Spider

I don't have the specifics to hand but I do remember when I altered one project, I had to fiddle about (read: experiment) with iirc two area's to make the air supply behave properly. My concern at the time was to get the 'lowest bar' into the right place.

Thanks for the continued updates! 🙂 🙂 🙂

😮

Not exactly 100% the same I know (not used JSON, normally XML or on rare occasions JS) although these things were a pain when they happened , the infamous javascript "alerts" popups. I've provided a suitable message given the forums theme:

Have added the screenshots (640x512 in jpg format) as a separate .zip file, just for those who wish to have their own copies of them to hand.

Thanks @jetsetdanny It looks 100% to me. I've just made a tiny alteration to the download page, although merely to put the 'detailed tech notes' from the descriptor into a text file rather than on the main page itself. Nothing else was changed. I thought that better as its allows an easier to read experience for those who want the basics of it without the detail, and the documented changes are in said text file for those who want to refer to it. 🙂

Thanks to @crem for creating us a new favicon. 🙂 I've applied it. Given browser differences it may take a bit of time to appear. I do recall (many years back) browsers especially elderly versions of I.Explorer etc were a bit difficult sometimes to persuade to pick up the new one, even after removal of temp data. Here's a quick pic for now anyway taken from a browser I don't tend to use much so it grabbed the new favicon:

Now (with TobyLobster's permission) also present here. 🙂

Regarding the above 'Entertainer' attached is a simple 2min (approx) mp3 of the above, although it erm plays a bit faster than normal, it does sound quite reasonable at a slightly "increased pace" though. entertainer_faster.mp3 🙂

Thank you @TobyLobster 🙂 I've submitted it here, set with you as 'submitter' so you are able to edit it if the need arises. I've done the following: Attributed it to yourself and D.Coathupe as 'third party' and 'original' authors respectively. Rather than just place the .ssd into the download , decided to make it a bit nicer for the end user by: Put the basic info into a 'read_me' text file Put the tech notes into a 'tech_notes' text file Taken screenshots of the title screen, all caverns and two of the game over screen Placed the above (aside from screenshots) into a zip and uploaded. You can find the download page here > https://jswmm.co.uk/files/file/145-manic-miner-2021/ Its support topic (auto generated) is here > https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/596-file-manic-miner-2021/ They both link to each other anyway, if by any chance you do edit it, please edit the download not the topic/thread as it will lose changes, editing the download updates the topic automatically. 🙂

Thank you! 🙂 Copy/Delete vary between emulators a bit! Plus iirc at least one of them allows both 'real' and 'logical' key mappings just to add to the confusion. 🙂

This is excellent, there's no other word for it. I was thinking would it be possible to perhaps host it here too in our download section (with some screenshots and a description) 🙂 We do have a few BBC variants of Manic Miner already here, standard and a couple of 'prepatched' cheat ones.

Thanks. :) The favicon I will admit I'd completetly forgotten about. I've uploaded a generic one for now, actually its the 3x version of this software's as the 4x does not have one. If memory serves at one point we just had a regular " smiling face " yellow smilie as the favicon. I do remember in dim/distant past trying to make something with M.W but given the size limitations of the favicon it proved difficult. There is some truth (apparently) in lower rankings for http vs https sites, I have heard that before. The reason it was not actually enabled (without boring you too much) as the host seemed to specify a huge array of htaccess code to go along with it, unfortunately this did not play nicely with the existing code we have in there and as at that moment in time it was a question of reopening the site asap, I felt it more important to "open the doors" after a few months being closed. Having said that I've just enabled it without their extra htaccess, so we'lll see if that is actually enough. In theory it ought to be, only possible concern perhaps is the browser complaining about mixed content but I think this may only happen where its a remote linked image, ie someone has not uploaded it but used the IMG tags instead.

Thanks for the updates! 🙂

Eugene hungry ? 🙂

I was used to seeing the # prefix and sometimes a 'h' suffix. Starting on the Spectrum platform in 84, there was not really any built in hex facility. Those who perhaps started coding on the Acorn machines may be more used to & however. For instance typing PRINT &C9 will return you with an answer of 201 , which is correct as #C9 is 201 in decimal. This is also accepted for the Amstrad CPC range too. Can't recall which but one emulator in the "insert pokes" section seems to prefer a $ prefix for hex values too, just to add to the mix! Personal preference is simply #xx as its quite easy to distinguish between: LD A , #80 JP #7530 Decimal of the above: LD A , 128 JP 30000 I do realise I'm slightly contradicting myself as today I did provide some 'pokes' using a different prefix however the prefix suited the platform they were intended for! , but in general if I was writing a post or such I'd rather just use #value, its easy to type and does not or should not lead to any confusion.

I mean to say utf8mb4 Pre conversion (some tables were already at this) , it only effected display. The parser would not be knocked unconscious by broken bbcode, I do know what you're referring to though. 🙂 I did get the data when I did the restore from the raw database via phpmyadmin directly 😉 Upon closer examination of a backup directly, the UTF8MB4 conversion appeared to have done this. Unfortunately had I delayed this, it would of happened anyway at the 3x to 4x upgrade. EDIT... Updated, read end of post info! Looking at post 11772 for instance here , I find the 'converted' (but pre-upgrade backup from last year) was truncated: 3x data (converted) 3x data (pre conversion) Unfortunately, as noted the conversion was not a recent thing, not even near the upgrade at least as I remember. 4x looks like this (just an empty post saying "test" really) I am able it seems to 'rescue' some posts, having found a pre-conversion example, despite having said otherwise previously. No guarantee's on this however i have just restored this post , with only a minor cleanup needed.

