Spider

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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Ah yes I forgot you have to do them like that now (or live) I sort of preferred the floppy disk method though as you could use a dos prompt, although I suppose you can stick the three 'essential' files on along with command.com to run it like that. Should be OK booting from USB these days though. :)

Hi. :) Its a temporary installation for another forum in case they want to use it while there's is having a couple of issues.

Welcome! :) This site is not intended to take any traffic away from other existing sites, its simply a place we have to discuss the range of JetSet Willy and Manic Miner games. Its fair to say these games have stood the test of time very well even now. Although primarily aimed at the Spectrum versions, we welcome any contributions and thoughts on other platform variants of these games too, both standard and edited. Feedback (both good and bad!) and suggestions are always appreciated, simply start a new topic in this area (News/Feedback) if you have any comments to provide. Thank you!