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Text File | 2003-06-19 | 59.0 KB | 941 lines

Deluxe Pacman Journal - rebuilding the code ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Note: This is my programming journal starting from after my hard drive crashed on me and I lost all my NEW source code. All this happened while I was in the hospital on the edge of death with a temperature of over 105 and I could barely breath or walk... it was a bad week for me ;) ...the NEWEST entry will be at the bottom of this file. ----------------- Nov. 27, 2001 ----------------- Had alot of clean-up to do! I redone the old makefiles and combined them into one makefile for the windows build. I deleted the linux, beos etc... makefiles and the perl scripts for creating makefiles. I now do all my makefiles by hand. This also reduces alot of clutter. I had to go over all the old code I had and fix it up so it would run. As it was I had been experimenting with using a 640x480x16bit screen and the code was really messed up and wouldn't run well at all! I redone it so it was back to the old 320x240x8bit mode and basically got rid of any experimental code. At this point I had also JUST added in a menu so I got rid of the old text display on the title screen and all associated code. I deleted the old data file and replaced it with the version .99 one. This meant I had to reprogram my newer map format code from memory or the game wasn't going to load in the maps. This took a little while to remember. I had redone the map code so that the maps were far smaller, each map cell was stored as an unsigned char, and the number of pills were stored as an unsigned short, but in the game the map cells stored data with values larger than 256, this confused me for a while until I remembered that I used temporary storage for the map at load time. I loaded the maps from the data file into "unsigned char map.." and then copied that data over to the players int map structer, converting the data from unsigned char to int as I copied. This allowed me to store smaller maps on disk, yet still store values larger than 256 in the map data in-game (for things like pickups and tools that appear, yet are not stored on disk permanently). Anyhow, I got that done and the maps loaded perfectly. Next, I had to go over all my code and clean it up so I could read it. Somehow all my tabs were all out of place and so the code was very messy looking and would be hard to work with as it was. I went over it line by line until it was all indented properly and no lines exceeded the screen width (so I could print it out neatly as well), which I did! ----------------- Nov. 29, 2001 ----------------- Been working on fixing a few bugs that I had completely forgotten about. When you moved over to grab the fruit or a tool, sometimes it wouldn't disapear and you would have to go over it twice to get it, each time making a different sound. This error eluded me for quite a while, but I managed to come up with a fix. When a random pickup or tool is selected, I set the variables "pickup.active = FALSE;" and "tool.active = FALSE;", that ensured that when ONE was selected, ONLY one would be available to be picked up. For some odd reason (which I still haven't discovered) sometimes after you grabbed a pickup (like an apple or something) it wouldn't set it as inactive anymore and so when a tool was randomly selected you would get BOTH tool AND pickup set as active still and so you would have to grab both. I don't see where this happens, I looked over my code carefully and I always set the pickup as inactive (pickup.active = FALSE) after it is picked up yet it seems to be active at times, so setting both to FALSE before something is picked ensures that doesn't happen. Still it bothers me, I need to know where it is that pickup.active (or maybe it is tool.active?) doesn't get set to FALSE (or gets set to TRUE)? We may never know! :) I added in code so I could select "God" mode with F9 (and disable it with F10). This was absolutely nessecary because I needed my pacman to stay alive long enough to test if the above mentioned bug would re-occur. I fixed the TL_DIAMOND code so the diamonds are perfectly centered over each tile, they were off center in the old code. I went through the datafile and re-organized it a bit so that all the sound samples, fonts etc.. were all grouped together. I redone the code to use the new fonts. I had to reprogram pacman.c and hiscore.c mainly... I still have some work to do in that area, some code needs to be fixed so the fonts are properly centered on screen and don't overlap etc. The new fonts are 16 in height, the old one was the standard 8. I also redone some of the code so it now checks the font size rather than having a default value of 8 in it. This makes the code more flexible for future expansion and/or change. ----------------- Dec. 5, 2001 ----------------- Fixed all the text display so that it is properly centered and not overlapping other text. Mainly the "PRESS ANY KEY" etc... when you start a game. Added back in the "LEVEL 1" etc.. indicator that tells your what level number you are on. Fixed the hiscore.c text so it is all properly centered and the correct colours etc. I also added in the "1UP", "HI" and "2UP" text next to the scores. It actually looks a bit better than what I had finished before because the "HI" is now in the correct position, it was a little too far away from the score before and it never got fixed. Added in cheat keys "D" to force diamonds to appear the next time a tool or pickup appears. Added in keys 1-5 for selecting EXTRA letters to appear the next time a pickup or tool appears. All these cheat keys were nessecary for testing purposes. A major update was the addition of a tool timer on the right side of the screen that counts down the time left on the current tool you are using. This was something I had planned when I first started making this game but never got around to completing and almost didn't get added until my hard drive crashed and I lost all my source code. Now as I rebuild the code I find myself taking the time to fix the various problems and adding in these features so I don't have to come back and do it over again. I will be working on the MENU next, I think I might try something new with it and see about using the GUI system alot more effectively with it. I might try out a new GUI system that replaces the default system that comes with allegro and looks alot nicer, we'll see how that pans out. If it becomes too much of a headache I will drop it and just stick with what I had before. I also discovered some errors with some of the graphics that I created for the game and I may have to redo some of them. The hearts don't fit properly in a couple of them. It shouldn't be much to fix it though. I also want to add in an actual screen to go along with the applause that one gets when you complete all the levels. ----------------- Dec. 5-6, 2001 ----------------- Started work on the this evening. I think I have improved my code so that it is far better than the original code was. It is definately alot more organized than it was before. The menu is working very nicely. I added in the same menu sound I had before (the PILL sound) only I raised the pitch of it a bit to hear what it would sound like and I am pleased