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Message: 4628

Author: john_elliott_uk

Date: 27/12/2004

Subject: Re: JSW64: Andrew's first beta-test of the game itself / JSWED

 

In manicminerandjetsetwilly@yahoogroups.com, andrewbroad wrote:

[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?

No; Willy's colour is part of the room format. And he really is green.

[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?

It is a patch vector; Willy enters each bathroom in round-robin order.

[49] "The Wine Cellar": No Block-Graphics Bug for the conveyor -
sacrilege! ;-)

No block-graphics bug. And I'm not reintroducing it.

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]?

I'm not entirely sure. Looks like a problem in the code that deals
with having 128 items instead of 64.

[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].

This is to do with the different way JSW64 models cells.

[27] "The Chapel": The ramp has lost its conveyor-effect (ditto
re. "Halfway up the East Wall" [32]).

Bug in my original converter; it doesn't set the "escalator" flag
when converting. The converter in JSWED gets it right.

[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).

Seems to be fixed on my version. I must update the copy on the group
some time.

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, Only 'cos you haven't seen JSWED 2.3.0 yet :-) After painstakingly navigating from "C:BBBBBBProgram FilesBBBBBBJSWED2BBBBBB"
to "C:BBBBBBDocuments and SettingsBBBBBBAndrew BroadBBBBBBMy DocumentsBBBBBBRealSpecBBBBBBJet
Set WillyBBBBBBJSW64BBBBBBJSW64BBBBBB040721BBBBBBJSW64v.tap", it informed me that it was
an "unknown JSW64 variant" and refused to load it! :-(

This is why it's a good idea to have users test your software. I
hardly ever use the JSWED file browser, since I usually launch it with
a filename from the command line. As for the unknownness, I see a
comment in the code:
/* See if it has a suitable variant ID. Prereleases don't. */
which probably means the file format has changed since that particular
pack of prototypes was released.

Furthermore, JSWED always starts browsing at "C:BBBBBBProgram
FilesBBBBBBJSWED2BBBBBB", whereas the RealSpectrum emulator at least
remembers the last folder used.

I'll fix that in 2.3.0.

JSWED cannot follow shortcuts to folders

Get a real OS :-) Or if you've got XP or 2000 and are using NTFS,
you can create junction links
<http://www.rekenwonder.com/linkmagic.htm> which act as real OS-level
links to folders.

cannot look inside .zip files, and does not recognise TZX files.

Guilty as charged.

But a JSWED snapshot to support the same convenience would obviously
have to hold many more data than just the Spectrum's
memory-contents.

Eep. There's no real way of snapshotting a Windows or Unix program,
unless the program itself supports it. The nearest you'd get is
frequent use of Quicksave (F2) and Playtest (F5), though of course
that doesn't give you a history of changes.

 

 

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