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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 5123
Author: Daniel
Date: 21/11/2005
Subject: Daniel's final review of "Maria on Tour"
I finished playing "Maria on Tour" yesterday. I played without any
POKEs, just saving snapshots and going back whenever I lost a life. I
testify that it is possible to finish the game without losing a
single life.
Once again, I am impressed by your graphics, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! They
have a different feel from the original JSW, but this makes them nice
and refreshing. I like some of your sprites a lot. The highlights for
me are: Bad Mr Frosty (excellent! and somehow seems to be very much
in line with what Sendy described as your "screen persona"), the bent
old men (?), the crabs, the burning fire and the stalactites (as
Andrew mentioned, reminiscent of "Underwurlde", another of my
Spectrum favourites).
The idea of "The Games Room" is cool, and so is the space flight (it
makes me think of the ending in "Mind Control" play it and see!).
There is just one point which you might want to change perhaps.
When you gain your twelfth life, you don't see it any more, because
only 11 Marias are shown on the screen. If you keep gaining lives
afterwards, you won't know how many you have (unless you keep count),
because you don't see them.
In very general terms: the idea of gaining lives is cool (even though
in real life it only serves for games like "Maria on Tour" which
can be completed without cheating with the infinite lives POKE).
There is just one problem with it: when the number of lives you have
is higher than 16, they begin to be displayed (as Willies, or
whatever the player's sprite is) in the second row, as it were, from
the bottom left-hand side of the screen, making the "regular" lives
displayed as Willies look bad. If you have 17 lives, it's just the
first "regular" Willy from the left that is looking bad. Then if you
go up to 32 (the maximum number of lives, as I understand), the
following Willies will look bad, too (at least the ones that are set
to be displayed on the screen).
In "Maria on Tour" this concerns at least the first regular Maria on
the bottom left-hand side of the screen when you gain your
seventeenth life (which happened to me while playing with saving
snapshots), she started sort of flickering, which wasn't looking
good. I'm not sure how many lives you can gain in total, but the
problem can possibly affect the other displayed Marias as well.
Now, this has nothing to do with "Maria on Tour", really, but with
the game engine, I guess.
If you want to see this effect, load any JSW game, POKE in 34785,32,
lose your lives, start the game again and you will see. I am writing
this for those of you who don't know I know it's probably quite
obvious for many of you.
So, congratulations once again, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, and just a couple
of questions:
- Your game is evidently toilet-compleatable. If nobody else
discovers any minor bugs, will you consider this currently released
version the definitive one? Or is it possible that you will
introduce minor improvements, like the display of Marias suggested
above or moving up the object in "Olde Style kitchen" so that it
cannot be reached from below (which Sendy has mentioned)?
- How do you get to the room "Fall Forever U Cheating Bastard"?
Daniel
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