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Message: 6487

Author: andrewbroad

Date: 27/10/2008

Subject: Re: Ma jolie – Game-engine bug

 

[Re. the bug in MM when jumping off the top, or falling off the
bottom, of the screen]

Daniel wrote:

>
> Is Room 7 (or the guardians in Room 8 in the Software Projects
> engine) affected also when the bug occurs in one of the later
> rooms?

Yes.

> If the answer is yes, it could lead to the creation of an
> interesting concept in terms of Manic Miner games' completability.
> A game could be "ever-completable" - you can go through the set of
> 20 rooms indefinitely, or "once-completable" - you go through the
> 20 rooms, but in room, say, 13 the jumping-off-the-top-of-the-
> screen bug occurs, due to which when you get to room 7 (or 8 in
> Software Projects version) again, when you tackle the rooms for the
> second time, you cannot progress any further.

Or maybe the bug could make it no longer completable in one way, but
make it completable in another way.

I don't recall seeing a MM game where you can jump off the top, or
fall off the bottom, of the screen in Room 7, and thus see the bug
arrive while you're in the room (you'd have to lose a life first, in
order to refresh the current-room buffer from the primary room-data).

I could have done such in MM4's "Contamination", but the bottom row
is full of Earth-cells (ditto re. MM:Hobbit's "Flies and Spiders").

I really want to make at least one more MM48 game so that I can
exploit POKE 37499,201 (turns all Fire-2 cells into Trap-cells), so
perhaps I could exploit the jumping-off-the-top-of-the-screen bug
there.

I've thought about doing a MM48 version of James Bond to illustrate
the differences that JSW64 makes, but it may be too restrictive to
the look of the rooms.

I might just do an original MM48 game - something surreal, along the
lines of Ma jolie (I was going to call this new game "lemonescent",
believing it to be a mondegreen of Evanescence until I realised that
there was actually a girl-group called Lemonescent).

>>> Now, a suggestion for an utterly-sophisticated game designer:
>>> design a game in which, if you solve room A in the traditionalway,
>>> two rooms later (in room C) you encounter an obstacle which makes
>>> the game impossible to complete. However, if you complete room A
>>> causing the jumping-off-the-top-of-the-screen bug, the obstacle in
>>> room C is there no longer, because the bug has made it disappear
>>> :-) .
>>
>> That would be way unfair, especially as the changes caused by the
>> bug are permanent!
>
> Strictly speaking, it doesn't really matter whether they are
> permanent or not, because (e.g. in case of "Ma jolie") since you
> cannot go back to the room where you jumped off the top of the
> screen and the bug occurred (room 5) from the room where it stopped
> you from continuing (room 7), you have to reload the game anyway.

Most players would restart the game rather than reloading it, unless
they realised that the bug had struck - which they may well not,
especially if they hadn't seen Room 7 uncorrupted.

> The same would happen (inversely, i.e. you couldn't go back to use
> an alternative approach so as to later benefit from the bug's
> positive effects) in the proposed game design.

In this case, it would suffice to restart the game rather than reload
it.

>> Such challenges would be better achieved using patch-vectors, such
>> as the one in Geoff Eddy's _Willy Takes a Trip_ (IIRC),
>> where collecting all the items in one room causes a wall to
>> disappear in another.
>
> It would serve no purpose in Manic Miner, since you have to collect
> all the items in one room anyway in order to progress to the next
> one.

Your point is valid for a pure MM game (completely linear, and you
can't progress to the next room without collecting all the items),
but of course, with the advent of JSW64, we're starting to see a lot
more hybrid MM/JSW games, and possibly move closer to The Megatree's
concept of "in/out rooms" (isolated MM caverns reachable via portals
in a JSW-style environment - at least that's my understanding).

Even in MM48, you can bypass having to collect a cavern's items by
giving the portal a FLASHing colour-attribute, as in MM4's "Students
Union" [sic].

> It would be an interesting extension of the concept of switches in
> JSW64, though, wouldn't it? A switch which causes something to
> happen, but not in the same room, but another one.

Like the Trip Switch in JSW II.

> This could increase the level of difficulty considerably, because
> if you couldn't progress in one room, you would know that perhaps
> you have failed to do something in another room, but you wouldn't
> know which one - you wouldn't know where you failed.

That could get *very* frustrating.

> And concerning the unfair challenges, I think that an otherwise
> great game with a very unfair challenge is "Monty on the Run".
> I may be wrong, but as far as I remember from my gaming days on a
> real Spectrum (Timex, actually) over 20 years ago, I used to reach
> a spot beyond which I could never progress. I have always had a
> strong suspicion that this was because at the start of the game I
> didn't choose the right items as Monty's equipment. Am I right in
> thinking that in "Monty on the Run" the initial choice of the
> artefacts affects the progress well into the game?

I remember playing Monty On The Run quite a bit in 1990 (the only
Monty game I've played other than Mutant Monty, which is like Manic
Miner without gravity). A JSWish game right down to the colour-
cycling items, but pretty frustrating for the reason you mention, and
also for the seemingly random squashers that you have to walk under.


[Re. "The Hot Room" [1] in Ma jolie]

>> I believe most players would have to go all the way round again,
>> and I'm happy to let them believe that, (snip)

I've been thinking about this: I might change my mind, and edit the
cavern to make the player do it your way. That's a lot more
interesting than going all the way round again.

I'm not sure what I'll call the new version of Ma jolie, though. I
don't really want to call it the Final Edition (à la Jet Set Emily),
because I never know when I might want to edit it again. So my
options are "Third Edition" (inconsistent with "Special Edition"),
"Special Edition 2008", or to add version-numbers retrospectively
(thus the original edition would be v1.0, the Special Edition 2006
would be v1.1, and the new edition would be v1.2).


[Re. "The Mad Ramblings of Longbeard" [5])

>> I'm not sure I like the look of this, and I'll have to meditate on
>> it before I decide whether to close this loophole or let the player
>> who discovers it feel clever.
>
> LINKING THIS WITH:
>
> Andrew's comment concerning room 01 ("Water Under The Bridge") of
> his game "Party Willy" (in the document "ROOMS_PART1.TXT")
>
>> The bridge has been elevated, separating the static-nasty blocks
>> from the conveyor, and is now a Promised Land - although I have
>> made it possible to jump up for the item in order to make people
>> feel clever about themselves.

Blimey - I never expected this comment to come back to haunt me over
four years later! :-o

> CONCLUSION:
>
> Am I right in detecting a slightly condescending attitude to the
> player here? An air of undue superiority, perhaps? An omnipotent,
> omniscient author who magnanimously allows the player to have
> his/her little moments of objectively unjustified joy?

I wouldn't presume to place myself on the spectrum of superiority.
I just think it's my prerogative as an author to command my territory
with absolute authority. So if I design my game in such a way as to
make a player feel clever, stupid, joyous, surprised or frustrated,
I might end up admitting that I designed my game in that way (or even
left it that way after an unintended loophole was brought to my
attention) - with no intention of asserting any external notion of
superiority.

>> I'm optimistic that I will be able to redress the balance between
>> tennis and MM/JSW in 2009.
>
> In favour of MM/JSW, I sincerely hope. The MM/JSW community needs a
> bigger share of your free time, Andrew!

I am sure that tennis will continue to demand the lion's share of my
Copious Free Time for years to come, but surely, for MM/JSW, it can
only get better than it has been in the first ten months of 2008.

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

P.S. darnkitty.com (home of Flash Manic Miner and Cheese, Louise!)
is back - yay! :D
I really missed it in the last 16 days.

 

 

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