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
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Message: 6799
Author: jetsetdanny
Date: 12/03/2015
Subject: When this Group was still a Club...
I am currently working on the chronology of the development of MM/JSW games, in order to put it on my new website, JSW Central. I am going through the Group messages one by one, for the first time ever (previously I would just search them for subjects of current interest). After browsing through the first three thousand messages, I would like to share some reflections about things that struck me most about the period since December 1999, when Yahoo! MM/JSW Club was founded by Andrew Broad, roughly up to March 2002, when it was converted to Yahoo! MM/JSW Group. That period is a kind of "prehistory" for me, as I joined the Group in 2004.
It is fascinating to see how much activity there was in those early days, how much enthusiasm and expectation. 313 messages were posted in the Club in September 2000, which to this day remains an all-time high for any given month. Authors would upload screenshots of their upcoming games and ask, "What do you think? Do you like it?". They would demand opinions after the games were released, sometimes even very specific ones (like "Which room did you like best?") and oftentimes they would receive some feedback.
However, even in those days, the number of members who participated actively in the sense of posting messages was very limited, constituting probably around 15% of the Club members at the time when total membership stood at around 70. Already back then this fact was a subject of some "metadiscussions" in the Club. It is worth noting, of course, that afterwards the percentage of active members decreased tenfold, when the membership grew to 700 and still not more than a dozen people posted regularly. Now, I am writing this just as an observation, not criticism - it is far better to have passive members (who, hopefully, are really interested in the subject and thus constitute an important audience) than no members at all.
There were also periods of inactivity, which seemed surprising to some members of the Club at the time. At the end of March 2001, for example, Scottigeuk wrote, "First time I have ever seen this place so dead. What's going on ??????????". In early May that same year Andrew Broad wrote, "No messages for nine days, and for months there had been hundreds a week! What's happening? Is there a problem with logging into Yahoo!, or have we said all there is to say about MM/JSW now? ;-)" and then he added, "I'd better work on some new ideas to kick this club back into life...".
The interesting thing is that the JSW-related activity, in the Club and in the sense of individual game creation, seems to have ebbed and flowed similarly for various active members. There were periods when most of them declared a temporary break from JSW matters, and then they would all start posting again, as if having experienced a new, simultaneous infusion of creative energy and interest.
From the perspective of close to 15 years, it is strange to read about people's repeated worries about an upcoming lack of internet access or storage limitations of 15 MB. The parameters of the computers used at the time, mentioned in some posts ("Pentium II 300", "200 mhz 64 ram" or "PII 450Mhz, 128 Ram, 3d Video Card with 16+ Mb"), are also a curious reminder that technology has come a long way since.
Several active members of the Club (and then the Group) have "always" been there, since the very beginning (Andrew, John, Sendy, Edward [soa1000], Philip, Jet Visy). It seemed only natural to me that they were there when I was reading their old posts. But it was also very interesting to read, a year or two into the Club's existence, the very first posts of people whom I came to know, when I joined the Group in 2004, as already accomplished JSW authors, namely, Igor Makovsky and DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!!!!. It was also interesting to read the input of members who were not active any more on the scene when I joined it, such as Gawp and Scottigeuk (who haven't "reappeared" much "in my time") or Erix1, Stuart and Adban de Corcy (who have "reappeared").
Another thing that caught my attention was that in those early days a relatively significant portion of posts had to do with the development of non-Spectrum JSW game engines, much more than in later years, I think.
The huge qualitative development of the MM/JSW scene for the Spectrum since the year 2000, with the technical knowledge of the workings of the original game engines, the understanding and application of quirky features, expanded possibilities offered by John Elliott's new game engines, etc. is very evident and impressive when browsing through those old posts. There is one particular aspect, though, which I would like to emphasise. Reading the old messages made me realise stronger than ever that JSWED had not always been as I came to know it in 2004 when I made "Willy's New Mansion" using version 2.0.3. It used to be a much less powerful and versatile tool than it is today. What's more, many people had been using Spectrum-based editors before they switched to JSWED. So if today somebody wanted to compare games from various periods, it would almost seem unfair to compare games created using today's JSWED and those made with so much less efficient and less easy to use tools (at least I imagine them as such, I have never edited JSW games in a Spectrum-based editor).
And, just to finish off, it is nice to see that this Club/Group has always been filled with a very positive, welcoming and friendly atmosphere. I am sure it will continue this way, even if it is not exactly overflowing with hundreds of messages a week any more...
Daniel
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