Spider

The only time I've seen that happen I think is when by accident or design someone sets the lives decrement to be an increment instead ( :D ) , once its made a mess of the lower screen area it starts to mess the top of the screen too. Only problem is with all the extra animation at that stage the game is virtually at a standstill. EDIT... Its not too slow, I was wrong. See pic as I may of explained the above badly! ^ That erm 'effect' anyway. Pic from the SP version but the effect is the same in the BB one. Not 100% on the screen exit Dr Broad ? I did not think that was easily possible without some minor cheating involved, the easy way I think to cause that is to remove the check for earth cells allowing M.W to walk through walls! That's really helpful sometimes with JSW as you can then climb them (seem to be treated as water cells in effect) but not quite so helpful in a 'fixed room' scenario such as MM. There's a .pok file to do that posted in the pokes section I think.

Thanks Norman! :) The newer modes are quite nice. I also appreciate the difference in Latern vs Candle and the fact you've applied appropriate icons to the title screen when one is chosen. For some JSW variants we borrowed the 'Wanted: Monty Mole' candle as its was ideal, yours reminds me of that in a way even though I can clearly see its not that sprite.

Welcome. :) If you're able and want to (if you've not done this before be mega careful of the very delicate keyboard 'tails') it may be worth checking any socketed IC's are firmly seated but I suspect its not that somehow but its relatively easy to check. You could perhaps run the diagnostic tests in this to see if anything crops up: https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/utilities/test-program-sinclair-research-ltd/ Easy to use: In particular test 6 (ULA) and test 7 (Memory) are the area's of likely interest. There are a few more similar programs available offering more but that one will hopefully grab anything major.

Just to be sure, apply one of these depending on what version you're using: Software Projects / Mastertronic releases : POKE 34804 , 1 Bug Byte Version : 34798 , 1 Note : Don't apply both ( :D ) or the wrong one.

Did see your FB post on this in 'Wonderful World' but unless its a bizarre ram fault effecting the airbourne status flag and setting it to 255 / #FF , I'm not sure what to initially suggest. :) We do have a few real 'experts' who may be able to shed further light on this however.

Welcome! Not that I'm aware of no. You've not run out of 'air' have you ? :unsure: , when that bar expires = loss of a life :) They are original games I take, I mean not highly modified with different level designs etc ?

Thanks Norman! :thumbsup: I was actually looking at what was left of (about 1/3rd) of the Sinclair Programs magazine from March 85 I purchased "back then". The charts section in particular. Both MM and JSW are listed. (removed the duplicate topic) :) Am attaching a pic of the relevant page of that magazine from a .pdf rather than a photograph of the sadly tatty magazine remnants: Hopefully they won't mind and this falls under 'fair use' as its not really of any real commercial value as I see it.

One thing perhaps worthy of mention the sequel "Tech Ted - The MegaMix" is 128K only, does feature improved music although in some instances I do prefer the beeper tune of the 48K version. Much expanded with more rooms/horrors to contend with. Tasks are numbered! So there's little doubt in what order things need doing. Difficulty I'd say is possibly just possibly a fraction less, but not by any real noticeable degree. To be completely fair you can at least navigate a few screens without struggling unlike the original where you more or less had to struggle with Cloakroom to get anywhere initially. Its worth mentioning the Ted sequel here, "Costa Capers" with Ted on holiday. This is insanely difficult I think, imo I consider Ted easy in comparison! There are objects to collect / use and its not obvious what to do with what (think Ted's tasks) , there are some brilliant innovations though with sprite movement patterns changing and the like and the title screen tune is excellent for a 48K machine.

That effect is quite useful :) It did spin quite a lot faster than I thought it would for some reason though. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying slow it down! :D

