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Message: 4207

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 11/05/2004

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

 

Alexandra wrote:

John fixed that with a patch called 'Adjacent ropes' (or something
similar). So you can have all 8 guardians as ropes, if you like :).

But not stationary ropes, which exploit the `feature' patched by
Adjacent Ropes. Unless you use the 4th May revision of JSW64 that
supports stationary ropes (cf. Messages 4173, 4179).

However, I noticed in Strangel (and also ZX HEROES) that certain
ropes can sometimes 'teleport' you, usually when you just enter
the room. Maybe this is one of the things fixed in the new patch?

A rope will `teleport' you if it collides with a pixel near the top
of the screen, since Willy always gets picked up at the rope's point
of collision.

But I think you can also get `teleported' if a rope is placed in
certain columns - something of which I don't currently have a
precise understanding. I've noticed when trying to place non-
swinging ropes in a room, that this bug can occur for some columns
but not others, with no obvious explanation in terms of pixel-
collision.

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? :-) :-)

Crikey, you're still in the 80's then ;). I don't think you'll
ever catch up if you plan on playing all of them to completion.
I've only actually played a select few to completion.. Sometimes,
just to look around and see all the rooms, is enough :)

I do expect to catch up eventually; it just might take me months or
years to do so. It's going to get much tougher when I get up to the
JSW128 games though! ;-)

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?

That reminds me - The Deadly Mission was actually the first JSW game
to feature forcefields! For three years I had thought that _where's
woody_ was the first game with forcefields (Goodnite Luddite and Ma
jolie have forcefields too).

Erix1-mode has quite a few unexplored quirky features, such as
being able to jump off of the top right hand corner of a 'special'
fire-block asif it were a wall :).

I thought I noticed that (possibly in "The Busy Road"), but then I
couldn't figure out what had happened or how to make it happen again!

What is a "'special' fire-block"?

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

It's a quick poke type utility for setting up the extra features
of each room. Very quick interface, does the job OK though :)

Who wrote the Hackulator? Is it publically available?

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?

Maybe, though the red nasties serve the purpose of preventing you
from jumping up and landing squarely on the sticky conveyor, which
would of course ruin the illusion of ice and make it look more
like glue :)

I think Erix1 Mode and SPECSAISIE RoomJSW were talking at crossed
purposes there - the way Erix1 Mode makes certain block-types behave
like other block-types is more confusing than the character-shifts
in a David Lynch film!

What I was proposing would look something like this, from RoomJSW's
perspective:

||||||..-----------------|--||||
||||*|..........................
||**.|-.........................
|*...|..........................
|....|..........................
|....|...........|.......|--**--
|-...|-----.....----..*-.*......
................................
..............................*|
|--**|||**-.....-**-...-****..-|
|**--|..........................
|--**|..........................
|**--|||----------------------||
|--**|..........................
|....|..........................
|..|||..----------------------||
The Fridge JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK

|..|||*****||------|||||--|*****
|..|||**$|||-......-|---..|||***
|..|||*||---.......-|-......||**
|....|||-...........-.......-|||
|............................---
|||.............................
**|------...........----.....-||
**|............................|
|||........................----|
|--..||||||..---..---|||.....|||
|....|--..............-.......|*
||||||.....................---|*
|----||||||..--...--||||......|*
|.........................----|*
|||..........................-|*
**|||||||||||--|||-||||||||---|*
Deep Freeze GBBBG GG G BG

(The two background-blocks at the top of "The Fridge" are to stop
the behavioural static nasties in the top row from killing you when
you try to go down; the extra wall-blocks at the top of "Deep
Freeze" are to deny direct access to the bottom-left of "The
Fridge".)

["Kamikaze Cavern"]

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_! :->

You could try a lateral inversion, maybe..

As I did for "Recurring Nightmare" in Ma jolie! :-) (a
reinterpretation of "P L A IS TO W G R OV E" from We
Pretty).

And I was thinking you'd fill in the aesthetic walls with more
playable stuff, since you don't like wasting space.

I'll see how I like the faithful conversion first, though I do like
the idea of lateral inversion...

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

I work on it from time to time. I will upload what I have to the
club soon, along with my 10-screen MM game (or did I do that
already?)

No, we have yet to play _manic person_ here. I'm looking forward to
that one, as there are way too few new MM games being released.

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).

I'll, er, come back to that later :)

Or maybe "Deep Freeze" as suggested above? (POKE 65279,83)

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

I like to think I'm very fair :). I pretty much bill JSW: RR as a
joint project anyway...

By that logic *all* MM/JSW games could be considered joint projects
with Matthew Smith, and all Java programs could be considered joint
projects with Sun Microsystems! ;-)

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. :-(

soa1000 kindly sent me a copy of Revision D, for SPECSAISIE to
compare Revision E with.

And so, the following pokes upgrade Revision D to Revision E:
POKE 34251,0
POKE 34273,0
POKE 34274,1
POKE 37426,182

Strangely enough, Role Reversal already has the above values for
34251, 34273 and 34274! However, 37426 in Role Reversal is currently
183 (as Revision D), so I guess you need to apply POKE 37426,182 and
then do a complete playtest to see if the bug recurs.

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

 

 

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