Happy birthday PacMan!

[Carnivius]

The great PacMan is 35 years old!

And still rocks!

[ervin]

Wow... that really makes me feel old!

[VincentGR]

Damn!!! I'm older than pacman 

[seanb]

Damn!!! I'm older than pacman 

So am I by 3 weeks

[VincentGR]

So am I by 3 weeks

To tell the truth I have the same age as Road Race (Sega) 

[Bryce]

To tell the truth I have the same age as Road Race (Sega) 

You're all just mere children in my eyes. I'm slightly older than this!:

[attach=2]



Bryce.

[seanb]

Slightly older than black and white?
You're Sepia!!! 

[VincentGR]

You're all just mere children in my eyes. I'm slightly older than this!:

[attach=2]



Bryce.

whaahahaha.
Yes but wiser too, you carry knowledge in your reels 

[Bryce]

Slightly older than black and white?
You're Sepia!!! 

Eh, no, slightly older than a PDP-11.

@VincentGR: Stop starring at my reels! My eyes are up here!

Bryce.

[seanb]

That makes a bit more sense

[MacDeath]

Dmn, will someone hack Pacmania to get a properly well deserved real CPC version ?

[Kris]

Damn!!! I'm older than pacman 

Me too

[Carnivius]

Dmn, will someone hack Pacmania to get a properly well deserved real CPC version ?

Hope you don't mind that I had a go too.  Am not generally keen on Spectrum ported graphics but I went with a more vibrant colour scheme.

[remax]

Damn!!! I'm older than pacman 

Me too 

[CraigsBar]

Me too 

aren't we all?

[EgoTrip]

Carnivac's mockup looks best. In the meantime if you want a MODE 0 pac man inspired game, theres always Fast Food.

[MacDeath]

Hope you don't mind that I had a go too.  Am not generally keen on Spectrum ported graphics but I went with a more vibrant colour scheme.

haha of course not, I didn't spend many time on the colours, more getting rid of the colour clashes... anyway each levels would get some different colours.

I also guess some parts could/should be in more than 2 colours... green could be highlighted with pastel yellow or whatever.
And of course a PLUS version could get hardsprites as well.

and yes, many of us are older than PacMan, as it was good to be born in the 70's, this time when women had luxurious forests of there own naturality and music was so badass it could get you high.

[Carnivius]

I also guess some parts could/should be in more than 2 colours... green could be highlighted with pastel yellow or whatever.

Normally I would agree with that regarding Mode 1 graphics but for Pacmania I think the 4 colours best serves it the way it is given the limitations of this graphic mode and the style of game.  Always having yellow for Pac and the pellets, black for backdrop, magenta for ghosts (so they stand out well though this colour could change to other bright clours such as light green, sky blue, red and such) and simply changing the main level colour (from blue in my screenshot, to perhaps grey, green, purple, any colour within that range of brightness).  If adding proper shading I'd go Mode 0 and give it the full 16 colour makeover using the colours to give extra depth and have anti-aliasing and shine to make up for the slight reduction in details.

[MacDeath]

To go mode0 's way would clearly not be the same game no more.
C64 version used such wide pixels anyway. 
I'm pretty sure an Amstrad PLUS could easily handle a badass Mode0 version...hardsprites + hardscrolls + fullscreen + DMA sounds...


Pacmania wasn't bad on Speccy/CPC, but the CPC version mostly suffers from classical "rushed port" symptoms.

= Slow : because many useless rasters/palette changes and 1bpp to 2bpp conversions.
but the game actually manages to go way faster when you pick up the speed boost bonus...

=Slow screen : this 256x192 joke... and freaking huge HUD (the whole right of the screen) on almost half the screen. Atari ST is the same except in 320x200...

=useless rasters : I'm pretty sure they screw up with the speed and CPU... or not ? this was such a loose-loose use... just so the HUD is a bit more like spectrum... seriously ?

= they even let those damn colour clash attributes...

=Flawless Ben Daglish musics... (ok, this one is really good and quite saves the day)..

I suspect the Amstrad Version to have been done in something like 2-3 days atr best.


Anyway, CPC can run the actual original PacMan arcade ROM... remember ?






A proper mode1 PacMania could use the same ditherings to get extra colours for the Fanthoms or sceneries as well...

anyway for the fun :










here are the sprites as stored in RAM during the game.

they are in 1bpp + 1bpp mask... would be good to keep the 1bpp mask as it enables to actualy use the 4 colours for the sprites but the main sprite datas would then weight 2bpp and "weight" twice bigger...
Also as some sprites were common on all fantoms (the rear view) because they were all the same colour, this would need to add extra sprite's frames.

another way could be to get the sprites coloured when put on the screen RAM, but this wouldn't look that good...

[Carnivius]

To go mode0 's way would clearly not be the same game no more.

In what way?

C64 version used such wide pixels anyway. 

I think the actual basic design of the C64 version's graphics have potential but are let down by being on the C64 and thus suffering from it's limitations regarding colour usage.   I could easily do a Mode 0 mock up that looks closer to the arcade game (and less drab) and all seven ghosts (I think that's how many PacMania has) could have their proper colour schemes and be easily identifiable in ways Mode 1 just wouldn't do no matter how much you try to fake colours with dithering.

[MacDeath]

seems the topic derailed again into "what if a game was redone" but hey, still in topic.


Well, the game's window for current pacmania is quite small... so Mode0 would looks really blockier than it is.

with a "fullscreen" type such as C64/SegaMS/Amiga screen setting, Mode0 could pass far betterly.

But with the AtariST/Speccy split screen thing, wouldn't look that well IMO. need "wide screen" display".


= Speccy/CPC : playfield is 160x176 (yeah, is is inside a frame that screw extra 16 pixels)
that is actually less that half the 16k 320x200 screen.

= On Atari ST the playfield seems to be somewhat bigger with 176x200

But :

CPC/ZX : sprites (pacman) are 16x16 sized
Atari ST : sprites (pacman) are 24x24 sized... you can't see anything...

didn't calcualte really but on ST the screen/sprite size ratio is clearly not good as well.

I guess an ST sized screen on CPC with Spectrum sized sprites/tiles could be great/better than current stuff...


Well, Arcade is vertical display in 224x288... both ST and CPC/ZX would screew up the screen ratio and sprites proportion...

yet the CPC could perform its trademark big vertical fullscreen à la Arkanoid/donkeykong/whatever and actually respect almost perfectly the arcade ratio.

so a 256x256 sized screen wouldn't be out of mind on a PLUS machine and the game may actually be better than most current 8 bit version if done well.

BTW the Atari ST version quite look like a Speccy port indeed... 
(but uses same graphics size as arcade... ouch)






and yes, c64 version's main issue is its garrish palette, not quite suited for such cartoonish game as usual... it also lacks a bit in "verticality" but scrolls very well.

Amiga version is great, as often... seems to be betwen 320x256 and 320x280... yeah quite awesome... Amiga could do fullscreen/overscan unlike most systems or like CPC...

[Gryzor]

At least the STe got an enhanced remake:

[mahlemiut]

There's always the virtually perfect X68000 port... extended version - for superior pacmaniacs!

[robcfg]

Acorn Archimedes version of PacMania was quite good as far as I remember.