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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 4527
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 17/10/2004
Subject: Manic Person (20th June beta-version)
(This message includes technical information about Manic Miner which
is not yet documented elsewhere.)
Sendy, first of all I appreciate that you've edited the title-screen
picture, and the colour-attributes of the bottom third of the
screen. There are two presumably erroneous white-ink character-
squares in the otherwise yellow remaining lives rows, one of which
shows up when you have two extra lives and have teleport-keys
enabled (the "6031769" code or POKE 33885,7).
There's a problem with the way you have recoloured the piano on the
title-screen: the code still uses Attribute 56 (black ink on white
paper) to uncolour the red and cyan squares. It can be made to use
Attribute 7 (white ink on black paper) with the following pokes:
POKE 37658,7 (attribute to uncolour red square)
POKE 37666,7 (attribute to uncolour cyan square)
It's nice to see that Manic Person - like MM:AT - now uses John
Elliott's MM patch to allow any room to have vertical guardians,
Skylabs, Eugene, Kong Beast and switches, (inclusive-)or solar power.
[0] "Hoping for Frequency": no further comments.
[1] "Apple Crumble": "fruits of the room" was a much cooler room-
title IMO. The general colour-scheme has improved slightly since the
12th May beta, but I miss the white river that used to flow along
the bottom through gaps that gave the impression of adjacent
caverns. On the other hand, the "delayed but inevitable death if you
fall onto the conveyor" is a nice touch. Still one of the all-time
great MM rooms, but a shame that the changes do more harm than good
IMHO.
If it were up to me, I'd rename it to "Fruits of the Room", extend
the conveyor from 1-30 to 0-31, and knock out the wall-blocks in the
two rows above the conveyor, replacing the lower ones with
background and the upper ones with first static nasties.
[2] "Crash Test Dummy": no further comments.
[3] "Paranoia (Don't touch the floor)": I say that MM/JSW room-
titles shouldn't contain playing tips, except in extenuating JSW
circumstances to warn the player of an infinite-death scenario or a
one-way exit.
The graphics are improved (particularly the `mad face' portal), with
nice pseudo-3D `walls' and `floor' (it's interesting that you can
now climb up the right `wall' - intentional?), although I don't like
the green-paper background introduced with the solar power. I would
change it back to black and use either POKE 36228,7 (solar beam
detects white Willy on black paper) or POKE 36228,71 (solar beam
detects white Willy on BRIGHT black paper, as in MM:AT).
(BTW, the colour-attribute of the solar beam itself can be set to _a_
with POKE 36262,a and the start-column can be set to x with POKE
36212,x for {0 <= x <= 31}; x >= 32 means that it starts lower than
the top row, which could be useful if you wanted to have a ceiling
for example.)
[4] "Cheating Time?": I like the new conveyor-graphic - very
authentic. I don't like the new room-title.
[5] "Willy's Auto Mining Boots": Not too many changes here, but
it's nice to see the conveyor-animation applied to the /second/
pixel-row instead of the first and third. This room really gives a
new purpose to walking under walls with the jump-button pressed! :-)
[6] "The Beginning is a Delicate Time": The graphical makeover is
mainly a change for the better, although the walls look a bit dull
now. What's the item-graphic meant to be?
[7] Reservoir Dogs": An excellent room made even better by the
addition of a trick conveyor-block and lowering the water-level
(why the convention that harmful water is cyan and safe water is
blue, when the original JSW does the opposite?).
[8] "Soluble Dux": Playing this again was a lovely experience with
those sinking ducks, and the new portal-graphic is interesting as it
can be seen either as a side-on view of a toilet or as a frontal
view.
[9] "Gimme Somethin Oldskool": It looks like an 8-bit platform-game
from the 1980s, but has some nice tricks such as the way you have to
jump along the crumbling-floor platform against the wall and back,
the embedded static nasties in the conveyor, and jumping over the
cyan VG proved deceptively tricky.
The VG sprites look like a cross between my `head of Matthew Smith'
and `face of Iva Majoli' sprites from We Pretty! :)
[10] "The Border Room": The nest of HGs seems claustrophobic and
nasty until I realise there's a character-column on the left in
which I can wait safely. I do think it's a design-flaw that you have
to go round again at the end, especially after having to repeat a
smaller section of the screen earlier on.
[11] "Innocent-Looking Clocks": A very interesting room technically.
It's always nice to see ILBs,* and the way you have to relieve of
crumbling floor the static nasty on the conveyor - so that it can
safely be jumped over when going back in the opposite direction - is
a notable first (TTBOMK).
---
* {An ILB (Innocent-Looking Block) is a wall-block that you can jump
through and it dumps you through the platform underneath it!}
The use of the letters from The Bank is interesting in that you can
jump under them without collision if you get the timing right (as in
MM:AT's "Aubrey Sci-Fi Convention").