As promised. Squashed original .avi of 60mb down to 5mb mp4. Audio quality has not changed, video is still way out of sync anyway as it is with this emulator. Bear in mind the sound chip (afaik) predates the AY unit used the Spectrum, Amstrad and other machines by a few years Inside a .zip as it won't attach directly (browser issue perhaps) Entertainer_mp4.zip Primary sound channel is white, green and yellow indicate channel 2 and 3, decided to double height for the display. These as well as the output itself were something I decided to add. Merely as by default it does not really do anything visually! Run time is just over two minutes. Pic attached of the output for the curious:

I could not (at the moment) find anything else using that player. I do have a superb rendition of The Entertainer however for the same platform. I even modified it to show the "SOUND a,b,c,d" commands as they were "executed on the fly" so to speak. 🙂 Only problem is I could not find a sane speed for it, the default one was too slow and so I speeded it up a little bit. I may attempt to record a video/audio of it later, but the two choices of emulation I have for this platform, one does not sync them very well and the other does not appear to have any recording facilities! 😮 😞 😄

Regarding 'tune.tap' , this is the title screen data from HydroFool and Sweevo's World/Whirled. The data provided was actually extracted from Hyrdrofool, I should of probably taken it from Sweevo as its a separate file but as they load and run at the same address it did not make much difference. Attached is something quite similar, this is a BBC Micro (sound chip on these is a Texas SN76489, 3 sound channels and one noise) unlike the AY3891x series used in say the CPC range and the ZX 128 machines. Anyway the video clip includes a nice player in effect too: Unfortunately the sound quality is not great but its worth a listen I think: 12MB / MP4 / 2m:58s BBC-Micro-Beebioli-Melvyn-Wright.mp4 Enjoy! 🙂

I did do a UTF conversion but that was after the 'missing' data, at least from what I can recall. I don't have a specific date for it unfortunately, not without examining several backup files, last years being compressed .gz's inside a folder for that month which as its last years is itself compressed into a huge single file. I've kept away from Cpanel's automated backup tool (invidivudla option rather than "take it all") as the last host I did notice there was a problem with truncated backups. I take them out via phpmyadmin manually and check they are complete, by this I mean the fact that the last table is present at the end of the file itself, I know this is not 100% however it is a reasonable guide compared to the truncated ones. There's nothing suitablte in WayBack machine, the collected data from that year iirc was before then and after in Sept it collected the 'we are offline' page twice, then things resumed. The backup I picked to restore the data to compare was the nearest "after the last post" I had.

BBC Micro POKE &67EC , &EA + POKE &67ED , &EA + POKE &67EE , &EA = Infinite Lives POKE &6961 , &EA + POKE &6962 , &EA = Partial*** Guardian Immunity *** Horizontal and some but not all vertical guardians. Eugene, Kong and forcefield effect doors are still deadly. Lightening bolts in Meteor Storm are safe. Obviously fire cells are still quite harmful! POKE &80 , &xx = Change Level. Apply during play ( ! ) , &xx value should be &00 to &14 , to activate a life will usually have to be lost. It works but it can occasionally crash the game! Use the built in "A SECRET" teleport cheat in preference to this, only included for reference. EDIT... Note the above 'pokes' are only valid for the original Software Projects release by D.J.Coathupe, and do not work with the updated 2021 edition of this game by TobyLobster

I think he was possibly quoting the 'dead' empty post I removed from Korzy_iz_Adb , only explaination that I can logically think of. Its quite difficult to do this as there's a choice of backup data so I used a different set to do this compared to the Download topic/descriptor I did the other day. In this case I used a backup taken 30th Apr 2020, which was the nearest that would include all the topic. There was an edit by line on the post I removed too, from the author which suggested they had either edited out the content (unlikely as this would not effect the quoted data in the previous version) at that time, as the software concerned the "quote" belongs to the new post author not the author of the quote, if that makes sense as its in their post. 🙂 Regarding internetarchive/wayback , I've never excluded archive.org search bot from the site at all so its possible it may be there if it was at all. I did consider the database charset conversion at one point (switched to UTF8) however that won't eat data, if anything it fixes odd issues where symbols appear instead of the correct characters, this is more a case where the writer is using perhaps a non-English/EU charset.

I've been through this topic: Results: Post dated 9th March by Korzy_iz_Adb has no content in the backup other than a broken quote liking a previous post. I've removed this 'dead post' Post dated 15th March by jetsetdanny that also had no content has been restored, it now contains a quote and the post content itself. 🙂 Post dated 16th March by IRF was similar to the previous, in that it had no content but the old backup data contained some information, I was also able to restore the quoted text and the post content for this one too. 🙂 Post dated 24th March with no content other than a quoted "like" was removed. Post dated 26th March with no content other than a quoted "like" was removed. Post dated 26th March with an empty quote box with no source link (external quote perhaps) was removed.

Its fine. 🙂 You saw the 'raw content' so I think all in all its not too bad a 'fix' 😄