Spider

Took a look at this. The jumping routine is slightly different in that keypresses for jump do not always take priority over left/right. To explain if you press left or right and jump at the same time you tend to move not jump and move. Easily got around however with a slight change to technique. The top 1/3rd of the screen appears in different colours sometimes, I suspect is an emulator issue but I'm not 100% sure. Apart from some kind of highscore table, the following differences were noticed, there may be more: Safe start as per JSW2 (expected as the same people wrote the Spectrum version of this) so infinite death is reduced, not impossible just not as easy The time counter is in a different format A 'rooms visited' has been added There's no arrow in The Orangery There's no item hidden or otherwise in the First Landing The 'lives' sprite also changes when you're in The Nightmare Room The object on The Beach correctly counts for one item The Banyan Tree has an appropriate air cell to ease climing The fire cells in The Conservatory Roof are sensibly placed There is no item in The Swimming Pool room The Dr Jones top exit 'bug' (I'd consider it a bug) remains as the top exit is still defined as Quirkafleeg, no infinite death however. Rescue Esmerelda still has the openings top / bottom. Top this time takes you to The Off licence however. Lower exit takes you to the Emergency Generator Jumping from the top of The Watch Tower also just takes you to The Off Licence. Infinite death is possible if you fall through The Security Guard as the lower exit is defined as the same screen. On with the screenshots:

I thought I'd take a look at the Amstrad CPC464/6128 version. :) It plays the same as expected. The tunes are (about) the same too. A couple of the levels have different names however I'll just let the selected screenshots speak for themselves with a couple of comments: Familiar tune as well as the highlighted keyboard keys. Background does not seem dissimilar to the Software Projects inlay actually: Note the name change: Just the same: This is interesting as when the skylabs hit the platforms they make a 'crashing' noise: Warehouse just as tricky: Final Barrier slightly changed, I guess as the top 1/3rd of the screen was free to add bit more into the mix: Oops!

I guess. :)

You must have a slightly different one then. :) I can't check that obviously I expect its denied because of the inclusion of '1942' in the compilation. Shame we can't get a .tzx minus that but with the rest of the compo. It sounds like the original (I did have this once upon a time) but with keypad check awol then, another variant.

I've noticed if you set attract mode on a stock JSW snapshot (even after fixing the attic bug) in two places ie 59900 and 59901 it can still corrupt the game. The reason seems to be because the attact mode includes screen 61 (or maybe 62 or 63) , given the 'content' of these screens its likely causing some very odd effects as expected. 62 and 63 contain what appears to be invalid guardian data. Interestingly if you attempt empty these rooms and guardians it does not always appear to work. To test this: Open a JSW snapshot with the appropriate bug fixes applied for the attic. Just use JSWED to set attract mode to on and nothing else. Save and now run this in your emulator. To save time, set it at a high speed. Allow it to cycle through all the screens. You'll notice that it does show 61 it appears. Once its been through them, start the game, you'll see something similar to this: Thoughts ? :)

Did the upgrade go OK ?

The well known "attic bug" caused by invalid arrow data. By applying a couple of extra pokes in addition to the usual lives / fall height to remove some collision detection... POKE 37982,0 POKE 37994,0 ...its possible to carry on in a fashion as the game continues to deteriorate. :) Eventually it is likely to crash though. It does seem to vary each time as well depending on the route taken and how long sometimes you stay in a room. Its also required at some stage to alter the start room as the Bathroom can become an unsuitable start location due to fire cells: POKE 34795.X Where it all starts Notice the nasty has gone from above Willy and is now making its way across from the bottom of the screen: Its also moved here too: Esmeralda (Esmerelda?) is also awol: At this stage, the text for items collected starts to get corrupted as well. Notice the dancing mouse making its way right across the screen: Bit of corruption here too: One nasty gone from here although there is the occasional pixel flicker: Both gone from here. Around this stage the ingame tune becomes corrupted slightly as well: West Wing Roof does not look too good: Chapel empty (as is immediately apparent when the attic bug is "initialised") no other apparent damage though: Kitchen chefs, two are missing and one is moving horizontally: Same here too, although one is making its way right off the screen to return on the far right soon: Text message starting to get quite bad now: More corruption inside the MegaTrunk: Over The Drive does not look too bad if you ignore the flickering sprites: Off Licence has gained a few more cells: MegaTree is starting to look a bit unwell: Bridge sprites have slightly changed and (usefully!) something has appeared to make Willy's bridge crossing a bit easier: Too much wine ? More Tree damage: Bathroom has been "restyled": Top landing is not looking brilliant either: Willy's mansion is really starting to fall apart now: Stuff of (bug) nightmares: The attic is in full swing: Halfway up the corrupted wall: Chapel guardian visiting Cuckoo's Nest: Dr Jones may not believe it, although I would: Even room 47 (the unused "[" room) is effected: West Bedroom looks decidedly uncomfortable: The Yacht: The Bow: Tool Shed: Above The West Bedroom: Back Stairway is broken: Well, Maria has gone but there's too many fire cells (the pillow) for that to be any comfort: Conservatory Roof has seen better days: To the kitchens is quite interesting, its almost normal. Note the three fire cells to make it difficult to jump across: Security has deteriorated further, compare to earlier screenshot: Messy underground: Tree roots have spread a bit: Generator is broken: A bit of (bugs) Watch Tower: Top of house is quite messy: West Wing: West Wing Roof, an excess of fire cells. Compare to earlier screenshot:

