2011-01-14

He set a new record, 3:33:01.40. I'm still irritated that booeys are allowed. I'll go to my grave contending that passing through a ghost is a glitch/bug and thus any run using them should be disqualified. But them's the rules.

I spent way too much time watching David's video and found that his time for the racks up to and including the 8th key are about five minutes faster than what I can (theoretically) do. His 3-4-6 key pattern is especially fast when compared to mine, but he exhibits a skillset that only a Pacman savant would have (reversals.) I am not a Pacman savant.

His 9th key pattern is about a full second faster than mine, which amounts to over four minutes.

However, a feather in my cap is that my split-screen method is 15 seconds faster than his. Or at least to the point where he eats the last dot. I'm not sure what rulebook he's going by. I thought that the game ends when you die for the last time, but David keeps Pacman alive for a few minutes after he eats his last dot. My theory is that either the time officially ends on the last dot, or else he had some time and didn't want to beat his previous time by *too* much. This way if someone comes back and beats him by a few seconds, he knows he can come back again and beat it with the two minutes or so he has 'in the bag'. A clever ruse to (seemingly) keep the competition interesting.

I thought about stealing a couple of his patterns but the main one I want (mentioned above) is one that I couldn't do with any consistency in a million years. You might think that posting his entire game puts his record in jeopardy, but for the most part it doesn't. If Nolan Ryan showed you exactly how to throw a split-finger fastball, you still couldn't do it yourself. Gnome I sayin'?

2010-09-06

I asked a referee at Twin Galaxies about the 'booey' thing again and he checked with some other referees. They say that it is perfectly acceptable to pass through a ghost during play. Seems like cheating to me but I'll have to accept that. At this point getting the record with out a booey seems unlikely but I still want to try. It will be a tall order, though, since I have to shave over 6 minutes off the chunk of time it takes to get through the 8th key. That's only 30 minutes total so far and I'm only shaving off a few seconds here and there in my research.

At the very least, if I'm working a pattern and I get to a point where I have to turn to avoid a ghost, I can no just try plowing right into it and see if I go through it. I'll have to dig around the 20 or so 9th key pattens and see if I have any where I run around too much avoiding ghosts and see if I can shave a second or two off of it. Really, that 9th key pattern is the key since you have to do it 235 times.

2010-09-04

It recently came to my attention that (apparently) the 9th key patterns used by the last few record holders contained 'booeys', or incidences where pacman passes through the ghosts. It clearly states in the Twin Galaxies Scoreboard FAQ:

Since passing through ghosts was clearly not an intended behavior of the original Pacman programmers, this really smells like a bug to me. I've been going on that assumption all along. How anybody can call passing through a ghost an accepted part of the game is beyond me. I'm trying to get some clarification on this as it could have some ramifications for my quest.

I'm not saying that I have any patterns lined up with booeys in them, but I certainly have a bunch of half-patterns that I have abandoned due to booeys.

In my mind, though, I have a nagging voice in my head telling me that this is cheating. Even if I find out this is allowed I don't think I'd want to do it. It's certainly against the spirit of the game. If this is allowed, then what's stopping people from using the Galaxian (or is it Galaga?) bug that stops the aliens from firing missiles at you?

If this is really going to be allowed by Twin Galaxies then they need to reword their FAQ and make it clear that bugs are okay, cheats are not. In any case, though, I think most people would agree with me that it's not cool to exploit bugs in the game to decrease your time or increase your score.

I just don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

2010-03-15

And damn you Rick Fothergill, too. Apparently there has been a Pacman arms race going on that has culminated in Rick breaking my original target record of 3:42:04 by over six minutes. Then Rick came back and regained the record a second time by improving that by 25 seconds. So now the record sits at 03:34:08, 8 minutes better than my original target. I feel like I fell asleep at the wheel, but now I'm even further behind.

I find it hard to believe that Rick found eight extra minutes in the racks leading up to the 9th key. Perhaps one or both of them finally cracked the 9th key and found a microsecond on each of the final 235 boards or so. I don't even know where to begin looking for that kind of time anymore.

Thanks, jerks.

---

2009-09-17

So the move this past weekend was successful, but little did I know at the time that while I was lounging around watching four guys pack and move all our stuff, Twin Galaxies was certifying a new time record for Pacman! Damnit!

I guess congratulations are in order for David Race, but he done fucked up my plan. He shaved a whopping 42 seconds off the record time that has stood for over nine years. Read about it here.

As it stood, I felt with the old record and my pace I would have 140 seconds to finish the split-screen. I got it down pat to exactly 2 minutes on Mame. But now that David has come along, I only have 98 seconds to finish the last rack. This will not do. It's back to the drawing board for me to make up some more time. This will be a tough nut to crack, but it might be fun that there is a random challenger out there like myself. He just beat me to the punch.

The time chart has been updated with the new numbers. Hopefully in the coming weeks I'll be able to find some extra time in my patterns. I think the most difficult thing is that as I develop new patterns I'll have to forget the old ones. I've literally done every pattern hundreds of times. They're all pretty ingrained in my head. Now to undo some of that is going to take some work.

As I said in the title, bummer.

---

2009-08-26

I'm still practicing on a regular basis, sans camera. I still seem to really tank when the camera is on. I'm still sharp otherwise, though.

I thought I was going to have some time to try to record my epic game in a couple weekends when my wife was going to be out of town. But instead it turns out I get to move! Hurrah for that. It'll actually be nice to get out of this place. And at the new place we'll have a garage so I won't feel so bad about making Pacman noise while my wife is asleep in the next room.

I swear, this thing will happen. Really it will.

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2009-07-23

Annoyed by the broken camera, I purchased a new one. It's a little tiny pocket HD camera from Kodak which is actually pretty slick. It's got the form factor of a large cell phone and it's 'ruggedized' so I think this one will be more difficult to break.

I've been practicing a lot as of late but I've also been wasting time with a bunch of new Rubik's Cubes I purchased. Ha ha. Sad that my one nerd pursuit is getting in the way of my other nerd pursuit.

In other news, my wife and I attended California Extreme a few weeks ago. It's a classic arcade gaming expo and it was hella fun. There are some photos here.

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2009-06-03

So a couple weeks ago I started playing games with the camera rolling. It turns out I really tank badly when I'm recording. I'm not sure what's up with that.

So this particular day (mind you, the video camera was about two weeks old) I was going to take a break and record my cats doing stupid things. I took the camera off the tripod mount and, forgetting that the power cord was attached, I walked off with it. So two steps later the cord snags and yanks the camera out of my hands.

My first reaction was to try to catch the camera, which I was unsuccessful in doing. What I was successful in doing was tossing the camera further away, where it bounced off the edge of a cedar chest and crashed to the ground. No parts came flying off of it so I was hopeful...

Turns out the drop busted the LCD display, but everything else works. So it records just fine, but I can't tell exactly what I'm recording. The view was pretty tight with the camera so I'm not sure I can eyeball it properly. Perhaps I can run a video-out to the TV to align it, or perhaps I can get a different camera. I dunno.

I've come real close to dropping our new snapshot camera, too. I guess I'm just becoming a klutz as I approach 40. Oddly, I haven't broken a dish or glass in a long time.

I'm doing some more practicing this week and may try again this coming weekend. I've been inspired by Wiebe's live attempt at the Donkey Kong record at E3. :)

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2009-05-12

Okay, I finally acquired (purchased) a decent, cheap video camera! I got me a Polaroid DVC-00725F. It does HD (720P) and has all the basic features you'd need in a little digicam. I've played with it around the house and it's pretty cool. It's light enough that my little tripod, when electrital-taped to the side of Pacman, can hold it up.

