[stella] Pacman4K

[Dennis Debro]

Hi Thomas,

> Great! And good to know you didn't abandon the project.

Nah, I had a notebook full of notes I've been keeping over time. I finally
had an opportunity to actually sit down and type them in the last month. I
was surprised to see I got so close in my first attempt.

> It seems that you reuse only one sprite multiple times. Couldn't you do
> this for
> both?

Right now, no. The kernel is tight on time and I was trying to get this in
4K. Maybe I could do this with more ROM. Then again I don't know if I'd
have enough time to position both sprites in the kernel. Maybe I could if
I didn't waste time by using the divide by 15 method and actually write
routines to hit RESPx at the right time. I'm also down to about 2 bytes of
RAM. Some can be shared through.

All that to say, it's an option I'm still persuing but I can't do that in
4K. For the 4K version I'm thinking of removing the variable flicker
altogether because it's so awful and see what I can come up with for a no
frills version. I'd really like to see a working game in 4K.

> And I wonder if constant 30Hz flicker for Pac-Man himself is acceptable.
> At least
> it would help reducing the overall flicker a bit further.

I agree. I'd love to have Pacman and the bonus fruit share the same sprite
and the monsters use the other.

>> I'm terrible at TIA sound.
>
> Me too! :-)

One day I'll get a handle of this. Right now I've got a little help in
that department. I need to look over some data that was sent to me and see
how I can reduce it.

Take care,
Dennis