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using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Message: 6562
Author: jetsetdanny
Date: 22/09/2009
Subject: "JSW: The 2009 Megamix" / An update from Daniel
Hello Everybody,
I haven't posted since 17 February this year, it seems, which sounds like a hell of a long time. This reflects the "kidnapping" by "real life" I have experienced over the last year (positive altogether, but extremely time- and energy-consuming) and may have led you to believe I had abandoned the world of JSW. Well, the good news (for those of you who are still interested) is that I haven't, and although I didn't post, I did put quite a lot of my Scarce Spare Time (TM) into the development of two JSW projects, namely:
- A "side project" whose nature I will not reveal at this point. I can only say that it involves several people and (hopefully) two computer platforms and that I have completed my part of the project. Since it is out of my hands now, I would prefer to wait until some concrete development has occurred until giving further info about it.
- "JSW: The 2009 Megamix", amply described in previous posts. I am pleased to say that I'm very close to finishing what I would call "the hard editing phase", i.e. designing the new rooms, with three or four to go before the work is done. Then it will be correcting some details, introducing some minor improvements in some rooms and thorough playtesting. Then I could release the beta version, which I would present to the Group and ask for comments. However...
I would also like to prepare an easy (or lite) version, since the majority of the new rooms - and there are probably about 70 of them - are mind-bogglingly difficult. Well, some of them, at least, and many are very difficult, especially for less-accustomed players. So there is a clear need for an easy version. But it will take time, too, with the necessary playtesting, etc.
I will also want to design a title screen and a loading screen for the game. That will take time, too.
And I will want to write a proper text file to go with the game. I don't have to do it from scratch - it will be an expanded version of the file included with "JSW: The 2005 Megamix", but I want to do it well, so it will take time again.
To sum up: it is next to impossible that I should be able to do all of this by the end of 2009, given the fact that my current real life situation is still very time-absorbing (and will remain so for a long time to come, if all goes well in the professional sense). But I would very much prefer to keep the name of the game as "JSW: The 2009 Megamix". Switching to "2010 Megamix" is an option, of course, but since the final sequence involves rooms based on the idea of going back to the 1996 Speccy scene and then back to the present, changing to "2010" would ruin my current pattern of double-year room names (e.g. "The Forward Timeporter 2004-05"), call for another room(s) to introduce (and I have no more empty rooms left), etc.
So would it be acceptable if I beta-released the hard version of "The 2009 Megamix" by the end of this year, and then gamma-released both hard and lite version of the game in 2010, keeping "2009" in the name?
Apart from that, some more activity in the Group would certainly be encouraging. If other people, including the authors of the games, are still active in the JSW/MM field, would you mind just mentioning it (or elaborating on it, of course) to give us all a little psychological boost? :-)
Best wishes to everyone,
Daniel
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