I've made a couple test videos and they turn out pretty good under the circumstances. I'm finding that it's harder to talk out loud and pay attention to the game than it is to think about what you will be saying on the video. (Twin Galaxies encourages you to talk in the video so that it is uniquely identifiable to them.)

I have to turn the video camera 90 degrees to fit the screen on there but it's easy enough to rotate the video back once it's downloaded to the laptop.

The missus is going to be gone over the weekend so if I'm feeling up to it I may make my first attempts at the record! W00t!

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2009-03-24

In anticipation of updating the back-end software used to run this site (http://www.joomla.org) I'm doing away with the forums. Nobody posts there. Nobody cares. If anyone has any comments they can just comment on this blog.

So there.

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2009-03-24

I got a new snapshot camera which can also record pretty decend videos, in HD even. I also purchased a pretty cool little gadget that allows me to hook the camera up to a hard drive and record pretty much indefinitely.

I've done a preliminary test, pointing the camera at Pacman and recording a little test video, and it seems to work. I ordered a little tripod, which should arrive soon, that I can attach to the side of the Pacman and start to get some real video going on. Hopefully I'll have something to post soon.

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2009-01-20

My wife just got a job (congratulations!) which means I'll have about three hours every Saturday to practice! She doesn't mind when I play Pacman when she's here, but I feel a bit guilty about it so I try to do it 'after hours' or when she's not home.

That three hours is nearly enough time to squeeze in a full perfect game, ha ha. Anyway, hopefully I can come across a video camera soon and can crank this sucker out within a month or so!

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2009-01-14

I've been thowin' down perfect 9-key games left and right as of late. Tonight I decided to keep going with the hope that I'd make it to the split screen and could practice that.

I took some big breaks to eat, watch Scrubs etc., and it was getting to be past midnight before I even hit a million. I was actually kinda relieved when the gold ghost took an unusual turn and killed me toward the end of a rack. When you do that pattern a few dozen times in a row it gets to be sort of robotic. I should have had plenty of time (a second or so) to react and turn away, but I just ran right into him without even thinking about it.

As a funny side note, I also made a wrong turn on the 8th key and had to freestlyle most of it. It took me a couple minutes but I did it without much problem. That would have been funny/irritating if I got all that way and messed up on that last rack before "phase 2".

---

2009-01-14

My highest 'perfect' score so far.

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2009-01-02

So, over the Christmas break I tried playing a non-timed perfect game. I blew through the game up until the 9th key and figured I'd use my pausing method (hiding spot) to chip away at it throughout the day. I especially wanted to practice the split-screen for real.

Turns out that maybe the hardest part of this whole thing is doing the 9th key pattern 235 times in a row. I eventually quit the game when I only had about half a million points. Up to that point I had screwed up the 9th key pattern three times. I recovered fine twice, but when I finally died I got irritated and turned the machine off. Argh.

Plus, I don't have a decent camera to record the game yet. I tried pointing a webcam at it but (1) there's no way to get a decent image with a webcam pointed at a CRT and (2) it seems that most webcam software, even though it says it's recording at 30 fps, it's really not. So it looks choppy and generally like crap.

I have a big TV to sell and maybe a tax refund, so perhaps my wife will allow me to up the budget for a video camera (from $100.) Does she even remember that she authorized that budget a few months ago? :)

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2008-12-07

I did some more calculations and fixed up the time chart. As it stands now I have 138.5 seconds to finish the split-screen. I typically take just over two minutes for it, unless things go really haywire, in which case it can take me three minutes or more. So that's definitely the X-factor to this whole project.

I thought I might try to come up with some new, faster patterns for the first 19 racks. I figured a good place to start would be the first apple because that pattern is repeated three more times after it's first showing. I came to a realization, at least on this pattern, which makes it near impossible to find something faster.

I first spent a couple hours coming up with a new pattern. I didn't keep track of the time as I went along but when I finished I found that I was just two seconds slower than the pattern I was already using. After some thought I figured out why this is.

With only 2 seconds to eat the blue ghosts, you have to get them pretty close to the power pill. At the start of the rack the ghosts are in 'scatter mode', where they each go to a different corner of the rack, then reverse and converge on Pacman. This takes about 15 seconds, so you automatically have that delay right off the bat. Throughout the rack you have other reversals which basically put the ghosts off-limits for another 10-15 second timeframe. Pacman only goes so fast so I think it will be difficult to speed up this pattern.

I may try to do something with the exorbitantly long cherry pattern or work on some of the longer ghost racks.

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2008-11-27

I've had about enough of trying to find a new 9th key pattern. It's just not happening. I literally have 20 9th key patterns I've made up and the closest I have come to reducing time on the best pattern I have (which I stole) is .6 seconds. It's been well over a year so I think it's time to just move on.

I'm going to take the 25 surplus seconds I have and try to throw down a perfect game over the Christmas break (2008.) I get the week off between Christmas and New Year's so I'll see if I can convince my wife to spot me a personal day to fulfill my quest. I figure at the very least I can get a perfect game and maybe break the time record. If not at least I'll know about how close I can come and how much time I may *really* need.

I've been doing some practicing and throwing down an occasional perfect 9th key game. The joystick on the PacMan is kinda squeaky but I'm reluctant to take it off and oil it in the event I mess it up and make the machine inoperable.

Anyway, mark your calendars for December 25th-31st. Somewhere around there I should be blogging about my success (or failure.)

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2008-07-18

I got my split screen down to about 2 minutes. Woot!

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2008-07-16

I have gone through some life changes the last few months (new job) so I haven't had a lot of time to practice PacMan. This past week I finally got some time to sit down with Mame and crank out a bunch of 9th key patterns. I eventually made it to the split screen and quickly saved the position and backed up my .xmame directory.

I've come up with a way to do the split screen, but it takes me about 2:30, which is not fast enough (unless I find some time elsewhere.) It's only been a day so I'll have to experiment with it some more.

One thing that irritated me was that when I successfully finished the split screen for the first time I was 90 points short of a perfect saved game. It's probably no coincidence that there are nine hidden dots on the split-screen at 10 points apiece.

I found that I had mis-read or likely not read at all (or God knows what) the official Twin Galaxies tournament settings for PacMan. Turns out you start with five guys AND get a bonus life at 10,000 points. I didn't account for the bonus life, thus I'm one PacMan short for my practice rounds. Argh!

At this very preliminary stage this one pacman accounts for about 19 seconds. So I guess this means my time is really closer to 2:49. I got some work to do.

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2008-06-05

In looking at my previous attempts at PacMath I realized I was rounding up in my time for the 9th key pattern. I figured maybe those fractions of a secand would add up to something ... Just maybe.

The real time, averaged across 10 9th keys, is 48.7 seconds. When I re-did the math I found that I actually have 109 seconds available for the split screen. I still don't think that will be quite enough. I do know I can squeeze 10 - 15 seconds each out of the 5th, 7th and 8th key. So that should be at least 139 seconds, just over two minutes. Which could be enough.

I'm maintaining a chart to track the time I have in hand. As I reduce times for racks I'll update the chart to show my progress.

I'm also currently running through an entire Mame game, saving along the way, so I can get a save for the split screen and start working on that. So far I've accidentally erased my save game twice (once I had gone through about 40 9th keys) so I'm trying to be a little better with backups. Ha ha.

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2008-05-04

So I'm still working on getting a better 9th key pattern. It's amazing how fast a month goes by.