The rooms are almost 'built' with a LOGO type of instruction. If you make an invalid exit then you end up in "Down in the sewerage" , from which there's no escape! The room as far as I can tell only has air and fire cells defined, the yellow ink/red paper platforms are fire and the air cells are red paper. All exits from this lead back here. T-Ted2 incidentally does not feature this room, it sadly without warning just goes to the title screen. Final word on TT2, there was 'back in the day' a large hack to add a teleporter, unfortunately (a bit like JSW2 actually!) there -is- already one present built in but it was not well known about... Problem is on both (TT2 especially) it is not impossible or by being really silly to end up making an invalid exit. Cheats such as 'walk through walls' make this even easier! The most memorable 'extra platforms once you progress' are a ladder added to Reception and platforms in Beaker Store, I think one appears after Task3 and one after Task5 , or vice-versa. A single poke enables them all as does another single poke to permit tasks in any order you like. I really don't want to talk about the loader at the moment, its a bit complex! :lol: , if you wanted to know try here OK back to the TT time concern. ;) 43191 DEFM "08:30" ( 48 , 56 , 58 , 51 , 48 ) 43196 DEFM "17:00" ( 49 , 55 , 58 , 48 , 48 ) ^ They are ascii as indicated, you can alter them. The time check routine works like this: I should point out, I did have help with this as you can guess its not my work as such aside from the 'newer' comments. Thanks Richie! :) EDIT... There's no check as such for 24 hours so if you alter it, it will happily carry on regardless ie: 25:00 etc. Easy 'extended' time is probably to just change the game end time to 07:00 as its never going get reset down again (infinite time) or if practicality is needed then set the start time to say 6:30 (one poke) and the end time to 19:00 (one poke) , that then gives ted an extra two hours in the morning and an extra two hours in the late afternoon. :)

That looks really good. :) Thanks for the continued updates. Its interesting you've posted that today as I was thinking earlier about doing a couple of mockups with the 'darklight' version and posting them as screenshots as the author was open to changes. I have a "plan of action" for that I'll discuss in the appropriate topic once I've clarified (to myself at least) what I'd like to suggest etc.

The time is stored as ascii and the 'end check' is also read as "17:00" so its quite easy to modify that and/or the start time to allow the timer to progress rather than have infinite time, but allow Ted a sane deal. :) must submit that to Tipshop actually. The loader is very (imo) complicated, not the animated Ted's which is a work of art in itself and I think unique back then (think the baud rate is fracionally below normal too, to allow for the time needed for this) but the way the code is loaded in and decrypted, still makes my head spin just thinking about that lol :lol: Kokotoni Wilf is worth a mention as this is a simple platform game too, more 'Manic Miner in several screens' in several 'time zones' , but although its really showing its age now unlike MM and JSW which appear timeless, it still quite good fun to play. Bear in mind there's no jump key, its replaced with 'fly' instead.

It is a good game but far too difficult. The tasks must be completed in the correct order (and unlike the sequel, there's not really a clue to this as such) The platforms can be a bit iffy sometimes for instance if you jump from the starting position in Factory Gates on the leftmost ledge, its quite easy to just fall off! I'm told that the actual time limit is exceptionally tight, leaving no room for errors. There are a lot of good things about it though! The conveyor animation and the fact Ted walks backwards sometimes on them for instance and the multiple guardian movement paths, not forgetting the "later additions" where certain rooms gain items such as platforms and ladders once certain tasks have been completed, thus allowing further progress. The above gripes (time limit / task order / platforms) can be fixed quite easily. I submitted pokes for the latter two to Tipshop ages ago but they are under someone else's name given they were their work, I merely converted them into pokes. There are some very innovative touches in this that's for sure. There's quite a lot I could write about this if wanted. :)

Most welcome. :) I did plan a selection of differences with various parts of the game (most machines) but its not a quick job unfortunately. For now ( as this took longer than I thought :lol: ) here are the above visual differences, apart from the missing pixel in MAD/Venta Final Barrier. Bug Byte is left screenshot, Software Projects is right screenshot. Title Screen The missing pixel on the car windscreen frame on the BB version: Processing Plant The different item UDG graphic and the different Fire Cell UDG on the conveyor. The latter is sometimes overlooked: The Warehouse The different vertical guardians. The SP ones represent the Software Projects 'impossible triangle' logo: Amoebatrons' Revenge The different vertical guardians: The screenshots were taken up immediate entry into each cavern by inserting a breakpoint to stop code execution immediately upon it being 'ready' as such, this way you get the first real full screen 'frame' of it all. The only 'manual tampering' with the images aside from joining two together with a 4px white border between them was to remove the teleporter boot and set all the air bars to be identical, simply for neatness's sake. :D

One other thing, the MAD (Mastertronic) re-release is missing a pixel on the horizontal guardian on Final Barrier. This is because the byte is missing from the tape file! :D Apart from that and the tiny Basic loader changes (and screen changes) the SP and MAD versions are identical "code" wise. All ZX 'official' re-releases are based on the SP version however.

