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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 4626
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 26/12/2004
Subject: JSW64: Andrew's first beta-test of the game itself / JSWED
Yesterday I playtested Variant V of JSW64 itself (jsw64v.tap) - the
21st July 2004 revision currently in the Files section
("John Elliott" folder). I will playtest jsw64{w,y,z,yy}.tap on
later dates, along with JSW64: Dragon 32 and another look at
JSW64:MM.
The rooms with special features:
[11] "The Hall" / "Ballroom West" [21]: Presumably the green Willy
is a patch-vector, and is white for the purpose of collecting items
and arrow-collision?
[27] "The Chapel": Air and solar power.
[28] "First Landing": Two static-nasty block-types.
[29] "The Nightmare Room": The flying pig is now magenta.
[33] "The Bathroom": Three ramps, two conveyors, item-triggered
guardians, item-triggered portal. Bad place for an example of
crumbling floor - it drops you to infinite death in The Chapel!
Also, the superjump in the variants of The Bathroom (reached by
going right from Top Landing) makes it all too easy to jump up into
the wall in Emergency Generator and have to reset the game. It can
also dump you through the floor if Willy jumps from a misaligned
vertical position.
[34] "Top Landing": Extra block-types for air, floor and wall. The
many different variants of The Bathroom to the right of this room
are easy to miss, as most players will not think to walk back right.
Is this a patch-vector effect? What's the rule for deciding which
room to enter?
[35] "Master Bedroom": Air, portal.
[49] "The Wine Cellar": No Block-Graphics Bug for the conveyor -
sacrilege! ;-)
[132] "This I do not believe": Variant of The Bathroom with a portal
to "Central Cavern" and the rest of the Manic Miner caverns.
In the interest of playability and item-completability (even though
the JSW64 game itself is obviously an experimental prototype), here
is my list of bugs:
Why no items in "At the Foot of the MegaTree" [3], "On a Branch Over
The Drive" [9], "The Nightmare Room" [29], "The Banyan Tree"
[30], "Top Landing" [34], "Conservatory Roof" [43], and Rooms 50-60?
Why only half the usual number of items in "To The Kitchens" [22]
and "Cold Store" [25]?
[13] "Out on a limb": The ramp-floors behave as floors instead of
ramps - also in the rooms from "Rescue Esmerelda" [14] to "On the
Roof" [18].
[27] "The Chapel": The ramp has lost its conveyor-effect (ditto
re. "Halfway up the East Wall" [32]).
[71] "Miner Willy Meets The Kong Beast": The left switch doesn't
work, so the player has to reset the game (or use WRITETYPER), which
is therefore not item-completable. I conclude that 83 items are
collectable without cheating; I managed to up my total to 97 by
apparating into "The Warehouse" (press '7' and '9' together in
WRITETYPER mode).
[82] "Solar Power Generator": The inaccurate conversion of vertical-
guardian boundaries from MM to JSW64 is very noticeable when trying
to get past the yellow and red VGs. Obviously the changes in the
26th September 2004 revision of JSW64:MM need to be applied to the
JSW64 game itself.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
JSWED 2.2.2 <http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Jsw/jswed.html> seems to
be the most ambitious and extensive MM/JSW editor yet, and I'm
really looking forward to exploring it properly in 2005... but I
have to say that JSWED's file-handling is a pain in the derrière.
After painstakingly navigating from "C:\Program Files\JSWED2\"
to "C:\Documents and Settings\Andrew Broad\My Documents\RealSpec\Jet
Set Willy\JSW64\JSW64\040721\JSW64v.tap", it informed me that it was
an "unknown JSW64 variant" and refused to load it! :-(
So I haven't had the luxury of looking at this game in an editor,
nor have I yet made any real attempt to extend my own software (e.g.
SPECSAISIE) to handle the JSW64 room-formats.
Furthermore, JSWED always starts browsing at "C:\Program Files\JSWED2
\", whereas the RealSpectrum emulator at least remembers the last
folder used. JSWED cannot follow shortcuts to folders, cannot look
inside .zip files, and does not recognise TZX files.
A big advantage of using Spectrum-based editors such as my Manic
Miner Screen Editor and Jet Set Willy Construction Kit is that all
the snapshotting facilities of the emulator are just a keypress
away - there's no need to go back to the main menu when you're in
the middle of, say, editing a vertical guardian and need to try lots
of different values to get a boundary working just right.
RealSpectrum's instant snapshots (you simply press Alt+ScrollLock to
save a snapshot in memory, then ScrollLock to reload it at any time)
make Spectrum computing much much easier, and have proved to be a
real time-saver for me.
But a JSWED snapshot to support the same convenience would obviously
have to hold many more data than just the Spectrum's memory-contents.
--
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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