I managed to get a pattern that comes in about 1/10th of a second faster than the current pattern. I was originally very excited about that, but then I noticed when I was playing PacMan in the garage that sometimes I would miss the first key, yet the rest of the pattern would work. I verified this behavior on MAME and it did the same thing. Bummer. So close. A tenth of a second isn't enough to add up to the time I need but at least it was something.

Back to the drawing board. Still not ready to give up on this one.

One other thing I have going on is that I'm trying to get a Mame saved session at the split screen so I can practice that. I'm also keeping track of the score as I go along so I can hopefully have some milestones to look forward to when I'm doing the 9th key pattern 235 times. I'm only cranking out 10 of those a night and it's already proving to be very tedious.

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2008-04-07

For the past few weeks I've been working on the new 9th key pattern. I'm still not there. I've come within about a second of the current best time (42.75 seconds or so) but have not been successful in shaving any time off of there.

The good news is that I've thrown down a couple perfect games up to the 9th key so I'm pretty well in practice for that part.

Hopefully I'll have a breakthrough in the next couple of weeks, or else I'll start looking for time in other places. For fun I tried a few things with the 5th, 7/8th key patterns and I was able to shave off about 10 seconds on each of those without hardly trying.

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2008-03-14

It's been a long time since I've logged any activity in here, but I have been busy. I've been working on a 9th key pattern that takes 42 seconds or less, but I have not been met with much luck. The best I've done is 44 seconds.

I'm not ready to give up yet, but because I'm bored and in case I do get fed up, here's a table of all the patterns so far and how long they take. I may have to come back to this later and try to shave time off some of these. Hopefully not, though.

Note that these times include the space between racks, including cartoon intermissions. I measure time starting and stopping at the instant PacMan appears on screen after a new rack is drawn.

Rack (totem) Original Time (seconds) New Time (in seconds)

Cherry (cartoon) 1:30 (90)

Strawberry 1:25 (85)

Orange 1:15 (75)

Orange 1:23 (83)

Apple (2-second) (cartoon) 1:24 (84)

Apple (special) 1:17 (77)

Grape (2-second) 1:16 (76)

Grape (2-second) 1:16 (76)

Galaxian (1-second a) (cartoon) 2:06 (126)

Galaxian (special) 1:16 (76)

Beehive (2-second) 1:16 (76)

Beehive (1-second b) 1:59 (119)

1 Key (1-second b) (cartoon) 2:08 (128)

2 Key (special) 1:22 (82)

3 Key (1-second c) 1:54 (114)

4 Key (1-second c) 1:54 (114)

5 Key (cartoon) 1:05 (65)

6 Key (1-second c) 1:54 (114)

7 Key (kinda like 5) 0:55 (55)

8 Key (kinda like 5) 0:55 (55)

Total 29:30 (1770)

Hmmm. Somehow it doesn't look like I can find an extra two minutes in there. Better get back to the 9th key!

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2008-02-18

I made it my goal tonight to get a million points on Pacman, and I did just that. My previous best game was a million (I quit because I was bored) and I wanted to do it again to get used to playing for that amount of time. I think this game was better because last time I didn't have a lot of perfect patterns. I missed a couple this time around but I bet I still did it faster. It took me an hour and 12 minutes. I did the 9th key pattern 52 times.

This got me to thinking, I still haven't figured out exactly how many times I need to do that pattern, or how long it will really take overall. I've had no success in shaving off a second or two from the 9th key (though I've had some luck adding a second or two, har har.) It takes me between 48 and 49 seconds to finish that pattern.

First, I think I'll figure out exactly how many times I really need to do the 9th key pattern.

First, it's a given that the perfect score is 3,333,360. I also know that the amount of points we get by finishing up to the 8th key in a perfect way is 365,600. This leaves us with 2,967,760. I've observed that the number of points you get on the splitscreen pattern is 6,760, leaving us with 2,961,000 points to divide across all the 9th key patterns we have to do. I happen to know that the 9th key pattern gives you 12,600 points a pop. Let's do some more math:

2,961,000 / 12,600 = 235

So there you go. The 9th key pattern has to be done exactly 235 times. Let's re-do our math to get an exact time...

It might first be convenient to convert everything into seconds, so:

The record = 3:42:04 = 10,800 + 2520 + 04 = 13,324 seconds

9th key pattern = 49 seconds, times 235 = 11,515

First 20 racks = 29:36 = 1740 + 36 = 1776

Total so far = 13,291

Which leaves us 33 seconds for the split screen. Crapola, I don't think that's gonna happen. The fastest I see it online is about 2:30. So, I need to find about 1:56 in my current patterns.

I may give the 9th key pattern re-work another week before I start looking elsewhere for the time. Damn.

---

2008-02-02

I went ahead and timed the 9th key pattern for real. I ran it 8 times in a row, and it took just about exactly 6:30. Divided by 8 that's precisely 48.75 seconds. Let's call it 49.

Applying that to the previous calculations:

29 x 60 + 36 = 1776 seconds

49 x 236 = 11564 seconds

= 13340 seconds total

/ 60 = 222.333 minutes

/ 60 = 3.71 hours

Which is less than 3 hours 45 minutes. Let's actually do it correctly.

13340 seconds is 222 whole minutes, and change. Which is 3 hours and some change.

13340 seconds total – 10800 seconds (3 hours) = 2540 seconds left over

2540 seconds / 60 = 42 additional minutes, with some change.

2540 seconds – 2520 seconds (in 42 minutes) = 20 seconds left over.

So we get 3:42:20 so far. The record is 3:42:04.

But my time doesn't include the split screen. So basically I need to shave enough time off my current (hypothetical) total to give me time to do the split screen. Then maybe a few seconds more.

If I can find one second in the 9th key pattern that would be 236 seconds, which would be almost 4 minutes. I found a video on line where the entire split screen process is completed in about 2 and a half minutes. Hmmm.... It would be nice to have a slightly bigger buffer than that.

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2008-02-01

The 9th key pattern was cake. I got it in about 4 tries, and just did it about 10 times in a row.

It takes 45 seconds. But then there is about 5 seconds while the rack flashes and it moves on to the next level. To be safe, I'm going to be doing some calculations based on 51 seconds per rack. So here we go!

Up to and including the 8th key you have 20 racks, which took me 29:36, which is 1776 seconds. Hey the birth year of my nation! Sweet!

So, rack 255 (I think. I'm not sure if PacMan counts from 0 or 1, and if it crashes on rack 256 or on the one after 256. For my purposes I'm going to say there are 256 good racks, then the split-screen, just to be semi-safe.)

So, this means there are 256 – 20 9th key patterns, or 236 x 51 seconds each, which equals 12,036 seconds. Add to that the 1776 seconds we already have and we arrive at:

13,812 seconds / 60 = 230 minutes, 12 seconds. From that we can extrapolate...

3 hours 50 minutes and 12 seconds....

Hmmm. Crap. Is that right? Fuck. Pardon my French. But that seems to already be past the record of 3 hours 42 minutes 4 seconds. Did I do that math correctly? Hmmmmm. Let's start again.

29 x 60 + 36 = 1776 seconds

51 x 236 = 12036 seconds

= 13812 seconds total

/ 60 = 230.2 minutes

/ 60 = 3.83 hours

Which is just about 3 hours and 50 minutes.

Are you fuckin' kidding me? What the hell? Damnit. I'm too slow. Am I really too slow? Shit. That's a bit of a fly in the ointment. And that's not even counting whatever time it's going to take me for the split screen.

Wow. I'm stunned. And bummed. However ...