Some slightly less common ones, I've submitted them to The Tipshop anyway. Very slow air drain. Note there is a slight graphical corruption on air bar: 35398,1 (Software Projects and VentaMatic) 35392,1 (Bug Byte) Immunity (Software Projects and Ventamatic releases only) seems there was not one for this only the BB version and that did not always kill skylabs off properly: 35688,0: 36116,58: 36345,33: 36423,33: 36681,33: 37396,33: 37503,58: 37510,58 Kill Solar Generator: 34721,255 (Software Projects) 34715,255 (Bug Byte) Kill Eugene: 34681,255 (Software Projects) 34675,255 (Bug Byte) Auto Collect Objects: (Sorry!) 36747,0 (Software Projects Version) 36735,0 (Bug Byte Version) Note you must apply 'Kill Eugene' as well for this to work properly otherwise its impossible (or almost) to complete his screen Portal Open: 36826,0 (Bug Byte Version) 36837,0 (Software Projects Version) Some random ones: (SP version) Although you can easily step a few bytes to do this for the BugByte one if needed: 34835 34836 = 0 kill pause 35834,0 = Disable conveyors 34810 34811 = 0 prevent break/space to quit game 34856 34857 = prevent tune on / off 34904,0 34905,0 no in game tune The 'prevent tune on / off' is best applied with 'no ingame tune' as this way willy's lives remain animated. 35011 / 35012 / 35040 / 35041 kill cheat mode availability (only if not already enabled or manually switched on) 34408 , X scrolling message speed, does seem a bit fast in some cases. SP: 37114,43 / BB: 37103,43 , Extra life per 1000 instead of 10,000

Although I've submitted these (hopefully all of them) to the tipshop, I thought I'd post them here. Not the "usual" run of the mill pokes, more unusual but potentially useful ones: Stop in-game tune deteriorating as lives are lost: POKE 35665,62 POKE 35666,8 POKE 35667,0 Prevent Game Auto-Pausing: You can still pause it manually but it won't 'Auto-Pause' if you play without the in-game tune: POKE 35518,0 Unlimited attempts at keypad code: (well, someone *may* find it helpful) POKE 34497,182 POKE 34498,134 Disable Conveyors: POKE 36601,0 Infinite Time: POKE 35414,0 POKE 35415,0 POKE 35416,0 Stop screeching noise on title screen while instructions are scrolling: POKE 38636,0 POKE 38637,0 Stop screen colour cycling while intro message is scrolling: (Note: does not stop border or noise!) This best combined with the "Stop screeching noise on title screen while instructions are scrolling" pokes above if required. POKE 35010,70 POKE 34997,0 POKE 34998,0 POKE 34999,0

There were four releases (five if you count the PGC bugfix) although with a few exceptions the loaders are about the same. Loader: Pre-Production Loader: Normal Loader: PCG Bugfix: Loader: Ventamatic Loader: Re-Release "They Sold A Million" Saver: Re-Release "They Sold A Million" The Pre-Production / Normal / PCG Bugfix releases all share an identical loader. The Ventamatic release is very similar, apart from the obvious text change the only other difference really is the use of the bright attribute in the listing along with setting the paper yellow for the text. The compilation Re-Release on "They Sold A Million" uses Speedlock. The 'saver' routine is loaded and the game code is loaded at a lower memory point to allow the Speedlock saver to sit in upper memory. This saved the whole lot from screen memory downwards. Unfortunately, the 'save' did not include the speedlock saver itself, the code terminates after 32768 bytes from 25000 ie 57768 and the 'Saver' builder lives right near the end during "build" at 65024. The saver code shown is what is present when the game is running. I have heard that a few games using Speedlock have saved the 'saver' code as well, once I have found one of these it will be interesting to examine as there is currently only the Alcatraz utils available and these are very dificult to use, I've yet to manage it. The speedlock code is not really something I fully understand, the 'basic' is shown in the screenshot above however there is far more code present. Its protected using both odd line numbers (0 a few times) as well as attribute changes.