with the results. I think I'll keep it. I am using the readkey() function to read keyboard input rather than key[KEY_UP] style statements so that I can easily add in joystick support later on. When I add in joystick support I will simply use simulate_keypress() when-ever a joystick is moved, this requires buffered input which readkey() can handle nicely and I won't have to add in seperate code for the joystick. Once the joystick is moved, it will simulate a keypress and then then keyboard routines will handle the input as if a key was pressed, kewl huh?! =D When I created a bitmap for the menu I forgot to allocate the memory created to the BMP bitmap and crashed my computer, yay! It is always the simple errors that get ya! heheh. So far 1 PLAYER, 2 PLAYER and QUIT menu selections work. It is shortly after 6am, and I am heading to bed now. heheh... I'll finish the menu off tomorrow and then see what else I have left to do. Things are coming along ALOT faster than I expected!!! If it wasn't for the kind email I got from a fan of this game I don't think I would have even started rebuilding it, which would have been a waste as I have put ALOT of time into this project... as simple as it seems NOW, it was a learning curve for me as I worked on it... anyhow, off to bed! ----------------- Dec. 7, 2001 ----------------- Okay, I got LOTS done since my last log entry. It is shortly after noon and I have ALL of the menu D O N E!!! YAY! I got RID of the window mode for the game. Did anyone REALLY use that?? I didn't think so. There were some bugs when displaying "PRESS ANY KEY" at the game start screen when in windowed mode. This is a fault of Windows and/or the library and I really didn't feel like hacking around for a few hours trying to solve a problem for a mode nobody probably uses anyhow. The "PRESS ANY KEY" part at the beginning of each level looks alot better, while trying to fix the above mentioned problem I decided to improve the look of it and I really like the result. I edited the HELP, CREDITS and ABOUT to reflect changes in the game. The HELP section had the largest change. I added info about all the tools and what they are all used for etc. I added another name to the CREDITS. I was sent in a few levels from someone who liked the game so I added them to the game (level 24-27) and gave him credit (thanks). I updated the PACE program, it required remarkably little change, the mouse pointer needed to be fixed to the colors were correct. I added in new code so that the mouse pointer changes to look like whatever line or pill you select, looks very kewl! :) ----------------- Dec. 10, 2001 ----------------- LOTS more done!!! This rebuilding is going alot faster than I ever ever ever imagined! :) You just don't realize how far back the old code was and how many problems I had to fix (AGAIN!). I am almost glad it happened as I have found alot better ways to do alot of things and it is really looking good and easier to manage. I added in more comments to my source to remind myself (and anyone that might see it in the future) what certain sections do. I have most of the tools working, it was easier than I thought (the result of early planning that I had forgotten about). I redone the scoring code and put it in it's own function and let that function handle adding points to the players score, mutliplying points do to tool usage, calling the floating point function where needed etc. This really makes it simpler to redo any of the scoring in the future. I played with the idea of floating ALL points when you grab pills, power pills etc.. but changed my mind when I tested it out. Things can get really cluttered when you are eating pills and several blue ghosts at the same time and you have 3-6 points all floating up in the same area of the screen. I added in code to show a shimmering shield around your pacman when you get the shield or GODMODE is enabled in cheat mode. I added in code to stop the ghosts from moving when freeze mode is active. Only the ghosts currently not dead will be frozen. Dead ghosts eyes will continue to move around and when they regenerate at home (hey, they can warm up by the fire! =D) they will be able to wander again regardless of wether freeze mode is enabled or not. I limited the number of points you can get from pickups to 10000. The points for pickups (fruit etc..) went up by 500 points per level but got too high after you done all the levels once and seeing as how you get a free man every 50000 points I think it was reasonable to cap the points to 10000 per pickup. I may still raise the freeman score from 50000 up to 100000. I am thinking about allowing a free man at the FIRST 50000 and then every 100000 after that (after all, you can get an extra man with the EXTRA letters and you can gain ALOT of points if you get the present, too many extra men and the game ceases to be a challenge). I done the question tool, it gives you a random tool or death (or nothing if it gives you an EXTRA letter you already have). The "DEATH" tool kills you no matter what you have protecting you. I consider it like swallowing a suicide pill, no shields can protect you against yourself. I know... mean eh? :) I recompiled the game using the release version of Allegro v4.0. Changed the JUMP tool so that it now jumps you to a random level rather than jumping up to five forward or five back, you now get jumped to a totally random level ANYWHERE in the game. This could be fun and is easier to code than a fixed number forward because if you jump past the end of the levels it puts you back at the first level which could bugger up the pickup points, and there is no way of knowing for certain if there are extra levels on disk that didn't come with the game that the user may have created so a random jump anywhere in the game was the safer bet and just as fun, plus the risks and benefits of using it are more pronounced! The earlier in the game you use it, the better chance of a positive jump and the later on in the game you use it, the better the chance for a negative jump... makes it more interesting. I might change the level format again before I release the game. I want to re-organize the lines so they look better in the editor and convert the maps that are stored on disk by the editor to a packed file format. This should allow me to use larger numbers for maps (good for future expansion) and possibly have smaller file sizes for them. I have started editing the graphics again, putting all the lines, pills etc.. in thier own graphic file to make for more organized source files and easier editing and also getting ready for the new map format. This will be the final map format as redoing all the graphic files and maps is alot of work, probably more work than reprogramming this game's code again! :/ ----------------- Dec. 11, 2001 ----------------- I added in two new tools, the skull and dynamite. The SKULL will kill you if you grab it. The question mark can also have this tool so be sure you're willing to take a chance when you grab it. I found an excellent image for the SKULL tool!!! I shrunk down a digitized image of a real skull, it looks great! The second tool I added is DYNAMITE, when you grab it, it will kill off all ghosts that are BLUE giving you 5000 points per ghost killed. This can give you up to 20000 points if you have all