References (Atariage forum):
6/3/2012
Nukey Shay:
“This is not a hack of Pesco. It’s a hack of Ebivision’s unreleased Pac-Man game (which later became Pesco). ”
The pause works well on all the games now.
Although I forgot that the game pauses itself after each guy so I don’t know how necessary it is
I think there might be a problem with Hangly Man 2. When you go over the power pills the maze randomly goes off. I think it may be a feature but it doesn’t happen all the time, so I don’t know if you want to check that out or not.
This is one of the differences between the arcade Pac Man and Pac Man Plus, and I managed to get them all in (besides the differing fruit shapes, that is). Although there wasn’t a “Hangly Man Plus” in the arcades, I figured that I might as well allow them in the 2600 Hangly Man game as well (it didn’t “cost” anything to do so). All of them should not appear in the blue maze variations of the game.
Differences between regular and “squared” mode…
-The maze is green instead of blue
-The patterns of the monsters are slightly more aggressive
-When energized:
The bluetime is of a shorter duration than the normal game
The monsters wear little flags or “apple stems” on their heads
One or two monsters may not become vulnerable, but remain lethal
The maze may turn black (invisible)
-Bluetime is given when a fruit is eaten. When it is…:
The bluetime given is a different duration than normal “energized” bluetime
All 4 monsters always become vulnerable, and the point values are doubled
…i.e. 200,400,800,1600 = 400,800,1600,3200
Instead of turning blue, the monsters will be invisible (until they begin flashing)
If the maze was already darkened from a previous energizer, it remains dark. Otherwise, it has the same chances of becoming dark randomly** as the energizers.
** the word is used loosely here, since in this game everything follows a pattern (i.e. not just the monster movements).
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-13>
The game plays an intermission following the strawberry, first apple, first Galaxian, and first key. There are 3 different ones (the last one repeats). Like the arcade game, the 2nd intermission is cut short…however using the pause function while this one is playing may cause it to accidentally loop. Never did fix that
This glitch will not affect the other intermissions.
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-14>
Game controls:
Left difficulty will alter the monster “intelligence” (really, all the expert setting does is allow the other 3 monsters the ability to use the red monster’s “chase” routine…by giving each monster a separate ratio of how often to use this routine keeps them from bunching up). In B setting, the other 3 just move randomly all the time.
Right difficulty selects your speed. In B position, you move twice as fast and the dots don’t slow you down.
Game select allows you to begin a new game at any of the 22 starting levels (up to the 10th key).
Game reset will restart the game and toggle between 4 different versions (Hack’em -> Hack’em2 -> Hanglyman -> Hanglyman2).
The color/B&W switch selects the pause mode…because the physical switch differs between them, separate routines are used for the 2600 and 7800 (the boot routine attempts to detect which console is being used automatically). This boot routine will not detect properly when using emulation…in which case it will use the 2600 mode by default.
Important note: Toggling ANY switch besides this one during gameplay will reset the current game.
Once a game is over, the joystick trigger can be used to begin a new game at the last level reached in the previous game.
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-14>
A few tweaks:
I improved the invisibility of “plus”-mode monsters. There were occasional glitches that would give their position away in the earlier binary.
The eyes roll a bit while running to the box.
The fruit shapes are larger…they look closer to the arcade versions (still not quite satisfied with the strawberry, tho).
Either joystick can be used to move.
The last intermission also repeats following the 5th key. Forgot to add that (intermissions are supposed to play each time a level with more bluetime is reached).
Added a 50hz binary (I think). Still not too clear about what is involved between NTSC/PAL switching…but this should work AFAIK
The PAL60 version remains at 262 scanlines.
The computer here is acting a bit odd…so I’ll post it later
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-14>
Bugfixes…
If a monster was leaving the box as an energizer is hit, it wasn’t flagged to avoid the reversal (so occasionally, it would move right through the box downward until it looped back up and resumed normal movement once reaching the upper portion again). This has been corrected.
One of the sub-kernals was off by 1 cycle (due to the routines being shifted around…the branch was expected to take one cycle longer than usual). This was also fixed.
The “eaten fruit” object timer has been increased.
I also made some additional trims to the code…saving half a page of space and 1 ram location ($F0).
Additions…
Using that extra space, I added a flicker routine for the score portion of the display. So in addition to displaying the score and logos @ 30hz, it also displays extra lives and the level indicator @ 30hz
When a game is over, the routine is skipped to display the score @ 60hz. This required no extra ram…though the level indicator is a bit hard to make out sometimes (I only have 5 scanlines to work with).
Also, in the 16k version there was an entire page of space which wasn’t used at all. So I added one to include “plus” mode fruits (Coke can, martini, pea pod, apple, grapes, Galaxian, loaf of bread, and stack of pancakes.
-Since the fruit point sprites exist on a separate page (which alters the color to white), and the 2 modes have separate pages…the upper level indicator would have been the wrong color/object when the fruit is eaten. Therefore, it momentarily changes to be an “X” graphic.
However…once the eaten fruit timer is cleared, a slight glitch happens where the original object flashes for a single frame – displayed in white. I dunno a fix for this yet.
Attached Files
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-15>
Auto-start was removed a long time ago (I can’t remember the last version that had it) because there were a couple of unresolved problems when using it. The B&W switch just pauses the game in later versions. Since the game waits for a trigger press at the start of each level or life anyway, it was just something extra to assign to the switch.
Game reset cycles though the game modes, as you noticed. When I was hacking Jr. for speed, I noticed how easy it was to add it’s method of easier games – by eliminating some of the monsters using the low bits of the game variation and using that as the upper limit to the monster’s routines. I was already using a variable to track the variation, so that is another “why not?” option…it didn’t “cost” anything to implement. Game select allows you to start on any level up to the 9th key. However, if you hold up on both controllers when starting a game, you will begin at level 254 (just a little split-screen development thing I left in…level 255 features a simulated rollover bug).
Difficulty switches:
Left difficulty controls how well the monsters track the player. In B difficulty, only the red monster will seek out the player, all others move randomly. In A difficulty, each of those random monsters are given a variable amount of time to seek the player as well. The arcade’s method of tracking the player is not implemented in either mode, so this game is considerably “dumber” than it.
The right difficulty controls how fast the player moves. In B, the player can outrun all of the monsters on any level.
The score’s color will indicate what position the switches are in, as a reminder. White = both B. Red = left A, right B. Blue = left B, right A. Green = both A.
Changing any console switch (other than color/B&W) will restart the game on the level selected. At the end of a game, the player is given the option of continuing at the last level reached (while the X sprite is displayed). Press the trigger on the stick while this icon is displayed to continue.
Regardless of the mode chosen, the monster’s movements are possible to replicate from game to game…so it’s possible to create solid patterns so long as you keep track of your own movements.
BTW the Ms. Hack version was pretty much abandoned, because I could never figure out why it doesn’t work on real hardware…what’s the point of a 2600 game that doesn’t work on a 2600?
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-17>
You can start a new game in test mode to find out for yourself
Hold UP on both sticks when starting a new game…and you only need to clear 1 board to see it.
There aren’t enough dots on the right half of the screen…so the game continues to play without any way of beating the board (in effect, “simulating” what the arcade machine does – though not very faithfully). The maze gfx is also prevented from being displayed in reversed mode…which was a cheap way of “simulating” the garbled screen gfx. The only thing I left out was the garbled screen map directions – because there was already a bunch of exceptions put there (i.e. if the sprite is in an S-channel, if the player is hidden, etc)…and I was worried about cycle time.
From <http://atariage.com/forums/topic/55226-hackem-hangly-man-combined/page-19>
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