Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
      using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines

 

 

	Previous message		Next message
			Next in thread

 

 

Message: 5196

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 30/11/2005

Subject: Sendy and Daniel's Mind Control: Andrew's second playtest

 

(Warning: LONG)

Less progress this week as (a) I prioritised clearing areas already
visited of items over exploring new areas, and (b) I succumbed to
the temptation to break off and write SPECSAISIE ItemsJSW128, which
lists the uncollected items in a saved-position JSW128 snapshot,
telling me their room-numbers and cell-coordinates. I now have 148
items.

The geography does get less painful with familiarity, especially as
I'm now used to finding my way back to "Yes! Willy's a lucky
bastard!!!" and right into "The Mystic Room of Many Exits". But it's
still pretty tedious to have to repeat the same journeys over and
over, due to the excessive number of one-way exits.

---------------------
Room-by-Room Comments
---------------------

[4] "A Rope in the Sky? Impossible!!!": It's unfair that Water and
Fire look identical.

[23] "In the Sandhills": I actually thought this was impossible to
cross from left to right for several minutes, until I realised that
you have to jump through an ILB from the room to the left ("Outside
the Castle" [47]). If this jump isn't pixel-perfect, it's a really
unfair infinite-death scenario - as it is if you're standing on Row
9 in [47] (the highest Earth-cells in that room being in Row 8).

[40] "Sendy will never believe this..." / "... nor this!!!" [17]:
There's a mutual infinite-death scenario between these rooms if you
move between them at the bottom.

[43] "End of the Road: Milk Factory": The way you have to stop on
the conveyor to jump up for the items is one of my favourite MM/JSW
manoeuvres. I presume that the laterally-inverted and video-inverted
Ramp graphic is intentional - it actually looks much better than it
has a right to look. ;-)

[56] "Road to the Milk Factory": It's very tempting to kamikaze
those lower items!

[60] "A Glimpse of 'JSW: 2005 Megamix'": It's possible to fall into
this room so far to the left as to suffer infinite death on the red
moon.

[74] "How on earth did you get here ?!": It's great to see this as a
playable room! (It was originally an unreachable room in Richard
Hallas's _Join The Jet Set!_, which kills you on entry if you
teleport there.)
_____I like the way you can jump straight up over the diagonal
kangaroo. I've not seen that before.

[90] "More than it seems": The invisible one-way teleporter is
unfair, because the obvious route through this room entails
collecting the rightmost item *after* clearing the middle.

[112] "The Most Secret of All Places": The rope catches you if you
fall in from above, but if you walk right, you get `hanged' between
this room and the one above.
_____If you fall off the bottom of the screen to the right of the
fire-guardian, it's infinite death. If you fall to the left of the
fire-guardian, it's a shortcut to the top item.

---------------
Reply to Daniel
---------------

Daniel wrote:

My inspiration for "The Mystic Room of Many Exits" came from Stuart
J. Hill's "Utility Cubicles" and the sequence "The Green Room" –
"The Red Room" – "The Blue Room", which makes the navigation easier
between various points of the game. And I hope that the word
"Mystic" justifies to an extent the fact that the exits take you to
unexpected places :-) . Or would "Mysterious" be better, as it's a
mystery where each of the exits takes you?

"Mysterious" would be more accurate in terms of dictionary-
definitions, but "The Mysterious Room of Many Exits" doesn't have
such a nice ring to it. It's also 33 characters long.