four ghosts blue so you might want to keep at least one powerpill available as long as possible just in case the dynamite appears. With no blue ghosts the dynamite effect is useless. When one appears grab a powerpill and then avoid ghosts and grab the dynamite for the most points. I drew the dynamite myself. I am no artists but I think it looks okay. (hey, if you can do better let me know and I'll use your artwork and give you credit in the game for ANYTHING you think you can improve upon, all art sent to me MUST be free of copyrights though, ie: public domain or I won't use it.) I redone the TOOL labels in the datafile. This is nothing that the user will notice but it makes it easier to add in new tools to the game, the tools are now labeled TOOL000 to TOOL014 (with a NULL TOOLZZZ at the end for performing calculations with, ie: TOOLZZZ-TOOL000=the total number of tools available, this works no matter where they are in the datafile). I still want to re-organize the lines so they look better with the editor and so I'll have to also redo the map format slightly, this shouldn't be too hard to do, I think I can rename the labels in the data file to accomplish this without fiddling around with the artwork and then I'll only have to write a simple utility to convert the current maps over and restore them back in the datafile. I also still have to add in joystick support, an easy task. I also want to create alot more levels, at least 50 more, but I would prefer to have a total of 100, we'll see how energetic I get. ;) I also have to edit some of the line graphics in the game, they have some errors that were introduced when a friend of mine redone them. He done a nice job but didn't pay attention so certain important details. It shouldn't take much effort to redo them... then I can finally release this sucker as version 1.0 and start on something new! ;) I just updated the docs as well. ----------------- Dec. 12, 2001 ----------------- I redone the lines for the levels, if you run PACE (the editor) you will see a big difference. They are much better laid out and easier to find the line type you're looking for. I also redone the level format so the levels now consist of unsigned integers rather than unsigned characters. When the levels were unsigned characters (per byte stored) you could only store values from 0 to 255. Now that they are unsigned integers they should be able to hold values from 0 to over 16 million I think (unsigned ints are 4 bytes in size, that means values over 16million! I'll never use that much!) I am also using a packed file format so not only will the levels be able to hold an almost unlimited number of values in each map cell, but they are actually smaller when saved to disk from PACE, usually around 250bytes (the unpacked size is 1269bytes). Not really all that large with hard drives in the gigabytes these days but I have noticed a lack of concern amoung programmers for file size these days and it all starts to add up after a while so I am always trying to save every byte I can. I think it is a good habit to get into, regardless of the amount being saved, so long as speed and quality aren't sacrificed too much, and they aren't in this case. The new map format required me to unpack the levels before storing them in the data file (it is packed seperately) and adjust my routines to load either map from the hard drive (packed) or from the datafile (unpacked). Any files saved with PACE will be packed. I wrote a utility called convert5.exe to convert all maps to the new format. The new format required map names to be LEVEL001.MAP, LEVEL002.MAP etc. rather than LEVEL1.MAP etc... the number MUST be 3 digits long, no more, no less or the game will not load them. To use convert5, type CONVERT5 LEVEL#.MAP (where # is the level #). Your file will be converted and probably be smaller than it was before. You will need to rename it to the new format before using it. So if your level is say LEVEL19.MAP for example, you would rename it to LEVEL019.MAP. I might redo the convert utility to automatically find all maps and convert them for you, possibly even renaming them for you or spitting out a new map with the new name, it shouldn't be too hard to do, I could use the for_each_file() function I guess. I probably will do it now that I think about it. It would be a learning experience as I have not used that function before and it would make life ALOT easier for people who just want to quickly convert thier old levels without alot of hassle. And the less hassle you have, the less email I get asking how to do it. :) I want to redo the END OF LEVEL flashing screen so it doesn't flash WHITE anymore. version .99 had this already done and I forgot about it until I was watching my wife play the game and noticed that I had to redo it again. It shouldn't be too hard to do and looks nicer than the flashing white, it could also prevent a siezure. ;) Oh, I renamed the levels in the datafile to LEVEL001, LEVEL002 etc... as well. I also renamed the lines to A00LINE01, A00LINE02 to A07LINE19 with A99LINEZZ as the end marker. This is more neat looking, I had renamed it while I was re-organizing the lines around so they would look better in the editor. There are better ways to do this, I know indexes to the datafile indexes would be ideal, and then storing the indexes in the map files would be far far far easier when converting maps as I would have no need for a map converting program because I would only have to redo the indexes in the editor and the game to point to the proper graphics, but I want to do this in a future version of the game when I start fresh... indexed maps would have been alot easier if I had thought of that in the first place though. Live and learn I guess. Right now the maps store the actual datafile number of the graphic to use (which meant that all my graphics had to be at the beginning of the datafile and not go over 255 when the map format was using unsigned chars, indexes would have been alot better in that case as well). I reprogrammed the game so that when pickups (fruits etc...) appear, they appear randomly. There is no longer a different pickup for each level. I felt it looked nicer to have different items appearing to pickup rather than the same one for the whole level. This also solved a new bug that popped up with the pickup display routine. I reprogrammed the game so the screens don't fade out anymore. This caused some wierd problems on some computers (my other computer had problems with the fading, it has a Voodoo 3-2000 video card in it). I put the background image back in the title screen so when you switch from the title screen to the main menu you have a common background behind both of them that looks better when switching between the two. Lets see, I just have to add in the joystick support, edit some of the line graphics and maybe create a few new levels and I am finished (unless I am crazy enough to think of something else I want to add!). ----------------- Dec. 13, 2001 ----------------- I redone the present tool graphic. The old one was very plain looking. The new one looks a little better. I am no artist but it's better than nothing. ;) I fixed the errors that were in some of the line graphics, errors introduced by a well meaning friend to redone the graphics (and done a nice job), except