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Message: 6432

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 17/05/2008

Subject: Re: JSW64 MM: James Bond

 

Daniel wrote:

>
> 1.
>
> I hereby certify that Andrew Broad's "JSW64 MM: James Bond" v.1.0
> can be completed without any technical problems. If you are
> interested, please see my RZX walkthrough of the game hosted by the
> RZX Archive (http://www.rzxarchive.co.uk/j.php#jsw64mmjamesbond),
> but you'd better not watch it if you want to have a try yourself -
> which I highly recommend, because "James Bond" is a delightful
> challenge :-) .
>
>
> 2.
> --- In manicminerandjetsetwilly@yahoogroups.com, andrewbroad
> wrote (in reply to Daniel's question when he got
> stuck in room 16 "GoldenEye"):
>
> > But I see that it is necessary to give you a clue.
> (snip)
> > It's so simple you wouldn't believe it. That is why you fail.
>
> Thanks for the tip, Andrew! After perhaps more than two hours of
> helpless jumping attempts, it took me about two minutes to discover
> the solution when I started meditating on your words (in front of
> the screen). Its simplicity was the reason for my delusion, indeed!
> I will refrain from considering myself an idiot on this account,
> but I will admit you are a design genius :-) .
>
> The rope in this room provides a double quirky challenge, then. The
> one you face when you start playing this room should be considered
> a classic, I believe. Has it ever been applied before? Have you
> included rope challenges of this kind in Advanced MM/JSW Trainer?
> (the legendary "Broadian Rope Trick" :-) ) and in the pertinent
> documentation?

No, but I just added a quick note to my alpha-copy of trainer.html
(both the web-page and the game itself are way too far from quiescent
states to upload any time soon).

Actually, I'll have to go through JSW64MM:JB with a fine-tooth comb,
extracting new material for my Quirky Features page and for AMJT,
because I know I invented/discovered quite a few novel features when
writing JB!

Broadsoft Lifts open up a whole new avenue of quirky features - even
if they may be ironed out in later versions of the patch - as
demonstrated especially in the brilliant (if I may say so
myself) "Casino Royale".


> 3.
> Daniel wrote:
>
> > I have also considered using the strange feature appearing at the
> > left edge of the screen, due to which you can make JB walk to the
> > right in mid-air along (above) the upper left platform.
>
> Andrew wrote:
>
> > Wow, I don't believe I've seen this feature in "GoldenEye" before!
>
> Yep, it's a great quirky feature, because you can actually walk in
> mid-air as far as the edge of the platform (I tried it in an edited
> game file with the black guardian removed). But as soon as you jump
> (straight up or to the side), you fall down to the normal level,
> and cannot recover you "altitude" any more, unless you go back to
> the left edge of the screen.
>
> If applied one row lower, this feature could be used to create a
> beautiful challenge, I believe. The player would have to discover
> it in order to be able to walk in mid-air to jump (one-way only)
> over a guardian he couldn't normally jump over. Beautiful, isn't it?

It would certainly be cool to exploit this deliberately and usefully,
unlike in "GoldenEye".


> I am not sure whether this feature has been discussed or documented
> before. I think I have seen it in "Manic Scribbler". If I remember
> correctly, you have to use it on the lower left of "Isaiah 36:12"
> (7), but it's not as spectacular there, because you don't walk in
> mid-air. I have no idea what causes it, but it's very interesting.

That room is certainly a disorienting experience, but a quick test
suggests that you're right about /having/ to use it!


> 4.
> The quirky feature in "Casino Royale", which allows you to collect
> the two upper rightmost items - that's a novelty, too, isn't it?
> Can we count, at some point, on a description of how / why it
> works, Andrew?

I don't have time to look into it technically and precisely right
now, but basically, when you walk off the edge of a screen in MM (and
hence JSW64MM:JB, where the edges have been patched to behave as in
MM), your attribute-position becomes misaligned from your pixel-
position; they become realigned when you jump, even if the jump is
blocked immediately by an overhead Earth-cell.

So, before you jump, your pixel-position may coincide with an item,
but it won't be collected until it collides with a white-ink colour-
attribute.


> 5.
> When you restart the game after completing "Casino Royale", you
> have 186 items collected, and you continue to collect items. What
> happens when you have collected 256 items (somewhere in the middle
> of the second run through the game, I imagine)?
> Of course this question concerns all JSW64-MM games, it's not "JB"-
> specific, is it?

Since the on-screen item-count is updated as the denary string that
is printed, it would just increment to 257 and onwards. The internal
integer (unsigned byte) that is used to determine when Maria
disappears would presumably wrap around, but that is of no
consequence to JSW64:MM games that don't feature Maria.


> 6.
> I looked hard and wide for possible loopholes in the game and I
> thought I would fail. However, "This organisation does not tolerate
> failure." So there is one thing I found which, judging by the
> design and other elements of the room, may be a way to outmanoeuvre
> the author's "vicious" intentions for the player :-) .
>
> It is in the room "The World Is Not Enough" (18). It *might* have
> been the author's intention to force the player to solve the upper
> part of the room first, then climb down with a jump through an ILB
> (the yellow block under which the rightmost of the three central
> items used to be) and then face the challenge of the fast-moving
> cyan horizontal guardian and the black guardian above it in order
> to get to the lower part of the screen. However, this is not
> necessary, since after collecting the right topmost item (as the
> last one in the upper part of the screen) you can simply jump up,
> at the right moment, and find yourself at the bottom of the screen
> where the yellow HG is moving.
>
> Were you aware of this, Andrew, or is it a simple thing ("so simple
> you wouldn't believe it" :-) ) which eluded your playtesting?

It's an unintended loophole, which I certainly intend to close for
v1.1 - along with the one in "Thunderball", where a last-minute
change (to make it possible) resulted in you being able to go right
from the bottom at the start.

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

 

 

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