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Message: 5930

Author: Alexandra

Date: 13/10/2006

Subject: Re: Death TV v0.3... Andrew's third playtest

 

> Previously I wrote:
> >
> > I guess for my third playtest I'll get through [23] using a
> > harmless-guardians POKE, and see where that portal takes me...
>
> To the top-left corner of Room 0. So I must teleport again, this
> time to [42]...

As you may have noticed many of the rooms and connections require much
more work ;)

> > [42] "": I'm not sure which World this untitled room belongs to,
> > but it reminds me very much of a room from Robin Burrows's
> > _Platform One_ <http://www.tilemap.co.uk/platformone.html>.
> > I haven't actually played it yet - only seen it from the top
> > (after going down from [53]), and it's not possible to descend.
> > The colours look wrong: Cell-class 3 (Earth) should surely
> > have red PAPER, and Cell-classes 1 and 7 (Water) should have green
> > INK for an attractive 'Megatree' atmosphere.

This room was just an aimless sketch really, I may include a 'nature
world' with caves, trees and hills to explore, but there probably
isn't going to be enough space. I may use it in another game.

I agree about the colours, actually it started off as a Megatree clone
room and I think I was trying to give it a Winter theme - perhaps in
anticipation of a "Cold World". I can't remember my exact intentions.

> Compared with DTV2_taster of 13th May 2005, this room appears to
> have taken a retrograde step!
> Cell-class 4 (Ramp /) has the same colour-attribute as Cell-
> class 7 (Water), so the Ramp / cells that you see in JSWED turn into
> Water-cells in the game.

I didn't notice, probably because the room's never been playtested yet.

> But I do think the following design-pattern in the v0.3...
> revision is kind of neat:
> ||...../
> |...../.
> |..../..
> ||../.WW
> ||./..WW
> ||||||/\

I probably won't be using it in this instance, but I'll file that
pattern away for future reference.

> [17/29] "Rescue Esmer... I mean... Monty?": The hidden entrance to
> this room in [4] is unfair - I only discovered it after I had
> concluded that [17] was unreachable and teleported there! I don't
> think it's fair to have tricks like this in a JSW64 game where there
> are too many cell-classes to use process of elimination (in a
> JSW48/128 room, I try to account for all 6 cell-classes - I find 6
> much easier than 8).

It was supposed to be more secretive than fair. Like an 'easter egg'
which might be discovered later on. I'm tempted to change perhaps one
pixel in the graphic so that it becomes an observation test.

> I'm not sure I like the effectively-invisible item behind the
> teleporter from [17] to [29]. That said, it's a nice (pair of)
> room(s) overall.

That may be there to produce a sound effect, I can't remember. This
room will change depending on whether I can have items in the game
that don't need to be collected or not.

> [29] in v0.3... is a completely different room from "" [29] in
> DTV2_taster, which uses invisible trampolines and fast Crumbly cells
> to simulate the kind of effect I'll be able to have when I implement
> vertical conveyors (the room is rather tedious, but it always feels
> a shame to get rid of a MM/JSW room).

I too felt the tediousness which is probably why the room is gone. I
can't think of all the rooms I must have made and then deleted. I
wonder where they all go?

That room was a good example of an interesting idea which doesn't
translate well to an actual room.

> [18] "A Very Deep, Dark, Dank Place": An atmospheric but rather
> pointless room as it stands. Going left gives you a Promised Land
> view of [6], so an item at the far right of [6] would reward you for
> crossing the top-left of this room.
> The right half of this room is unreachable AFAICT. The top-
> right looks like it should connect to something sensible. I hope to
> see these loose ends tied up at some point.

It's going to be a room shared by two Worlds (namely, Miner World and
Nightmare World). I love it's atmosphere and the way I anticipate it
fitting into the overall scheme.

> [37] "Adding Insult to Injury": The way to reach this room from [13]
> is devious! I must admit I didn't spot it in the second playtest, as
> I had flicked a switch you're not supposed to flick...
> "Adding Insult to Injury" is a very difficult room to avoid
> sacrificing a life in, as there are three points at which you must
> leave Crumbly cells to escape. At first I was glad it wasn't a No
> Kamikaze room, but now I think it /should/ be, as there's much more
> satisfaction in solving it properly than in collecting all the items
> and then realising you can't get back out.

It's a really hard room. I'm undecided as to whether I should tick the
"Sadistic designer" box :)

> What is a "LOJCR"? ;-)

A very cramped LOSER :)

> [37] "" in DTV2_taster is a completely different room from "Adding
> Insult to Injury", and again it would be a shame to lose it.

I don't remember what was there but I'll go back and see if I can
resurrect the old room. I may have deleted it for a good reason, though.

> [41] "Miner World": Seems to be a meaningless copy of an old
> revision of [13].

I remember that but don't remember how it came about.

> [25] "": Obviously a work-in-progress, with its basic design and
> lack of proper connections. The right half is unreachable if you
> come in from the left, so I teleported to the top-right in order to
> collect both items.

I admire your determination to get all the items - if I knew you were
going to attempt that I might have tried making it a bit easier :)

> [24] "A Great Big Pit Of Slime To Jump": Obviously a work-in-
> progress, with its crude graphics, IDS below, and the way you can
> get trapped between Earth-cells and have to reset the game.

I think this was a test room for something or other, and I have no
idea what the name comes from. At one stage I obviously had some
specific idea that I felt warranted a room-name but I'm damned if I
remember.

> [27] "Machine World": I like the way you have guardians passing
> through Water-cells, finely avoiding pixel-collision, and collecting
> the top-right item was fun for me (rushing through a swarm of
> guardians until you reach the place where you can wait safely).
> Unfortunately if you collect the rightmost item first, then it
> is impossible to collect the leftmost without sacrificing a life, as
> the slow HG turns into a fast HG when you collect the last item in
> the room. This is unforeseeable and therefore unfair.
> The left half of the room is unreachable from the right, and
> the connections there don't make sense anyway.

