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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 1954
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 19/02/2001
Subject: Software Projects rushed Matthew Smith
> i suspect the time pressure caused it.yes.
> blame that. stupid software houses wanting
to
> rush everything out and make a profit
ASAP.
> couldn't be matt's fault.. :)
What a
despicable attitude that is. He should have insisted on
taking his time.
I don't think that was a problem
with Manic Miner judging by the end product, which had
no *obvious* defects.
Sadly, though, it was
all too obvious that Matthew rushed Jet Set Willy at
the end, hence the four official Software Projects
bugs:
- the invisible and unreachable item in First
Landing;
- the blocked Banyan Tree;
- the uncollectable
item in Conservatory Roof;
- the notorious Attic
bug (caused by an invalid arrow, and not of the nice
Filsoft or Broadsoft varieties! ;-) ).
There were
other flaws in the original JSW, too:
- the item for
which you have to sacrifice a life in Conservatory
Roof;
- the exits up from Watch Tower and Rescue
Esmerelda (he may well have intended to put new rooms there
- he could have used Rooms 47 and 61-63);
-
arguably, the fact that you can bypass the Chinese Dragon
with a 5x2 jump in The Attic (he could have put some
items to collect);
- defined but unused graphics
(the item in The Attic, the static nasty in The Drive,
and Macaroni Ted, to name a few);
- the item in
Swimming Pool, which is auto-collected because the room
has white-ink background;
- Room 47 is blank, as
if he cleared it (and perhaps even started it a
little!) and intended to finish it later; Rooms 61-63
contain TRS-80 machine code which is not called from the
JSW game engine and can therefore be safely
overwritten with new rooms.
Hmm... now I wish I could
have offered my beta-testing services! Now that's what
I'd call JSW 1.1! :-) (I'm not planning to release
JSW 1.1 as such, because it wouldn't be `canon'
unless Matthew Smith edited it himself, but I might use
some of these ideas in Party Willy! :-)
)
Anyway, one thing that's good out of it is that perhaps
some of my beloved quirky features would have been
ironed out if he hadn't been so rushed! ;-)
He
told me when I emailed him in 1999 that Willy's
movement was supposed to be symmetrical in JSW as well as
MM, which suggests that he probably introduced the
`walk-through-wall-blocks-at-head-height' and `jump-through-overhead-wall-blocks' features
(technically the *same* feature) in order to be able to jump
onto the ledges in The Wine Cellar or something - if
you laterally invert that room or convert it to Manic
Miner, Willy just falls instead of catching on the
ledges.
--
Andrew
Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/>
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/>
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/>
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/ target=new>http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/>
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