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Message: 5868
Author: Daniel
Date: 18/07/2006
Subject: "Willy's Hoard" released!
I am happy to announce the release of a new JSW game: "Willy's
Hoard". Please download it from:
http://xa.bi/jsw/wlhoard.zip (2,26 Mb)
The basic game package includes low-quality versions of the map
and "The Quirky Spoiler". You can also download a high-quality
version of the map from:
http://xa.bi/jsw/wlhrdmap.zip (5,19 Mb)
and a high-quality version of "The Quirky Spoiler" from:
http://xa.bi/jsw/wlhrdqs.zip (2,18 Mb)
I have not yet updated my JSW website, kindly hosted by Xabier
Vazquez, so there isn't any web page devoted to "Willy's Hoard" yet,
just the above-mentioned files. I will update the website in a few
weeks' time and let you all know about it.
"Willy's Hoard" includes the majority of the rooms from the 1985/86
game "Henry's Hoard", by Martyn Brown and Andy Bigos (Alternative
Software Ltd), transferred to the "real" JSW engine and expanded
significantly. Therefore, it should always be credited, apart from
me, to Martyn Brown and Andy Bigos.
The game was designed using Jet Set Willy Editor (JSWED) v. 2.2.9 and
2.3.1 by John Elliott. A part of the job was done using Warajevo ZX
Spectrum Emulator v. 2.51 by Zeljko Juric and Samir Ribic. A crucial
element for the creation of the game was Jonathan Graham Harston's
extension of the JSW48 engine which allows to create more rooms than
the original 64. Please see also the "Acknowledgements, Thanks and
Credits" section below for other credits.
I. Novel Contributions
Before you get discouraged by the fact that "Willy's Hoard" (which I
used to call my "side project" in previous posts) is not an entirely
new game, let me mention the novel contributions it makes, to the
best of my knowledge, to the JSW designing scene:
1. It is the first JSW48 game to feature 75 fully-designed rooms -
25% more than in the original "Jet Set Willy"!
2. It is the first JSW game to feature a room which looks different
depending on how many lives you have when you enter it, and which
changes when you lose a life inside it.
3. It is the first JSW game in which in some of the rooms the player
sees *real* items which are impossible to collect. However, he/she
can collect *precisely these items* - the same ones - in other rooms,
as he/she progresses through the playing field. Moreover, in some
rooms you can only collect a part of the items, and you have to
collect the remaining items in other rooms. There are 256 items to
collect, but as they progress through the game, the player will
normally see between 302 and 305 items in total!
4. It is - to the best of my knowledge - the first JSW game in which
the player has to pass through walls using ropes.
5. It has an additional screen with a message, after the Game Over
screen.
6. It has the longest title screen tune ever found in a JSW48 game.
7. It features a graphically-advanced title screen.
Please see point V.b) below for more details, or refer to the text
file accompanying the game.
II. Background Information
Ever since I first played "Henry's Hoard"
(http://www.worldofspectrum.org/games/h.html), I was impressed by the
atmosphere and quality of its rooms. I always felt sad that these
fine rooms did not form part of the "official" Miner Willy canon,
which for me is Dr. Andrew Broad's list of released Manic Miner and
Jet Set Willy games
(http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/list.html).
Since the original "Henry's Hoard" uses a heavily-modified JSW game
engine, it is not included in any of the JSW game categories Dr.
Broad currently recognises (MM, JSW, JSW128 and JSW64), and it is
only mentioned in the "Other Games of MM/JSW Interest" section. I
thought that this was an unfortunate situation, and so I decided to
change it, by transferring most of the rooms from "Henry's Hoard" to
the classic JSW48 game engine.
As I progressed with this task, I decided to make the layout of the
game more "natural", i.e. make sure that it can be depicted
graphically with no rooms overlapping and with no "illogical" jumps
(like exiting one room and appearing in another one, located far away
on the map). This entailed expanding the game by creating brand-new
rooms. I realised that the 64 rooms available in the original JSW48
game engine were not enough to accomplish this task, and so I decided
to use J. G. Harston's extension of the game engine, which allows
more rooms (http://mdfs.net/Software/JSW/JGH/). Finally the game has
75 rooms, including 49 rooms transferred from "Henry's Hoard" and 26
new ones. I would say it has a "95% logical" room layout - no rooms
overlap, but there are two cases of "illogical" jumps between rooms.
I chose the first incarnation of Miner Willy - the original sprite
from "Manic Miner" - for the protagonist of the game. Playing as
Miner Willy gives a slightly different feel to the rooms
from "Henry's Hoard", in my opinion, and it also makes the game more
difficult, because Willy is 4 pixels taller than Henry.
