Paku Paku (WIP)

[Sokurah]

A few days ago I asked about a palette related "problem". Unfortunately it doesn't seem like I could solve it the way I'd hoped for, but I managed to come up with something else.
As you can see I had the idea to port Paku Paku (aka. "1D Pacman") back to the Pacman arcade hardware.
This is a preview of that. And this IS a preview - because it's probably only half done.
It should be noted, that so far my effort (about 4 evenings worth) has only been about getting the "mechanics" working: sprites, controls, movement, fruits - no time at all spent on balancing speeds and gameplay.
You can see how much is in already. The next things I'll work on is pills and energy pills, being able to pick them up, turning the ghost "scared" when you do - and all the rest of the things related to eating the ghosts and resetting the "level" when all pills have been eaten.
Then I'll do the GUI and menu-stuff and then I will look at the gameplay.

But you can see what I have so far, here.


I'm actually also working on another much more ambitious thing for this hardware, but I put it aside for a little while to do this small game instead, so more will come for the Pacman hardware later 😉

 

[Georgian2]

This is awsome! Looking forword to converting my pac-man.
Could you make something like the playfield randomly starts at other position? This way the monitor burn-in could be reduced.
Great work!

 

[Hurray Banana]

Nice work

 

[Sokurah]

This is awsome! Looking forword to converting my pac-man.
Could you make something like the playfield randomly starts at other position? This way the monitor burn-in could be reduced.
Great work!

Thanks. I will not move the playfield around, but I do have another idea that will work just as well ... in the unlikely situation that someone would actually put it on a real arcade machine 😄

 

[Georgian2]

Thanks. I will not move the playfield around, but I do have another idea that will work just as well ... in the unlikely situation that someone would actually put it on a real arcade machine 😄

I will for sure. Not an dedicated cab but I will play it in one my cabs.

 

[Robert]

I added this preview to HBmame, and after letting it run for a while noticed a little bug. I know it's only a preview so the bug doesn't matter, but still. The sprite in the centre shows every sprite that exists if you wait long enough. When the score sprites show (400,800,etc) they are backwards, so for example 800 shows as 008.

Anyway, good luck with this project.

 

[Sokurah]

That's not a bug - that's just me not having bothered putting in a check 😆 (because I'll add more fruits than what is in the original Pacman game at some point) 😉
As for the backwards part, perhaps I'm just flipping the fruits horizontally. That's an easy fix 😅

Right now I'm just worried how I'm going to get sound into it ... but that's a worry for another day.

 

[Sokurah]

Hi guys,

Small update. In the demo I posted on Saturday I replicated the original "level" in that there was 8 pills on either side of the "central hole", but I always felt that the playfield was very small ... and I honestly wasn't super happy with my "hack" to let Pac go through the sides, so I changed it and the board now goes across the entire width of the screen. That means only 12 pills instead of 16 (although I could squeeze 2 more in), but "looks wise" it feels closer to the original game.

Get it here.

How do you like this compared to V1?

PS. I also limited the items that appear as fruits, and removed the horizontal flip too 😉

 

[Robert]

Right, that one works. Just discovered that the left-right keys move the pacman around and can eat the fruit.

When I was referring to bugs, I only meant about the backwards numbers. I wasn't concerned about which sprites showed. Now there's no numbers to worry about. I suppose you could show a number for a few seconds when the fruit is eaten.

 

[Sokurah]

Hi guys,
Almost a month since I wrote last, and to be honest I haven't done much in the mean time.
Gameplay (the little that was there, lol) certainly hasn't progressed, but the few times I've been working on it, it has been to try to implement some sound effects.
Easy, just copy the code and data from the arcade machine - it's a version of Pacman anyway, and then it'll work, right?
Well, it took a bit more than I'd expected, but tonight I managed to use the sounds from the original game. Phew 😅
Long story short, next time I sit down with it, I'm going to actually put them into the game, so hopefully it'll come more alive soon 🤞

 

[Hurray Banana]

I've still got to mess with sound on the pac board

 

[Sokurah]

It has been a while since my last update, and while I haven't spent as much time on PakuPaku as I wish, I have made some progress.
You can now eat the ghosts and the pills, and the energizer pills work too, but I haven't finished the code for eating the ghosts and replenishing the the pills after eating all of them.
... and absolutely no tuning of gameplay yet either. That comes last ... and much more comes first

So, a lot more done than last time ... but LOTS of things still missing or incomplete.

The will be the last version for a little while though, as I'm going on vacation tomorrow for a couple of weeks.

Latest version here. https://tardis.dk/retro/pakupaku/PakuPaku_v03.zip

 

[Sokurah]

It has been a while since my last update, and while I haven't spent as much time on PakuPaku as I wish, I have made some progress.
You can now eat the ghosts and the pills, and the energizer pills work too, but I haven't finished the code for eating the ghosts and replenishing the the pills after eating all of them.
... and absolutely no tuning of gameplay yet either. That comes last ... and much more comes first

So, a lot more done than last time ... but LOTS of things still missing or incomplete.

The will be the last version for a little while though, as I'm going on vacation tomorrow for a couple of weeks.

Latest version here. https://tardis.dk/retro/pakupaku/PakuPaku_v02.zip

I'm an idiot - I mistakenly added the link to the previous version again
The correct file is this one: https://tardis.dk/retro/pakupaku/PakuPaku_v03.zip
(I've edited the post above with the right link too 😅

 

[Sokurah]

Hi

It's been a while, but I'm still alive - I just haven't felt like coding for a long time. I just picked up this project again after a break of almost 3 months of doing nothing.
In fact, it's almost been 6 months to the date of when I started on this project, and since I make a backup after each coding session, I can tell that I've only worked on it 25 times in those 6 months. But I digress...

After getting back into this project last week, I've made the main menu, fixed the biggest and most annoying bug, added an anti-burn-in mode and gotten started on the scoring and a few other things. And then, suddenly, the list of things still missing is a lot smaller and are mostly consisting of polish and tuning.

Although the menu says otherwise, there's no demo this time, but enjoy the menu screen

 

[Hurray Banana]

Good to see