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: 5995
Author: Daniel
Date: 19/12/2006
Subject: "where's woody" - a new map and Daniel's review
1. I spent a lot of time this year playing (and "processing") Sendy's
game "where's woody". Some of the results of this process (a complete
walkthrough of the game) can be downloaded from the RZX Archive:
http://www.rzxarchive.co.uk/games.aspx?letter=j#jswwhereswoody
(file size: 977 Kb).
Another "where's woody"-related product I would like to offer to the
JSW community is a text-based map in the PDF format (321 Kb), which I
have just uploaded to my folder in the Files section of the Group. It
should facilitate moving around the huge playing field of the game.
Madmekon's visual map of "where's woody" was extremely helpful in
creating the text-based version. It can be dowloaded from:
http://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=JetSetWilly6&sort=0&part=4&ath=
2. As a general comment about the game I would like to just say that
if every JSW game is like a separate world, "where's woody" is like a
mini-universe. It is as huge as a JSW game can ever get (256 playable
rooms, although you will see some of them only in infinite-death
scenarios), very diverse and fascinating to explore. There are dozens
of rooms there which I think are truly beautiful; too many to list.
It is an incredible effort, and it boggles my mind how much time
Sendy must have devoted to it.
The only specific criticism I could express about the game is the
item distribution. While in some rooms there are several easily-
collectable items (like in "the junction with a function" or "crude
oil"), other rooms do not need to be visited at all in order to
complete the game (like the whole "Love" sequence, several rooms to
the right of the "entrance hall" if you use the invisible teleporter,
the whole sequence starting with "up the garden path" and others).
Moving some of the items would change this state of things easily -
unless it was Sendy's intention not to make the player visit all (or
most) of the rooms, but leave some as an additional space, fun to
explore but not necessary for the completion of the game.
3. Sendy asked in the past about which rooms the Group members would
recommend for the SE of the game (which would use a JSW64 game
engine, if I remember correctly, so the number of rooms would have to
be reduced to 128). There are a lot of rooms which I would consider
essential to any future edition of "where's woody", but I don't think
it would make sense to list them all, because they would probably
have to be modified substantially in order to fit into a new game
layout. It would be hard to imagine for me to leave just half of the
current rooms, and "where's woody se" is not one of Sendy's
priorities for the moment anyway, is it?
4. I managed to complete the game with a toilet time of 2.10 pm (or
thereabouts). On Speccy Spoilers there is a snapshot with the ending
of the game with a toilet-time of 11.15 am
http://www.speccyspoilers.co.uk/games.html#J
While I would concede that the time I achieved in my RZX walkthrough
could still be improved visibly, it seems hard to imagine that anyone
could complete "where's woody" at 11.15 am without any cheating. Is
the contributor of that ending file among us, and does he /she have
any comments on this?
Incidentally, the toilet time I achieved (still possible to improve)
shows that it is not true that a 256-room game is geometrically
bigger than a 64-room game. The average time to complete a 64-room
game (when you know it well, I admit) is 8.30 am, I would say. For
256 rooms it should be - when multiplied arithmetically - 1 pm. I
think it would be possible to bring "where's woody" close to this
result (however, I must admit that if some items were moved, as
described above, it would increase the time needed to complete the
game).
Anyway, congratulations, Sendy, on this classic JSW128 game, and I
look forward to your future releases!
Daniel
|
|
|