The work on the game was also an exercise in manual hacking for me,
or as close to it as I had ever come. I used the memory editor of
Warajevo 2.51 to apply J. G. Harston's extension and place the beyond-
the-64-range rooms in the right place in memory (I designed them with
JSWED and then transferred them in Warajevo). I also applied some
modifications to the game engine invented by other people (such as
Andrew Broad). Then, after studying disassemblies of JSW48 and Geoff
Mode, I felt confident enough to move some other data around, in
order to create new effects such as the graphically-advanced title
screen, the extra-long title screen tune and the additional screen
between the Game Over screen and the restart of the game, for which I
used modified code copied from L. Marwick's "Spaceman Willy" and a
modified message from the original "Henry's Hoard".
In the latter part of this creative process I grew used to operating
in hexadecimal rather than decimal values, and I started using
JSWED's Hex editor, which I found to be in some ways more handy than
Warajevo. When I do similar editing in the future, I will most
certainly use JSWED's Hex editor again. However, I will still need
Warajevo (or another program) to convert decimal values to
hexadecimal if I want to apply POKEs given in denary.
III. Acknowledgements, Thanks and Credits
I would like to give credit and express my sincere gratitude to:
- Matthew Smith, for the original "Jet Set Willy".
- Martyn Brown and Andy Bigos for the original "Henry's Hoard".
49 rooms in "Willy's Hoard" were copied from "Henry's Hoard" (some
with slight modifications). 26 rooms are of my design (please see the
text file accompanying the game for details).
Most of the sprites in the game were designed by Martyn and Andy as
well.
- Jonathan Graham Harston for his extension of the JSW48 game engine
(http://www.mdfsnet.f9.co.uk/Software/JSW/JGH/), and for his editor
DefRoom 1.24, which I used as an auxiliary tool in the first stages
of the creation of the extended version of the game.
- John Elliott for his JSWED
(http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Jsw/jswed.html), which was my main
tool in creating the game. I used v. 2.3.1 to easily transfer the
rooms from "Henry's Hoard" to a JSW48 game file, and v. 2.2.9 during
the rest of the creation process.
John's analysis of the HH game engine
(http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Jsw/henry.html) was also useful to me,
e.g. to copy the "after-a-loss-of-life" effect from the
original "Henry's Hoard".
- Zeljko Juric and Samir Ribic for their Warajevo ZX Spectrum
Emulator v. 2.51 (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html),
which was an important and valuable tool in creating the extended
version of the game.
- Richard Hallas and Philip Bee for the in-game tune. I copied it
from Philip's game "Jet-Set Willy Ivy" (1998), but as he explains in
the text file accompanying the game, the tune - Strauss' "Radetzky
March" (as featured in "Technician Ted") - was arranged by Richard
Hallas.
Moreover, Richard's document "A Miner Triad"
(http://www.hallas.net/Software/spectrum.htm) was a valuable aid for
me in redefining and restructuring the music.
In turn Philip is the person who, according to the information given
in Dr. A. Broad's list of MM/JSW games, in April 2000 discovered the
fact that "Henry's Hoard" plagiarised "Jet Set Willy" by using a
modified game engine.
- Dr. Andrew Broad (http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/),
for the second part of the title screen tune, which I copied from his
JSW48 game "Party Willy (Part 2)" (2004); the tune is "A Wolf at the
Door" from Radiohead's 2003 album "Hail to the Thief" (the first part
of the title screen tune is Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" from the
original "Jet Set Willy", so it was certainly programmed by Matthew
Smith).
Andrew also deserves credit for some of the modifications of the game
engine (see the "Technical Notes" section in the text file
accompanying the game) and special thanks and acknowledgement for his
outstanding role in the development of Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner
games and the JSW/MM community.
- Leslie Marwick, the author of the 1985 game "Spaceman Willy", from
which I copied the code which allowed me to create "the final screen"
(after the Game Over screen and before the restart of the game).
- Geoff Eddy for the disassembly of Geoff Mode
(http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/jsw/geoff_dis.html) and JODI (Joan
Heemskirk and Dirk Paesmans) for the disassembly of the
original "JSW" (http://jetsetwilly.jodi.org/poke.html) - they
provided me with information which allowed me to make various changes
to the JSW game engine.
- All of the authors whose sprites and graphical elements were used
in the game (see details in the text file accompanying the game).
- Scott Watson (scottigeuk), for the title of the game. According to
information given in Dr. Broad's list of MM/JSW games, Scott began
editing a Henry's Hoard game called "Willys Hoard" (27th January
2001). Since there had been no news of the game ever since, I decided
it was safe to "intercept" the title, which seemed the most logical
choice for my project anyway. I contacted Scott (who, incidentally,
is the author of some great JSW and other games for the PC -
http://www.scottige.co.uk/) and he confirmed that he had no objection
to my using the title, since he wasn't working on the game (or any
other Spectrum games for that matter) any longer.
