Spider

JSW1 for the Spectrum with a few mild patches present.
 
Care was taken to avoid over-doing any fixes with a few exceptions. The intention being to try to retain reasonable originality but taking a mild twist on the regular '4 poke' fix:
 
1. The Basic loader was slightly altered (see screenshot) , the embedded codes for the flashing and colour blocks were replaced with their instruction counterparts. Care was taken to ensure the ordering was kept the same. The 'crash' poke was left intact but the real floating point value was changed from 23613 to 16384, thus ensuring the 'crash' poke did not have any effect as it was now just setting the first byte in the screen memory to 0 harmlessly. The combi-screenshot shows both original with 'exposed' embedded values and the 'replacement' one. Viewing them in 128K Basic they look about the same, the change is only really apparent in 48K Basic mode, however they function identically with the exception of not crashing if Break is pressed.
 
2. The keypad routine was left intact however rather than change the first JPZ or the second JPZ to just a JP (to always pass the keycode) the reset the machine instruction was changed to start the game instead by just changing 00000 to 34762. This way if both key code entries fail, the code falls though to the 'reset' line but its now going to jump to the title screen instead. This also preserves both calls to the keypad code too, so that both instruction strings are seen.
 
3. As per the official bug fix, the fire cell was removed from the Conservatory Roof. Viewing this screen on both JSW2 and on JSW1 and JSW2 on several other platforms, there is a mild variation in how it is fixed on those, generally it involves removal of one more fire cell but in this case, the single cell removal (although not perfect by any means) was felt sufficient.
 
4. As per the official bug fix, the earth cell in Banyan Tree was changed to a water cell. There are other fixes to this such as modifying the tree 'trunk' and/or the lower 'roots' area however these are a bit too much for a mild bug fix, so the official fix was felt best.
 
5. The self collecting item in Swimming pool, there are various ways to fix this however a fractionally different approach was taken. The most common one is to set the ink to 5 (cyan) however in this case it was set to 4 (green) as this may be a more suitable colour given Orangery is above, aka: a 'Vines' effect and that screen is mostly green too
 
6. The invisible object in First landing, although the official 'fix' moves it, unless further action is taken it is still invisible and it is quite possible to miss it if you are jumping to avoid an arrow. Rather than give it shape/form it was easier to simply remove it from the game.
 
7. The double object on the beach, there are two ways of looking at this. Previously splitting it into two and moving one further to the left so Willy is forced to use the water 'conveyor' seemed ideal however this file is meant to be a mild fix so the best approach here was merely to set it to be just one object not two.
 
8. The pause bug caused by the presence of an Interface1, as per Skoolkids bug fix this was rectified by changing the IN A © to IN A (254) , along with a single NOP for the inactivity counter as well. This does not prevent pause it merely means the game will not auto-pause, the same as if the in-game music is playing.
 
9. The ability for Willy to leap from the top of a rope where he is not intended to such as Beach , On The Roof were rectified by changing his height comparator from 12 up to 15. This usually prevents him climbing high enough to be able to 'jump top exit' while on a rope.
 
10. Thought was given to the guardian halo effect, as well as corrupted conveyors although their fixes involve potentially putting some code into the unused areas, the same as the bug that effects Under The Roof if you happen to fall off. The latter two quirks were ignored and the former 'halo' ones were fixed by simply turning off the bright effect on the few effected sprites.
 
11. The infamous 'attic bug' was rectified using the official method of setting its co-ordinates correctly as this is the most sensible and efficient fix.
 
12. The incorrect animation counter for the Monk/Priest in Chapel as well as the saw in Cuckoo's Nest were fixed by setting them from 03 to 07 and setting their correct starting frames so they animate as intended and do not move 'backwards'
 
13. Unlucky for some ? The slightly annoying effect of the time and item count temporarily flashing back to 000 and 07:00am was rectified by changing their initial display values to be a blank space, leaving the colon intact. This means that they temporarily flick out and back in again however this seems indefinitely preferable to having them appear to have the incorrect values displayed albeit temporarily. There is a small article in our Articles system describing this in detail.
 
14. Finally, the existing bugs/quirks such as jumping from the top of Dr Jones and Watch Tower as well as Esmerelda are left in, as they were in the original file, along with the TRS-Dos code at the end of the file.
 
Enjoy!

A simple small file to load before the main JSW tape. It provides the following fixes to the standard game:
 
1. The second keypad code is always accepted
2. The invalid arrow in The Attic is rectified
3. The impossible Fire Cell in the Conservatory Roof is removed
4. The single Earth Cell in Banyan's Tree's trunk is replaced with an Air Cell
5. The air ink for Swimming Pool is changed to allow Willy to collect the item by himself
6. The top distance on ropes was reduced preventing Willy from accidentally jumping up where it was not intended
7. The interface1 pause lockup is fixed
8. The hidden First Landing item was moved to The Hall and given a shape borrowed from West Wing Roof
 
It should be noted this is intended for a standard game, its effects on third party variants of JSW is unpredictable.

The initial idea of this small game occurred to Andy one boring weekend afternoon. It was to make a mini "25 items and 25 rooms" variant of JSW, but after trying this out, in reality it did not seem that much fun. Thoughts then turned to have a grand total of 100 items spread around 25 modified rooms. This involved much demolition and rebuilding of Willy's original mansion to accomplish sensibly!
 
