Tagged: Games

“The Infamous Pac-Man Level 256 Glitch…”

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July 2nd, 2019 Permalink

View this post on Instagram The infamous Pac-Man level 256 glitch. The reason for the glitch is that the level counter in the original Pac-Man is stored as an 8-bit integer, meaning the highest value it can hold is 255. The level counter starts with 0 internally, but for calculating the fruit counter it adds […]

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The infamous Pac-Man level 256 glitch. The reason for the glitch is that the level counter in the original Pac-Man is stored as an 8-bit integer, meaning the highest value it can hold is 255. The level counter starts with 0 internally, but for calculating the fruit counter it adds 1; however, because of overflow, adding 1 to 255 would result in 0, and the game tries to count fruits from 1, causing the game to attempt to draw 256 fruit to the screen until it overflows to 0. The result is the garbled mess on the right side of the maze, because the screen memory starts with the bottom, followed by the columns from the right side.-Nick- . . #pacman #puckman #8bit #blinky #nintendo #namco #atari #80s #maze #ghost #blipblip #eatingfruit #glitch #basementwizards

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“The infamous Pac-Man level 256 glitch.

The reason for the glitch is that the level counter in the original Pac-Man is stored as an 8-bit integer, meaning the highest value it can hold is 255.

The level counter starts with 0 internally, but for calculating the fruit counter it adds 1; however, because of overflow, adding 1 to 255 would result in 0, and the game tries to count fruits from 1, causing the game to attempt to draw 256 fruit to the screen until it overflows to 0.

The result is the garbled mess on the right side of the maze, because the screen memory starts with the bottom, followed by the columns from the right side.”

– Nick –

CBC The Current – “Fun and games: Why we should take time to play”

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August 30th, 2017 Permalink

In a world of juggling emails, texts and social media, the rise of stress and anxiety seems to be by-products of our non-stop, connected world. How to combat the effects? Enter the world of games and play. Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology professor and author of Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses […]

In a world of juggling emails, texts and social media, the rise of stress and anxiety seems to be by-products of our non-stop, connected world. How to combat the effects?

Enter the world of games and play.

Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology professor and author of Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games, tells The Current‘s Anna Maria Tremonti how boredom plays a role in fun.

“In boredom there’s a sense that you’ve expended the obvious capacities of your situation.”

Bogost says that boredom gives you two choices. One is to seek something else out. And the other is to pay attention to boredom as new terrain and go deeper.

He sees boredom as necessary to pursue fun and says the experience of play is richest when you approach it with questions like, “What else is possible and how can I kind of collaborate with this object?”

This edition of The Current caught my attention. The Labyrinths I have been making in recent years have more to do with Fun and Play than Reflection or Meditation.

There is much overlap with Ian Bogost’s point of view about Fun and Games, and my decision to create chalk or painted Labyrinths in Public Spaces where Children are usually found, like playgrounds.

This interview helped explain a number of behaviours I have observed in people walking my Labyrinths, providing vocabulary which until now had remained elusive.

Cool. I’ll now have to go read his book.