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Message: 5592

Author: Igor Makovsky

Date: 25/02/2006

Subject: Matthew Westcott from "comp.sys.sinclair" wrote:

 

EXTREMLY INTERESTING MESSAGE!
UMM: Quirky features or quirky bugs?

P.S. Do not miss words of what waits for all of us!! =D


Andrew Broad wrote:

> The general consensus in the MM/JSW community is that Igor

Makovsky's

> Ultimate Manic Miner is indeed brilliant. Admittedly I myself have

only

> had a quick, casual go so far, but it was enough to see that the

game

> deserves full marks for novelty, amazing graphics, and a unique
> atmosphere.

I've had a quick play now (cheers for the link, Dunny) and I have to
say
I find some of the criticisms here rather harsh. I'm surprised that
people here, of all places, are so intolerant of attribute clash...

I'm especially impressed with how Igor Makovsky taken an essentially
linear game
and gone so far to give it at least the illusion of non-linearity
(although admittedly John Elliott's engine hacks can probably take a
lot
of the credit for that). The idea of building 'cut-scenes' out of
actual
MM levels was a really nice touch - sure, the sound of collecting
items
and the brief flash where you could see Willy entering a portal gave
away how it was done, but in my opinion that just added to the
appeal.
Sort of like being able to see the strings in Thunderbirds, I
guess...


At risk of gushing on about a topic I know very little about, I would
venture that what Igor Makovsky has actually done is created the
first
ever example of machinima <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinima> on
the Spectrum, using the MM engine as his medium in place of the FPS
engines that machinima creators would normally use.


However - and I think this is the key to why the hardcore JSW/MM fans
are raving about it while others are being left cold - behind all the
neat stuff, it's a bit lacking as a game. I'm currently stuck on
Attack
Of The Mutant Telephones, which I guess is the first real puzzle of
the
game. I've killed myself several times jumping at random bits of
screen
thinking "well, maybe that's a cunningly disguised portal, or at
least
platform I can land on". The only possible exit seems to be on the
bottom left of the screen, boxed in behind a blue platform. I know
just
enough about MM/JSW to suspect that this might be...

> an Innocent-Looking Block (i.e. an Earth-cell at head-height
> that dumps you through the platform below)

...and if so, I'm giving up on the game right now. This sort of thing
makes me want to grab everyone in the MM/JSW community by the neck
and
bang their heads together screaming "IT'S NOT A FEATURE, IT'S A
FUCKING
BUG!!!"

Honestly, the reason Manic Miner is such an enduringly brilliant game
is
that you can pick it up instantly - the game mechanics are intuitive.
It
may just be a bundle of pixels, but those pixels translate into real
world metaphors - jumping over deadly spikes, riding on conveyor
belts,
collecting treasure. There is no real world metaphor for an
Innocent-Looking Block, so if you build puzzles based on them, you're
breaking a fundamental rule of game design.


(And before anyone points out that there's no such thing as an
amoebatron in the real world either - the difference is that you
don't
need to know what an amoebatron is to understand that it's something
nasty to be avoided.)

> But UMM is certainly something special in the development of the

MM/JSW

> field, and in graphical terms it will be a very hard act to follow.
> Anyone who has written a MM/JSW game will appreciate the amazing
> achievement of Igor Makovsky.

I can't argue with that, and even though I'm by no means a MM/JSW
guru I
can appreciate the clever stuff he's done with the engine. But when
it
comes to expecting me, the player, to exploit the quirks of the game
engine myself - that's where it all falls down.

 

 

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