There are three official releases of JSW2. I'm not counting the 'JSW2-128' version here as far as I'm aware this was not in any way 'official' as it incorporates a built in cheat mode. Feedback on this point is appreciated. To quote the readme: With that said the official versions are: 1. The Software Projects release 2. The DroSoft Re-Release 3. The Ricochet Re-Release The loading screen is the same for all versions so one pic will suffice: Software Projects This is the only release that has some protection on it. A small piece of basic containing assembly to headerless load the game code (47416 bytes) and the keypad routine as per JSW1 albeit this one has seven pages instead of one. To make life easier for myself after examining the basic itself I then decided to simply use a fake header to load the 'basic' at a higher address, and then examined the loader section, ie all code after the section of My understanding of Z80 is not good (to say the least) so any thoughts / suggestions on my comments to the code are appreciated along with any errors I've made. :) The code is thus and starts at 23832 org 23832 ; Loader code appears to start here, seen by using a fake header on the basic. di ; Kill interrupts. xor a ; Ensure that A is going to be black. out (254), a ; Set the border to A aka black. ld hl, 22528 ; Setup the requirements for an LDIR so that we can blackout the screen with ld de, 22529 ; black paper and ink. We actually seem to be copying the contents of 22528 into ld bc, 800 ; 22529 to 23329 (800 bytes) which extends into the basic and variables area a ld (hl), a ; little bit. Assume this was done to prevent easy tampering with the loader itself. ldir ; Do it! ld sp, 63796 ; Put stack pointer somewhere up top. dec a ; Decrease A before we swap them (protection maybe?) scf ; Set carry flag before calling loader. ex af, af' ; Swap reg contents. ld ix, 16384 ; Start address of data to load. ld de, 47416 ; Length of the data to load. call 1378 ; Call the rom loader so we can load in this big headerless block. jp nc, 0 ; Reset on error or tampering ? jp 36864 ; Exec the game code :) Drosoft and Ricochet These are identical loading-wise so I'm counting them together as one. The keypad routine is not called. The loader is unprotected apart from an attribute change to 'hide' the master saver routine, shown 'as is' when first listed and 'exposed' The game code is loaded at 25007 and appears to be 40528 bytes in length. After that 2kb piece of code loads to 18432 then the game is started with a call to 20140. I expect this is to simply bypass the keypad routine. Turns out (thanks Jon Elliott) that it appears to be a snapshot loader so we'd guess then that the 'snapshot' was simply taken after the keypad code was accepted.

Posted and it was solved quickly :o :D

There is a "Like" button: ;) :lol: This is likely to become my upcoming new site: http://jswmm.co.uk/

Correct on 7 :D Answer to 12 As I'll no doubt be removing this installation soon as StarGlider made a clone which attracted more people ( although the board name did help :) ) I did consider that though but decided against it.

Correct. :) That just leaves 7 and 12 remaining. They are well known, 12 especially. 12 is a 16K game. ;) To give you some idea of its age.

This is mainly aimed at anyone who has not used this software before as its slightly different. You can access the most common area's by simply clicking the 'user menu' on the top right where your name is: From here as you can see there's the usual array of settings for various features and some options on the left too for other sections. Most of these are pretty obvious (attachments, ignore prefs and signature for instance) but I wanted to quickly run through a few of them: Clicking Photo brings up the photo/avatar upload popup: Clicking the left side Profile Customisation brings up a customisation screen where you can upload a background image or simply change the colour of your profile background: There's also a notification settings which I recommend you take a quick look at so you can determine which 'events' such as someone quoting a post you made or perhaps 'liking' a post you made, you want an inline or email notification of: These are shown on the board index with a red counter (for unread ones) the same as messages, you can click the icon to see the most recent ones at any time by just clicking it: Any questions etc please just start a new topic in this area. :)

I noticed that. It was the post table itself (not that one) in another. A check and repair of them all would I agree be the way forward, not personally keen on truncating them unless they really are temporary ie session table etc.

Correct. :) 3 , 5 , 15 correct. Almost right with 4, not far off ;) No. :) I think 10 may be the most difficult. 1 , 4 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ,13 , 14 remaining.

Brucie Bonus ?

Figured it was about time. ;) OK, these are more or less the initial view you would get when you've picked your controls etc and started the game itself. Might be a bit easy though. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Confused. :blink: :)

Varies. I think its worse because you know its not working, if it was then there'd be less 'concern' I suppose.

Ah yes I had to re-read it a couple of times before I realised it was the 'who posted' popup numbers. :) Click the replies column > http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/misc.php?do=whoposted&t=48396 then click the number on the right (Example) > http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/search.php?searchid=1378192 No problem. :) As I put in another topic I was thinking about it earlier today when things were down and after a while I thought I'd just open it up and be done with it. At least its a temporary 'refuge' for those who want to use it until WOS is back. If more categories / forums are required just let me know. Figured we'd probably only need this 'Chat' and maybe a couple more at a push if needed. Surprised its not though already. Its table crash: , unless its beyond that in which case restoring the last backup is the quickest 'fix' in most cases. I guess they have it in hand. Did not realise Martijn got married either. :)

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