Spider

Welcome 🙂 Yes I recall it well, I had the CD back then. It was quite good to combine them all with a map too, I think I even tried to modify some of the snapshots. There is an inbuilt cheat but memory fades on what it is. I'm not sure given the way its built how you could easily run it in a 64bit environment because of the libraries (iirc, I've not looked as I write) , apart from either a virtual install of say 95/98 (unsure if it will run properly on XP32, it probably will) or via DosBox which although I've found the latter a pain myself its quite good. 🙂

Will provide my 'story' tomorrow 🙂

EDIT... Replied to wrong topic!

Great story! Mine arrived October 84 I've recounted the story before so I'll not do it again unless its wanted. 🙂 I do recall having to use a (terrible) ancient 12 or 10 inch BW TV at one point, the one with the single dial tuning on that kept drifting to due a dirty potentiometer track at a guess.

As usual, thank you for the comprehensive updates Danny. 🙂

I think that machine may be a mockup, even if you disregard the key layout which is done for the title/cover. It looks vaguely to me like the Oric case part with similar to QL keys, I can't recall if the Tandy TS ( ? ) had rounded keys.

Thought I'd have a blast at this today (again) although a while back it was more the editing features. Played through the "traditional almost" caverns , until I got to 22 "Melting Iceberg" it gets rather tricky! I have an open .rzx for now.

Now what would be good , have those colour cycle like objects (but still deadly on contact) perhaps have them alternate between red/green/yellow or something ? Two colours might be easier.

Local B+M have had a Christmas Isle for a good month I think! 😮 I'm afraid I only have the few tunes from last year still 😞 They are higher up in this topic but I can repost them. I did fix one damaged .tzx if I recall correctly. Now that is an excellent idea. Perhaps it is something you could start to do before "that time" allowing you to develop ideas and thoughts/designs ?

Thanks. 🙂 I wanted to do a mini video but Zero did not appear to support that, at least the version I had to hand. I think from memory Spin does work quite well for it (really) but you need a control file loaded. 🙂 Not sure why the loader is as it is, to be fair its the sort of thing I sometimes do 🤣

To quote from the Central Cavern FB group: https://highriser.itch.io/manic-miner-trick-or-treat A couple of pics from both versions: Plays nicely enough. Based on the Bug-Byte code. I used the cheat to quickly get a few screenshots. I was not able to get ULAPlus to function properly in Spectaculator nor ZXSpin with either version so I used Zero to get the pictures.

Looking forward to seeing the results! 😄

That's quite good. 🙂 I'm impressed.

There's a maps topic (all version all machines) in the JSW forum that has slowly been growing. Check it out here I'd not hugely considered adverts or reviews although that could be done. Unless you wanted to zip them and put them into a download ? Occasionally with a download I'll include an inlay but that is quite rare I'll admit. Mainly as for other platforms its not that easy to find them! 🙂

Thanks both 🙂 Appreciated!

Indeed. I still have that 40th Edition (ZX Anniversary) to try to do something constructive with although that is very much a quick mini game.

Thank you for the detailed explanation and the attached examples, allowing it to be seen "in action" as such.

As the original JSW (and MM) both keep some data in lower memory (contended memory to be exact) such as the attribute and screen buffer data, assuming one relocated this to uncontended memory, that being > 32768 would there be any noticeable speed increase in the game itself ? I'm only basing this on the assumption that contended memory might be slower, although with interrupts disabled I'm not sure. Sorry. I suspect any increase would not be noted, I do realise that the change to LDI vs LDIR would and does offer a bit of a boost though.

Sinclair Programs , March 1985 . This is actually my only surviving magazine (and its only half complete) from 'back then' . Posts in some FB groups about Spectrum charts over the years made me think about this, and bear in mind MM was released in 83 and JSW in 84 , and here we are a third of the way into 85 (a long time in computing!) and both JSW and MM still feature highly in the reader charts... EDIT... Yes this is a pic from the actual magazine rather than from an archive somewhere.