"Mystic" sounds pretentious, implying religious mysticism rather
than mystery - but as a David Bowie fan, I can only say that's a
good thing! :-)

So I would leave it as it is: "The Mystic Room of Many Exits" :-)

In view of the above, it would probably be good to provide the
player with an optimal, most efficient route (there isn't just one,
I would say there are several equally efficient variants), so that
he/she does not have to waste their time wandering around. It is a
controversial solution, though, because it may spoil the pleasure
for those of us who do have more time and are willing to dedicate
it to wandering around JSW games and (painfully) discovering things
themselves. What's more, there are several "hidden" rooms or routes
(like the cloud walk you revealed in your post), so if I make the
optimal path "public", I will have to mention all of those (so that
nobody has to go back after missing a secret room), and that will
definitely be a bad spoiler. I have decided to solve the problem in
the following way – please, let me know, Everybody, whether you
think it's a good idea:

a) In the coming days, very soon, I will upload a file to my folder
in the Files section with the description of the suggested optimal
route in "MC". Everyone who is interested in dealing with the game
efficiently and not wasting their time to wander around will be
welcome to download the file and use it.

b) I will include the same file as a separate "spoiler" text file
with the final release of the game.

In this way everyone interested in a "quick" route will be provided
with it, while those who prefer to take their time and discover
things on their own will not be forced to read spoiler information.

Do you think it's a fair solution?

Yes, I agree with your proposal to publish an efficient route,
although I'd still like to see fewer one-way exits in the game.

2. The room-names problem

In the end I decided to adopt the following convention: the room-
names should follow standard spelling rules used for titles, with
the exception of names which are sentences, where sentence-case
should be applied.

An interesting convention. In Party Willy, I used title-case all the
time, except for direct quotes and "bedroom role reversal games" (a
reference to Sendy's no-caps typing from of old). I still wasn't
entirely consistent with "To"/"to" and suchlike words.

It seemed to me that it was a reasonable rule and that it generally
followed what Matthew Smith did in the original game (even though
he wasn't entirely consistent). In the original JSW the room-names:
"I'm sure I've seen this before..", "We must perform a Quirkafleeg"
and "Dr Jones will never believe this" are sentences and they are
spelled like sentences (assuming that "Quirkafleeg" is a proper
name).

In the version of JSW that I had for my real Spectrum, it was "We
must perform a quirkafleeg"! It was only after my real Spectrum died
that I realised I couldn't find an emulator-version with the
little 'q', which begs the questions of exactly what version I had
(a friend copied it for me), and whether there were any more
differences.

At the same time, the names "Out on a limb", "A bit of tree" and
"On top of the house" do not stick to the rule general rule, but
I think this is just because Matthew Smith wasn't such a
perfectionist as some of us are...

It's a shame that he was under pressure to release JSW quickly. It
would be most intriguing to see his solutions to the bugs in "First
Landing", "The Banyan Tree", "The Attic" and "Conservatory Roof",
and whether he would have put new rooms above "Rescue Esmerelda" and
"Watch Tower", given that Rooms 47 and 61-63 are unused.
Paul: There are those mysterious four lost levels. Are they in there
somewhere?

Matt: Um. I would... some of them were designed but they were never
working, but I could never work out why. And the reason was actually
because I had my device driver from my Tandy loading on top of the
last four levels in memory. And that device driver ended up on the
final tape. It's still there. If you disassemble, you can see that
it's partly copyright Tandy Corporation.

<
<http://www.redkeyreddoor.com/index.php?p=75>

I wonder if there's any chance that these room-data that were
overwritten still exist? Or whether Matthew remembers enough about
those lost rooms to be able to recreate them?
4. The problem of getting 'hanged' (infinitely stuck between two
rooms) on a very short rope when trying to jump up into the room
above

I was aware of this problem, which concerns three rooms in the game
- "Clouds over the Plain. No Rain" [046], "The Elusive Passage
continues" [091] and a third room whose name I will not mention at
this point. I was really unhappy about it, but even though I gave
it much thought, I have not been able to invent any reasonable
solution.

Does anyone have any clever ideas? Or shall we just confide in the
players' alertness – they can only land on these ropes after
falling from above or having been to the room above, so they should
know that there is nothing above the ropes and they will get
'hanged' if they try to jump up.

Or even if they just WALK right from the rope. No, this is not a
satisfactory solution.