Thanks. :) That's slightly more elegant than my method of changing it to calling twice for a 'beginners/easy mode' game, and leaving it at four calls for normal/difficult. I did consider calling it five times on a hard game setting but given its not that easy anyway it would be near impossible to complete the cavern if I did that.

The code changed a bit (as well as teleport code) to allow the IF2 joystick to work properly, really this means changing it from the 'Cursor' joystick to the Interface2 standard. Talking of code the source remnants in the BB version are replaced in the SP version with a repeating pattern of 00/FF (000,255) , bear in mind most of the code is not in quite the same place in the SP version! Teleport code changed. Active key moved from 6 to 9 because 6 is used by the IF2 (its in theory used by cursor too but it signals "down" so its not used in MM as such) Scrolling message changed as well as loader with attribution details. The sprite differences are not huge the main game sprite changes are: A missing pixel in the title screen / Final Barrier in M.W's car windscreen frame is filled in. This is not a common thing to be noted! The fire and item cells in Processing Plant are different , this is also not always noted! The vertical guardians in Amoebatron's Revenge are different The vertical guardians in The Warehouse are different Code below 33902 is identical between versions (aside from char changes) Code above 33718 is identical between versions (aside from sprite changes etc) Code between these is either 6 , 11 or 13 (accurately it should say 6 then 13 then 11) bytes higher up See this topic for a bit more info on the loaders if curious. External links with more details can be found here and here if required. :thumbsup: As an aside in other platforms, there are some screen changes too. In particular the BBC Micro version has a completely different full screen Final Barrier and no Solar Power, replaced with 'Meteor Storm' iirc. There are screenshots of all this (for most platforms) in various topics in the JSW section if curious.

The "Beaker Store" ? :D :) That was a good idea. This got me thinking but I suspect it may be completely impractical, the length of the beam should be reduced by a block or two per item collected. I do realise its length varies depending on where its pointing to, but what I sort of mean by this is: No items collected = beam travels all the way to the wall/floor One item collected = beam stops one or two blocks before the wall / floor Two items collected = beam stops two or three blocks before the wall / floor etc Upon reflection (no pun intended) I think one block per item is enough as once you've got two or more there's essentially a small gap if you're near the edge of the cavern...

Me too in regard to your last sentence, but mine was the BB version. :) It was actually a month or three after buying JSW that I purchased MM...

Thought about one 'each side of the wall maybe but I'd not looked into it yet. :) The switch idea does sound a bit more sane really now you mention it! :thumbsup:

https://worldofspectrum.net/ Overview here Topic on Spectrum Computing about this > https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2947

Could be done I think without a huge amount of trouble by at a guess just removing a couple of earth cells to allow M.W to jump over it :unsure:

I think this may be something I'd like to implement in one future game project perhaps. Ideally with a warning and maybe some careful cavern design so that the Portal is 'in the way' a bit too, as in not buried in a corner harmlessly ;)

I wonder why most (if not nearly all) third party modifications to Manic Miner use the Bug-Byte variant instead of the Software Projects one. I realise the BB release came before the SP one, but the latter does fix up a couple of small issues main one being the joystick control for an Interface2 I consider the disassembly however some early mods may of appeared before this was out and about, I've not checked dates on that though. I do plan a difference file with skoolkit to create an SP version of it at some future point too, it is on my radar so to speak. Unless it was down to sheer numbers of tape sales, as there are/were more BB MM tapes about, I can recall this from B.I.T.D too, I never saw a SP version for the Spectrum in the shops, whereas nearly all the other versions were (the reason for that is they were only released by SP) , also if you take a look at a non-ZX site for -ahem- "game downloads" and grab a Spectrum version or two of MM, chances are they will be the BB version. :unsure: This is partly why the last few MM variants out the door here have been SP based as it really needs a bit more airing I think. I'm not saying its superior in any way as the changes are relatively small all-in-all but they are appreciated ones.

Noted two YouTube video's of this... Manic Miner with Light Modification (2020) Walkthrough, ZX Spectrum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3GVWY1Iq0Q Let's Play Manic Miner Dark Light Modification & First Impressions - 2020 ZX Spectrum Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHXfni4ZVJU