I'll look into the unfair death. I can't even think why I would want
to make the guardian speed up after collecting the items, apart from
just adding a bit of variety.

> [28] "Machine World": I had a devil of a job trying to crack this
> room of Eugenes, triggers, opening walls and No Kamikaze. It's
> unreachable AFAICT, so I had to teleport to the bottom-right to
> collect that item and escape, then to the top-left to collect the
> items there and escape, and I still don't feel like I solved it
> properly.

I just tried it and I managed after a few goes. Either there's some
kinda error in the version I uploaded which is now corrected (which I
doubt, but it's possible), or you've overlooked something. It does
require a chain of perfectly optimized moves which may not be entirely
obvious.

> [30] "Machine World": The item at the bottom-right feels redundant,
> as the player is almost certainly going to go down and collect it
> immediately after collecting the middle item. The bottom-right item
> would be better placed at the bottom-left, to reward the player for
> getting there.

Noted.

> [31] "Machine World": The guardians at the right remind me of the
> pan-lights in _Bruce Lee_, only slower and closer together.

Me too :)

I do love making 'machinary' out of sprites. It's a fascinating field
of guardian design.

> [32] "Machine World": I entered Machine World by teleporting to the
> top-left of this room, although in retrospect I should probably have
> started at the bottom-right, in order to experience all the
> constraints of this room in terms of the switch and opening wall.
> This room has two traps to avoid: jumping onto the ledge below
> the middle item forces you to sacrifice a life, and getting stuck
> below the magenta HG in the top-right forces you to reset the game -
> these two punishments are probably commensurate with the stupidity
> of falling into these traps, although a time-limit (e.g. an air-
> supply) would be nice in the latter case.

Good idea about the AIR. I might put it in. I'm just not sure if it
will feel right in the context.

> It's also quite clever how the HGs and VGs in the middle square
> cross each other's paths, but remain in phase so that they never
> collide (although maybe this would be desirable to impose the
> aforementioned time-limit!).

I think that only looks right in a game obviously designed with Quirky
Features in mind. In this case it would simply look like I was
careless in defining the guardian paths.

> [34] "Machine World": Going right from this room results in infinite
> death in "" [36].

That's an exit I just opened up. Originally that little exit to the
right was blocked off.

> [36] "" (the room formerly known as "Machine World"): In v0.3...
> this is an almost blank room where you just fall to your infinite
> death on entry (left from [28] or right from [34]). In DTV2_taster,
> however, it's a proper playable room from where you can go up to the
> bottom-right of [32] - it would be a shame to lose that.

I remember feeling that this room was weak. I'll keep the connection
scheme for sure but I doubt I'd bring back that room unless I change
my mind.

> [38] "Machine World": It's nice to see that you can still have
> invalid arrows in JSW64. But what's the point of this room?

I think it's a half-existant early duplicate which has been scribbled
out, or it may have been a test bed for the arrow.

> [40] "Machine World": I like the way you have to move with the

> [43] "Nightmare World": I teleported to the left-hand side of this
> room (going left just takes you to [0], like so many exits in this
> game).
> There's more to this room than meets the eye, with Crumbly
> cells having the same appearance as Water-cells, and an invisible
> conveyor-ramp which is presumably intended as the entrance to this
> room.

Yes :). I thought it would be spooky to be lowered in from the sky.
Note that the two upside-down guardians are supposed to be the "Elm
Street" sign - the rooms were copied from the JSW128 version of Death
TV but the guardians point to different sprite pages now.

> [44] "Good Lord! They Caught You At It": At what? This room is just
> a near-copy of "On top of the house" from the original JSW.

I had a monitor screen sprite which showed Willy's head moving up and
down one pixel. It was supposed to depict paranoia, showing that
cameras are watching you wherever you walk. But then I realized the
'bobbing' was too drastic for it to look like walking... So I thought
of this room title. Basically if I can get it to 'work' it will be a
joke that Willy's been caught on tape sleeping around :)

> [51] "Pick a Death": What's the point of this room? It looks like it
> could be the Death TV world-selector, but it lacks any sensible
> connections, or teleporters...
> The room-name seems to have more meaning in the DTV2_taster
> revision, which has five gaps at the bottom of the screen.

I've been toying with different ideas for a World-Selection cluster.
This was the last idea I had. The rows at the top are supposed to be
the 'audience' but I couldn't avoid making them look very crude.

> [57] "off": Making the player try to pass the yellow & green VGs
> whilst wearing that diving-costume that cannot stand in one cell-
> column is a cruel torture, and I have to conclude that it is
> probably impossible, and had to collect the items by cheating.
> After collecting the leftmost item, you can either walk into
> [58] and fall to the room below, or jump left into [58] and face an
> infinite-death scenario. I can't find a way from [57] to [58]
> without cheating.

I'm almost sure I had tested these parts but it probably needs tweaking.

> [59] "off": The bottom two items can't be collected without
> cheating, which is a shame because it looks like you should be able
> to collect them by jumping over Fire-cells and landing /inside/ the
> adjacent stand-onable cells.

Again I thought it was possible but it's been ages since I looked at
it and I may have to alter it.

> [60] "off": A good 'sunken ship' atmosphere, but it could do with
> one more item to completely hide the skeleton that walks behind them!

That would then create the possibility of an unfair death, though ;)

> [73-76] "water world" are completely different rooms in DTV2_taster
> from in v0.3... The old rooms just kill you on entry due to
> guardians colliding with the scenery. They look like they might have
> been part of an animated teleporter-sequence?

Just junked roomes IIRC.

To be continued...

Sendy

 

 

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