Thanks for the detail. 🙂 I was aware of most of what you'd said although I'm hugely appreciative of it being posted. Most 'used' versions of "JSW" for the CPC are actually JSW2, its when you look at the inlay you see this, as indicated. I did as you mention have a lot of trouble finding JSW1 for the CPC and yes it is only on the compilation , same Speedlock almost as the ZX version of this compilation. There's actually this single extracted tape file here, both 'as is' and a very slightly tweaked version I did of it (thank goodness its an early 'easy to break' Speedlock) 🙂 I did conclude but was not sure that the CPC version of JSW1 was never a stand alone release. Random thing: I did 'cut down' the ZX version of JSW2 to match the map of JSW1 although I never finished it, I think this was about 6 or 7 years ago now. Mainly to play JSW1 with the 'engine' of JSW2. EDIT... Here's mine 😉

You first 😉 Warehouse and/or Solar Power Generator Actually, if you can perfectly memorise the key timings it would be possible, ultimately that is really all (sort of) an .rzx is doing.

I've quoted just part of it, not because the rest is uninteresting, on the contrary it is very interesting however this does explain why (to me) JSW2 is slightly tricky to edit at least without some tools. I'm surprised Manic Miner used all of the memory even with the 64K unit, although I do not know anything about the CPC hardware other than it is probably a lot more powerful than it appears to be. I'm thinking along the lines here that certain screen modes may be 'eating' a portion of the available ram, rather than that having its own dedicated shadow ram. I do think there was enough detail and amusement in the released JSW2 , I do wonder what could of been added actually. In particular use of " [ " and " Banned " are funny. 🙂 I'm not sure what the missing '4 rooms' from the original were intended to be, I've heard a lot of things over the years, the most "popular" one was an expansion of the MegaTree, how true that may be is another matter. I'm not asking about that though really. Some of the exits may give clues perhaps.

Well, almost changed all of them. My memory fades a bit! 🙂 , map of it for the sake of completeness. Had I had it to hand at the time of my post the other day I'd of attached it then. I'll not go into the tricks in it because that is not relevant here to this topic.

If the above do not play, two .zips in .mp4 format are here: jsw2_tape_p1.zip jsw_tape2_p2.zip The 'disc' version tour may follow over the next few days. I was unable to climb one area after a few attempts so to avoid a huge video I left that out.

A tour of the mansion, in two videos! I did not visit it all although hopefully enough is shown. It should be noted to speed things up a little bit I did use an immunity cheat. The specifics of this are discussed elsewhere on this site as it is a source of confusion. There is no updated 2021 version of this, unlike JSW1 and ManicMiner however there are in effect two JSW2 versions (excluding any modified ones) of these: 1. A 'tape' version which was by many copied over to disc for convience 2. A 'disc' version The differences are large. Note: Only the 'tape' version is shown here in two individual 'tours' The tape version (which is also on disc but was never officially released as a disc) has a very cut down mansion, very few rooms are present from the original but there are a few new ones and some changes such as no 'Tree Root' , although most if not all of the Space Station and Planet areas are there, the exception here being 'secret passage' , this version is designed to run as one as the BBC graphics mode eat a fair chunk of memory leaving perhaps 20K or less for the game itself. Sprites are also limited in that less are defined likely due to memory constraints. The disc version is fully featured and closely mirrors the ZX version, it uses the disc to load in portions of the map as you play and/or will attempt to load it into 'sideways' memory if this exists. This feature does not work too well on emulation however on a real machine a few years back I'm sure it did. The layout is slightly different however most if not all of the ZX map is there, mansion too. As above, this is not shown here, only the 'cutdown' tape version. There is a lot of confusion about these versions, but that is essentially the difference. Should be noted I did not play too hard. I did run emulation at about x1.5 speed however the video may not play back at that. Please note that the sound out of sync is down to the emulator, the raw .avi also suffers with this sadly. Part One