New Vectrex Homebrew - Vec-Man

Started by TrekMD, August 12, 2019, 04:09:57 AM

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TrekMD

Synopsis

    -Minimalistic Pac-Man clone in the style of the original eighties' Vectrex games
    -This project was originally meant as an educational example for the students of this course. It has somehow grown out of hand and has by now evolved into a full Vectrex game.

How To Play

    -Vec-Man lives in a maze and is always hungry. His task is to eat all the food pills that are laid out in the maze in order to advance to the next level.
    -Unfortunately, the mazes are inhabited by hostile ghosts who are also hungry and want to eat Vec-Man. If Vec-Man is caught by a ghost, he looses one of his lives.
    -With higher levels the number of ghosts will increase, and the ghosts will move faster. Also the layout of the mazes will become more and more difficult.
    -Some mazes contain power pills. If Vec-Man eats a power pill, then for a short period of time he will be able to eat the ghosts. A bonus life will be awarded if all present ghosts are eaten.

Trivia

    -The intention of this project is not to recreate the original Pac-Man, but to do a Pac-Man themed clone for the Vectrex that adds slight taste of its own.
    -There are small and large mazes. In each level, the layout is different.
    -Vec-Man can take one of the outer warp exits which cause him to reappear on the  opposite site.
    -The ghosts cannot go through the outer warp exits.
    -In each maze, there are either 2, 3, 4 or 6 ghosts.
    -Each ghost has its unique strategy of chasing Vec-Man.
    -In each maze, there are either 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 power pills.
    -In higher levels, food pills and power pills start to move and are thus more difficult to be caught.
    -The sequence of levels is always the same. It is created by procedural content generation techniques based on a determistic pseudo random number generator.
    -The game starts easy, but some of the much higher levels might become crazily difficult to virtually impossible...
    -The starting level can be selected as game option. However, the machine's high score will only be updated if game play is started at level 1.
    -A two player modus is available in which the players take turns.
    -The code has not yet been fully optimized for speed and memory consumption.


Going to the final frontier, gaming...


zapiy


Own: Jaguar, Lynx, Dreamcast, Saturn, MegaDrive, MegaCD, 32X, GameGear, PS3, PS, PSP, Wii, GameCube, N64, DS, GBA, GBC, GBP, GB,  Xbox, 3DO, CDi,  WonderSwan, WonderSwan Colour NGPC

TrekMD

There is a good chance this, along with several other games, will be released with cart and overlay.  This is a school project and they've made various games so a number of us have encouraged them to find someone to help them make a release.

Going to the final frontier, gaming...


TrekMD

For anyone interested, development of this game has continued.  It's up to RC24 now. Go to the link above to get the latest binaries.  Here are the changes made...

Latest modification on 11/07/2019, 09:00

Gamma test version 2-4 uploaded as a result of the Vector War feedback

    -Vec-Man now slows down for 2 frames (skips movement for 2 frames) when eating a pellet / pill. I do not know if this really affects the game play in terms of difficulty. First, I tried  skipping just 1 frame, but that felt not noticeable to me. Might be due to the fact that the original Pac-Man ran at 26 Hz, and Vec-Man is running at 50Hz. Skipping 2 frames is now visually noticeable. Still, I don’t know if I like this whole thing and if it should be kept. Thoughts?
    -The ghosts can now decide to reverse direction in the instant when Vec-Man eats a power pill. This is the only situation where ghosts can reverse their direction. They must not do so, but will do so, if their AI decides that this might be to their advantage. This makes chasing the ghosts a bit more difficult, and so far I like it, and I think that I will keep this. Thoughts?
    -When Vec-Man eats a power pill, the ghosts now slow down less than before (to about only 2/3 of their current speed). Before, the ghosts always slowed down to minimum speed, regardless of the level. Again, this should make chasing them a bit harder. I guess I will keep this. Thoughts?
    -The "slow" bonus now slows down the ghosts only. This is what I intended from the beginning. Up to version 2-3, this bonus also slowed down all other moving items as well (pellets and bonuses), so this is rather a bug fix. Again, this should make things a bit harder for the player, and I think I will keep it. Thoughts?
    -The ghosts in level 1 now start out a bit faster than before. Together with all the above, level 1 should now be a bit more interesting, but still manageable for novice players. Thoughts?
    -Slightly modified level 36 and made it a tiny bit easier, as a reaction to many players reporting it to be really hard during the Vector War. Thoughts?

Going to the final frontier, gaming...


zapiy

This is simply awesome, love to see things like this happening.


Own: Jaguar, Lynx, Dreamcast, Saturn, MegaDrive, MegaCD, 32X, GameGear, PS3, PS, PSP, Wii, GameCube, N64, DS, GBA, GBC, GBP, GB,  Xbox, 3DO, CDi,  WonderSwan, WonderSwan Colour NGPC

TrekMD

For anyone who may not know, Vec-Man can now be ordered from Packrat Video Games:  http://www.packratvg.com/vvecman.html


Going to the final frontier, gaming...