One solution would be to create new rooms above the rooms containing
the ropes, which are clones of the rooms currently above them, but
with a stand-onable cell in the bottom row, allowing Willy to drop
safely back into the rope-room one cell to the left or right of
where he fell in from a great height.

Thus you could clone [99, 70, 60] as follows:

[114] "Falling through the Clouds": Ramp BBBBBB at (15,28); Air at
(13,30); Air at (0,30). Set [46]'s up-exit to [114].

[115] "The Elusive Passage": Earth at (15,23); Air at (14,21); Air
at (15,21). Set [91]'s up-exit to [115].

[116] "A Glimpse of 'JSW: 2005 Megamix'": Conveyor > at (15,3); Air
at (0,5). Set [112]'s up-exit to [116].

(I suspect that the changes I propose to the clone of "The Elusive
Passage" may interfere with the changes you've already made to the
room itself since the Club-release.)

Another solution would be to remove the ropes, and to reset Willy's
fall-counter whenever he falls off the bottom of the screen, using
POKE 38113,0: POKE 38114,0 (using JSWED's hex-editor: set 94E1 and
94E2 to 00).

But this could create loopholes throughout the whole game (allowing
the player to land safely instead of infinite death from falling too
far), and it requires a stand-onable cell to block your fall in
[91]. I prefer the first solution.

5. Specific room comments

a) "Sky Landing" [001]

Andrew wrote:

In particular, a JSW player should be able to fall off the
bottom of the screen from a height of four (or fewer) character-
rows without expecting an infinite-death scenario.

I agree, this is a very important point.

In spite of the above, I would rather leave "Sky Landing" as it is,
because:
- When you stand on the fourth ledge from the left (or second from
the right), the infinite-death scenario below /is/ kind of unfair
in the sense that the player is standing at a height of four
character-rows, so according to the above postulate he/she could
expect to be able to drop down safely. However, taking into account
the whole design of the room, I think that players instinctively
should not try doing it.

A good JSW player will try every possible exit from each room
(obviously saving a snapshot first, but this is not possible on a
real Spectrum, and I always judge fairness as though I were going to
play it on a real Spectrum).

I am also afraid that adding Fire-cells in the top or bottom row
would spoil the room design.

Whenever there's a conflict between artistic design and eliminating
infinite-death scenarios, the latter should almost always take
priority.

At least JSW64 will help in this regard, as we'll be able to add
extra cell-classes, just for safety, which look identical to Air.

- The first ledge on the right is OK, because you are
actually /meant/ to step off it and fall down.

Which, taking into account the whole design of the room, I
instinctively didn't try until I read your message! ;-)

Plus the whole thing is very early into the game, so even if
somebody falls into an infinite death scenario without having saved
a snapshot first, he/she will not have much terrain to replay.

Yes - it's okay to have an IDS right at the start of a JSW game.
I've often thought about starting a JSW game with a room of
precarious blocks with a dreadful drop into infinite death, but it
hasn't come about so far... This would work best with Crumbling
cells, of course, so now that JSW64 has arrived...

b) "Coming Down" / "Two Signs and a Vision" [007 / 027]

Andrew wrote:

(...) there is a nasty infinite-death scenario [in "Coming Down"]
if you walk in after collecting the item in "Two Signs and a
Vision" [27]
___A JSW player should never encounter infinite death by
"walking" out of a screen – even if they should have seen
the hazard on their way in just a few moments before.

This general rule is something I am wondering about. After all, if
you MUST have seen the danger, but didn't take it into
consideration, it's your problem, isn't it? How does everybody feel
about this rule?
because myself – I'm not really sure...

If an IDS can be eliminated without compromising the /technical/
design of the room, it should certainly be eliminated. a JSW game
should be as idiot-proof as possible when it comes to infinite death.

