SPEKKU-MAN - New Pac-man clone for ZX Spectrum 48k

[Grongy]

Introducing yet another ZX Spectrum clone of PAC-MAN by Namco - SPEKKU-MAN!

Revisit hit 80's arcade game on your favorite microcomputer!

Runs in glorious 50fps!

Original ghost patterns from the arcade ported as close as possible!

Original beeper soundtrack, as well as complex in-game sounds added for best arcade experience!

Try SPEKKU-MAN now!

Code: Art-top
Graphics, SFX: Grongy
Music: AER

PAC-MAN is a registered trademark and is owned by its respective rights holders. This game has no affiliation with PAC-MAN.

https://zxart.ee/eng/software/game/arcade/spekku-man/

[flatduckrecords]

Fantastic loading animation and title screen @Grongy, that's very cool.

I don't think I've ever seen Pacman face out towards the screen before either, heh.

Nice work

[TMD2003]

Well, I was impressed - 40 years we've waited for an arcade-quality Pac-Man on the Spectrum, the "official ROM" version notwithstanding, but I have to issue a word of warning. There I was, eating dots, wondering if the ghosts had the same AI as the originals, wondering if there was ever a "kill screen" that I'd never see... but I saw it, rather sooner than I'd hoped. After racking up 10,000 points on stage 4, the "wacca wacca" noise started to sound different. And five seconds later, it crashed.

So something is not quite right. But with only 14,390 bytes loaded to get this far, it's not as if there isn't plenty of space left to fix it.

Maybe I'll make an RZX and see if it happens again.
EDIT: So I did - https://www.rickdangerous.co.uk/zx/spekku_man_crash.rzx
@Grongy - send this to the main coder. The problem is where there's this "burp" noise at 10,000 points. The "wacca wacca" is then slightly different. Then it changes again, much more noticeably, around 10,600 points, then I hit a ghost and instead of losing a life, the game crashes.

Also, in case there's anyone who hasn't seen this before: The Escapades of Percival "Pac" Man, Esquire. Many times I've said "who am I to refuse a gift of providence" when I've found potatoes lying by the side of the road that have fallen off a passing tractor. I suppose they're like human-edible dots.

[Andre Leao]

Released...





https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/20 ... m-man.html

✓ PROCESSED

Topics merged by PJ

[StanVanman]

Really well done clone, but FIVE lives? In a repetitive pattern game with only one screen and nothing new to see at any point? (This version doesn't have the occasional cartoon scenes.) If someone wants to make Pac-Man interesting and fun in 2022, give us ONE life.

[MatGubbins]

V1.0
Spekku-man, another great and very welcome game.

Upon being nabbed by a ghost on the last life the death animation doesn't play.
I have been able to walk into the inner maze walls a few times (using Spin at the moment) and reverse back out.
Collision detection looks a bit off, but gladly it is towards the players advantage.
Please, any chance of an option to switch off the in-game noise, but keep the wakka-wakka and bonus sounds on.

[gabriele amore]

Lovely Game!
My only criticism is that havng cyan ghosts after eating the pill, can be confusing in later levels just becasue one of the regular ghosts is cyan too

[MatGubbins]

I've been testing with Spekku-Man v1.0 on Spin and Specemu with WindowsXP

Selecting 4 to use Cursor keys (5678),start the game. Pressing 5678 keys do nothing, Spekku-man does not move.
Pressing Capshift + 5,6,7,8 will move the player.

Pressing the PC keyboard arrow keys will move the player but it is not as responsive - very sticky.



EmuZwin 2.7 with WindowsXP - my main emulator for testing games as it allows in-game rollback - I wanted to try and
reproduce walking into the walls as mentioned in my previous post.

The game will load and run. Starting the game, the maze appears, READY flashes, the noise starts and then it will crash to debug mode at location 30074/757A And A,1
Cancelling the debug, the game plays a bit and crashes back to the debug at 30074 again.

Tried on another XP computer with EmuZwin and the same happens.

[Grongy]

Fantastic loading animation and title screen @Grongy, that's very cool.

I don't think I've ever seen Pacman face out towards the screen before either, heh.

Nice work

Thanks!

Released...

There's a typo, it's called Spekku-man Thanks for looking at it!

If someone wants to make Pac-Man interesting and fun in 2022, give us ONE life.

There is a soultion, just spend four lives and start playing on the last one Just kidding, I think we're gonna add options menu in the future, we'll see.

Lovely Game!
My only criticism is that havng cyan ghosts after eating the pill, can be confusing in later levels just becasue one of the regular ghosts is cyan too

There's a cheat code just for you. Redefine keys as "BLUE", then change it to whatever you like and voila - ghosts are blue! We chose the dark cyan one, because the original color would be too dark for CRT TV's and ghosts are sort of blending with the maze, but once again, we can make it a choosable option.

@TMD2003, @MatGubbins, thanks for testing and finding bugs! The coder (Art-top) is gonna fix it soon enough. I guess that's what happens when you're in a constant hurry trying to release it for demoparty. Hope you still enjoyed the game!

[Grongy]

Version 1.1 released!



- The collision detection code was partially rewritten, now there should not be any problems encountering walls and ghosts (we hope)
- Crashes and other bugs were fixed
- The optimization was tighten up a bit, may be noticeable on some models
- The game over animation now plays properly, as in the original arcade game

Also we're thinking about making an extended version of Spekku-man with additional levels and other stuff, stay tuned!

Download here:
https://zxart.ee/rus/soft/game/arcade/spekku-man/

[StanVanman]

There is a soultion, just spend four lives and start playing on the last one Just kidding, I think we're gonna add options menu in the future, we'll see.

The good news is I had another go at POKEing the new version, and POKE 52459,1 works

(The game still shows five lives, but you only have one, and it starts new games fine.)

[Grongy]

The good news is I had another go at POKEing the new version, and POKE 52459,1 works

(The game still shows five lives, but you only have one, and it starts new games fine.)

I forgot, there's another cheat-code in the game, you can remap the keys as "CAFE" and after that you will earn a life after every 1000 points, not 10000. Also the "READY!" changes to "CAFE!", a nice little easter egg. Recommended in case of too high difficulty.

[Grongy]

Proof that Art-top really cared about the conversion of the source code and he excelled at it

[Grongy]

Spekku-man is in display in Saint-Petersburg's Yandex Museum

[Grongy]

Wow, another great Pac-man remake! Thanks for pointing it out @R-Tape. This one slipped past my radar and I have to agree with you that these two are the best Pac-man games on the Speccy.
However I did encounter a crash (usr 0 type crash) with Spekku-man after playing for a short while on Kempston Joystick on SpecEmu, 48k mode. It crashed on the first level. A second attempt also crashed on level 1 and gave the "6 Number too big, 1:5" error. I tried recreating the crash using keyboard and it crashed right at the start of level 2.

Thanks a lot! As for the crashes - I suppose you used a version 1.0, which was buggy, yeah. Version 1.1 never crashed on me; you should try that, if that happens again on 1.1, we can fix it with your help!

[cmal]

Thanks a lot! As for the crashes - I suppose you used a version 1.0, which was buggy, yeah. Version 1.1 never crashed on me; you should try that, if that happens again on 1.1, we can fix it with your help!

Cool, thanks @Grongy . I'll get version 1.1 and try it.