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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 5899
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 18/08/2006
Subject: Re: Willy's Hoard
Firstly, I'd like to say how impressed I am with the technical
innovations in Willy's Hoard. At first glance, it looks like the
work of a seasoned Z80 machine-code programmer! :-)
Secondly, the Quirky Spoiler PNG-file is an awesome effort - it must
have taken endless hours! I would never have time to do such myself.
I must study it with a view to ideas for Advanced MM/JSW Trainer...
Daniel wrote:
>It's a controversial issue, whether Henry's Hoard should be
> 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.
recognised as a JSW48 game, considering how heavily it is based on
the JSW game-engine and room-format.
There are two main objections against recognising it as JSW:
1. It was never claimed to be a JSW game when it was released -
unlike every single game in the JSW, JSW128 and JSW64 categories.
2. The file-formats are so complicated that I never got round to
preparing the data-sheets to type Henry's Hoard into my real
Spectrum. In fact, the current revision of SPECSAISIE doesn't even
recognise HENRY85.TAP and HENRY86.TAP as valid TAP-files!
> In the latter part of this creative process I grew used toI find my pocket-calculator very handy for converting between denary
> 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.
and hexadecimal (why does no one ever say "bicimal" or "hexadenary",
I wonder?). When I create the POKEs page for my website, I plan to
give all POKEs in both bases.
> P.S. A note to Dr. Andrew Broad:The way I see it, increasing the number of rooms is just a single
>
> 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.
patch, and does not therefore warrant an elaborated type-
descriptor. Having a symbol for every single patch would be a bit
over the top...
Geoff-mode and Erix1-mode do warrant elaborated type-descriptors,
because the game-engines are very heavily modified from the standard
JSW48 engine - although not so much as to warrant their own
categories à la JSW128 and JSW64.
We're not at the stage where we can just slice out the individual
patches that convert the standard JSW48 engine to Geoff-mode or
Erix1-mode, so that they can be applied individually to arbitrary
JSW48 games.
> b) Apparently there is a spelling mistake on the World of SpectrumI'm not convinced that it should be "Bigos", even though this
> 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) :-) .
apparent typo occurs in two separate places in the 1985 version.
The Crash review calls him "Biggs", which seems like a perfectly
plausible English name to me. So I'm going to leave it as "Biggs"
unless I see evidence for "Bigos" which is more than 50% convincing.
Why do you think that his first name is Andy? I didn't spot this
name by following any of the links from WOS. For all I know,
"A. Biggs" could be the Alan Biggs who wrote the Progen utility
(Gensoft, 1988).
To answer my own question, the scrolly on the MicroHobby tape
says "ANDY BIGOS" - it's a different scrolly again from the 1985 and
1986 versions!
And is this one different occurrence of "BIGOS" too many to be
coincidence?
"Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance,
twice is coincidence, the third time it's enemy action.'"
[Ian Fleming, _Goldfinger_]
> c) It seems to me that only two, not three versions of "Henry'sIn light of this, I have updated my local copy of my List of MM/JSW
> 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.
Games to say "At least two different versions of Henry's Hoard
exist". But I do remember downloading a third different version from
1987, which my Mac took to its grave in 2003!
I guess the third version was probably the one from the MicroHobby
tape, which starts by saying it's the 1986 version, but then says
copyright 1987 in the scrolly.
I hope to upload my updated List of MM/JSW Games by the end of this
weekend, but I still have 39 messages left to process, and other
commitments...
--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
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