Yep, I am actually still working on my Hangly Plus project. Taking time trying to get as much as I can close to the original Hangly Man and Pac-Man Plus.

I have been studying the ghost behavior and other events. So where is it at?

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Here is the layout showing the corners the ghost should be going towards for home. Red is the only one a little off. (Need to change a couple lines, but he does head up in his general corner. The others work fine.

There is a pattern from what I see on when they try to go towards thier home corners. The ghosts first start going towards thier corners for about 7 seconds, then they flip and chase Hangly Man for 20, go towards thier corners again for 7 seconds, etc… It flips back and forth 8 times where the ghosts will just chase you period.

Like the way the prize comes out after eating 70 dots and 170 dots in a maze, the siren sound in the background increases pitch at 116 dots eaten, 180 dots, 212 dots and 228. At first it didn't seem to make any real difference in the game what the pitch it, but then I noticed on the highest siren the red ghost gets just a tad faster keeping the same pace as hangly man.

Other ghost odditys… Orange I have figured out pretty close for it's general attack pattern. When orange is chasing you it follows like the rest…but when it gets within a certian range of Hangly Man, he backs off taking a path not retreating 180 degrees, but an alternate path where he tries not to kill him. It depends on the decision points where the maze splits off. He will run around in circles and stuff around Hangly Man's general area but not go in for the kill on his own.

Cyan (Light blue, whatever) at first seemed like you could "fake him out" at times scareing him off. Like when he is comming up a path and there is a chance to take a turn on a direct path to Hangly Man, if seemed if you did a quick flip towards the ghost he would not go for the kill, but just passes on by. Now I am not so sure. I think it is more just a 50/50 chance that he will take the last turn to kill him off if Hangly Man is close.

The "safe zones" are in and working. The original Pac-Man (and spin offs closely related) had 4 safe zones where the ghosts could not travel south to north unless they were blue. Thats where the yellow lines are in the picture. That led to another interesting problem. They way the ghosts were thinking they tried to take the shortest path to Hangly Man if possible. Well, with the safe zones, Hangly Man could be in the section above the pen and ghosts below would just run arround in circles. So I added a couple decision points to kick out the ghosts to prevent that if Hangly Man was up there. With the safe zones above the pen, the ghosts would not be able to travel north to kill him.

Ghosts coming out of the pen…I have that working nice as well. It may not line up totally for where ghosts will be in the original (due to speed, and of course this is just my best guesses at how they actually think).

On starting a level, red is alread out and traveling left (as all the ghosts do coming out of the pen, unless there is a point to reverse it (chase,go home..etc) Pink comes out imediately. Cyan bounces up and down 19 times and comes out, orange bounces up and down 34 times and comes out. If Hangly Man dies on a level, the next time pink bounces 14 times and comes out, cyan bounces 29, and orange 44 times.

Hangly Man now slows down a hair when eating dots (just slow enought for ghosts to catch up to him.) When not eating dots, Hangly Man is slightly faster, outrunning the ghosts.

Ghosts turning blue works for all now (and the change to flashing blue/white at 2 seconds before they change back). They work decent already, but I may try to change it so they take an alternate path just a hair mor often. Right now it's 50/50 but I might make it 2 out of 3 chances to change direction.

Just starting on the eyes going back to the pen. It works "half the time". I am pretty sure I know what is missing…working on that right now.

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As you can see I have the maze blanking out set for a possibility. In both Pac-Man Plus and Hangly Man later levels, when you eat an energizer the maze may blank out on you while the ghosts are blue. This one is Hangly style. In Pac-Man Plus the entire maze AND dots can turn invisible. I may include both options.

It's pretty random what can happen. Later rounds in Pac-Man Plus the maze turns invisible like above after eating an energizer, OR 3 of the 4 ghosts could turn blue leaving one normal still able to kill you. Eating the center prize can turn the ghosts invisible a while but for double points.

So thats about where I am at with it. I am droping out the "empty space" maze from the original Hangly. Ghosts would be moving pretty wierd, and it seems to be a bit unpopular. Instead I am proably going to do 3 more new mazes not in any of the Pac-Man series.

I have all these maze pieces ready, I might as well use them. I would probably do them in the Ms. Paz-Man order… 2 screens of maze one, 3 of maze two, 4 of maze three and 4 of maze four.