Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
      using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

 

 

	Previous message		Next message
	Previous in thread		Next in thread

 

 

Message: 4163

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 02/05/2004

Subject: Re: Andrew's beta-review of Role Reversal

 

Alexandra wrote:

[Re: Files > Arcane design > JSW - RR beta.zip]

[0] "Back door": That's the first time I've seen a non-swinging
rope outside of my own games!

Really? Wow... I thought they were less rare than that! *tries to
think of another game with a static rope* *fails*. Hmmm. Well they
are cool, almost like ladders. People should use them more.

Amen to that.

I want to make a room with 3 or 4 of them in soon.

That might be difficult, given the way ropes interact (because they
use 16 bytes in the current room's expanded guardian-list, rather
than the usual 8 bytes per guardian - i.e. they encroach on the next
guardian's data-space), and the constraints on which columns a non-
swinging rope can go in without causing the `bug' whereby you are
teleported to the room above.

:-) Of course I'm way behind in playing others' games to
completion, something I /do/ plan to rectify...

Good :). I recommend Still Stealin' by the Drunken Master, but
you're probably doing them in chronological order...

Yes. Next up for me will be Adam Britton's _The Deadly Mission_ and
_Willy's Holiday_ - I wonder if I could still persuade him to do
Special Editions to go with _The Continuing Adventures_ Special
Edition from 1998? :-) :-)

@[1] "Burial site": Navigating the conveyor with two HGs
is deceptively difficult!

Best to take a 'no hesitation' approach, like we do with 'Security
Guard' etc in the original JSW.

It's amazing how many rooms in the original Manic Miner and Jet Set
Willy are best solved with a no-hesitation approach! A prime example
being "Wacky Amoebatrons".

[2] "The Jobcenter" (Jobcentre - "center" is an Americanism)
What's with the black hole at the top? Why not instead make the
player have to jump up against the wall to get past the green
letter?

That was too tight for my liking,

A technique much underused in MM/JSW games. I used it a few times in
We Pretty, Goodnite Luddite and Party Willy.

and besides, that hole is where you fall down thru from the room
above. I know falling thru a solid block would work just as well,
but I generally don't use that in my games unless I want to give
the impression of a secret 'passthrough' wall/celing.

And why not, with the room above being one of Role Reversal's best-
kept secrets! :-)

I like the Promised-Land niche at the bottom-left (even though
it's only two hops away, so not much of a Promised Land). I would
definitely make the player /have/ to jump through the ILB!

I may well crumble and do just that. Can't hurt :)

Yais! :-)

[11] "Back staircase": Another Adam-Brittonesque room. If you
jump through the overhead wall-block at the very top-left, you
can walk through the left wall in "Top of stairs" - unintended?
I deliberately exploited this very move in We Pretty! :-)

It was unintentional but I noticed it during my playtesting. I'm
going to leave it in and put a hint in the readme, that there is a
hidden shortcut in the room. That'll get a few laypeople
wondering :)

Yes, although it would be better if you felt you were supposed to do
it that way. Perhaps you could move the 256th item to "The Study"
and have an extra wall there to separate it from the one behind the
forcefield?

[13] "The local ruins": A strange and disorientating screen-
layout, and a questionable colour-scheme. I'm not sure what to
make of this room. Is the switch really supposed to kill you?

No, it's supposed to unblock a passage in "The Stop-cock",
effectively meaning you never have to cross back from right to
left across "A Busy Road" after visiting the Eastern side of the
map. But it triggers some text which crashes with scenery and
kills you when it's drawn (which I intend to fix obviously!).

Aha! Well, it would be nice to let the player know that "The Stop-
cock" is now unblocked, unlike the similar effect in _Willy Takes a
Trip_!

The non-colour-cycling items are unfair - I had to make my way
back here at the end of the game when ItemsJSW informed me that
there were three uncollected in this room.

I was aiming to make these extra lives, but I couldn't work out
how to enable that feature in Erix1's room hackulator.

Hackulator? Is that some sort of Erix1-mode editor, or are you just
referring to the Erix1-mode game-engine?

@[15] "random Gun Shop": A truly splendid room, complete with
switch to toggle conveyor-direction. The jumps required to pass
the two rolling boxes are unorthodox and fun, as is the way you
can jump out of the shop on the right! The dog-sprite is quite
cute, too - may I use it in my own games?

