Pac
Not to be mistaken for Erwin Bergervoet's PC-Man or Gary Acord's Zapak, Pakdream, or Pakmon.
One of my more successful games, curiously enough, was a very hard Pac-Man clone. I asked that anyone who enjoyed the game simply send me a postcard, saying “I like Pac!” I got maybe half a dozen cards over the years.
Rather like Glubada Pond, Pac was just a study on Game-Maker’s goal structures; an attempt to see how a pre-Miyamoto design style would work in a specific post-Keen design environment. As it turned out, not that well.
The problems with Pac are twofold. First, there is no way to contrive it so that power pellets made the character immune to the enemies’ touch. I got around that by turning the pellets into projectiles that the character could spit out.
More worrisome is that if the player dies before eating all the dots, the counter will carry over but the background will not. In retrospect I’m sure I could have contrived a way to drain the counter at the start of a new life, but the solution I found was to give the player only a single life. One life, one hit point. To reach the end, you have to play a perfect game. Not the most elegant solution.
Also, since the only level end condition in Game-Maker is to touch a specific point on the map, to move on to the next level the player has to cash in all accumulated dots at a door in the center of the level. That's not so bad, but it is interesting how strictly post-Miyamoto it feels. The only concept of progress that the engine knows is literal, geographic progress. Again, not a big deal; just curious.
As with Octolris, Fluffy Ralph, Sign of the Hedgehog, and Zoom the Super Bear, this game underwent a bunch of revision when Game-Maker 3.0 came around. In particular all of the menus and interfaces got an overhaul.
Contents
Story[edit]
Pac's Assignment
PAC, also known as Periodic Andim Cleaner, has a job to do. The Andims are sectors of the artificially created world of Zlexianr (zlecks-EE-an-er). They occasionally become filled with small spheres of unknown orgin. These orbs are known to explode.
Here's where PAC comes into the picture. He is an artificially created life form, specially engineered to be resistant to the orbs' powers. In fact, he loves them. He, however, can't digest the larger pink ones. He stores these in a special pouch inside his stomach until he has the opportunity to spit them out. PAC does this with such force that it destroys virtually anything in its path.
Cleaning the Andims isn't easy for PAC, though. His body structure, sad to say, is very weak. It would only take one good whollup to finish him off. To make his mission even harder, there are strange creatures wandering everywhere in the Andims. They just appeared a few days ago, but have already chased all of the residents away. PAC has to deal with them.
Oh, what a life poor little PAC has.
Instructions[edit]
The arrow keys move PAC in those directions. If you tap the space bar, PAC will spit out a power orb (if he's swallowed one).
NOTE: The Andims are a very dangerous place. Thus, this game is very difficult. Don't get frustrated too early, or you'll never get anywhere.
Credits[edit]
Graphics, animation:
Sound:
- Aderack
Idea:
- Aderack
Music:
- Who knows (The music is just some stuff I found lying around on some BBS' and stuff. I would've put in mods, 'cept my engine (Game-Maker 3.0 by RSD -- Hit F10 in-game for info.) doesn't support them quite yet.)
This is bannerware, meaning that it's copyrighted yet you don't have to pay anything for it. It's like PD, only I hold the rights to it.
Okay, so the thing is based around Pac-Man, a trademark of Namco. Still, they can't sue me 'cause I'm not charging anything for this.
Availability[edit]
This game is distributed in the shareware directory of the Game-Maker 3.0 CD-ROM.
During the early 1990s the game also was available for download from GameLynk's Frontline BBS.
Also available on several shareware compilation CD-ROMs, including:
- Public Software Library's PSL Monthly #4-05 (1996),
- Public Software Library's PSL Monthly #4-08: Games, Sound (1996), and
- PC-Ohio's Shareware Extravaganza 8 (1997).
Archive History[edit]
Pac was retained as part of the archive from the game's inception.
Links[edit]
Interviews / Articles[edit]
- The History of A-J Games, Part Seven
- Pac (Nap'n'Retrogaming)
Misc. Links[edit]
Downloads[edit]
- Pac (540.1 kB)
- Level 1-1 Map (12.8 kB)
- Level 1-2 Map (13.8 kB)
- Level 1-3 Map (27.9 kB)
- Level 2-1 Map (12.8 kB)
- Level 2-2 Map (11.6 kB)
- Level 2-3 Map (20.3 kB)
- Level 3-1 Map (20.5 kB)
- Level 3-2 Map (22.9 kB)
- Level 3-3 Map (36.4 kB)
- Level 4-1 Map (12.4 kB)
- Level 4-2 Map (13.5 kB)
- Level 4-3 Map (33.8 kB)
- Level 5 Map (7.3 kB)