If it would compromise the technical design of a room to eliminate
an IDS, there can be occasions where it's better to leave it in. An
example is "The Forest" in Party Willy. You have to jump right off
the ramp into "The Magic Faraway Tree", and it's infinite death if
you walk back left into "The Forest" (which only someone with the
memory of a goldfish would try without saving a snapshot). But
placing a cell to block the player's fall at the right of "The
Forest" would have allowed the player to circumvent the intended
challenge.

This is one of the places where I will ask Sendy to decide :-) .
If you think, Sendy, that it should be modified, let me know and I
will do it (either rearranging the bottom left-hand side of "Coming
Down" or eliminating the green flower altogether,

That guardian is a flower? I always thought it was a metal trap! ;-)

c) "... nor this" [017]

But the bigger question is: why make this a one-way exit at all?

The first, "historic" reason is that I wanted to use the moving-
vertical-line horizontal guardians – Sendy's invention, I believe –
again, and I thought they fitted nicely in "Failed Suicide Attempt
Vol. 2" [095].

They certainly are a nice feature, and one I hope we'll be seeing a
lot more of - preferably not with a threat of infinite death though!

The second reason is that since it is a one-way exit, the player
later has to return to "Failed Suicide Attempt Vol. 2" in order to
climb up the rope. Because of this, they have to perform the
difficult jump from the platform onto the rope twice.

Which is not very pleasant IMO.

e) "A Ruined Lookout" [025] and "The Underground Torture Chamber"
[110]

Andrew wrote:

___But, when coming up from [110], I omitted to take the leftmost
item before leaving this room, and I'll have to pay for this
mistake later in my playtest, much to my frustration.
Please could we have a workaround, such as an Earth-cell at
(9,9) – or better still a two-way exit from [110]?

When I tried to go back for it via "The Haunted Log Cabin" [108], I
discovered that it isn't actually possible to collect this item by
jumping up from the left sliver of "The Underground Torture Chamber"
[110].

you see the leftmost item, but cannot collect it unless you come
for it from below, and you cannot go below unless you jump through
the ILB, and you cannot jump through the ILB unless you get your
moves right in the adjacent room, manoeuvring between two guardians
and four stationary Fire-cells, and all of this on the conveyor!

Wow, I thought it was impossible to jump through the ILB from the
conveyor in "The countryside is turning dry" [22] - until I tried
again just now! :-) I don't mind being fooled by something this
clever.

g) "Rope Defect" [039]

Andrew wrote:

Only an expert will conclude that it's possible to jump onto the
rope from the bottom-left, but this game is targeted at expert
players... isn't it? :-)

Yes, it is :-) .

:-)

You might consider making an easy version of Mind Control as a
parallel product, though I haven't done such for my JSW games (with
the exception of JSW:LOTR).

I decided to make the Kari Krišníková trilogy experts-only as a
challenge to the world, and to maintain an air of mystique about
these games, while my more mainstream efforts such as Party Willy
are supposed to be relatively easy to explore but difficult to
complete.

I still feel I'm searching for the optimum blend of easy-to-explore
yet difficult-to-complete, just as I'm searching for the optimum
happy medium between tediously linear and frustratingly branching (I
believe the answer is to organise the game in hierarchical clusters,
where each cluster can be entered and exited only via its hub-room,
and each path eventually returns you to the choice-point (hub-room)
so that you can take the alternative paths - each of which is marked
as unfollowed with an item, as in "The Mystic Room of Many Exits").

Now, this design pattern is Sendy's merit – it appears this way
in "The Unlucky Seven", in the room "clingon!" of "mind control".
Sendy later modified it, so that it's easier in "Where's Woody".
She even thought it was too difficult for "Mind Control", but I
really want to keep it the way it is – I love the frustration of
not being able to jump onto the rope, and having to try so many
times :-) .