there were a few problems around the areas where the hearts appear, some of the boxed areas weren't large enough for the hearts and the hearts would overlap the lines a bit, this is now all fixed. ----------------- Dec. 17, 2001 ----------------- Between yesterday and today I woked on adding in joystick support. I also moved all the input functions into thier own module called input.c. All keyboard and joystick main functions are in there now. I also had to move a couple global variables over to input.c and I redone a few pacman.c global variables so that they could be made external in pacman.h so input.c could use them. This also cleaned up pacman.c near the beginning of it a bit as a side effect. I had a small problem with the joystick routines in the continue() function (located in input.c), I had to add in code to wait until the user released the joystick button before the function continued on, I ran into problems when I forgot to poll the joystick while checking to see if the button was relased, as a result I ended up in an infinite loop resulting from the joystick button variable not being updated because the joystick wasn't being polled. It was one of the stupid little mistakes that takes you a while to figure out because it would crash the system and I had to reset everytime. Hehehe... live and learn I always say. ;) I believe I have done everything that I really wanted to do with this. I might package this up and release it as v1.0b and MAYBE make any refinements later on I wish and release it as the final non-beta release. Ooops, found a couple small errors with the level editor (PACE). When you loaded a new level in the line graphics wouldn't change to the set the level uses and things would be a little screwed up. The editor now switches to the line set the level uses and up dates the screen. When you loaded a level or switched to a new line set, the mouse pointer would still have the last piece you selected, even if it was not the current line set. If you clicked NEW the pointer would have nothing, fixed. ----------------- Dec. 25, 2001 ----------------- Got an email from Robson today, he mentioned the game speed in hard wasn't fast enough and the keyboard input wasn't responding. I tweeked the speed so that hard is now faster, easy is now slower (great for young children). I have an idea for improving input, I'll check for keyboard input, if there is any, I'll ignore any joystick input. This will HOPEFULLY correct the problem.... although I still think it has alot to do with Windows joystick calibration. I am tempted to remove joystick routines all together as I don't currently know of ANYONE that uses a joystick with this. I added in code so you can turn the music and sound on and off as well as selecting keyboard only or joystick (& keyboard). The keyboard will still work in joystick mode, but you may have problems using the keyboard if your joystick isn't calibrated properly (and I am NOT adding in calibration code when windows has calibration built in). If you select KEYBOARD from the options menu the game will not check for joystick input at all. The code for music and sound toggling is just as it says, it toggles music and sound on/off. This could be handy for late night sessions when you want to play but not wake anyone or if you are having sound problems but still wish to play. ----------------- Dec. 28, 2001 ----------------- Edited the input system a bit so if you press more than one cursor key at a time the game will most likely respond the way you wish it to and the pacman will be easier to control. It was a minor fix but some people seem to really notice the difference so here ya go! :) Fixed the pause button which wasn't working. Fixed the GAME OVER graphic which wasn't appearing when all your pacmen died. Added the version number to the title screen. Fixed a few other minor cosmetic items and cleaned up the code a bit. ----------------- Jan. 13, 2002 ----------------- Minor changes in all my source code. I changed all the function names so that all the functions that didn't require any variables ie: void function() were renamed to: void function(void). I learned there is a different meaning in C than C++ for such functions. A function in C with () doesn't nessecarily mean void, it could mean multiple variables in no particular order or whatever depending upon the compiler. I wanted to be certain so I put void in all the functions to prevent any confusion or problems. I also re-compressed all my executables and the allegro dll with the latest version of UPX (v1.20) for windows. This reduces the size quite a bit for the DLL whose original size was 800K and is now 400K!! It also reduces the executables size a little. This may not make much sense in the age of 40GIG hard drives and I wasn't going to bother until someone mentioned to me in an email that it might would be helpful to those with slower connections, the smaller file sizes would mean less time waiting for the download to complete, and that made sense so I reduced the size. It also helps it fit on a floppy disk quite nicely and with limited space allowed for me on my website, every byte counts. I renamed the version number to v1.02b just for the actual filename and description. If you run the game it will still say v1.02, the game itself is exactly the same, only a little smaller in size. If you have v1.02 there is no need for v1.02b, unless you want to send it to friends. ----------------- Jan. 28, 2002 ----------------- Done some cosmetic changes to the game. Change the title image and the hiscore background, added the fancy little block "fade-in" routine I used for the hiscore to the title screen, main menu and the first time you start playing just for looks. ----------------- Apr. 27, 2002 ----------------- Recompiled the source code so that it is a true, 100% Windows compile, rather than a Windows console program (or a Windows DOS mode program, but not actually a DOS program... <shrug>). Anyhow, you'll notice right away that there isn't a small DOS (windows console) style window when the game starts, there is just the full screen window. This should improve stability and allow the program to be run on newer versions of Windows hopefully. If this runs on Windows XP, please let me know, I don't run that version and would like to know. The new version of this game has only a slight version number change, v1.03w instead of 1.03 to indicate it is 100% Windows compile. ----------------- Apr. 29, 2002 ----------------- A friend (Kirk Wilson) tested the new compile with Windows XP and it ran! Only one little problem... portions of the video would disapear. This has NOTHING to do with *MY* programming but WINDOWS XP handles the display differently and doesn't like to keep the video contents intact. I used a dirty rectangle system of updating the screen which only updates portions of the screen that actually CHANGE, unfortunately I had to remove that and go with a straight double buffering system where the entire screen gets updated every frame. This is a much slower method, but my system still gets around 192 Frames per second which is respectable, but REALLY slow systems might hurt, I don't know, I honestly don't think anyone has so slow a computer that they won't be able to play my game, especially if they're using Windows XP anyhow so all