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Message: 5897

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 17/08/2006

Subject: Re: The three most difficult MM games in existence

 

Daniel wrote:

2. The three most difficult MM games in existence

I would like to offer some comments about Andrew Broad's games,
mainly concerning their level of difficulty.

a) General considerations

While recording the walkthroughs, I completed "Ma jolie" for the
first time ever, and I completed "Neighbours - Allana Truman" for
the second time (the first time back in March 2005). Both of them
were great challenges, indeed, and devoured many hours of my time,
but I consider it time well spent :-) .

I had also previously completed Andrew's other MM games. I believe
that there is a significant gap in the level of difficulty between
the first three ("Manic Miner 4 SE", "Manic Miner: The Buddha of
Suburbia" and "Manic Miner: The Hobbit") and the later two.
Each of the first three represents a challenge of one evening for
me, while to "Ma jolie" and "Neighbours - Allana Truman" I had to
dedicate about three days each, several hours per day.

I remember completing _Ma jolie_ in about six hours on my real
Spectrum (i.e. without snapshots). It is definitely the hardest of
my first four MM games (MM:Hobbit is harder than MM4, which is
harder than MM:Buddha).

In the text file accompanying "Ma jolie" Andrew says:

"Ma jolie is the hardest MM/JSW game ever written, and the hardest
that I ever intend to write! ;-) I just want to show, once and for
all, how hard Manic Miner can get!"

The first part of this statement must have certainly been true at
the moment of release of "Ma jolie". However, in my opinion Andrew
didn't stick to his intention, because "Neighbours - Allana
Truman" is more difficult than "Ma jolie".

Wow! I certainly didn't set out to make it so, but once a room comes
out hard, I don't like to make it any easier than necessary. Since I
never played MM:N-AT on my real Spectrum (apart from the first
room), I can't make a direct comparison with the difficulty of _Ma
jolie_, which I have never played seriously under emulation AFAIR.

Moreover, nowadays "Ma jolie" comes third on my personal scale of
difficulty among all games, because Darth Melkor's "Manic
Scribbler" is more challenging, too.

I must admit that Manic Scribbler does my head in. I started to
playtest it in January, got as far as "Surfing on chaos" [10], but
every time I open my snapshot to continue, I think "which way?" and
then "not today!" :-o

Every Broadsoft MM/JSW room is written to a plan, so it's pretty
obvious (at least to me as the author) in which order you have to do
things. But because the rooms in Manic Scribbler don't seem to be
based on plans, the element of disguise is amazing for a game where
the meaning of every individual cell is visually clear (except those
Crumbly cells with items in them).

I would say that it's a close contest for the most difficult game
between "Neighbours - Allana Truman" and "Manic Scribbler". "Ma
jolie" is definitely in the third place. "Manic Scribbler" is
the most difficult game in many aspects, IMO, but the challenges
in "Neighbours - Allana Truman" are more diversified.

Without playing all three games back to back, I can only imagine
that Manic Scribbler is the most difficult game, even though it uses
a narrower range of quirky features.

"It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge
of the Force, but by our skills with a lightsabre."
[Count Dooku, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones]

[Re. sizes of RZX files]

If the above assumption is correct, "Manic Scribbler" would have
to be described as the most complicated game (233 KB),
with "Neighbours - Allana Truman" coming second (206 KB) and "Ma
jolie" coming third (158 KB). For comparison: "Manic Miner 4 SE" -
129 KB, "Manic Miner - The Hobbit" - 102 KB (!), "Manic Miner -
2000" - 131 KB and the original "Manic Miner" (played by a
different person though) - 134 KB. Sounds like someone lost a lot of lives! ;-) 3. "Ma jolie" made easier

I have searched the archive and couldn't find any reference to
what follows, but I can't be 100% sure that it wasn't mentioned
before. So, please, let me know if it was.

I would like to offer one discovery which makes the room
"Wiredlife" (14) in "Ma jolie" much easier. Contrary to the
suggestion in the text file (did you want to make the player
suffer unnecessarily, Andrew? :-) ), you do not have to make your
way all around the room after you have collected the items, in
order to get to the portal. After collecting the second batch of
items (the three at the middle level of the room), you can just
jump twice over the blue horizontal guardian

You don't even have to do that...

and then make your way up the same "ladder" which you used to get
onto the middle level, that is, where the magenta vertical
guardian is moving.

Aargh! I can't believe I let that one slip through the net! Perhaps
a remix of "Wiredlife" is in order, if not a Special Edition of _Ma
jolie_ :->

4. "Neighbours - Allana Truman" made just a trifle easier

a) Room "Aubrey Sci-Fi Convention" (14)

In the text file accompanying the game Andrew says: "The central
item is protected by a crumbling-floor block which you must get
rid of so that you will be able to jump up for it from below. This
is best done by walking close behind the green letter as it sets
off to the right."

I'm not sure if Andrew meant to say "to the left" at the end of
the above paragraph,

"right", if you wait for the green letter in the cell-column next to
the leftmost ILB.

but I would like to offer the following discovery:

If you perform the first step described by Andrew in the Tips for
this room ("You start inside a wall. Jump right out of it to
collect the first item") immediately, you have enough time to drop
down onto the central item before the green letter approaches it
from the right. You can then jump straight up over it, and after a
split second (or immediately, perhaps, I'm not sure if it is
necessary to wait at all

It /is/ necessary...

) follow it to the left. Then you can jump over it (the green
letter) after it has started on its way back to the right. It
is a tight jump, because you have to watch out for the red letter
above, but it's doable. If you perform this manoeuvre
successfully, you will then have plenty of time to do the rest of
the room and kill the Kong Beast, too.

It's been well over two years since I wrote that, but I have a
feeling that I was aware of this loophole, and chose to keep it to
myself. Unfortunately it's not always possible to get a room's
constraints to 'add up' to make the players solve the room the way I
would like them to.

b) Room "Harold's Allotment" (17)

In the text file accompanying the game Andrew describes two ways
of doing this room after taking the top-left item and landing on
the middle platform between the white and red HGs. He calls
them "The Easy, Inefficient Method" and "The Difficult, Efficient
Method". He also says that there is an "Easy, Efficient Method",
which he leaves "for the cleverest players to discover..."

Well, I don't really aspire to such a distinguished title, but
I /have/ passed the room in a different way - I'm not sure whether
it's the third method Andrew meant, or still a different one.
I did not collect the top-left item immediately, but I relieved it
of the crumbling floor and then jumped to the right onto the ledge
below the portal, and then again to the right onto the next one.
Then I relieved the rightmost item of its crumbling floor (perhaps
unnecessarily, but it fit in with the timing anyway), jumped to
the left and collected the top-left item from below, and then did
the rest of the room (see the RZX recording if you're interested).
It left me with enough air to complete the room comfortably, and
it did not involve any extremely difficult manoeuvres. Congratulations: you've discovered a fourth method! :-) 5. The future

So Andrew, I look forward very much to your future MM games, and I
hope that they will not be more difficult than the latest two :-) .

So do I.
At least AMJT is a contrast to these insanely difficult games! ;-)

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

 

 

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