- Vaggelis Kapartzianis, for his ZX Spectrum Emulator (v.
1.03.98.0211) - also known as ZX32
(http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html), which was my main
tool in playtesting the game.
- The Ramsoft staff for their Real Spectrum emulator v. 0.97.26,
which I also used to playtest the game (http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org/).
- Xabier Vázquez, for hosting my JSW website at http://xa.bi/jsw.
- All of the authors of JSW/MM games and all members of the JSW/MM
community - especially of the Yahoo! JSW/MM Club - for sharing the
interest in and fascination for Miner Willy :-) .
- My four-year-old son Michael, who is a great source of joy and
inspiration for me in all my activities :-) .
IV. The Story
As a part-time hobby, Miner Willy designed a great computer game. He
lent it to his friend Henry, a lousy little dwarf, who plagiarised
Willy's effort: he copied the game engine invented by Willy,
introduced some changes to it, and published his own game with which
he made a fortune. He bought a lot of jewels and other precious
artefacts, and he kept them amassed in a hoard in one of his homes,
while many of them got scattered around the neighbourhood.
When Willy discovered that he had been tricked, he was really pissed
off with Henry, and he decided to reclaim the wealth which should
have been his. So he went to pay Henry a "friendly" visit to see what
he could do about the whole thing.
After a night of heavy drinking (the dwarves' idea of hospitality,
you know), Willy woke up in Henry's other home. It was quite late,
10.45 am already. Henry wasn't around, so Willy set out to explore
the dwarves' domain and its neighbourhood in search of the now
legendary hoard.
If you guide him skilfully over the torturous path to a magic castle,
through an aquarium and other weird and quirky places, he will
certainly find the treasure and will be able to escape before furious
Henry catches up with him!
V. The Game
a)
"Willy's Hoard" is a JSW48:JGH engine game. It features 75 rooms,
with 256 items to collect. You should visit all of the rooms in the
game to be able to complete it successfully. Theoretically the game
can be completed without losing a single life (in practice, if you
save snapshots on the emulator or are an extremely skilful player).
In the final playtesting I completed it with a toilet-time of 2.51
p.m.
Some of the rooms in the game feature challenges based on the so-
called quirky features of the game engine. I prepared a special
graphical document ("The Quirky Spoiler") to help players unfamiliar
with the subject of the QF, by showing Willy's proper positioning for
all of the difficult jumps throughout the game and some other hints.
It should make it possible for them to complete the game relatively
easily, and I hope that it will actually interest some of them in the
QF and make them appreciate the fact that these features (considered
by some to be bugs) contribute an additional dimension to the JSW
gaming! :-)
"Willy's Hoard" belongs to a sub-genre within the JSW world of games
in which you progress along the road and can only go back several
rooms at a time; you cannot move freely around all of the playing
field. "JSW IV: Willy's New Hat" (probably 1985) is the earliest
example of such a game, to the best of my knowledge, and the DrUnKeN
mAsTeR!!!'s "Bizarre" (2005) is the latest example.
If you reach the end of the playing field and discover that you
haven't collected all of the items, you can go back up to "The Canal
Bank" and climb the rope - you will jump to "Hoover's Hollow" and be
able to search for the missing items from the beginning. An
alternative (though not recommended) way of getting back to the
previous parts of the game is the WRITETYPER cheat, which can be
activated in the room "Henry's Antics (Hoard Minus One)".
Poke 35899,0 will give you infinite lives, as usual.
I have playtested the game extensively and I believe it to be bug-
free. However, if you find any problems, please let me know!
b)
The novel features include:
1. 75 rooms in a JSW48 game.
This is possible thanks to the use of Jonathan Graham Harston's
extension of the classic JSW48 engine.
2. The room ("MICROBYTE's Messy Attic") which looks different
depending on how many lives you have when you enter it, and which
changes when you lose a life inside it.
This happens because a part of this room's data is the area in memory
where the guardian data for the current room is written (between
#8100 and #8147). As a matter of fact, I cannot explain the
connection between the guardians in the current room and the number
of lives you have - why should the guardian data change if you lose a
life? - but that's the way it seems to work.
At some point during the designing process I had a version of this
room in which you couldn't get out of the room - because of Fire-
cells in the top row which made it impossible to exit downwards -
until you lost a life (because then the upper part of the room
changed and the lethal Fire-cells were not there any longer). I was
tempted to apply this as an additional difficulty, but then I decided
against it, because my concept of elegance in a JSW game includes its
being completable without losing a single life.
3. Seeing *real* items which are impossible to collect (most notably
in "A Vision of the Hoard").
All of this is possible thanks to applying J. G. Harston's extension
to the JSW48 game engine, but /without/ modifying the code that deals
with the item table so that it would allow 7-bit room numbers, as J.