should be okay. If you have any problems please email me and let me know. ----------------- Jun. 21, 2002 ----------------- Just got done with version 1.04. I had a few requests to add a Windowed mode back in the game so I have done that. I am also using a newer version of the NSIS installer (v2.0a0) which is a little nicer and I added in CRC checking to the installer so when you first run the installer it will check itself to make sure it hasn't been altered by a virus or whatever by calculating it's CRC (checksum code) and comparing it with the code that was stored in the installer when I packaged everything up. If these don't match the installer should warn you and fail to install. If this happens to you DELETE THE GAME and download it again, or if the place you got it from has an altered version of the installer with this error, inform them, do a virus check on the file etc. Download the game from my own personal website if you must, it will always be virus free. I also enabled the close button in windowed mode so that you can shut down the game normally by clicking the close button. This has the same effect as select QUIT from the menu or pressing ESCAPE so don't worry. I changed the icons for the installer to better reflect the game, the llama that you normally see has been replaced (eaten? ;)) by a pacman. I uploaded version 1.04 to my website and gamedev.net and started work on v1.05. I fixed a problem in cheat mode and with GODMODE enabled, if you grabbed the skull yo died. This no longer happens. The dynamite now blows up ALL the ghosts (except the "dead" ones that only have eyes left) rather than just the blue ones, my wife wanted it this way, so she gets it ;) It is alot more fun watching them all "blow'd up real good" he he he... plus you get ALOT more points if all 5 ghosts are alive, 5000 per ghost. Well, the close button works everywhere but when in a dialog, what a pain in the butt they are. I knew I should have designed my own and avoided allegro's GUI, it is a royal pain. Now I have a reason to redo the menu system, but I am not sure if I want to do a complete overhaul of this game or save it for version 2. I want the menu system to be alot better with more graphics, especially in the HELP section where I want actual images of the various tools you can pick up with descriptions next to them. This shouldn't be hard to do and will be infinately better looking than the ugly allegro GUI system. Fixed the problem with the end of level flashing properly in windowed mode! The installer will now add links to ALL the text files that are installed in your game directory, including this Journal, Cheat Codes (added new this version so you know all the keys) and the Map file format document in case anyone feels like creating thier own Deluxe Pacman map editor or perhaps a random map generator? (I doubt it but you never know). ----------------- Jul. 9, 2002 ----------------- (actually several days, I just forgot to update this, so sit back and relax a little, this is going to be a long one! ;)) Okay... I done ALOT of changes... the game now runs at 640x480 instead of 320x240. It LOOKS basically the same still. You will only really notice it when you look at the credits, help etc... which are half the size and when you look at the LEVEL box at the beginning of each level that tells you which level you are on, it is smaller, also the tiny numbers that float up are about the same size, but I am using a more detailed font so they should look a bit better. Also the hiscore screen has smaller letters. I can change this later on in a different version. WHY change resolution when it all looks the same? Well, for one when you run the game in windowed mode the window is now double the size. Also, 640x480 is a standard resolution, ALL cards support it guaranteed (or it is time to upgrade, they invented SVGA now! LOL). Another reason is I DO plan on changing to ALL new graphics, high res, nicer looking etc... maybe even 16bit graphics, so long as it doesn't effect the games performance much. Another MAJOR change was that I switched from double buffering (which I had to go back to, due to some Windows XP problems with dirty rectangles which is ultra fast!!!) to page flipping. Dirty rectangles is STILL faster, and I can still use them with page flipping for probably some pretty fantastic frame rates, but page flipping takes place 100% in video memory, which means the game can use all video memory. This increases the minimum video ram by about 4 times (double the resolution and double the video screens) but currently it only adds up to about 614K of video memory, plus I am also blitting much of my graphics to video memory to help speed things up so you can probably count on requiring at least 1MEG of video memory, which isn't all that much, but you want an accelerator card if you have any problems with speed. Without an accelerator it could slow down a tad although page flipping is still faster than double buffering... I'll have to test all this out on a non-accelerated system. Remember though, a higher video memory requirement means a lower system memory requirement, if it is in video memory it doesn't need to be in system memory (well, currently it is in BOTH, but that will change, I am working on it...). These days I don't think memory is much of a problem for most folks. I may have to add in a system for people without accelerator cards, I don't know how many out there don't own one, I can't see anyone NOT owning one, but... you never know. I fixed a LONG existing bug in the game, a minor one really that you probably hardly noticed... or did you? Anyhow, if you grabbed a powerpill before and you ate the red ghost (or possibly another), and the eyes of the red ghost made it home while the other ghosts were still blue, the background sound you hear when they are scared stops and returns to the normal sound even though some are still scared (blue). This has been fixed anyhow... now if they are ALL eyes (eaten...) then sometimes the scared sound goes on a bit longer, but that is minor... I may fix that soon as well, but I wanted to get this entry updated as I missed alot of days I was working on this bug fixing and forgot to update the journal. I was having a problem with an invalid page fault which means that mostly likely I was trying to blit a bitmap that didn't exist, or a non-bitmap. I had just changed the ghosts to video memory so in all likelyhood it was a pointer to one of the ghost images. This gets complex as I have quite a few variables referring to them. Well, it turned out that I had inadvertantly deleted a line that I didn't think I would need again that would switch the current ghost image back to the first image in the ghost's animation after he was scared. I had a different system I tried out that turned out to be a bigger headache and I figured out a better system. Anyhow, I didn't put the line back in (dumb, I should have just commented it out!), but I WAS smart enough to make backups of all my code before changing anything. It took me 2 days to find that bug! MANY MANY resets and alot less hair later it was fixed and I could finish up the rest of the code, like the menus and hiscore screens which needed to be changed because they wrote directly to the SCREEN in allegro and seeing as how I was using page flipping