Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
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Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
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Message: 725
Author: sendy_baby
Date: 11/09/2000
Subject: Re: Ooops forgot a few.
> q1. What is a good size for a first game?
> Willys time machine currantly stands at
about
> 30 rooms.
one thing i've noticed is it's
not so much how many *rooms* you do, as how
*much*
you cram into the rooms. this of course depends on
your style so i'd
say whatever feels
reasonable.
> q2. I've noticed that when some of my
sprites
> move, they move jerkily.
> This became
particularly apparent when I
> changed willys sprite in
a room?
> Any Ideas ?
take a look at
the original jsw sprites, in particular, the
horizontals.
you'll see that they move 2 pixels per frame. you should
emulate this when
you design your own sprites. it
doesn't have to be exact, but the more exact
it is,
the more pleasing the end results. of course, jerky
sprites have
their places...
> q3. What is
concidered acceptable and what is not?
> An example is
that I used the colour trick
> to put more than
one convayor in some rooms.
> In one room ( I
wont say yet :) ) I have a
> Hidden convayor (
looks like other blocks )
> one block long and if
you fall you die.
> Is that concidered a good
addition to a room
> or just plain mean
?
it's okay if you have enough time to react to the
situation and save
yourself, in my books. if the trap
leads to the loss of one life, then it's
not that
bad, but if it leads to an infinite death, then that
kind of thing
would peeve me off. especially if
it's gratuitous. (it's a lazy way for the
author to
bump the player off :). basically traps are good if
they allow a
millisecond or so for the player to
react, and do not lead to infinite
death.
oh
and the old 'going down an innocent-looking hole and
falling to your
death' scenario is completely
unacceptable in my books :). there is
something like that
in wba but it's very near to the beginning, the
hole
*looks* dangerous (because you fall quite a way before
the screen flicks),
and you fall 20 screens down
to your death, collecting several objects
and
getting some great 'promised-land' views of the different
areas as you go
:).
> q4. Infinate death
scenarios ?
> I have not set any, " Traps ", but
there are
> ocasions where it is possible to fall
from a
> ledge and get an infinate death
scenario.
> I have tried to limit them without
ruining
> the rooms but some times leaving the floor
out
> of a room is nescessarry.
> So do they
creep in a lot in your games ?
you have several
options here:
1) put some invisible fire blocks in
the places where you may fall out of
the screen to
your (infinite) death.
2) put fire blocks along
the *top row* of the screen over the parts
where
you can fall through. this has the same effect as
1.
3) make it fairly easy not to fall through. quite an
obvious solution but
sometimes the only one
:)
> q5. I was thinking about doing a 20 screen
mini
> game after wtm where you controll maria
trying
> to get back into the house because Willy
fired
> her for kicking him out all of the time
:)
> Has anyone done anything like that yet
?
maria might be hard to animate as she's so fat and
might not have room to
move in the frame. i believe
erix1 is making a game starring maria, but i'm
not
entirely sure if maria will be the 'heroine' of the game.
presumably so.
sendy (warming up for making a start
on the jsw faq :)
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