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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 3172
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 17/12/2002
Subject: Manic Miner v Jet Set Willy
My view on this issue covers not just the original Manic Miner and Jet
Set Willy, for I am heavily into editing these games.
I don't think either one is better than the other because they both
have pros and cons.
It's possible to create more ambitious rooms in MM.
+ Crumbling floor gives it a dimension that is lacking in JSW.
+ MM has eight block-types to JSW's six, which gives MM an advantage
in visual terms.
+ Moreover, these block-types can occur anywhere in MM, whereas a JSW
room can only have one ramp and one conveyor.
+ MM has more built-in special features (Eugene, switches,
Kong-Beasts, Skylabs and solar rays), although these could be achieved
in JSW using patch-vectors in Geoff Mode.
+ The linear, room-by-room nature of MM creates a focused challenge
for the player, eliminating the geographical confusion that can occur
in badly-designed or unfamiliar JSW games.
+ Each room can have up to four horizontal guardians; you don't have
to worry about running out of guardian-classes as in JSW.
JSW is very appealing in that:
+ You can move freely between rooms, and it's more fun to create a
game where you can define where the rooms stand in relation to each
other rather than a linear sequence. JSW is more conducive to creating
atmospheric games.
+ JSW has ropes and arrows.
+ Guardians in the same room need not share the same sprite, and each
room can have up to eight guardian-instances of any types.
+ JSW has more quirky features than MM
[http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/features.html ]
+ I like the additional sound-effects for collecting items and warning
of arrows in JSW :)
Yes, there are bugs in the original JSW and some of the rewrites (most
notably ones that crash when you pause the game), but they can be
fixed [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/bugs.html ].
In the 1980s, I preferred JSW because it had more rooms and you could
move freely between them. When I got into researching the room-formats
and editing in the 1990s, I preferred MM because I mastered the
technical knowledge before JSW, whereas the rest of the world was
ahead on JSW and behind on MM. Nowadays I love them both very much,
but I give JSW much more attention both in writing my own games and
playing others' games.
--
Andrew Broad
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/
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