this had to change because the "screen" is always in a different memory location, one of two locations (the two pages). My solution was to force the game to switch to the FIRST screen and also to DRAW on that screen, basically turning off page flipping for the hiscore and menu screens and then when it drew to the current page, (screen) they drew the images on the page you were looking at, rather than a page in the background like you normally would in page flipping (in page flipping you draw on an offscreen video page, then you tell the video card to switch to that memory location so it becomes what you see on the screen and you draw on the other offscreen video page... hence you flip back and forth and it is seemless, no blitting required which makes it alot faster. Although with hardware acceleration you get accelerated blits and clears so all my other graphic data is in video memory to take advantage of hardware acceleration. The ghost images and pacman images don't really make a difference, mainly the map data like lines and pills. The pacman image is in regular memory, it needs to be rotated and that is VERY VERY SLOW in video memory, also the pickups and tools are all in system memory where I'll probably leave them, they are too small to make any difference. I added a -nosound switch to the command line to you can turn off the sound and music before the game starts, good for those late night programming sessions when I don't want to wake my wife. :) I added more "CHEAT" codes to help me program the game mainly. Now if you press "F" you force the next tool to pop up to be a FREEZE. The ghosts eyes now STOP moving and just stare blankly at YOU (the player!) while they are frozen, it looks kewl I think. :) If you press F1-F4 you will instantly turn one of the ghosts BLUE (scared, depending on the F-key pressed), I needed this while fixing that scared sound bug. I made the shield (circle around pacman) a little larger, it looks better I think. The scared sound now stops when all the ghosts are dead. I also added in a new feature, the scared sound increases in pitch as you eat the pills. It works on a percentage bases, the less pills there are, the higher the pitch up to a maximum of 2 times the normal pitch. It sounds purdy kewl I think. There is a minor bug that still exists. Once in a while, when the moon is blue, on friday the 13th when you grab a tool it will last 2-3 times longer than it should! This can give you a major advantage and I want to fix this ASAP, but I also want to get another version out, so I figure you won't mind getting this little bonus bug for a little while until I figure out what is causing it to behave in that way. ----------------- Jul. 10, 2002 ----------------- Okay, I fixed the problem with the tool and pickup timers so now they should appear on time (no more long delays) and when you get certain tools that last a specific amount of time (like the freeze for example) they won't last 2-3 times longer. It was a minor bug to do with the retrace_count I use to time everything in the game and sometimes when I test it with a divide % it skips because it might be 1 off. Now I do the division and test to see if it is within 10 numbers from the interval I wanted so the MOST it will go over or under the time would be 1/6 of a second, more in likely it wouldn't be more than 1/60 of a second, which wouldn't even be perceivable by a person playing the game. Now that I have squashed that bug I want to work on all new hi-res graphics. The current graphics were made for 320x240 resolution, now that I am using 640x480 I can double the size of the bitmaps used for the map lines, pills, pacman and ghosts and reduce the blockiness with much more detail and it should look very nice. I might also switch the game to 16bit so I can use more colour in the game. I will be using 3D rendering software (Truespace 1 which is FREE on the internet now!) to render the pills, pacman, ghosts, lines etc... it should look good! Although creating Pacman and especially ghosts in 3D is alot of work! the pacman is almost done, the ghosts will be a bitch. The pills will be a breeze, simply render a 3D sphere with maybe some coloured lighting on them and they should look very nice. Anyhow, off to work.... oh, the game shut down on my wife for some unknown reason. She was on level 8 and a present apeared, when she grabbed it, the game just shut down very fast with no errors. I suspect it was something running in Windows that caused this as it doesn't make sense that the game would do this, BUT I will be keeping my eyes open for any problems that might occur and swatting any bugs. Let me know if you run into ANYTHING as this is the ONLY bug that MIGHT be left, although I can't imagine it being anything to do with the game, but you never know... it MAY have had something to do with the number of sounds playing at once, she has a sound blaster 16 in her system, but the game never plays that many I don't think... hmmm... Added in a new cheat code to force the next tool to be a PRESENT, this was so I could test for that bug, see the cheat text file for more info. ----------------- Aug. 8, 2002 ----------------- I found out why the game was shutting down. There is a few bugs with the Allegro library that I have to work around. For some unknown reason the game has a HUGE memory leak when I used page flipping and would eventually crash on you, the less memory you have, the sooner it would crash. I switched to dirty rectangles again and the library has a bug when you use it with Windows XP and dirty rectangles. Windows XP likes to clear the screen on you for no particular reason and this really screws up the game with dirty rectangles because the game only updates the areas of the screen that actually change. I JUST got an email from a fellow programmer who came up with a solution TODAY and I implemented it right away. It is basicaly a hack to avoid using certain areas of video memory, but it works. It uses extra memory that isn't needed, but this shouldn't be a problem unless you have a REALLY OLD video card with a meg of memory or less. The game now runs at 640x480. I put together a special version to release right away so people can play it without any bugs, it is 8bit and the graphics have been stretched to fit the screen. The main reason for changing to the higher resolution is because some video cards don't support modex resolutions like 320x240. But ALL video cards support 640x480 and since that happens to be exactly double the size, I simply doubled the size of the current graphics. I am working on all new hi-res graphics and maybe 16bit, but 16bit is slower, I may stick to 8bit which still looks very nice. The newer graphics are looking good and I will release them soon, you should only have to download the new datafile when they are done instead of the whole game as the current code will work with the newer graphics. The title screen is new, it has been dithered from 16bit to 8 bit and you can tell. I will be changing it to either 16bit only, or 8bit but with it's own palette so it will look like 16bit. Redone the title screen some more so now it has it's own palette. This means I can still have an 8bit title screen, but now it has the entire palette for the screen which makes for a much nicer looking screen. Right now it looks