Whenever I face a challenge which requires a manoeuvre (in this case
a jump) of time-frame-perfect timing, my algorithm is as follows:
1. Position myself ready for the manoeuvre.
2. Pause.
3. Save an instant snapshot.
4. Try the manoeuvre.
5. If it didn't work, then {
___5.1. Reload the instant snapshot.
___5.2. Unpause for exactly one time-frame, in which you do nothing
(i.e. hold the pause-key down and press the music-on/off key once).
___5.3. Repeat steps 2 to 5.
}

k) "Back to Life, Back to Reality" [[051], "Anywhere but in the
Water" [052]

I have changed the initial direction of the black fish at the left
edge of "Everywhere but in the Water", so that one gets a fraction
of a second more to turn back when entering from the left via the
room-path [98 up, 12 right, 51 right]. This should solve the
problem of the player getting killed by the black fish unjustly.

That wasn't actually my problem with the black fish - I think it's
fine to have guardians so close to the entry-position as to require
a fast reaction by the player (as long as it's not an infinite-death
scenario, of course).

Now, it is perfectly possible – and even not that difficult, after
you've done it once – to enter "Everywhere but in the Water" from
the left and pass it to the right – you just need to do it /below/
the black fish, sort of half-buried in the ground.

Why of course! It *is* a very difficult manoeuvre, but I'm mad at
myself for not spotting the possibility.

m) "Climbing up the Castle Tower" [059]

Just as a bit of self-advertisement: "Climbing up the Castle
Tower" is practically a copy (with changed cell-graphics and
colours and guardian sprites) of the room "Upper Balcony" [32]
from my first game "Willy's New Mansion".

I look forward to playing Willy's New Mansion properly one day (I'm
in the process of playing through all Spectrum MM/JSW games
systematically, but I'm only up to 1998, and haven't even played one
since my hard-disk crash in March due to tennis-distractions
followed by the ongoing playtesting of Mind Control).

r) "Scary Dungeon" [097]

Andrew wrote:

Atmospheric and fun to play, this is the best example of a ramp-
conveyor (as well as a conveyor-ramp) I've ever seen. I almost
always write off ramp-conveyors as an ugly construct when writing
my own rooms, but here it works well.

Another bit of self-advertisment: "Scary Dungeon" is a developed
version of the room "The Cellar" [19] from "Willy's New Mansion".

And very nice it is, too ["The Cellar"].

6. A very general consideration

Andrew wrote:

I'm not really keen on the idea of JSW games having more than 64
rooms anyway - with so many MM/JSW games, and so little time in
my life to play them, I prefer JSW in smaller doses.

Not to defend "JSW: MC" at all (it's not /that/ huge, it only has
just over 100 rooms excluding the final sequence), but just in very
general terms – this is a controversial preference, because:

a) Arguably it takes a comparable amount of time to play one 256-
room game and four 64-room games. The 256-room game will almost
certainly take longer to play, but it depends on its geography. If
the layout is consciously navigation-friendly, the difference may
be minimal (e.g. you have four centrally-located rooms and four
sections with 63 rooms each; each of these section is practically
played as if it were a separate game and at the end takes you back
to the central rooms).

Whereas if it's one huge, sprawling map with lots of choice-points
and one-way exits, the time required to play it will tend to be
exponential rather than linear in the number of rooms.

b) In such case the postulate of games not having more than 64
rooms because of the lack of time to play them could practically b
translated as: Don't design so many games, because I don't have the
time to play them. Of course time constraints are a huge factor for
many (most? all?) of us, but discouraging designing games would
certainly go against the spirit of this Group, wouldn't it? :-)

I'm not saying that at all. I would merely discourage authors from
setting out to create a JSW game with more than 64 rooms unless
there's a very good reason for doing so (to do justice to the
concept of the game).

And I would encourage authors embarking on a new JSW game to think
very carefully about the map they're about to create.

c) The size of the playing field is only one factor which
determines how much time must be spent if someone wants to play the
game to completion, and I would say that it may not even be the
most important one. More important is often the degree of the
challenge posed by the game. So while someone might complete Herve
Ast's "Jet Set Willy in Paris", which has almost 200 rooms (not
counting the final sequence), in two or three hours perhaps, one
might spend dozens of hours struggling with "We Pretty" or
"Goodnight Luddite" which have only 64 rooms each (and never
complete them, if they're not expert players :-) ).

