Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Archive of the
Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
messages
|
|
|
|
|
Message: 5737
Author: Daniel
Date: 22/03/2006
Subject: Special Editions
Igor Makovsky wrote:
> All these SE... why not to create something new? =( Creating SE'sI am not sure whether there is a generally accepted meaning of "SE"
> may be endless, but creation of absolutely new games is much
> better, to my mind,.. to my mind... I might be wrong, but, I
> suppose, that many people wait for absolutely new games to play,
> rather than a bit changed originals (Second Editions).
in the MM/JSW community. For me it has always meant "Special
Edition", even though in some cases I feel it might be even better
to decipher it as "Second Edition".
Since at some point I am going to create SEs of "Willy's New
Mansion" and "JSW: The 2005 Megamix", I would like to say a few
words in defence of the general idea of Special Editions.
While of course I enthusiastically support the creation of
completely new games, I think that there are many good things about
SEs being released. That's because:
1. One can eliminate all bugs and problems and offer the MM/JSW
community a better, and in many cases completable game at last.
Of course personally I believe every author should playtest his/her
game thoroughly BEFORE the gamma-release, to make sure the game IS
completable. However, if this hasn't happened for some reason, the
release of a SE is a good moment to make up for it.
A prime example of this is the SE of Adam Britton's "The Continuing
Adventures". I wish Adam would create SEs of his other games
("Willy's Holiday" and "The Deadly Mission") to make them
completable as well...
A SE is a good occasion to eliminate non-critical bugs as well. For
example, in "Willy's New Mansion" there are a number of instances
where vertical guardians have their start position set to 0, or
another value which is above their upper boundary. This makes
them "jump" at the moment of entering the room, appearing for a
split second at the top of the screen and then moving
instantaneously to their upper boundary. I believe now that it is
very inelegant, and I will eliminate it in the SE. But at the time
of creating "Willy's New Mansion" I wasn't aware of the phenomenon.
2. One can enrich the game with elements / features which were not
introduced from the beginning because at the time of creating the
original edition the author didn't know about them or didn't know
how to introduce them.
In the SE of "Willy's New Mansion", for example, I am planning to
introduce new music (probably not /really/ new, but copied from some
other game, perhaps the original "MM"). I wouldn't have known how to
do it back in 2004 when I created the game; now I think I know and I
would like to make use of it.
I may also consider introducing quirky features, of which I knew
next to nothing at the time of creating "WNM". However, taking into
account the preferences of many JSW fans expressed in recent
discussion, if I do it, I will probably create two versions
(one "quirky-featured" and the other "non-quirky-featured") in order
to satisfy all tastes :-) .
3. One can enrich the game with elements which were not introduced
from the beginning because the original game engine did not allow it.
That will be a common case with SEs of older games released as
JSW64, I believe.
As a matter of fact, I have a slight conceptual problem with this
phenomenon, because I think it will contribute to inflate the
overall number of existing games - as shown by Dr. Andrew Broad's
excellent list - unjustly. That is because if an author creates a SE
of his/her game in the same engine, it will probably end up beside
the original edition on Andrew's list (as one entry). However, if
the SE is created in a different game engine, even if the changes
are very minor, it will merit a separate entry.
This is a little unfortunate, IMHO, but I don't see a good solution
to it. The only thing I can think of is that on Andrew's /merged/
list such cases could have just one entry. But I don't feel about it
strongly enough to even suggest it.
4. One can make full use of the possibilities offered by the
original game engine.
When I was creating "JSW: The 2005 Megamix" (of which I consider
myself a co-author, because there is a lot material there by other
people), I wasn't aware of the fact that one can have more than 2
guardian tables in a JSW128 game (and that was only last year, I'm
ashamed to admit!). So I squeezed all of the guardians into the
first two tables. Now that I know that there may be a third and a
fourth table (and even a fifth one, theoretically, I think), and I
know there are about 70 free rooms there, I can see that the game
could be expanded significantly. And it grieves me to see so much
unused free memory in the game file. So a large part of the
motivation behind creating "The Megamix SE" will be to make full use
of that free memory, to the enjoyment of the player (hopefully :-) ).
5. One can generally improve the game by improving graphics,
guardian movement, adding new rooms, etc.
That point is quite obvious, and probably one of the main reasons
for creating SEs.
You could probably think of a number of other good reasons for
creating SEs. But I will just say that you could also look at it
from another angle and claim that thanks to SEs:
- the player receives an improved and expanded product, which may
give him/her new joy, partucularly great in case of a game
previously uncompletable now becoming completable.
- the author has the satisfaction of having created /the final/
version of their product, containing features which for various
reasons it was impossible to include in the original edition.
I am sure you understand the last point very well, Igor, because it
took you a long time to develop the Frosya game, starting
with "Frosya the Cat", through the Lite version and up to "Jet Cat
Frosya" :-) (incidentally, I haven't played it "seriously" yet, but
the time for it, according to my schedule, is approaching fast and I
look forward to it very much indeed :-) ).
And again, you all - when you're done with the final versions and
SEs of your games - create new, wonderful JSW and MM worlds!
Daniel
|
|
|