It's a room that requires some thought to find an efficient route, a
room where you can get yourself into trouble by using up the wrong
crumbling-floor blocks. Oh, and it's nice to see a thoughtful
exploitation of a colour-attribute in the screen-layout which does
not correspond to a defined block-type.
[12] "Missing Something?": A visually attractive room evocative
of "Strangers When We Meet" from _Manic Miner: The Buddha of
Suburbia_, and an invisible-items challenge the like of which I
don't recall since MM2's "Die Roboter kommen" (watching the score to
see when you collect an item - or, alternatively, looking at the
room in an editor or with POKE 58036,255). Thank goodness this is MM
instead of JSW! ;-)
Two things I really like about this room:
1. The non-obvious jump onto the crumbling-floor platform directly
under the floor-platform. (I used a similar technique in
MM:AT's "Where's Woody?", and would have used it again in that room
except that I wanted to keep the yellow HG, making it Forbidden Holy
Ground.)
2. The way, at the end, you have to jump left onto the conveyor from
below, then jump through an ILB, is a lovely touch.
My only niggle is that the first static nasty (that looks like a
ghost from Pacman) looks ugly because its eyes and mouth are
misaligned. It looks nicer if you rotate its eyes one pixel to the
left (POKE 57936,147).
[13] "Catstep Vatstep": A very cunningly-designed and very
frustrating room, I ended up saving a stack of four snapshots to
fall back on! It's nice to have a second Eugene in the game, and a
crumbling-floor-protected item to trigger it (you could have
protected the middle two items at the bottom, too).
This room is reminiscent of "NUCLEAR c@s GeT new HOME" from strangel.
[14] "I Am Not a Miner": I have to conclude that this room is
impossible, because there's no way to avoid death after collecting
the top-right item. It's a very atmospheric and visually attractive
room, though, with a very vertical (in the literal sense) challenge,
and an air-supply which seems to have been `optimised'.
The room-title reminds me of:
(a) "ceci n'est pas une chambre" from strangel;
(b) how Brian Eno once wanted "non-musician" as the occupation on
his passport!
[15] "Bad Trip - The Divvy's Lair": I haven't heard the
word "divvy" since I was in primary school! ;-) A surreal and
graphically-striking Skylab room, with excellent use of combined
wall/crumbling-floor blocks - including one for which you have to
count out exactly seven time-frames (or the easier solution - jump
onto the very left edge of the block and walk straight across it).
The invisible platforms - which you have to navigate twice - mean
that the air-supply can be a problem in this room. There's far more
to this room than first meets the eye.
[16] "The Dining Room (part II)": Always interesting to see a
reinterpretation of a JSW room in MM or vice versa! It looks a
little out of place, and a little worse for wear with all those
spiders, but the new challenge is interesting - especially getting
back over the green teacup at the top right, which requires
excellent timing on the crumbling floors. Once again the air-supply
can be quite tight, too.
[17] "The Dungeon of Erotic Punishment": This room too is
impossible, because there's no way to collect the bottom item.
And "punishment" is the operative word because it's very difficult
to escape after collecting each item - particularly the top-right
item which I spent ages trying to escape from (having to stop on the
conveyor is a nice manoeuvre, though). A very atmospheric room
reminiscent of Adban De Corcy, from whose JSW game _A Bulgarian
Requiem_ the guardian sprites come.
[18] "Pudding": Quite simply a beautiful screen to look at, like a
delicious helping of strawberry crumble, with an atmosphere
reminiscent of the Spectrum game _CJ's Elephant Antics_. It plays
very well too, with good use of sticky conveyors, and although it's
a very difficult room by general MM standards, it doesn't have the
frustration of the previous room.
This room makes the name "Apple Crumble" [1] rather redundant as
well as uncool! ;-)
[19] "On Our Way ""Hmoe"" (SIC)": Why "Hmoe" instead of "Home"?
A nice, atmospheric finale, although it's ironic how the last three
rooms of the game are progressively easier! The way you have to jump
into the wall in order to be able to jump up for the rightmost item
is a nice touch, although you probably shouldn't be able to wrap
around and collect the bottom-left item from here! ;-)
You should also edit the position of the swordfish and Willy's
colour-attributes above the swordfish. Appendix E of my Manic Miner
Room-Format [
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/mm_format.html ]
explains how to edit these colour-attributes.
I have not yet updated my Manic Miner Room-Format to explain how to
edit the position of the swordfish, but hopefully the following
notes will prove useful:
1. The pixel-position of Willy above the swordfish is:
16384 + 32*y + x
Poke the low byte into 36932, the high byte into 36933.
2. The pixel-position of the swordfish itself is:
16384 + 32*(y+3) + x
(where y is the top row of Willy above the swordfish)
Poke the low byte into 36941, the high byte into 36942.
3. The colour-attribute position of Willy above the swordfish is:
22528 + 32*y + x
Poke the low byte into 36947, the high byte into 36948.
POKE 36924,0 reenables the swordfish when you complete Room 19
in "6031769" (teleport-cheat) mode.
--
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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