Sure... I found him in Erix1's bonus game as a seemingly
unimplimented sprite with just one frame. I added the walk and
made him wink, but neglected to add hands/paws. Maybe he's in a
straightjacket :)

I thought I might use the dog in a MM room called "Fall Dog Bombs
The Moon" (in a future, as-yet-untitled MM game, to include
conversions of "Kamikaze Cavern", and "Hush" from _ZX Willy the Bug
Slayer_). It would be a Skylab room, so only one frame required.

[18] "Storage room": A good example of a Promised Land. I wish
there were more in this game, and indeed in almost all non-
Broadsoft JSW games.

Promised Lands almost always add X-factor to a game,

An intriguing air of mystique they add (ditto re. Forbidden Holy
Ground).

There are major Promised Lands at The Wine Cellar, The Local
Ruins, Storage Room, The Stop-cock/House Outlet... and a few minor
ones such at Septic Tanks/Back Door. Next time I'll certainly try
to add more ;)

Yes, Role Reversal actually isn't too bad in terms of Promised
Lands - although many of them are, in fact, one-way exits (which I
try to avoid with Promised Lands, even though the Promised Lands in
Role Reversal are `fair' one-way exits AFAIR).

[28] "Top Landing": I like having a Promised Land right at the
start of the game! I did likewise in Goodnite Luddite; Sabre Wulf
was the first example for me.

Monty on the Run (second screen, top right) was my first example
of that. I remember thinking only expert players could get up
there!

I know the screen you mean.

[32] "The Dining Room": One of the better crumbling-floor rooms
in this game, requiring a bit of timing and forward-thinking.

Would be even harder in MM ;)

Because items don't stay collected after you lose a life?

[34] "The Fridge": A good conveyor/guardians timing-challenge:
getting back is the harder part, so I would have made the player
have to exit and reenter the room (to get an item in a Promised
Land).

I'd change it if I could but the geography leaves me no choice but
to leave it.

But you could consider knocking a hole in "The Fridge" (above " F"
in the bottom row), clearing some of the static nasties at the top
of "Deep Freeze" and putting an item there?

[38] "Toolshed"

Originally I wanted it to be kamikaziable (?!)

kamikazeable? ;-)

[40] "Crazy Kitchen": Who's been playing "Wiredlife" in
_Ma jolie_ then? ;-)

This was actually inspired by my own room "Driller Killer" in
Where's Woody, which has VG's that pass thru blocks specially made
to fit them.

I'm nearly sure I've seen all the rooms in _where's woody_, but I
cannot remember "driller killer" now, nor when I wrote "Wiredlife"!

"Wiredlife" was actually inspired by "ZipZone" in the brilliant
Amstrad CPC platform-game _Radzone_. I plan to do a Spectrum/JSW-
conversion of Radzone one day! :-)

[46] "Onto the Roof": A combination of crumbling floors,
horizontal lifts and a relentless vertical guardian, creates a
challenge of almost Broadsoft proportions! ;-)

You can stand on the flame/booster part of the lifts. Don't know
if you knew that but it can make it easier.

I do know that, but it didn't help me to cross "Onto the Roof" from
left to right! ;-) So I ended up going left and taking a detour
through a few done-and-dusted rooms.

[50] "The Town sewer": Fond of sewers and _Monty On The Run_,
aren't you? ;-)

Very much so. How on earth did you guess? ;).

All those sewer-rooms in _where's woody_, and all the MOTR sprites
throughout your games? ;-)

I don't know where the sewer fixation came from,

I have a toilet-fixation myself, and rarely write a MM/JSW game
without facilities! ;-) (with the exceptions of MM:Hobbit and
JSW:LOTR).

I've always had a hankering to go to Paris and take a tour through
the sewers, among other tourist-attractions there. But I doubt I
will ever make a journey outside the UK again... save one.

The way the ramp interacts with the crumbling floor is most
intriguing! Perhaps crumbling floor should make you sink like a
ramp does.

That would make it quite tricky wouldn't it ;).

Only if there were ZipZone-style guardians in the crumbling floor,
since, like a ramp, you'd still be on the same level in terms of
walking and jumping (but not in terms of drawing and guardian
collision-detection).

[56] "Temple of Doom": Another nice switch-effect (and an
atmospheric, visually attractive room to boot), and I like the
way you have to jump through an overhead wall-block to collect
the item behind the yellow nasty - even had /me/ fooled for a
minute! ;-)

That is actually a mistake which was corrected shortly after
uploading. You're supposed to get the item another, more novel,
way. The crumbling foliage has been removed to stop that method of
collection.

Damb! That was a really cool quirky feature!

