2 on Ubuntu. I must say you turned a lemon into lemonade. Outstanding!

 

Now if you just do the same for E.T. and Defender.

[sefoil]

Wow, best improvement on Pac-Man yet. Thanks!

[Pacfan97]

Nukey, This Game Is Really Cool!!! MUCH Better Than That Old Crappy Pacman For Atari 2600.

NOT SO BAD!!!

Edited December 6, 2009 by Pacfan97

[mrjodyhong]

I'm a newbie to this forum. I just wanted to say that this hack is one of my favorite hacks. its the "what if they did it right" hack. I hope to see many more "what if" hacks in the future! Awsome job and thank you!

[maiki]

I was brought to this thread from a You Tube video that looked awful so I wanted to see the real deal. Yes, this version improves the game a lot. I especially like the white dots and the overall colour palette is nice. Question of the day is: any chance to disable that sprite flickering? It is very irritating and most importantly makes it very difficult to distinguish between 2 modes of collision detection ON/OFF. Some flicker-free multiplexing would be nice...

Edited March 16, 2010 by maiki

[Nukey Shay]

Not without a complete rewrite...which would be defeating the purpose of this hack. That subject has already come up before (as did changing the maze and improving monster A.I.). Change any one of those, and it loses the unique "flavor" of the game - and pushes it toward being just a knockoff of miles-better games that have already been done (namely, Eric and Dennis' two homebrews).

[Corby]

Is there anything you can do Nukey to fix the screen roll, when the intermissions come on? or like you said , you'd have to do it all over again.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW what "should have" been released is supposedly close to what Atari's Ms.Pac-Man is, according to the couple of programmers who saw Frye's original ideas for the game. Rob's "A Better Pac-Man" (renamed "Pac-Man Arcade") is probably as close as we are going to get to it based on that info...unless a proto can be discovered that features Frye's original work. The odds of that happening don't look too good, unfortunately

 

Anything/everything else done since Atari's game begins to involve questions such as "But did that technique exist at the time?". I'm happy to report that this hack only involves coding techniques or examples that were common knowledge at the time...so at least it could have been released this way by Atari if they chose to (F8 banking had already begun to be implemented for Atari's port of Asteroids).

[Nukey Shay]

Is there anything you can do Nukey to fix the screen roll, when the intermissions come on? or like you said , you'd have to do it all over again.

 

Sure, if I knew where to put the jumps to and from the main program. But I never found the right spots. I still pick at unfinished stuff like this on occasion. If it bugs you, you could just run the version included above that has the intermissions taken out.

Edited March 16, 2010 by Nukey Shay

[KevinMos3]

I just wanted to say that I love this hack of Pac-Man. I find myself playing it often. I've always preferred the Atari 2600 version over the arcade just because it's the only Pac-Man I knew growing up. I love how this version keeps the feel of the original, but improves the visuals and audio.

 

Thanks Nukey for a great hack!

[A.J. Franzman]

Rob's "A Better Pac-Man" (renamed "Pac-Man Arcade") is probably as close as we are going to get

Nukey (or anyone, really), do you happen to know what the original names for the other "Arcade" titles Al has released were? The Hacks and Homebrews Collection doesn't have a game called "Galaxian Arcade", nor "Space Invaders Arcade" but I assume they're probably already in there.

[Nukey Shay]

That would be difficult, since not all of the hacks that have or had "arcade" in the title are the latest versions. There are also multiple directions that a hack may have gone (such as Thomas' Missile Command TB vs. my Missile Command Arcade...authentic control vs. other features).

Renaming the game during development can also pose problems...for example, Rob's Space Invaders Arcade is in the collection as Better Space Invaders. The original hack of Galaxian (Galaxian 2000) done by Jess was further hacked by Manual (Cybergoth Galaxian) to remove the yellow border and update sprite colors - I'm not sure which one of those was sold as "Galaxian Arcade".

 

One of the good things about Rom's collection is that the filenames include the name of the author (if known).

[KevinMos3]

You're right AJ, they all should be in the Hacks & Homebrews collection, but like Nukey said, they aren't always the latest versions. Also, like Cybergoth Galaxian, sometimes there are updates or alternate hacks by someone else that you might like a bit better. A good example of this is the hack called "Mr. Pac-Man" in the database. It's an update by El Destructo to "A Better Pac-Man" by Rob.

 

If you're looking for an "Arcade" hack of Galaxian, you can try the one I uploaded the other day. I believe the colors are a little closer to the arcade version and the animation is a bit smoother than the hacks that widened the enemies. Of course the colors look vastly different depending on what emulator you use or if you play on real hardware. I had MAME running for comparison while working on that and tried to match up colors based on the pallete in Stella. I probably could have gotten it a bit closer, but went by what I thought would look decent on a TV (I didn't want to use colors that were too dark). For a more arcade looking player ship, it would be nice to hack in a color table (if that would even be possible). That way you could have a red top portion instead of how the sprite just uses a single byte for color description now (the player ship shares the same color as the attacking flagship by the way). Nukey, if I'm saying that wrong, feel free to correct me. I'm just describing it as best I know how.

 

As for Space Invaders, you can't get any better than Nukey Shay's Space Invaders Deluxe 8K hack. The most recent version in the thread is not what's in the download section of the site unless it's been updated recently. I never even liked Space Invaders (at all), but I really enjoy Nukey's hack and play it often which I think says a lot.

[A.J. Franzman]

Thanks Nukey and KevinMos3. Although I do like to know which hack or remake of a game is the most arcade-faithful, that wasn't the point of my post. I'm compiling a list of game "aliases", and I just wanted to know what the hackers' names were for the hacks that Al has been selling as "... Arcade" titles, since his store pages don't mention that info. Are there any other VCS games which Al sells under a different name than what their creators or most recent revisers called them?

[raindog]

Renaming the game during development can also pose problems...for example, Rob's Space Invaders Arcade is in the collection as Better Space Invaders.

 

For what it's worth, I never referred to my Space Invaders hack as anything but "my Space Invaders hack" until long after its last release. The last version I released, which I think is what Al used for the cartridges, was just called "spchack3". I told him I didn't mind him changing the names of that and "A Better Pac-Man", but the name changes didn't occur during development.

 

(But in the case of Pac-Man, the name did change -- there were some early versions I referred to as "PacFTM".)

[ravenxau]

Just curious, was playing this on game 6 - talk about insanity after the first 8 or so boards, I actually had the old adrenalin rushing!!! - Is there an official High score thread or anything for this awesome hack?

Edited December 12, 2010 by ravenxau