Maybe I can find a way to clear the 9th key pattern faster. I just grabbed the first pattern I found. If I just shave off even 5 seconds that's nearly a 20 minute savings. Which would give me 12 minutes to beat the split screen for the record. Damn. No freakin' way I'm learning new patterns for the first 20 racks to shave time off this thing.

I guess my next goal is to find a faster pattern for the 9th key, or since I'm so adept and making patterns myself (har har) invent a new one.

And I thought I was almost done! Damn!

---

2008-01-31

At exactly 8:32pm tonight, I ended the first mega-epic game of Pacman I've ever played.

Tonight I finally got all the way through the 8th key without screwing anything up. This was my goal before I was going to learn the 9th key pattern. Awesome.

It's been just over 2 weeks worth of trying, so you could say it took me about 15 tries. As I mentioned in my previous entry, most of my games tend to be really close to perfect. I typically miss a turn on one or two racks. If it's a ghost eating rack I'm usually sunk. I can freestyle the ghosts on nearly every rack, but it's very time consuming and not something I can do if I'm going to break the record. Normally I'll play through just to practice the other patterns, though.

Some observations:

I didn't notice until yesterday that when you start a new rack, the red ghosts starts outside of the ghost corral. In my lifetime I've probably played thousands of PacMan games and I just now noticed this.

I play better the earlier it is. I typically play after 11pm or midnight. I also typically play a few crappy games where I screw up the cherry pattern before I hit my stride. My epic game tonight was the first game I played after I got home from work and the grocery store.

The further along I get in a game, the more perfect it is, the more nervous and giddy I get. I have no idea why, since nobody is watching me, and I turn the machine off after the 8th key anyway.

Score: 365,600

Time: 29:36

Looks like I'm just under half an hour, just about where I thought I'd be, and well under my first arbitrary goal of 40 minutes. Awesome.

On to the 9th key!

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2008-01-16

¡Muy irritato!

So I try to play one 'good' game of PacMan every day. I want to get to a point where I can throw down a perfect game up to the 8th key before I move on to the second phase of the game (9th key times 230.)

I define a 'good game' as not dying before the first apple. After that if I screw something up I just play on so I can practice some of the later patterns.

I tend to screw up one or two racks each game, and it's different ones each time, it seems. So there isn't really any one thing I suck at. And until tonight memorization wasn't a problem.

So I'm throwing down a good game tonight and I get all the way up to the second key. About halfway through I just get brain freeze and forget the goddamned pattern. I couldn't believe it. It's like I never learned it in the first place. As I continued on I kept trying to remember it, and by the fourth key or so I did. I can't believe I did that.

I managed to slip off the control stick on the 6th key, too, and died. But other than that, everything else was perfect. Over 350K points, and in 29:30. Oh, and by the way, I went ahead and memorized the 7th/8th key pattern, so this time includes those, too. I think my real time once I don't screw up at all might be about 30 seconds less than this. After I screwed up the 6th key it took some time to clean up the top half of the rack.

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2008-01-05

Since Christmas I've managed to find the last elusive kong on the first galaxian screen. I have it where there is a small pause, but it's just waiting for the ghosts in the upper left corner of the rack, then jamming down and killing them all. I'm hitting it about 90% of the time. I may still try to find a nonstop pattern for it, but for now it's good enough.

A couple days ago I managed to get a nearly perfect game up to and including the fourth key. Somehow one 1600 point ghost on the second grape turned away from pacman. What the ...? Close enough for me to feel comfortable enough to move on with the patterns.

I've come within a couple of kongs of a perfect game since yesterday, too. For some reason the first apple pattern is the one I screw up the most, which sucks because it's also the one that repeats the most. I tried making adjustments to the way I do hairpin turns and such tonight and was met with some success, but I still need to practice that pattern some more.

On to the fifth key!

[a few hours pass]

I did the 5th key pattern from memory on the fourth try. Got it wired. Just did it about 10 times in a row. It takes 57 seconds.

I peeked ahead to the 7/8th key pattern and it's exactly the same as this one up until you get the second key, but after that it's just collecting the power pills in the corners. So I already have 90% of that one wired.

And on an even more awesome note, I spent about an hour looking for that last kong on the first galaxian, and I found it! Sweet! And it's pretty simple.

Now I have continuous, nonstop patterns for all levels! Sweet!

---

2007-12-27

I spoke too soon. Turns out that when you use the cheats on Mame, the first galaxian rack, and thus the first 1-second rack, is different than the other five. The fourth kong is different. That's what I get for not trying this stuff out on the PacMan in the garage.

So over the Christmas holiday I came up with two non-continuous patterns to get the fourth kong on the first 1-second pattern. In my practice game tonight, I forgot them both and missed the one kong! Damn! This was unfortunate because I aced the rest of the game up to the eighth key! Double damn!

The better news is that even with freestyling the fifth, seventh and eighth keys I came in at 30:08.

So, the special fourth kong on the first galaxian pattern/method, both of them now that I think about it, require a slight pause and some timing. I don't like it, so I'm going to try to find a way to do it continuously. I don't want to have to rely on my timing, even for the one kong. In Mame practice I can hit either one only about 75% of the time, so that's no good. And as I mentioned, I apparently forget them altogether when I'm playing out in the garage.

So this week will be devoted to finding that elusive kong. Then at that point I'll have nearly all the patterns I need, and none of the racks after that will have kongs so I shouldn't have to make up anything else on my own. Things are lookin' good.

---

2007-12-16

Well, I did it. I found a fourth kong continuous pattern for the first 1-second rack (first galaxian, second beehive, first key.) Pretty sweet, if I don't say so myself!

It took me one evening to find an alteration to that pattern that would get me the fourth kong with a minimal pause at the top left corner of the screen. It was actually pretty easy to time as the ghosts didn't really run into the power pill, but turned to the right. So you could wait until they passed, then hit the power pill and force them to turn around and run right into you. However, it still bugged me that you had to pause. So the next night I set out to find a continuous pattern, and I did.

So now I have all continuous patterns, no pauses, no reversals, up to and including the fourth key, including two slightly different, but mostly the same, 1 second patterns.

The new, what I'm calling '1-second a' pattern clocks in at about 1:58. The '1-second b' pattern is slightly faster at 1:51. So I'm still under my 2 minute limit.

I died a few times and screwed up some patterns but overall it took me about 32 minutes to get to the ninth key tonight. This also included some freestyle time on the fifth key since I haven't learned that pattern yet. So my overall time looks to be pretty damn good. I'm jazzed.

---

2007-12-12

Glory be!

So I set out to get the fourth kong on my second 1-second pattern tonight. I don't know if I'm lucky or what, but I nailed it in about 10 minutes.

However, after I got it I realized that I wasn't sure what I had done to get it! Turns out I had forgotten what I did and it took me another hour to find it again. I promptly drew it out.

It clocks in at 1:54, too, which is pretty sweet. The whole thing requires no pauses or weird timing things like the first 1-second pattern.

Oddly enough, this new pattern works on the other 1-second boards up to the third kong. It's easier to perform for me so I'm thinking of going back and re-working that pattern, too. That way all six of my 1-second boards will be nearly 3/4 the same, and different just for the last kong.

Currently, on the first 1-second pattern, the last kong kinda sucks because you have to pause for a split second and time the eating of the dot and the first ghost just perfectly, then you have to turn around and go right immediately after that. It's easy to screw up. I'll spend tomorrow searching for a new 4th kong on that pattern. Hopefully I can get it to where all the patterns I use require no pausing or weird stuff like that.

So this puts me up to and including the fourth key! I'll practice this for the next week or until such time as I feel comfortable with the whole game thus far.