just as good as the 16bit version. I am going to redo the menu the same way, I want it to have it's own palette which will mean more colourful menu, with a 16bit "look" to it but in 8bit. This will also free up more of the actual GAME palette used when you are playing for more colours used for the actual game and NONE needed in the main palette for the title screen or the menus which will end up with a 16bit LOOK with an 8bit palette and greater speed than 16bit. Even the game AGE OF EMPIRES is 8bit! They just use a very nice pallete for the game, and I bet seperate palettes for the menus etc. Oh, the level editor ISN'T included with this version because I have not redone it yet to use the larger graphics. You can use an older editor from version 1.03 or something (with the OLDER datafile, just put PACE and the datafile from that version of the game in thier OWN seperate directory, DO NOT OVERWRITE THE NEWER DATAFILE) and the levels it creates can still be used with the newer game. I will redo the level editor in the days to come, I am not sure how I want to redo it though... but I'll think of something. ----------------- Sep. 5, 2002 ----------------- More bug fixes, still due to library bugs and not my code, but I managed to implement more fixes to help work around the problem. The OPTIONS menu now has a new feature called "DIRTY" which allows you to toggle dirty rectangles on or off. Dirty rectangles greatly speed up the game by only updating the areas of the screen that actually change. The only problem is that with WindowsXP (and possibly other NT based versions of Windows) they will suddenly blank the screen on you and the game doesn't update the entire screen. The game disables dirty rectangles on WindowsNT, 2000 and XP and enables it on all other versions of Windows. You can change wether or not it is enabled in the options menu to force it on or off if you wish. I created a special title screen for the Gamedev.net version of the game with thier logo on the title screen. I figure it's the least I can do seeing as how they host my game for free. The last version (v1.30) had a problem with the menu. The technique I used to get around the blanking bug ended up screwing up my menus so they were hidden when you tried to use them. This is fixed now. I noticed the music seems to be muffled on me. I think this is because of old SB-Live! drivers, I will update them to see if it fixes the problem, I seem to remember it fixing it before. Let me know if anyone else has this problem. ----------------- Oct. 15, 2002 ----------------- HAPPY DAY!!! I am so pleased today I cannot describe it! :) The bug that has plagued this game and the game library that I use has been FIXED! MANY thanks to all the folks that work very hard on the Allegro library, these guys don't get paid to do this, they just love to program and were a huge help. The bug that caused this game's screen to suddenly go blank when run under Windows XP has been fixed and now runs smoothly for ALL versions of Windows! Many thanks especially to Eric, I mention him and another guy in the games credits, please take a moment to read though them. I am releasing v1.32 of this game and I MIGHT just call it quits for a while with THIS game anyhow. I WILL do a major update for it in the future with all new graphics but I just want to give this bug free, working version of the game a chance to get around and people to enjoy it while I work on another project. I might take some time and update the level editor for this for v1.33 and release it ASAP, but other than that I'll put any other game updates on hold for now as it is running smoothly and I need a break from it. heheh :) OH yeah, one last SMALL bug I fixed, if you selected -nosound as a command line option when you ran the game, it would STILL try to initialize your sound before it played! DUH... this wasn't a problem as it would initialize it but wouldn't actually play anything, but IS a problem if you don't have a sound card installed on your system! The game would get a critical error trying to initialize the sound card and you couldn't play it! hehehe... a small oversight. OH, if you play the game with the -nosound option enabled at the command prompt, that you can't re-enable the music within the game without risking a crash. Actually, I'm not sure what would happen, perhaps nothing. The sound card is NEVER initialized if you use -nosound command line option so re-enabling music (or sound!) from the options menu will cause the game to try and play them again, but with no sound card... could mean *POOF*. You have been warned. ;) (I'll probably add in a protection for this in v1.33 as well, but for now just use common sense). ----------------- Dec. 5, 2002 ----------------- I just got done redoing the level format slightly. The new level format is version 6, I had made a slight error when I originally coded the level loading and saving routines in. The error is a minor one that probably would never have caused any problems but I didn't want to take any chances so I fixed it now and converted all the old levels. It took a while, but it is better off this way. The code is corrected now with no errors, the levels will no longer be packed when you save them to disk, they will be 1K larger in size, this was nessecary because in order to add new levels to the data file they have to be uncompressed, it was easier to have them uncompressed in the first place rather than go through the hassle of decompressing them etc... when the file size is so minor, most people have a minimum of 4K block size for thier hard drive so the old size of under 1K and the new size of over 1.24K will make no difference in how much drive space it will take, either way it would occupy 4K of space minimum. When the levels are loaded into the datafile, the datafile compresses them so there is no loss in space at all in any game I release, only on levels people create. I still want to add more features into the level format like individual level names, pacman starting position, ghost starting positions, ghost home entrance etc... but I'll save that for the future. Next thing I will do is create a conversion program for anyone who has packed levels they want to keep to convert them to the new format. It should be pretty easy to implement. (famous last words eh?) ----------------- Jan. 8, 2003 ----------------- Another new year, and I am still programming this thing. I think my tombstone will read "here lies Pacman" or "the ghosts finally got him" ;) Anyhow, thanks to "Gary" for reporting an obscure little bug with the jump tool! I made a small programming mistake and as a result the random jump tool would pick a level from 0 to 27 instead of 1 to 28 (other programmers will recognize this mistake rand()%28 ;) You have to remember to add a 1 after that or it picks from 28 random numbers, but you have to remember computers don't count from 1, they start at 0, at least in C they do and so it would pick a value from 0 to 27 (which is 28 numbers in all) so you had a 1 in 28 chance of getting level 0, which didn't exist and do to some other oversights it wouldn't pick up that the level wasn't loaded and whammo... crash. All fixed anyhow, it had the potential to lock up your computer under Win98, it was a rare bug and you would have to play the game ALOT to