QUIKMAN 2008 for the unexpanded VIC 20

[rhurst]

The Wordpress plugin is mangling the "+" in the filename. I renamed the archive using an underscore. The posted link should work now, thanks!

[Victragic]

By far the best Pac-man clone on the Vic.. and there are some good ones out there.

[beamrider]

Link doesn't seem to be working again for me.

[rhurst]

Bad winter night; I had to reboot my Verizon FiOS router. Unfortunately, I did not check to see if it changed my DHCP lease -- it did and it is only programmed to autoupdate my DynDNS hurst.homelinux.net as of Jan. 29, 2014 6:39 PM, but not my vanity domain, hurst-ri.us. DOH!!

All should be well now.

[rhurst]

Wow, I have reorganized internal memory and found other minor optimizations to free up program and data space. The result allowed for these added enhancements, and I'd like some beta-testing and feedback on the alterations please:

• new doorway
• new fleeing ghosts
• intro sequence after every 4th level

The maze tile reorg might allow me to squeeze in my final goal: I need to hand-compress the maze data (spaces, dots, east-west wall) with extra code to unpack it for proper display; if that can fit in the 8K expansion and allow for a little more data space, I should be able to add a proper music sequence to the interlude.

I may have broken the Quikman death sound effect sequence, doesn't sound like before, but it may be my playing end of it.

I did not commit the new source nor updated the zip archive from the other week, but you can fetch the program binary via download here.

[beamrider]

How about the background siren effect as on the arcade original and Jelly Monsters?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[beamrider]

Yes, the death sounds has gone a bit wonky

..also not sure if there was before but there's no background sound effect when ghosts are running away.

[rhurst]

Yeah, the death sound was borked by a bad starting address pointer from my memory reorg, throwing the whole sequencing off. Thanks for confirming and the binary has been updated.

Keeping things within an 8K memory expansion is my project requirement, so really not competing with Jelly Monsters. Sirens are not on my radar, nor to my liking. While Quikman is a good "clone" of the arcade game, I also re-worked the doorway again, because I think it looks something more special that is uniquely VIC.

[orion70]

The intro sequence after every 4th level is an excellent add-on (I used to play the original arcade only to see it).

[pallas]

amazing development! thank you!
pac man is one of the games which relives more funny memories of my childhood, both on the arcade and on the vic!

[Mayhem]

Now I have to decide whether to add or replace the existing game in GB20

[rhurst]

I trust your judgement in all things related toward maintaining classic software legacy, Mayhem.

I corrected all my observed flaws from the memory reorg. Then, I did all of the MAZEDATA encodings, packing repeating dots and spaces, and netted over 600 bytes! I integrated my (music) player into the IRQ handler, because now both the theme and (new) interlude tunes have been generalized to execute from there.

I have over a page (256-bytes) free. I will (re)think the siren, but no promises. It's no longer a matter of fitting the feature in, now it's a matter of taste.

While it looks and feels completely usable, its PRG binary is available from its SVN trunk or for playing as BETA. Feedback reports are welcomed.

[rhurst]

Ok, this is a release candidate, which means it should be good to go AS-IS, unless someone finds a real issue needing resolution. Tested using xvic 2.4.6 with 8K memory expansion for both NTSC and PAL modes.

Of note from the 2009 version:

• modified splash startup screen
• updated sound effects and music
• intermission after every 4th level
• new cage door
• new blue monster
• flashing P1 or P2
• arcade replica of its numeric font and !

All made possible mostly because of encoding the mazes for compression of the repeating space or dot tiles, which freed up over 600-bytes; plus new runtime memory assignments to make better use of the system stack $0100 and the datasette buffer. All of the changes fit in nicely, with a little more room to spare!

Download the complete zip archive, or from its SVN trunk.

This was a lot of fun to do.

[beamrider]

nice work - look forward to trying it out..

[Mayhem]

In the end, I've added this version to the original 2009 version as an extra in GB20... seemed the fairest way.