Some of the conventional paths to reach certain items are slightly altered, although the game room layouts are (broadly speaking at least) not too far from the original game.
 
The download .zip contains a standard .tap file of the game as well as a more detailed readme.txt file
 
We hope you enjoy this game as much as we did putting it together and look forward to reading any comments and/or feedback on it.

The initial idea of this game was to take a different twist on the release of the "Manic Miner - Hi-Score Challenge" game, which, although was reasonably successful in itself, did have some quite limiting factors, namely being forced to either POKE or reload to change the cavern, which meant multiple cavern completion times were not possible.
 
With this in mind, Andy decided to make a cut-down version of “Manic Miner”, featuring a mere ten caverns. For the sake of traditionalism the first and last caverns, (those obviously being “Central Cavern” and “The Final Barrier”) were kept.
It was decided to simply create two other, new versions of it based on what we had, so we would have a total of three games. The new ones being an ”easy” version and a ”hard” version. The thoughts here were to make the ”easy” version a little bit more player- friendly than the original and the hard version slightly more trouble for the player.
More details of the changes and details between each version amongst other things are in the readme file.
The download .zip contains a standard .tap file of the game as well as a more detailed readme.txt file
We hope you enjoy this game as much as we did putting it together and look forward to seeing your high-scores, reading any comments and/or feedback on it. We feel it is an interesting slight twist to the original in offering the choice of skill levels to play at.

Manic Miner - The Big Bonus Edition
 
This is a very simple modification of Manic Miner to provide a higher score compared to a standard version. In addition to this, a few small minor (miner?) changes were also made to improve the game a fraction. Care was taken in what changes were made to avoid an insane score value being obtainable.
The 'score changes' performed were as follows:
 
1. Item Collection: Changed to 1,000 points per item from its default of 100.
2. Air Bonus: Changed to 10 from its default of 1 per air unit remaining upon cavern completion.
3. Kong Bonus: Changed to 1,000 from its default of 100 per block the Kong Beast falls.
4. Extra life: Changed to award an extra life at 100,000 points instead of its default of 10,000 points. This was necessary to prevent an excess of extra lives being awarded!
 
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Update December 2019 by Ian Rushforth
 
A Cheat Mode has been added, which is activated by the BASIC loader if the player presses '$' during loading. i.e. the 'SYMBOL SHIFT' and '4' keys simultaneously. The game then enters 'Mega Bonus' mode, allowing the player to accrue even higher scores than in the 'standard' Big Bonus Edition! (Each of the four 'score changes' listed in bullet points 1-4 above are scaled up by an extra factor of 10.)
 
The 'High Score/Score' row, which is printed at the bottom of the screen during play, is rearranged for the Mega Bonus Edition to allow for higher scores to be accommodated - it is now quite possible to reach a score of a million points!
 
A 'bug/flaw/imperfection' in the original 'Manic Miner' has been addressed - it used to be the case that if you exceeded the previous High Score during a game, then the High Score was updated 'behind the scenes' at the beginning of execution of the 'Game Over' routine, but the new High Score could not be viewed on the screen until the next game had begun. In this version, once you attain a new High Score during a game, then as soon as that game ends the new High Score is printed onto the 'Game Over' screen just as the 'Boot of Doom' begins to descend!
 
Finally, a couple of visual glitches from the original game were fixed. More technical details can be found in the 'Readme' .txt file which accompanies the game.
 
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Manic Miner 2020 - Special Edition
 
This small eight cavern mini game is dedicated to all essential workers in any industry or sector who are continuing to keep things moving during these highly unprecedented times of the 2020 lockdown. We say "Thank You"
The game engine itself is slightly modified from standard, the main changes of note being:
 
The caverns themselves are identical in layout of guardians and cells to the original except they are mirrored versions!
There is approximately a 30 seconds air grace period upon entering each cavern
If the air supply should for some reason actually run out during play the game will continue without loss of a life
The bonus for making Kong fall into the Portal is increased
Pressing Break during play to abort the same will unlike the default Manic Miner update the highscore
 
The caverns to play are as follows:
Eugene's Lair
Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast
Wacky Amoebatrons
Attack of the Mutant Telephones
Ore Refinery
Skylab Landing Bay
The Warehouse
Solar Power Generator
Should perhaps also be noted that both Kong and Amoebatron's screens in the original game are used twice, here the versions used are the second appearance of each as these variants are a fraction more difficult.
We will keep a top-x record of players scores too:
 
:1st: - 41842 - jetsetdanny
:2nd: - 40173 - Spider
:3rd: - 36281 - MtM
4th -
5th -
 
Thank you , and enjoy! 🙂

An interesting twist to a regular Manic Miner game!
 
Miner Willy can only 'see' what his lamp would conventionally light, making the game much much harder to play.
 
Both BB and SP variants are included in individual zip files (as .tzx tape format) as well as the authors instructions with patch file to allow this change to be applied to third party games too.
 
The .tzx's are 'ready to play' complete with loader. A small change to the original loading screen was applied too, in essence the attribution text present in the SP variant loading screen is applied to the BB version as well as the removal of the 'flash' effect from the screen itself.
 
Enjoy!