Spider

The air bar upon contact I actually thought about for a project a long time ago, but (as it was easier) I found it simpler in my case to merely add more air to it, and set black/black for the 'next row down' so you'd not actually see the extra air. A small additional tweak to the ending point also helped. It gave the seemingly valid impression that you'd get 30 to 60 seconds 'air grace' period, whereas in reality the visible part of the air bar which was still the whole row would simply not get touched as it was busy depleting it from the hidden row below. I found 30 to 45 about best as any more and a very fast player on an easy quick cavern (Cold Room) would mean they could finish the cavern before the visible was decremented, resulting in a slightly unusual initial 'air bonus' sound. 😄

Have to say I was aware of some of the things mentioned on Twitter, although (as above) how much is fact vs fiction , I'd rather not say in public 😄

I don't think I can add anything (sensible at least) to @jetsetdanny's excellent post. Apart from perhaps if you look at the trademark images themselves, the player sprite does not look quite right, the wrong hat. It actually reminds me of the player sprite hat from RollerCoaster... Over the years (going well back before 2019) I've heard that much hearsay that I can no longer differentiate between fact and fiction, this is worse when its combined with what as someone with no legal training I'd just call 'legalspeak' too from various parties. 🙂

Yes I've been following it a bit and when I've been able to providing a bit of feedback to the author. 🙂 Its a great game! 🙂

Welcome 🙂 Sorry the sound was out of sync! Emulation choice maybe but the other emulator I use for this does not record video. There's also an MM one of the same if you've not seen it 😉

Restart in same cavern: Software Projects > POKE 34260 , 088 Bug-Byte > POKE 34254 , 088

That's excellent. 🙂 I don't know if you've seen 'SkoolDaze' 'Contact Sam Cruise' or 'Bak2Skool' as they also have a scrolling playing area but it moves by eight columns at at time, I did with those try at one point to make it move one column but it just made a mess, was a long time ago mind you. What you have looks really good. Before I saw the video I thought immediately of the CBM Amiga version of this (there's a video of it here) which does something similar however a serious problem with that version is there is not enough "look ahead" room so its very easy to have an accident unless you're 100% familiar with the guardians and even then its perilous! I really like what I see. 🙂

Attached is a short video of me exploring the mansion. As per the MM video, I did not play very well! A few minor (miner?) accidents and I'd run out of lives. Unfortunately, the sound dropped out of sync when I converted it from raw .avi to a more saner sized mp4. The actual download page can be found here and the (auto-generated by the file submission) discussion topic can be found here I did enjoy revisiting this excellent conversion again though after a few months. 🙂

Attached is a short video of me playing this afresh. I did not play very well sorry! However it does demonstrate some of the caverns at least. Unfortunately, the sound dropped out of sync when I converted it from raw .avi to a more saner sized mp4. The actual download page can be found here and the (auto-generated by the file submission) discussion topic can be found here I did enjoy my short play with this again though. 🙂

Ben Versteeg (byte-delight) post from Facebook

No its not been mentioned on here yet. Thanks. I was a bit caught up in other things although I did post or 'react' to various groups on FB about the loss. 😞

I think I've seen a few 'patched fixed' versions of this in the past. From memory I'm aware (or was) the item in Forgotten Abbey cannot be got at, although other erm 'faults' don't spring to mind. It was quite a while ago I fired up the CBM version of it!

Thought: Are you on Facebook ? 🙂 It may be worthwhile posting about it there in the 'Central Cavern' group perhaps. I could 'tweet' about it, with a link to this topic too if you want. I generally only use Twitter to announce new releases and news from here anyway.

It would not run on my machine (W7x64 on ESU) , I had a full screen then a blank black window at the upper left and not much else. I'll try it virtually perhaps later. Norman, did the one that would not run throw any errors ? in particular anything along the lines of complaining about cwsdpmi (or similar) libraries, compilation errors etc , also a sign its a 16bit which as you know x64 Windows is not terribly happy about. i386/x32 yes usually will work in a vague sense. The issue I had with the attached file -may- be limited to me as my machine was quite in need of a reboot anyway, 38 days is a long time for Windows!

Great than you. 🙂 Updated. As its your 'own' rather than the AI I've added it as the empty rank.

It's not a problem at all. 🙂 Please do not worry about that. The 'issues' would of likely of been worse had we at some point switched between different software platforms rather than 'stay with one' and merely upgrade. Most welcome. Don't worry about posting 'special characters' , there should not be any issues anyway since the previous (from @IRF's original enquiry) a few months ago now with anything 'new' from that point onwards, its only the small handful of ones remaining that may need attention but as I think I mentioned at the time, from a cursory glance I could not see anything else amiss and it would be near impossible to read everything! 🙂 As an aside if anyone does note anything amiss (this is likely only for any posts previous to the middle of last year or older, nothing newer) please feel free to either post in this topic about it or if you prefer you can send me a PM instead.