---

2007-12-11

Huzzuh! I was not satisfied with the second 1-second pattern I had made up, because the third kong required a pause and some difficult timing. So I've spent a few days seeing if I can improve things, and I have!

I managed to get the third kong using a continuous, non-stop, no pausing, pattern. Sweet! So I just have to figure out how to get the one last kong and I'll be set with patterns I have to make up myself. Well, pattern, really. Since there's only been one I've had to heavily modify.

After I get that one then I only have three more patterns to memorize, plus the split-screen. Sweet!

---

2007-12-09

Cutting out the Mame and cutting in the real PacMan is helping out quite a bit. I nailed a perfect game up to and including the last real pattern I know, the second key. It took me 20:51. I tried my second 1-second pattern and ate it big time, freestyled the fifth key, ate it again on the 1-second pattern, freestyled keys 7 and 8, managed to clear the 9th key with no pattern then killed off the rest of my PacMen on the 10th key. All in all it took a total of 31:31. So, once I nail down patterns for all the rest of this crap I think I'll come in nearly 10 minutes faster than my 40 minute goal. Pretty damn sweet!

---

2007-12-05

Practice is going well. Each day I play one game of real Pacman. Today I got all the way to the second key before I screwed up on the last kong. Actually, I screwed up on the third kong but was able to recover for those ghosts, then I did a boneheaded thing and missed the last 1600 ghost.

It took me just under 20 minutes to clear up to the first key, so that's half of my goal for clearing up to the ninth key. In this particular game it then took me an additional 7 minutes to die on the fifth key. I don't have a pattern for it and for some reason I was flustered. I think I died once on the second or third key, too.

Since I know the sixth key will take about two minutes, and the 7th and 8th key are non-ghost eating racks ... I think I can finish those in well under two minutes each. So I think I'll come in way under my 40 minute goal. Pretty sweet.

I'm going to try to work out a better 'second' 1 second pattern, one that doesn't require freestyling, or as much of it. It's too easy to die or just plain screw it up when I have to do that.

---

2007-11-30

Things are looking up! I managed to make it to the first beehive tonight before I screwed up and died. I did it with two kongs remaining. So I finished it off without getting any more kongs, but I didn't die again until the fourth key. I managed to pull off my custom sorta 1-second pattern, but had to do some freestyle ghost wrangling to get the fourth kong, but I did it. It probably added 3-4 minutes on there.

The even better news is that I made it all the way to the 10th key with no patterns. I was a freestylin' machine. I cleared the fifth key as well as the 7th and 8th key without dying, then got whaled on during the 9th key. Pacman slows down quite a bit there and if you don't have a pattern it's tough. I wasted most of my guys there and died halfway through the 10th key. Very nice. Well over 300,000 points, so I'm 1/10th of the way there. Ha ha.

---

2007-11-27

Semi-success! I got one more kong on the third key 1-second pattern. I've also verified that it doesn't work on the earlier 1-second racks, so that sort of sucks. One more pattern to remember, or rather half a pattern.

This kong isn't perfect, either. It's not continuous. In other words I have to do one of those things where you pause for a split second, eat a power pill then immediately reverse to get the ghosts. I can do that part pretty consistently, though.

The other problem is that since there is no way you can do it exactly the same way each and every time, the ghosts will not behave in the same way for the last kong. I'm looking into some freestyle methods of grouping the ghosts for the last kong in a faster way than I'm used to, so hopefully that will work out. If not I may have to keep trying on that third kong.

---

2007-11-26

I got some of my PacMojo back tonight! I played up to the second key with only missing two kongs and dieing once on one of them. I screwed up the first 1-second pattern on the first galaxian and couldn't recover. However, I pulled off the 1-second pattern twice more on the road to the second key.

I also verified that the 1 second patterns for the third, fourth and sixth key are different that the others up to that point. The ghosts take a different turn on the third kong. So, I'm going to have to find another pattern online (I looked already and I can't find one) or invent my own 'second half' 1-second pattern. Which, I hope, will also work for the other three 1-second racks so I can just use the one pattern. We'll see.

One other thing that has me stoked was that I was able to freestyle the 5th key tonight, so my non-pattern skills seem to be up to spec, too.

---

2007-11-24

Still frustrated with real PacMan. I'm getting a little better at the 2-second pattern but it's almost like I have to start all over again. Not fun.

I've also noticed something that's put a little fly in the ointment. The 3rd and 4th keys are 1-second patterns, but when you get to the third kong the ghosts behave differently, so I have to look around for a new pattern for those keys, or make one up. It's going to be difficult because the skip ahead cheat for Mame only goes up to the second key, and even then it doesn't always work for some reason.

I'm going to give myself another week or two off for finding/learning the next patterns so I can get back up to speed on real PacMan.

---

2007-11-18

Good news: The PacMan PCB arrived on Friday.

Bad news: I seem to suck at PacMan now.

I'm so out of practice on the real PacMan that I totally suck now. It's nights like this that make me want to just throw that stupid thing in a river and forget about it. I'm lucky to make it through the first apple without dying or screwing up a pattern. Very frustrating.

Mad props to Greg at GS1 Electronics (http://www.gls1electronics.com) for testing my board and giving me information about it. Turns out there is a little side-car kinda PCB attached to PacMan that was an FCC required 'filter' board that ultimately does nothing. This is the thing I blew out, along with a couple fuses as I found out yesterday.

When I first hooked up the PCB yesterday something didn't seem right. For one thing, the PacMan would not boot most of the time, it would just repeat the test patterns over and over. On the occasions that it did boot correctly, half the time it was upside down. The other half of the time the ghosts would go through walls, turn colors, or other weird, random stuff like that. I finally discovered that I had brown a fuse, maybe two.

So I went out and bought 10 bucks worth of fuses (you gotta get 3 or 4 of each kind, but at least now I have some spares), turned that puppy on and it ran fine. The graphics look better than before, somehow they are sharper and less out of focus than before. However, the red is still really dark. I didn't spend much time messing with the colors because I wanted to play. Maybe I should have done that instead of getting all frustrated and irritated tonight.

Time to see if I can learn the second key pattern tonight ...

(One hour passes ...)

Learned the second key pattern! It's pretty easy. The first half is like the typical 2-second pattern. This one clocks in at 1:18, so that's pretty sweet. What's more, after this one is two more 1-second patterns. So I have the knowledge in my head to complete the game up to and including the fourth key. However, it's late and I'm sleepy, so I haven't done it in Mame and will probably never do it on the real PacMan, damnit.

---

2007-11-13

Good news item #2: I played a perfect Mame game up to and including the first key tonight, and I got the official times.

Cherry - 1.25

Strawberry - 1.13

Orange - 1.30

Orange - 1.22

Apple - 1.15

Apple - 1.27

Grape - 1.13

Grape - 1.18

Galaxian - 1.55

Galaxian - 1.26

Beehive - 1.14

Beehive - 1.55

1st Key – 1.55

Total – 19.15

I'm lookin' good!

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2007-11-11

I got the 1 second pattern down pretty well, but not down cold. I have about a 75% success rate with it right now. It's tough to pull off, but I'll get a better hang of it as I go. I decided I didn't need any more 1-on-1 training with it, so I've moved on to the next pattern.

The second galaxian pattern is a throw-away, but the first two kongs are exactly the same as the apple patterns, so I didn't have that much more to memorize. It took me about five tries to get it the first time. There is a tricky reversal followed by two hairpin turns that is tough to pull off, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The good news is that the next three racks after this one are patterns I already know: a 2 second pattern followed by two 1 second patterns. So with my current knowledge I'm up to the first key.

