Spider

Yes I agree. Perhaps my use of the word professional was misunderstood. Its very possible and has been done to create many a good game with that editor alone. I think I meant someone who would start with a "blank sheet" as such, and have to write the core etc.

JSWED does work in Windows just fine. Yes you can redesign the sprites but its a bit painful to do but it does work. The other 'editors' tend to be written in ZXBasic and are a bit crude or difficult to use. Professionals tend to write and use their own editors/builders per game as far as I'm aware. I know I would anyway, probably.

I can't recall if there is any form of 'save' in that file at all, to save progress. I think not but memory fades a bit, its a long time but I can still see the "map" where you moved between each game.

I'm beginning to wonder if it would actually run in a X64 environment with some suitable libraries, I'd have to research this.

Thanks Danny. 🙂 Sadly given the way the game is , its not practical to do it as some kind of save snapshot as you progress, at least not without difficulty. I daresay such a tool would exist for MS-DOS however or failing that for Win9x (as it can run iirc in a full screen under that with appropriate libraries) Your comments on MM7 are interesting I had forgotten all about that I'm ashamed to say!

Out of interest Danny, do you know if anyone actually completed the whole thing ? 🙂 ... I think many moons back I may of tried to make it easier by editing the snapshots for a few things but I can't recall. I'll have to dig out the inbuilt cheat.

10/10/84 (the date is permanently etched into my mind) I got my first Spectrum, a rubbery keyed model (all that was available then!) from the local Co-Op, using my own savings. Obviously Horizons was in the box along with an RF/Antenna/Aerial lead, a tape lead and a power supply with no mains plug as was quite normal back then... It came with this 'pack' too: Turned out that was standard fare for Co-Op at least, other stores varied a bit. It was a bit faulty actually and we had to return it a couple of times to get one that worked properly as in would load from tape as the first one was completely deaf, I do remember the first erm 'replacement' had a large dent next to the Enter key, indicating it was not actually 'new'. That went back. I seem to recall we tried it and found half the keys dead but the fact it was obviously 'a previous return' did not bode well One of the very first things I saw once we got a working one (a few days later!) was this... I remember the erm 'excitement' of it drawing the rainbow for the first time Naturally "through the wall" was one game I played a lot and it was if I recall one of the first programs I edited quite a lot once I'd figured out a few things. Incidentally through "hell and high water" etc etc , I have managed to retain probably about 60 or 70 percent of my original 'purchased back then' tapes...

I'll have to have a detailed think about this, to provide a sane sensible idea or two. I'm hoping @jetsetdanny will also have some creativity ideas to assist, as well as others. 🙂

Could you have the rubble slowly disappear perhaps ? As in say every 5 seconds have it drop one pixel row ? 🙂

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.