\fi360 These are miscellaneous items that may be if interest to you. It is strongly recommended that you skim through them at least once so that you know what is going on with PacMan...I don't want there to be any surprises! After you've read through this once, there's probably no need to ever bother with it again.\
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\b\i\fs32 This version is fully functional! It is free! It includes sources!\
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\fi360 The big rule here is that if you re-use any of the sources you must do it one of two ways. I still retain all rights to the source in any case... The two permissible ways to re-use the source code are (1) release any derivative work(s) as
\b freeware
\b0 with complete source code provided--including your changes. This is preferred. (2) If you insist on charging money for your work, be it commercially or via shareware, you must first obtain written permission from me, the original author. Obtaining this permission may include a small royalty, depending on how much code you plan to use. I'd rather you just release free software, though, since it's less of a hassle for me and I'm releasing this for free to hopefully stimulate production of some more games for the NeXT. After all, I can't write them all
though I'll try if no one else does :).\
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\b\i\fs32 Yet to be implemented things:\
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Nice NeXT-like "Game Over" Sequence. Dim playing field and slap Game Over on top of that?\
Animated Info... Panel.\
Animate the Pacs in the "Pacs Left" Box.
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Tunnels from one side of the screen to the other in the mazes.
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Monsters eyes show direction they are going/will go.
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Better Help Panel.
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Better Mono images.
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Maze Editor, including ability to make bigger mazes.
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Larger .tiffs so eyes you don't go blind playing.
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Faster Graphics.
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A multi-player network version.
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\pard\tx1140\tx2300\tx3440\tx4600\tx5760\tx6900\tx8060\tx9200\tx10360\tx11520\fc0 hosts should randomly reverse o
Tweaks to dynamics: Pacs faster on corners, slower when eating, etc.
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Better algorithm controlling the Pac during the demo. It's pretty brain dead right now. Anyone who's into AI could give me some pointers...
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Sound effects and music; both will use the music kit.
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Something better than the blinking mazes; maybe fade out the old and fade in the new. The blinking isn't too attractive, though, even if the original Pac Man game did it...maybe a dissolve would look good...
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I need some between-level cartoons.
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To the best of my knowledge, there aren't any bugs with the code that's here. If you find one, though, please do tell me! (I'm sure I haven't tested every possible situation, seeing at that's technically impossible for a program of this size, so there may be a surprise or two somewhere...)\
\b\i\fs32 So, what's new with PacMan?\
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\fi360 Well, this is mainly a maintenance release, so it doesn't have any mind-numbing new features, but it does refine things a hair and fix a few of the more annoying bugs. This includes (partial list):\
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Mailing suggestions won't complain anymore about return characters.\
Stats and Fruit move with main window.
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Makefile should do install properly now.\
Console errors are gone (or should be, anyway).\
Coalesce key events so high key repeat rates don't screw it up. (My machine seems to be fast enough that I don't see any problems with the event queue getting filled up anymore, but someone on a 68030 could tell me if this
\i really
\i0 works now...)
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New: drag and drop a .tiff or .eps into the playing field sets the background.\
Intermediate speed between old "medium" and "fast". Slow and Medium are as before; the intermediate speed is "fast"
but it's choppy
and the old "fast" is now called "hyper."
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Hidden app doesn't suck up CPU cycles.\
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\fi360 Feel free to suggest any changes or bug fixes that you'd like to see implemented. Your input will determine which things get addressed first. I have a few things in mind myself; like making the drawing more efficient...right now, PacMan wants 50% to 66% of the CPU, which isn't awful, but definitely could be better. On a 68030, I'd bet it wants all the CPU it can get plus some.\
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\b\i\fs32 Some Future Plans:\
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\fi360 This is entirely up to you. I plan to occasionally fix bugs, and so on. I'll add requested features and nicen things up, too. Right now, I'd simply like feedback on what
\i you
\i0 think needs to be addressed. Remember, since this is a freebie, new releases won't come out as often as for PillBottle, Columns, or any of my other "cost-you-money" projects. Note the list above under "Yet to be Implemented Things." Currently, I consider sound and music to be the highest priority. After that comes larger images and a maze editor, since those are what people have complained about the most (to date).\
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\b\i\fs32 The disclaimer:\
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Well, enough of this. I hope you like Pac Man, find it enjoyable, and so on. Although I am including source code, don't consider this any sort of amazing example of NeXTSTEP programming; it's how I chose to implement things, and nothing more than that...there's a lot of things I'd probably do differently if I did it again, and there are several things I've done which are inefficient. (But they were easier to write that way, so that's why I did it. The path of least resistance is often one of my favorites...)\
I have, however, tried to put in a _lot_ of comments, so if you do want to see how I'm doing things, it shouldn't be too awful to figure it out. By the way, I wrote this using Edit with the tabs set to 4 spaces, so if you use a different tab setting, the formatting may be really ugly. (In some spots, to conserve screen space, you'll see nastiness like 5 brackets on one line. Don't flame me; I like to have as much code on the screen as possible...)\
Seeing as this is free, don't expect any warranty or stable support. You get what you pay for. In this case, I think you're getting an amazing bargain, since I've spent plenty of time on this, but of course I
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