I played a full game tonight and I was going perfectly until I missed the LAST STUPID KONG on the first key. I was rather irritated at that.

I re-played my Mame recording and found that the second galaxian pattern takes 1:25, which includes the intermission. Too bad I don't get to use this pattern more because in reality it's only about 1:15. It would be nice to have shorter patterns later in the game here.

So the whole game, including the missed kong, went 19:15. I think I'm making good time. Up to the first key equals 13 racks in just under half the target total time of 40:00 (if you recall, I wanted to make it to the 9th key in under 40 minutes.) So, I have 8 more racks to get to that point. Of those, three more of them are 1 second patterns. So that'll be six minutes. One of them is another throw away ghost eating pattern. Then the 5th key and 7-8th key (which is the same pattern) are all non-ghost eating, which I think will make them a little quicker. I'm going to estimate that I'll come in at about 33 minutes total including the 9th key, when I get there.

The unfortunate thing is that I have four more patterns to learn, plus the split-screen pattern/method. I wonder at what point I'll start forgetting stuff? I keep thinking it'll happen soon, but then I cram one more pattern in there and it doesn't seem to be a problem. I must have a videogame gene or something.

By the way, this brings me up to right about a quarter million points. So I'm about 1/13th of the way through. Sweet!

Lastly, the cheat file for Mame finally broke down. The 'start at ...' and 'practice ...' selections for the second galaxian don't work. It's kind of odd in that the display on the bottom displays the 'fruit' up to that point just fine, but it appears as though when you try to play it you're really playing a 2-second rack. So something is off somewhere. To practice I just have to start a real game and use the 'finish level now!' cheat to skip through each rack up to the second galaxian. The cheat file only lists 'skip ahead' cheats up to the second key anyway, so I knew at some point it would become a little more of a hassle to practice.

---

2007-11-03

I figured out what my problem was. It's a Mame thing, and I was being dumb.

The first 1-second pattern is the first galaxian. The next one is the second bell. I've been using the cheat file to start on the second bell, and that wasn't working. I wonder if the cheat file is a little off or something? The reason I didn't want to practice on the first galaxian is because after you finish it, or die and use the 'finish level now' cheat, it plays the 10 second intermission cartoon. Apparently I don't have enough leisure time to waste watching that cartoon every time I practice the stupid thing.

Anyhoo, I switched my practice sessions and the pattern works fine. It's sort of a difficult pattern because there are a lot of turns, and you have to go around the maze in places where you have already eaten dots so you can group the ghosts together. When you look at it on paper you wonder how you'll ever memorize the thing, but this is also one of those patterns where the ghosts kind of help you remember where to go as you're doing it. The drawback is that there is absolutely no room for error. If I screw up a pattern during a game, this is the one it's going to be.

The best part is that I'm averaging 1:55 on this pattern, still under my two minute goal. Sweet!

I just did a quick game/run where I only screwed up one rack (second grape) and my times are looking good. Here they are:

Cherry - 1:26

Strawberry - 1:14

1st Orange - 1:26

2nd Orange - 1:23

1st Apple - 1:21

2nd Apple - 1:20

1st Grape - 1:16

2nd Grape – 1:16

1st Galaxian – 1:53

Total: about 12:35.

So I'm not quite halfway through phase 1, which is getting through the 8th key. My original goal of getting that far within 40 minutes looks like it's doable.

The good news is that I get to repeat that 1-second pattern 5 more times, plus the one more repeat with the 2 second pattern (first apple.) The bad news is, as you've read, this is nearly a two minute pattern. So there's 10 more minutes added onto my total time. Still within budget, but it would be nice if I got to repeat the 2 second pattern five times. More bad news is that there are a few more throwaway patterns to get to: 2nd galaxian, 2nd key and 5th key. Plus I have to learn the 7/8th key pattern and the 9th key pattern. So, aside from the split screen pattern, I have five more patterns to learn. So far they are all sticking pretty nicely, and I don't have to look at a cheat sheet to remember which one I have to do next. Hopefully that keeps up so I don't have to have notes when I play. I'd look like an idiot.

Credit and thanks go to Neil "nrc" Chapman for inventing the original pattern, and YouTube user Adam "Lucid Faia" Sweeney for further refining it.

Note: I know that Lucid Faia has a slightly different pattern for the first galaxian vs the second bell and first key, but this pattern seems to work on all of them and I didn't want to have to remember another pattern/end game. So there.

---

2007-10-08

The second apple pattern is a lot like the first apple pattern, at least for the first half. The second half was easy to master because it has a sort of flow and sense to it.

Many of the patterns seem to fall into place when I'm doing them because as soon as you eat the power pill, the ghosts scatter in such a way as to 'steer' you to where you need to go. So, many of the patterns play out in my mind as performing the first part correctly, up until the first power pill. Then just collecting the rest of the power pills in the right order. The fruit then shows up at some point at which time you immediately go for it. I guess I'm trying to say that memorizing the patterns is proving to be a little easier than I anticipated.

The bummer about this second apple pattern is that it's another throw-away that can't be used anywhere else. The good news is that the next two racks (both grapes) repeat the first apple pattern. So, just like that, I've jumped ahead two more levels. So I'm already well beyond my previous best perfect-game. Woot!

As an added bonus this pattern takes just under 1:30 to finish, so I'm still way below my two minute goal on all patterns so far.

An oddity I've noticed is that I have the same tendency to 'lock up' on certain corners on certain patterns on both Mame and on the machine in the garage. There are just certain sequences that I have a brain hiccup on and do not turn. Odd that it happens in both places. I also have noticed that I have a tendency to screw up less overall on Mame, and make more stupid mistakes on the real Pacman in the garage. Maybe it's easier to play with three fingers on the keyboard rather than using a whole joystick. I think I'll start a new rule: one day of practice to learn new patterns on Mame, then the rest of the week is played in the garage.

---

2007-10-14

I may have run into a little problem, but maybe not.

The next pattern on the list is the '1 second' pattern, meaning the ghosts only change blue for one second. It's pretty tough to get them now.

The only pattern for this I have found is a very long, meandering pattern with lots of moving around empty spaces to set up the timing for the ghosts. I've seen video online of it that lasts anywhere from about 4 minutes minimum up to 8 or 9 minutes. The reason is that the pattern only provides for three 'kongs'. 'Kong', I've learned, is the term for eating all four ghosts after a powerup.

So the length of this pattern is a problem. The freestyle aspect of the fourth kong can throw my whole plan into chaos. So what's a nerd to do? How about he makes up his own pattern?

I cleared my mind, got all zen on the Pacman (mame, of course) and set out to make up a pattern. It's no easy task, but I'm learning some things.

Namely, that the stupid gold ghost is stupid, and I hate his stupid face. It's pretty easy to get the other three ghosts chasing you, but that fourth one sucks big time.

I worked on my pattern for about two hours and I'm thrilled to say I managed to get the first kong, and consistently. It works every time. I started a new tact which is to get the three ghosts chasing you, and somehow lure the gold ghost straight at you, except there's a power pill between you so you can eat him. If you have the other three ghosts just a little bit far away from you, after you eat the power pill there is enough time to continue around the box and get them. Kind of hard to explain here, but suffice it to say that so far the pattern is awesome and hopefully getting the other three kongs will not be too difficult. I don't want to spend a month on just this pattern.

It is an important pattern, though, as it gets used six times during the game.

I was getting frustrated because I was getting nowhere with the pattern, but now that I got one kong I'm totally jazzed.

---

2007-10-16

ARGH!

So the Pacman in the garage has always been a little flakey. It usually turned on, but sometimes it didn't. I didn't suspect that it was a loose connection or anything because I checked those a zillion times.