@[59] "Kamikazi Cavern" (Kamikaze): Clever use of crumbling
floors, especially if you are to escape with your life! I like
the modified Moonface sprite, too. Please may I do a Manic Miner
conversion of this room? I wouldn't be able to call it "Kamikaze"
though! ;-)

Yeah, that would be cool... No doubt you'll find a way to make it
harder too..

Well, I'd start with a faithful reinterpretation and see how that
turned out. "Eternal Flame" (originally from J4) had to be made much
harder to fit _Ma jolie_! :->

[61] "Hopscotch Traps": First time for me to see this effect!
(sorry Vidar). Like sticky conveyors with induced jumping.
Crossing the bottom is bl**dy difficult! ;-)

Yes. I wanted a fairly easy-ish game, or one that would be
inviting to lay-players, but even easy games have to have the odd
evil part methinks :)

Yes - if 90% of the game is easy to explore, there should be
something tucked away behind something as evil as the bottom
of "Forgotten Abbey" used to be for me! :->

Overall, Role Reversal is a very impressive game technically, and
a very attractive game visually. The Erix1-mode special effects
make up for the lack of quirky features, although there are a few
quirky features just crying out to be deliberately exploited or
added (e.g. Rooms 9, 11, 38).

Glad you approve. I think it's my best effort to date, and shows
more 'maturity' as a designer than my earlier games, with the
possible exception of Strangel and Death TV.

strangel is the one I admire the most, because of the multitudinous
quirky features and the surreal atmosphere - much like We Pretty! :-)

I've been looking forward to Death TV for a long time now.

I finished with 255 items. Role Reversal cannot be item-completed
because the 256th item is in Room 62, which is unreachable, and
in fact contains half of the item-table.

Yikes... I can't even see that room in JSWED. No doubt Erix1 will
have the answer :)

Byte A of the item is at 65279, and currently has the value 126 ( =
62 + 64, i.e. Room 62, uncollected). The format of Byte A is
YCRRRRRR, where Y is the most significant bit of the row, C is the
`collected' flag, and RRRRRR is the 6-bit room-number.

Byte B of the item is at 65535, and currently has the value 0 (i.e.
the item is at 0,0). The format of Byte B is YYYXXXXX, where YYY are
the lower three bits of the row, and XXXXX is the column.

So you could poke 65279 to move the item into a room that JSWED
recognises (POKE 65279,222 moves it to the lower half of "The Study"
[30] if you subscribe to my suggestion above).

The end of the bed is supposed to be the 'toilet' which will
change into a sprite depicting Maria laying on the bed (ooh-er!).
But for some reason my 'toilet' (bed) has gone walkies and I can't
see it apart from in the editor.

This is because you try to have the toilet in Master Bedroom, and
the code that checks whether you are in Master Bedroom only goes on
to check whether you are in The Bathroom if you are NOT in Master
Bedroom:
38199: CP 27 ; in "Master Bedroom"?
38201: JP NZ,38298 ; if not then jump to toilet-drawing routine

So The Bathroom cannot be the same room as Master Bedroom unless you
rewrite the code to also jump to 38298 when it's done handling
Master Bedroom!

Another problem is that although the toilet is drawn in Room 27,
Willy is detected to hit it in Room 50! (My notes about the toilet
are in Message 3854.)

So Role Reversal needs two fixes: one to make it item-
completable, and another to make it toilet-completable.

There is also going to be some extra stuff for presentation
purposes. No prizes for guessing who is helping me out (read:
doing it for me) there ;)

Along as credit's given where credit's due! :-)

Erroneous coloured squares started to fill the screen from the
bottom-right when I had about 147 items. Wasn't this the bug that
was fixed in Revision E of _Maria vs. some bastards_?

Yes. Again I am relying on a certain someone to fix it..

If I had a copy of MvSB Revision D to hand, SPECSAISIE Compare could
compare D with E and tell us the pokes needed to fix the bug.
Unfortunately my only copies of Revisions A-D are on a Mac-disk with
no Mac to read it. :-(

I could compare Role Reversal with MvSB Revision E, but of course
the changes would be buried in the many differences between the two
games, not so easy to spot since SPECSAISIE Compare does not
currently have an address-annotation facility!

It's a nasty bug which should certainly be fixed. It crashes if you
quit the game using CAPS SHIFT + SPACE, and I dread to speculate
about what would happen if the coloured squares reached the playing-
area! Fortunately I finished the game (as far as possible) before
this happened.

--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

 

 

	Previous message	Back to the Yahoo! Archive home page	Next message
	Previous in thread		Next in thread