Its is (well , it was) slightly more involved. The forum started originally on ISO-8859-1 (I think) and after a couple of years I ran a script to convert it to 'regular' UTF8, which allowed more characters to be accepted properly in the database (mysql being upset as usual) , this was in effect v3 of the software, although I did upgrade it as/when required. At this point in time, the 'data' was all there, or so it seemed. It turned out that some but not actually all posts (data) were effected. Have to bear in mind I'd also upgraded php/mysql a couple of times too. Later on after the sites small unintentional 'vacation' , I upgraded to a newer software version, this would of by default demanded the data be in at least UTF8 format, if not UTF8MB4 format. I chose the latter even though it took more db space it did guarantee at least what I thought was a problem free way. It turns out upon inspection (I did post a section of the code way back) this contained some odd bugs, causing it in effect ignore a 'special character' and although that was not ideal, it then ignored the rest of that data, resulting in the truncation we sometimes see. ^ It is a bit more involved than that, but I wanted to skip the detail and just provide a summary. To be fair once I spent a fair bit of time fixing the majority of the issues on this, the remaining ones are a case of "as and when , please tell me" as Danny posted above. 🙂

Yes. The missing part (and just the missing part only) was: ální jeskyně" (to be precise, with no diactritical marks and capitalised, so "CENTRALNI JESKYNE"), which is Czech. The Slovak name would be (if Google is to be believed) "Centrálna jaskyňa" (which actually shows you nicely how similar and at the same time different the two languages are). Its been restored 🙂 Check here No, no need for them to go. Because now we are on utf8mb4 which allows 4bytes per "character" vs utf8 which was 3 bytes, and in a previous incarnation a few years ago I think it was iso-8859-1 (I think, I can't remember that far back!)

Well done and thank you! 🙂 Updated. This does mean that 1st place is now shared between four players, and I myself have moved to 2nd place, leaving 3rd place open for a future participant.

Are the four 'members' shown 'still with us' as such ? A simple yes or no would suffice I think and still leave an element of puzzle rather than say for instance that x are not.

91.0.1 W7Ult (On the ESU) x64 Thanks Norman. Not quite sure why it did not work for me. My first thought was SWF but I do not think that would be the case these days, a year or two ago maybe. I did not notice that 😄 I was too busy playing. Well spotted though. For jump comparisons, try the Spectrum version of JSW1 vs JSW2. Or the Spectrum version of MM and the Amstrad version of MM. You'll note that the Ams version of MM behaves 'jump movement' wise the same as Spectrum JSW2. Does make sense to test for MW actually colliding with something he should not rather than worrying about a Guardian. Some variants of JSW for instance the CBM+4 and CBM C16 iirc have guardians passing though a bit of a water cell.

Welcome @Tuna 🙂 I had to use Chrome (as you mentioned) as it did not work in Firefox. I had a quick go on the first cavern, it plays nicely. It feels smooth in its action and the speed is about perfect. I like the 'loss of life' effect too, the top-to-middle and bottom-to-middle horizontal lines to effectively 'close' the game for that life. I'm attaching a small screenshot: One thing I did note and it may of been me, as I'd not read the documentation ☺️ was I had to assemble it first, simple enough just one more click then run. I'm sure others will be along soon to provide their thoughts too.

As I read it the quick test would simply be to test for'6519' (which works) and then '6549' (which does not) The results are as follows: ZXSpin v0.7 6519 = OK 6549 = Fail. Only 5 and 6 show Spectaculator v8.0.x (Paid version) 6519 = OK 6549 = Fail. Only 5 and 6 show. Note this is the same if you switch to early keyboard emulation (ULA concern iirc) Fuse v1.5.7 6519 = OK 6549 = Fail. Only 5 and 6 show Zero v0.71 6519 = OK 6549 = Fail. Only 5 and 6 show Although some of these have newer versions, it was what I "had to hand" as such. I did not test further however once you had one key from each "half row" it struggles with much else unless its the 'far end' , for example if you hold "T" and "Y" so you're having the second left and right hand rows, it won't accept "R" or "U" , ie one 'either side' of that.

Thanks for the detailed explanation Norman. I did at one time wonder if using an older 'legacy' type PS2 keyboard connector vs USB (either wired or not) would have any bearing but I think not. Spectaculator and some other emulators do offer a slight variation in Issue emulation regarding keyboards , but I -think- from memory this was partly to help with the 'dead cockroach' modification on the Issue 2 machines, as I do not recall too many issue with having it set to "late" vs "early"

Although I (myself at least) have not had chance yet to test the latest changes out, I fully appreciate the fast changes you've provided. 🙂