So finally tonight it just would not turn on. I flicked it on and off several times. The screen makes a warming up noise and the sound clicks like it always does, but then the game did not start.

What's more, after I opened the back I smelled electricity. You're probably wondering 'What does electricity smell like?' Well, it smells like slot car triggers. You remember the smell that used to come out of those things when you were a kid? Fried Pacman smells the same way. I saw a whisp of smoke coming out of what I later learned was (forgot the name) some sort of primitive surge supressor/filter attached to the PCB.

So, I found a guy in Oregon that is an expert at fixing Pacman PCB's, and I'm sending him my pride and joy tomorrow. If it's fixable it'll cost me about $90, but a replacement could go for several hundred, so I thought I'd try the fix-it route first.

So I'm annoyed, but I figured this day was coming soon. I'll just have to work on my 1-second pattern some more. That's basically going nowhere fast, I'm still on 1 kong. But I'm getting close.

---

2007-10-22

I miss my Pacman! Just kidding. But I will be curious to find out later this week if it's savable.

I've mainly been working on my 1-second pattern, and still getting nowhere. I'm still on 1 kong. It's difficult to make your own pattern, especially the 1-second pattern, but I found/figured something out today with the ghost eating. The half second or so when Pacman freezes after you eat a ghost, that doesn't count for the one second. So, when you successfully eat the ghosts, it feels like you have more than one second. When people can finally see my 1-second pattern, you can see on the first kong that pacman makes it about a third of the way around the box by the upper left power pill before he eats the fourth ghost. It doesn't seem like you should have that much time.

So, it appears as though you don't have to have all the ghosts that close to you when you eat a power pill. The first kong on my new pattern proves this by having the last ghost start out half-way around a 'block' in the upper right side of the rack when you eat that power pill.

So my task is to string them all along, no more than 1 second apart. It still doesn't seem to make anything easier, but it may come in handy later when I'm close to more kongs.

---

2007-10-28

Damn, this pattern inventing thing is tough. I still only have one kong on the 1 second rack. I've managed to get three out of four ghosts on the next kong, but that just will not do. I have some promising ideas and 'almost' patterns, but nothing yet to get all four ghosts. It seems that, mostly, that stupid orange ghost does not want to come near pacman. Argh. I wonder at what point I'll get frustrated and give up. Probably never. If I want to meet my goal I need this pattern to be fast.

So the pacman PCB should be coming back this week, then I can practice on the actual machine instead of Mame. The guy in Oregon said that the on-board power supply is shot. He'll replace it, test it, burn the board in for 72 hours and send it back. I can't wait.

In the mean time, aside from trying to make up the 1-second pattern, I'm still forcing myself to play the first 8 racks every day. I got that shiz-net down.

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2007-10-31

So, I've had about enough of trying to make up my own stupid pattern. I think I've wasted about 100 hours of my life on it. I figured there must be an example of a good 1-second pattern on the inter web somewhere, right? Maybe I was just being lazy last time I looked for one.

So a wasted another hour of my life looking, and you know what? I found one! Sweet! On YouTube! So I can see the whole pattern played out. Nice!

So far I've memorized the first three kongs, except that I can never get the third one. I'm not sure what's up with that. I've tried it about a dozen times and the ghosts just never turn where they're supposed to turn. I've double checked my pattern and everything. Something is amiss, but it's late and it's time to go to bed.

Onward ho! (Huh huh. I said 'ho'.)

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2007-09-30

Learned the first apple pattern tonight. It took me a lot of tries to get it the first time. There are some timing and turning issues that I had to work out but I think I've figured it all out.

I'm jazzed because this is the first pattern (finally) that I get to use multiple times. The best thing is that it takes about 1:12 to complete, so it's quick.

So far I've been through the first five levels and it takes just about 7 minutes to do, which as way below my rule of under 2 minute patterns. Sweet!

---

2007-09-27

I can't seem to play Pacman without the sound.

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2007-09-23

Another week, another pattern. The second peach pattern (or is it an orange?) is exactly like the first peach pattern until you're about halfway through. I'm having a hard time on my first day here resisting the compulsion to do the wrong pattern on the second peach, but hey, it's the first day. It'll come.

On the cherry pattern I often find myself daydreaming or thinking about other things, then all of a sudden I'm done with that rack. Good. This is what I want. I need these things to be as automatic as possible. I often 'punish' myself for screwing up later patterns my forcing myself to start from the beginning (on MAME) so I've probably done the cherry pattern 100 times by now.

Peach2: 1:22, still on track. The bummer is that this is another throwaway pattern that is used only one time. My head is getting cluttered with these damn one-off patterns.

A thought occurred to me today. Wouldn't it be awesome if I could somehow perform my perfect game live, at some sort of tournament? The bummer is that the west coast edition of the Classic Gaming Expo is usually held around the end of July, which is to say I have 10 months until then. I don't know if I can hold the tools to get a perfect game in my head that long. The annual tournament at FunSpot (the premier tourney sponsored by Twin Galaxies) is usually held around Memorial Day, which is seven months away. Better, but FunSpot is in New Hampshire. (H-a-m-p-s-h-i-r-e, really? Is it really spelled like that? Damn that looks weird to me right now. It's 3:30am.)

Anyway, it might be cool to do the game on my machine in the garage and hold onto the tape. Then see if I can stay sharp until there is a convenient tournament and throw down live in the flesh. Then if I fail I can just whip out the tape and submit that.

Good luck on that one. Bah.

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2007-09-16

This past weekend my wife and I threw an end of summer BBBQ (that's a typo) for our friends and family, or at least our friends and family that bothered to show up. I wanted to get Pacman prepped (thus the new feet) and I decided to press my luck with the monitor adjustments to see if I could get it looking better. Previously, it had been very hard to see the red ghost, but everything else was bright and shiny. I'm now thinking it's a PC board or chip issue, because I couldn't get that damn red ghost to show up better without whacking out the rest of the screen. What's worse, now I've screwed up the focus of the red and blue phosphors so the thing isn't at all aligned now, either. I must have spent an hour messing with it and it now looks worse than before. Argh.

In case you've never seen the inside of a Pacman, the screen adjustments are cryptic and plentiful. You have a horizontal and vertical hold, as well as size for each direction. Then you have four knobs that seem to sort of match up to the classic HSV (Hue, Saturation and, uh, whatever that last one is. Violence? That's what I felt like applying to the damn thing this past weekend. Now I'm thinking it's Brightness, but isn't it HSV? Not HSB? Whatever.) Plus, around the bottom of what I'd call the 'gun' portion of the huge, heavy, ancient monitor, er CRT, you have three rings that you can spin around to otherwise align the three color components (RGB) of the monitor itself. Except that each of these three rings are actually split in two. You really have six, but maybe it takes an idiot like me a while to figure this out because they are mostly stuck together with 27 years of dust and grime.

So no matter what I did, the R and B would not line up. Even worse, in the event that I did get them somewhat aligned at the top, they would be grossly misaligned at the bottom. The combinations with which you can screw up the image on the screen with the dozen or more adjustments is mind-boggling, and impossible to master. Better move on to the next pattern.

---

The good news is that I mastered the first peach pattern in about 10 minutes. It took me four racks to get it one time, then I was able to fire off three in a row in Mame, plus one in a row on the real Pacman in the garage. The patterns are holding up as far as time is concerned, too. So far we have:

Cherry: 1:30

Strawberry: 1:09

Peach 1: 1:26

That 1:26 with the peach includes the little cartoon interlude, because you don't pause the timer on that. Even so it comes in way below my two minute per rack goal. With these times that leaves me nearly two minutes of freestyle time.