G. Harston suggests should be done.
4. Passing through walls using ropes (in "The Drop" and "The Quirky
Enclosure").
This follows my idea mentioned in the Club in message # 5790
(http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/manicminerandjetsetwilly/message/
5790). As a matter of fact, I used the technical file I posted in the
Club ("Rope-Wall-demo.sna") as the starting point for designing "The
Quirky Enclosure".
5. The additional screen after the Game Over screen.
The message contains a slightly modified text from the Game Over
screen of the original "Henry's Hoard". I hope that it adds some of
the original flavour to the remake.
6. The longest title screen tune ever found in a JSW48 game.
It is 202 bytes long (plays for about 59 seconds), is entirely
different from the in-game tune and has no random sounds. This is
more than twice the standard JSW48 title screen tune (99 bytes). The
longest title screen tunes so far in a JSW48 game, to the best of my
knowledge, can be heard in Andrew Broad's games "We Pretty" (1999)
and "Goodnite Luddite" (2002) - they are 172 bytes long and play for
about 51 seconds. The play routine first plays the title screen tune
proper, then the in-game tune and then the program data following
both tunes until it hits an FF.
7. Additional graphical elements on the title screen.
This was made possible thanks to manual hacking. It was inspired by
Philip Bee's "Jet-Set Willy (again)" (2005), but is more developed.
c)
The .zip file with the game package includes:
- The game file in .tap format.
- The accompanying text file.
- A text-based map of "Willy's Hoard" in .pdf format.
- A picture-based map of "Willy's Hoard" in .png format.
- "The Quirky Spoiler" in .png format.
The .zip file contains low-quality versions of the picture-based map
and "The Quirky Spoiler". If you have a good Internet connection,
please download high-quality versions from the addresses given at the
beginning of this message.
VI. Technical Notes
Please refer to the text tile accompanying the game (the "Technical
Notes" section) for a detailed description of the modifications made
to the game engine.
VII. Final Remarks
a)
I am in an awkward situation, because a large portion of "Willy's
Hoard" comes from a commercially-released game ("Henry's Hoard") to
which I have no rights whatsoever. It is a fact that the authors of
that game (who should obviously always be recognised as co-authors
of "Willy's Hoard") evidently violated Matthew Smith's rights by
copying large portions of the original JSW game engine, but this
provides no justification for me.
My justification is - and I really look at it from an emotional, not
legal point of view - that I have used M. Brown and A. Bigos's
material for purely non-commercial purposes, to contribute to a
passion which links many people from various countries, and I did it
out of admiration for and fondness of the rooms they created. So I
hope that if "Willy's Hoard" ever falls into their hands (and I would
be the first one to send it to them, if I knew where they were), they
will appreciate my initiative of adapting and re-using their product,
and rather than fret over legal issues, they will be happy that "The
Hoard" lives on and can be enjoyed by new people in this new era of
emulated ZX Spectrum gaming :-) .
Please remember that some elements of the game may be copyright of
other authors. This is the case of the tunes, for example - the
second part of the title screen tune is the copyright of Broadsoft
(2004). Please refer to the "Acknowledgements, Thanks and Credits"
section in the text file accompanying the game for details.
As far as my "own" rooms and sprite graphics are concerned - I will
be quite happy if you use them in your own games, or while creating
games for other computers. I will appreciate it, however, if you let
me know about it.
b)
If you get stuck and frustrated and begin to think that after all it
is impossible to complete the game, or pass a certain room, or
collect an item without losing a life, let me know about it, and you
will soon receive a reply with the solution :-) . Taking into account
my experiences up to date and the number of people who have actually
written to me, I think that I can reasonably promise that I will
respond to EVERYONE. It will be very rewarding for me to know that
you have played "Willy's Hoard", so please, do let me know about it -
even without any specific comments :-) . The biggest gratification
and encouragement for anyone designing free games is to know that
someone else has played them! :-)
So download, play and enjoy! :-)
Daniel
P.S. A note to Dr. Andrew Broad:
a) I would like to kindly suggest that "JSW48:JGH" would be a good
abbreviation to describe the game on your merged list, since the most
notable feature of the game is that it has more than 64 rooms, and
it's thanks to J. G. Harston's extension.
b) Apparently there is a spelling mistake on the World of Spectrum
website in the name of one of the co-authors of "Henry's Hoard". His
name (according to the game files themselves, both versions) is not
the properly-Anglo-Saxon "Biggs", but "Bigos", which (probably by
coincidence) looks very familiar to me, because it's a word for one
of the delightful, typical Polish dishes (boiled sauerkraut with meat
and sausages) :-) .
c) It seems to me that only two, not three versions of "Henry's
Hoard" exist, one from 1985 and the other from 1986. Three
versions used to be listed on WoS, but now they have corrected it and
only two remain.
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