find it. (I guess Gary is a fan ;)). IN order to find the bug I had to implement a cheat key to force the next pickup/tool to be the JUMP, press "J" in cheat mode to get it. I also had a comment from one person that found the shaded numbers made it difficult to tell a 9 from a 0 so I added an option to turn off shaded numbers. If you turn them off you still get coloured numbers, just no shading and they appear a bit brighter. It actually doesn't look too bad. Anyhow, for those of you who prefer them unshaded, you now have that option. (see, if you have a feature you want, just tell me! heheh) I also worked on finishing the graphics some more after taking a break from editing them. Trust me, editing the graphics takes more time than programming the game! And it doesn't help that I am no artist. I'll try and finish them up as soon as possible as I really need to get the next version out there with the bug fix. In the meantime I will upload what I have completed so far to the website. I removed the DIRY ON/OFF option, it was left over from the buggy WinXP days, that bug was fixed (and I no longer use WinXP, I went back to good old Win98se) so I no longer needed that option, it was replaced by the Shaded Text option. ----------------- Mar. 22, 2003 ----------------- I modified Allegro's Setup utility for use with the game so that people who have problems with audio MIGHT be able to fix it with this. There are no guarantees though, but it does allow you to select which audio driver you wish to use under Windows. The MIDI and other items aren't used in Deluxe Pacman, only the digital driver will effect the game at all, I am just too lazy to program out the things that aren't needed. ;) I am throwing setup in to help a few people who have had problems (mostly because of built in, onboard sound which I don't recomend to anyone, buy a seperate sound card, I highly recommend Creative SoundBlaster sound cards, I use a SBLive! Value, which is pretty cheap but with really nice quality sound and it works.) ----------------- May. 25, 2003 ----------------- I finished redoing the line graphics so now they are now hi-res 16bit graphics rather than just resized 8bit graphics. I also redone the Pacman character graphics so he looks totally different than before. The Pacman should be the most noticable difference, he is now all new, hi-res 16bit, redone from scratch. Now I'm wishing I had redone the ghosts the same way, I still might, but first I want to get all the pickups and tools redone to new hi-res 16bit graphics. I also need to redo some of the coloured text, it is currently still 8bit, low-res, I need to create larger, hi-res 16bit versions to get rid of the blockiness of it and just plain look better. I will keep the low res text for smaller text displays (like the opening "get ready player one" stuff looks nice with the smaller text), but the scores and the large text on the high score screen doesn't look good at all. Once I am done ALL the graphics, I will start on possibly adding in the GUN (due to popular demand... 2 or 3 people actually requested it :)) and I MIGHT add in the EXTRA bonus screens, not sure... or I may just save it all for version 2 of the game to avoiding hacking away at old code (and some of the code in this game is VERY old! Just ask me for it and I will you the source for v1.32 of the game. ;)) I added in a new level, LEVEL029 is now in the game using one of the new line graphic sets. I plan on taking an entire day and doing nothing but creating levels. I would like to get up to 100 levels, and I think I can get there in a day with some work (I said that before didn't I?) I'll probably start doing more work on this game again, it has been a while since I done a large amount of work on it. --------------------- Friday, Jun. 13, 2003 --------------------- - 1:00am Friday the 13th... <Bart voice>are we scared yet? Anyhow, I got alot done since my last entry. I just got done totally changing the fonts for the game to new hi resolution fonts. I used anti-aliasing on the fonts to reduce the jaggy edges and blockiness of the letters. I also created three different sizes of fonts, small, large and huge. I done this to avoid stretching fonts to make them larger as this makes them too blocky looking (you could really see this on the high score screen). Now the high score screen (now renamed the "HALL OF FAME") uses HUGE fonts for the large letters and a large font for the scores and names (large font is used on the game screen as well). The small font is used for the credits, about etc. I have also added about 10 new levels of my own, plus someone who likes the game has sent me about 20 levels, so look forward to at least 30 new levels, plus I have at least 36 more levels beyond these already designed on paper, just not created yet. So 66 NEW levels, plus the 29 that already exist makes it about 96 levels, and I will make up whatever number is required to make an even 100 which has been my goal all along. I have many more plans that I am working on adding to the game in the next couple of months. - 2:10pm Got alot more done. I managed to fix two bugs, one allowed you to enter the ghosts home, I fixed it so you can't enter into thier home no matter which direction you come from (the way it should have been from the start!) There was alsoa a nasty bug that on rare occasions, if you were on level 29 and you grabbed the jump, it could crash on you. This has been fixed, what I did was when jump would randomly select a level, if it happened to select level 28, the game would then end level 29 and before it jumped, it would hit some code that would increment the level (as if you just properly ended the level) and so your new level would end up at the same level, this caused some problems in the way the game was coded and *whammo* crash time. Anyhow, it was fixed and won't happen again. I also fixed a bug with the high score routines where they wouldn't properly load the high scores. Nobody ever seen this bug because it was introduced in the last version and caught before I released it. I had accidentally deleted a routine to set the password to "NULL" before saving and loading the high scores. The functions I use to save and load high scores are effected by the password function... oops. Just glad it was fixed before I released it. Anyhow, this is version 1.40 now as there have been some major changes to the game. I am going to upload this to my website as an official release due to the fact that it fixes a few important bugs and is to the point where most of the graphic work has been finished and so looks purdy good. Any old versions should be completely uninstalled and this should be installed fresh. The reason being is that it no longer relies on a DLL as with other versions, the library is now statically linked (part of the program itself) for reasons I won't get into here. Also, the hiscore names are now limited to 19 characters long rather than 20, if you have a hiscore file with names 19 characters or less than you can still use it. Otherwise you'll have to delete it or manually shorten the names before running this version with it. ----------------------- Thursday, Jun. 19, 2003 ----------------------- - 4:00PM Done some minor changes in the pacman and pace code to bring it up to date with newer versions of Allegro.