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2007-09-10

So I got the first two patterns (cherry and strawberry) down cold, and it's only Monday. But I'm still going to force myself to do each pattern for a solid week before I move on. It's a shame you only need each of these patterns one time. There is probably some other information that would be better suited to be in the area of my brain that these things are taking up. By the way, the strawberry pattern I have takes about a minute and a half. I figure if I can come in way under two minutes on each rack early in the game it will add up to ample time to correct mistakes I make in the patterns. I just can't do it too much. It's pretty easy to hit that on/off switch when I screw up, though. Using my math above, I need to keep in mind that I have to make it up to the 9th key in about 40 minutes to stay within the time limit I've imposed on myself.

One thing I've noticed about Mame is that the cheat file I have isn't quite what it seems like it should be. All of the skip ahead cheats do not work entirely right. The 'Start on level nnn' stuff certainly skips to the designated level, but I noticed that the ghosts behave the same way they would on the cherry pattern no matter where you start. Except that it's sped up a bit (you can tell by how quickly the ghosts exit the corral at the beginning of the stage.) So it doesn't really work for practicing.

There is a 'finish this level now' cheat that works most of the time, but it can get tedious to pause the game, go to the cheat menu, select what you want, etc. etc. I think there may be a way to hotkey a cheat, but I haven't figured it out yet.

So for now I just play both levels. I can do the cherry pattern in my sleep, and the strawberry pattern when I'm half awake. So that's something. (Editor's note: A few weeks after I wrote this section I found a new cheat file which works up to the second key, so now I can practice up to that point without wasting much time getting to random racks.)

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So this past weekend I bought new feet for the Pacman. It only had three aftermarket feet on it when I got it, so I took them off. It sits flat pretty much but I've found that my garage floor isn't completely flat, and it's differently flat in different areas. So I got some adjustable furniture feet and installed them this weekend. I basically put three of the feet all the way up, then adjust the fourth until it lays flat. It's nice to have a non-wobbly Pacman now.

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I also set Pacman to have the official dip switch settings for tournament play, which is to say five lives and no bonus at 10,000. I haven't a clue why this is the tournament setting, as I've never seen a Pacman in the wild set up like this, but there you go.

Also, I noticed today that after clearing the first two racks you have exactly 30,000 points, which means I'm just about 1% of the way to my 3.3 million point goal. Woot!

Lastly, my wife caught me playing Pacman on Mame this weekend, and she watched as I cleared the first two racks. She was also there when I purchased the feet, as well as when I was putting them on. I'm sure she knows I'm up to something...

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2007-09-03

I've done some calculations and I now think it's feasible to beat the fastest perfect game record, which currently stands at 3:42:04.

I found a 9th key pattern that can be done in about 45 seconds. Actually, I found two of them that are about the same. I'll have to decide which one is easier to memorize when I get to that. The current 9th key pattern I know takes about 52 seconds. When you have 235 of these it adds up so those few seconds count.

I figure if I can keep the 'regular' racks (where you have to eat ghosts) down to under two minutes I can do it. It breaks down like this:

Fruit levels plus first eight keys: 20 X 120 seconds = 2400 seconds

The rest of the keys = 235 X 45 = 10575 seconds

Total seconds (minus the split screen) = 12975

Equals minutes = 216.25

Equals hours = 3.6

Precisely this is 3:36:15 (I think, it's getting late.)

Which should leave ample time for the split screen, but not ample time for screwing up and having to freestyle any ghosts.

So, my goal is to use/steal/develop sub-two-minute patterns for each rack. The cherry pattern I have now is solid at a consistent 1:26. The crappy thing about it is that I only get to use it once.

I can do the cherry pattern in my sleep, but I really want it (and all patterns) tattooed into my brain, so I'm going to continue to practice it for another week.

A thought just occurred to me. I don't have a video camera. Maybe I can get one for myself for Christmas or something. Ha ha.

Another thought just occurred to me. My wife has no clue I have become re-obsessed with PacMan. I wonder how long I can keep it secret?

And if you care, the story on my PacMan exploits so far goes like this... My best score is just over a million. I was practicing one night a few years ago and got bored stiff after about two hours, so I just killed myself. A million seemed like a logical place to stop.

At one time or another I have thrown down a perfect rack for all boards up to and including the first key. However, I have not strung them all together. A lot of them happened at different times in different games.

The best perfect game I got going was up to, but not including, the second apple. Which is sort of ironic because the second apple is easier than the first. I think maybe I was tired and did something careless, I don't exactly remember as it was over two years ago, back when I didn't have a life. Ha ha.

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2007-08-31

This past weekend I saw a movie called 'The King of Kong' which is about a guy's quest to become the world record holder in Donkey Kong. It was a very good movie and it has renewed my interest in my previously semi-abandoned quest to play a perfect game of PacMan.

I don't know who is going to read this, but if you are someone that doesn't know me, I have an actual, vintage, 1980's PacMan upright in my garage. It works pretty well, though the screen is sorta burned out/dark. It seems pretty solid, though, so maybe it'll hold up. The only annoying thing about it is that it wobbles a little bit because I took the feet off of it (it only came with three working feet, which I think were aftermarket anyway.) One day when I'm at the hardware store I'll buy some adjustable feet to make it level.

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One of the coolest pieces of software you will find is Mame (http://mamedev.org/) It is a multi-emulator for many vintage video games which work off the actual ROM images of said games. So if one would have a legally ownable (since I own the original ROM in the machine in the garage) software image of the PacMan ROM and used it with MAME, one would essentially be playing the exact same game on their computer. It affords an opportunity for easy practice, and the ability to jump to later levels in the game without having to clear all the racks leading up to it.

This bodes especially well for the final crash/split screen. I don't want to have to go through 255 racks before I could even practice that one. That's the only screen that really worries me.

I have used and developed on my own some decent patterns for clearing the racks and some good strategies for getting all the ghosts up to a certain level (around the first key.) One bad thing about this 'freestyle' method I have is that it takes forever. You could be sitting there trying to line up the ghosts for easy consumption for five minutes at a time. I have to find a better way.

The plan is to learn some more patterns that require little to no freestyling. This guy's patterns seem pretty good: http://nrchapman.com/pacman/. I've pretty much got the cherry pattern down, and it took about a day. But to truly ingrain it into my brain I plan on playing a pattern for an entire week, no matter how boring or monotonous it gets. I need to be able to do them in my sleep.

I should need a total of nine patterns, including the final split screen. The trick is remembering when to do each one as they are not in a completely logical order, PacMan kind of goes through cycles.

Not that it's my life dream or anything, but in some way it might be neat to be in the top 10 on Twin Galaxies. If I can get the perfect game down, then maybe I can work on speed and get on that list, too.

By the way, it's a good thing I was just looking at the records over there (http://www.twingalaxies.com) because I just noticed that the dip switches for their official rules on PacMan give you five lives (with no 10,000 bonus life.) That's good to know. A perfect game is 3,333,360 points. There are guys in the top 10 with less than 3,200,000, which means they made it pretty far but not even to the last split screen. Maybe they fell asleep or their eyes glazed over after doing the 9th key pattern a couple hundred times.

Even if you got to the split screen with all your guys in tact and managed to get zero points there with all five of your lives, you'd only miss out on somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 points. You'd get 2 keys at 5,000 a piece, plus about half a rack of dots, plus two powerups, plus the hidden nine dots times five. That's less than 300 points right there. I think I could easily get to the final screen, barring any fatigue or bathroom issues. The quest begins...