When I playtested Goodnite Luddite on my real Spectrum - without the
benefit of snapshots or the speed-up key (` in RealSpectrum) - I
toilet-completed it in one four-hour sitting (with the help of a
Paracetamol after two hours, I must admit).

And when I playtested Ma jolie - which is completely linear and only
has 20 rooms - on my real Spectrum, it took me six hours!!!

Difficulty is a linear factor in the time it takes to complete a
game; geography can be an exponential one.

So the "time problem" could also be rephrased as follows: "I'm not
really keen on the idea of JSW games being very difficult anyway -
with so many MM/JSW games, and so little time in my life to play
them, I prefer JSW in smoother doses", or, more bluntly: Don't
design so difficult games because I don't have the time to play
them. But such postulate would also go against the spirit of this
Group and against the very essence of Broadsoft, wouldn't it? :-)

I'm not saying that at all. Designing challenging rooms, and working
out whether a room is possible to complete - that's what I'm on the
MM/JSW scene for.

I find most authors' MM/JSW rooms very easy to play anyway, compared
with my own rooms (Mind Control is one of the most challenging games
on a room-by-room basis; Strangel is the most difficult non-
Broadsoft MM/JSW game I can think of).

d) The "time problem" is also related to the question of why we
play JSW games at all, and to the question of "getting results"
versus "spending your time pleasantly". Of course somebody may want
to play games quickly – e.g. a JSW author who wants to see what
other authors have done, but has little time. This person needs
/results/, and needs them as quickly as possible, because what
he/she really wants to spend their time on is designing, but for
this they need the knowledge of the existing games. Their desire to
be able to progress through the existing games swiftly is
completely justified, of course. However, there may be another
person, who just wants to be able to roam around the rooms and
leisurely discover new JSW worlds, perhaps even without really
wanting to complete the game. This person is looking for
/pleasure/, because spending time playing JSW is pleasant for
him/her, so the more time they can spend playing a game,
the more happiness they get. And they could say: Why does this game
have /only/ 64 rooms? Or: Why is this game /so/ easy? – depending
on what they get most of their joy from (exploring large numbers of
rooms or overcoming difficulties).

I felt like the second person you describe when I only had the
original Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.

But I am a completist, and I can't play a new JSW game without
thinking how much I want to complete this game - and them all - even
if I'm only going to do it in the distant future.

I get my pleasure in life from setting myself routines to follow.
Routines which have rigid, predefined criteria. Routines which must
be completed, or kept up with, at all costs. It gives me great
pleasure to establish these routines for myself, and again whenever
I meet one of my goals with 100% success.

In 1996, for example, it seemed perfectly sensible to me to type
MM/JSW games into my real Spectrum, 1024 bytes a day, as there were
only two MM and six JSW unofficial sequels on the Internet by then.
But the Great Willy Games Explosion of 2000 meant that I would have
to type in three or four kilobytes a day, just to keep up with the
release-rate. To be honest, I was relieved when my real Spectrum
died in April 2003.

So nowadays I just have to play them all on RealSpectrum, but even
that is difficult to keep up with as there are now over 70 MM/JSW
games, and I have other (mainly tennis-related) routines competing
for my free time (whose external inputs are also coming in at a much
greater rate than when I established them).

Right now, I'm having to think very seriously about how I might
relax the criteria of my routines in order to rebalance the
priorities of my life. I would certainly like more time for playing
and editing JSW than I've given myself this year, and to be able to
reply to emails/Group-messages at a greater rate than I am putting
incoming emails aside to be replied to later.

Okay, forgive my "massive" post. We won't have much time to
play /any/ MM/JSW games if we have to read such long messages,
will we? :-)

Hehe! :-)

--------------
Reply to Sendy
--------------

1. The geography problem and "The Mystic Room of Many Exits"

I do admit that geography is a problem in "MC". I also think that
there is little that can be done about it at this stage of
development.

You could include a map, either of screenshots, or a text-based
one?

Or even just an overview-map, highlighting the major choice-points?
Such a diagram could complement the description of the optimal route.

My inspiration for "The Mystic Room of Many Exits" came from
Stuart J. Hill's "Utility Cubicles" and the sequence "The Green
Room" – "The Red Room" – "The Blue Room", which makes the
navigation easier between various points of the game. And I hope
that the word "Mystic" justifies to an extent the fact that the
exits take you to unexpected places :-) . Or would "Mysterious"
be better, as it's a mystery where each of the exits takes you?

I prefer 'mysterious' or 'mystical', since 'mystic' is a noun
AFAIK.

Actually, "mystic" can be used as an adjective too - as an
alternative to "mystical".

a bit of inconsistency is sometimes required since English is not
as pure as logic or mathematics. No indeed! :-) Personally I think the only problem is that the rightmost hole
looks like you might be able to drop down onto a lower screen and
come to think of it the hole to the left of that is also a
candidate for luring the player to an unfair death. One possible
solution is to extend the conveyor at the bottom to go right the
way along, blocking up all the holes and 'conveying' you into the
fire blocks if you fall in but don't die from falling.

Yuck.

- The first ledge on the right is OK, because you are
actually /meant/ to step off it and fall down.

Oh, I didn't spot that. In that case, I'd be tempted to just leave
the Sky Landing as it is *shrug*. Preferably, you should make it so
both 'friendly' looking holes are safe to go down, perhaps so that
the second hole down into the clouds should land you on a right
conveyor which then drops you down the chute?

Yes, that would be much better - preferably with an invisible
conveyor from (2,21) to (2,27) in "Falling through the Clouds" [99].

I also think it's cool to have places where there's a risk of
infinite death, provided it's not difficult. It adds a bit of
tension.

I agree. In We Pretty, I deliberately left it possible to get stuck
in "THESA FET YZ ON E" and have to reset the game,
because I enjoyed the thrill of danger at that point (even on a real
Spectrum without the ability to snapshot).

It's okay to do that *once* in a JSW game, where the probability of
your attempt to complete the game ending with infinite death is slim.

What's really annoying is finding loads of infinite-death scenarios
in a JSW game, many of which could easily have been eliminated if
the author had tried all possible exits while playtesting each room.

However, some emulators seem to display all Bright colours as
really ugly and garish. I like zx32 because it seems to aggree with
JSWED about colours :)

So does RealSpectrum, although I use the emulator in full-screen
mode for maximum authenticity - a slightly different experience from
viewing a room in JSWED! :-)

Incidentally, I meant to post the feedback I wrote for WNM to the
club, instead of privately sending it to you :). I was really
impressed by it. I might dig it up and post it if I can find it.

I always prefer to have feedback in this Group rather than in a
private email.

Not a quirky feature at all, but useful nonetheless. I spotted it
in my own "Crazy Milk Drink" while making a picture to send Daniel.

000#x
-----

Not sure if that came out ok. 0 is for air and x is fire, - is the
platform and # is earth. Adding guardians spices it up a bit.

It was this very pattern that caused me to swear out loud when I
realised it couldn't be crossed from left to right, having exited
and reentered "Crazy Milk Drink" at the left!

||||||---------..-------...|||||
...|*......................|*..|
...|.......................|....
|.........................-|$...
|..........................|..-|
|------...-...--------.....|-..|
|..........................|..-|
|..........................|-..|
*........|*............*...|..-|
......---|-................|....
.........|...-.....*......$|-...
|-.......|...>>>>>>>>>>--||-|||.
|........|.................|..||
...-..---|-....................|
........*|...*..../..*.........|
--------|-|-----------------|..|
Crazy Milk Drink!

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

 

 

	Previous message	Back to the Yahoo! Archive home page	Next message
			Next in thread