Metalmickey

I would have thought that in the modern days of emulation it might have been possible to see just how it functions and maybe even try a bit of 'Old school' coding, i'm sure there's no shortage of TRS80 emulators knocking about there on the interweb .. so we could quite literally code (almost) exactly the same way as Matthew Smith did when creating MM and JSW ... as long as, that it, the TRS DOS code is complete and hasn't been overwritten with one of the rooms ... who knows?

I would have thought that in the modern days of emulation it might have been possible to see just how it functions and maybe even try a bit of 'Old school' coding, i'm sure there's no shortage of TRS80 emulators knocking about there on the interweb .. so we could quite literally code (almost) exactly the same way as Matthew Smith did when creating MM and JSW ... as long as, that it, the TRS DOS code is complete and hasn't been overwritten with one of the rooms ... who knows?

I would have thought that in the modern days of emulation it might have been possible to see just how it functions and maybe even try a bit of 'Old school' coding, i'm sure there's no shortage of TRS80 emulators knocking about there on the interweb .. so we could quite literally code (almost) exactly the same way as Matthew Smith did when creating MM and JSW ... as long as, that it, the TRS DOS code is complete and hasn't been overwritten with one of the rooms ... who knows?

As mentioned in my post above, I completed the game yesterday. It was a great pleasure to play it, because it is full of very smart arrangements of blocks (Cells), which make the way to complete many of the rooms not obvious at all. I mean, it is not immediately apparent which route the player should take, and when you just "dive into" a room without any reflection and try to solve it as you go, you find that you can't do it this way and you have to go back to the start of the room (which I was able to do thanks to using the Rollback feature in the ZX Spin emulator) and take another route. I really appreciated various arrangements which made me go back and think again about which route to take :). This is a great asset of the game, IMO, which makes it technically much more interesting than some of the other, earlier MM remakes mentioned in this thread. Some modifications to sprites and item shapes (and the title screen tune) are also good.
 
The recording of my walkthrough can now be downloaded from the RZX Archive or viewed on its YouTube channel. However, I would strongly encourage everyone to play the game themselves first, before watching the recording, as it's really a lot of fun :). The game is more challenging than many other MM remakes, but at the same time not as hard as "Manic Scribbler", which I believe to be the hardest MM game ever created, or most of Andrew Broad's MM games.
 
So Ligan, congratulations on this fine creation!  :D (if it is indeed your work, as I believe it to be). I would like to add the game to the list of MM games on my JSW Central website and so I have some questions in order to make the information which will be placed there as correct as possible:
 
- Is it OK to quote the name of the game as "Manic Miner Hard" (which would be my preference), or should it be just "MM Hard" (or perhaps "MMHard", as in the name of the Z80 file you uploaded)?
 
- Could you please kindly confirm that you are the author of "Manic Miner Hard"? If so, would you like to be credited with anything else other than "Ligan"? (such as your real name or whatever else you prefer). If not, could you please let us know who the author is?
 
- I believe that in Chronology I should mention 6th August 2017 as the date of the gamma-release of the game. Is this correct? Has the game been released somewhere else before here by any chance?
 
I guess that would be all as far as JSW Central is concerned. I just want to say once again that I really enjoyed playing your game, that it was a lovely surprise to see this game appear out of the blue, and that I look forward to any further MM or JSW redesigns you may create. Is there any chance this will actually happen? :)

Some video links here,  hope i'm not repeating anything already mentioned
 
Interview with Matthew Smith, how he got started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMmwkXgY-xQ
 
this video shows how he designed the original game engine in Manic Miner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LymCezUg7HI&t=296s

Yes, in fact if you were to look into the RZX and stop it as the Cold Store is accessed you'll see that the bug has the effect of then changing to the Swimming Pool and then to the Orangery even though Willy isn't even in the rooms .. if you were to use WRITETYPER to go back down the room below you tend to find even more devastation and carnage than there was when you accessed it first time around
 
...i have created an RZX where i go through all the rooms even 61-63 repeatedly until the game completely falls apart, got as far as round 3 and the Cold Store then it did a USR 0 on me  :blink:

putting a second rope in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'? Did try that but it involved a lot of rework with the room and i ended up with something quite some way removed from the original flavour of the game, it just looked too far out of place. I am looking at creating multi-rope rooms in my new project which does not need to be tied to the original format of the game so no need to follow my self-imposed 'AMI' rules

JSW2 C16, I split out the four maps from the original 'combi' one as its a bit easier to digest this way:
 
Part One:

 
Part Two:

 
Part Three:

 
Part Four:

WOS and The Tip Shop both seem to be up and running now

WOS and The Tip Shop both seem to be up and running now

Yes, in fact if you were to look into the RZX and stop it as the Cold Store is accessed you'll see that the bug has the effect of then changing to the Swimming Pool and then to the Orangery even though Willy isn't even in the rooms .. if you were to use WRITETYPER to go back down the room below you tend to find even more devastation and carnage than there was when you accessed it first time around
 
...i have created an RZX where i go through all the rooms even 61-63 repeatedly until the game completely falls apart, got as far as round 3 and the Cold Store then it did a USR 0 on me  :blink:

Some video links here,  hope i'm not repeating anything already mentioned
 
Interview with Matthew Smith, how he got started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMmwkXgY-xQ
 
this video shows how he designed the original game engine in Manic Miner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LymCezUg7HI&t=296s

Some video links here,  hope i'm not repeating anything already mentioned
 
Interview with Matthew Smith, how he got started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMmwkXgY-xQ
 
this video shows how he designed the original game engine in Manic Miner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LymCezUg7HI&t=296s

Yes, in fact if you were to look into the RZX and stop it as the Cold Store is accessed you'll see that the bug has the effect of then changing to the Swimming Pool and then to the Orangery even though Willy isn't even in the rooms .. if you were to use WRITETYPER to go back down the room below you tend to find even more devastation and carnage than there was when you accessed it first time around
 
...i have created an RZX where i go through all the rooms even 61-63 repeatedly until the game completely falls apart, got as far as round 3 and the Cold Store then it did a USR 0 on me  :blink:

Thought i might share this.
 
It's just a quick demo that i knocked up, as you can see (if it works in your emulator, apologies if it doesn't, i've not tested it yet) Willy already has his mind on other matters so using WRITETYPER  i have run through all of the rooms in order having first accessed 'The Attic' to get things going. The demo shows how the game degenerates when certain rooms are accessed. I've left this open so you can append to it at your leisure.
 
One thing i noticed when working on this is that Willy doesn't even need to be in a room to lose a life when the bug has started doing the damage so i have added anti collision pokes to give you a chance to see the rooms in all their 'glory'(??)
 
When accessing rooms with ropes the bug in the game automatically changes to the room above
Attic bug effects.rzx

putting a second rope in 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'? Did try that but it involved a lot of rework with the room and i ended up with something quite some way removed from the original flavour of the game, it just looked too far out of place. I am looking at creating multi-rope rooms in my new project which does not need to be tied to the original format of the game so no need to follow my self-imposed 'AMI' rules

That's consistent with the large flashing block letters on the Title Screen, which Matthew also created, and which has a space (but no hyphen) between 'Jet' and 'Set'.  It was also two separate words (unhyphenated) on the original cassette inlay (in graffiti-spray writing, representing Willy's trashed house!)
 
By the way, when you mention minor layout changes to the new rooms, I'm wondering if you have followed through with an idea you mooted in the readme, of having two ropes that allow access up to the Tree House...?

I'm inclined to go with Jet Set as there is no change to the number of characters in the message ... 

That reminds me, as well as the aforementioned changes i have tidied up Willy's 'sticky bed' problem, will update the readme to add you to the credits for this

Did you remove the hyphen from 'Jet-Set' in the scrolly (with a space character there instead)?  (I'm being picky now!)
 
By the way, I've just brought the Temporary Topic that you created back from the grave, in case it's of assistance...  (I'm not sure whether I've revived it for another month, or permanently?)

Thankyou Sherlock... yes indeed that particular file was uploaded whilst i was playing JSW using letters Q and W with space to jump, but whether i play left or right handed depends on what i am playing it on, when using ol' rubber keys i tend to just use the cursors .. (5, 8 and 0) as the ageing keyboard membrane is a bit knackered and letters Q and P need extra heavy presses to get them to respond (33 years of defining keys as QAOP...), i use a laptop with a numerical keypad when playing it on an emulator and like Danny i am right handed yet play using QW for left and right movement and INS and DEL for rollback action...
 
by the way, later on i will upload the final release, no major changes, just the edits to the readme and some minor cosmetic changes to the new rooms, watch this space...

By way of an explanation for the above:
 
Earlier on, I think I established that the 'As Manufacturer Intended' game file was built upon a snapshot file - this conclusion was based on the fact that some of the addresses which store the variables that are used in the game (#85CB-#85E4), hold non-default (i.e. non-zero) values when you examine the game file's code in a hex editor.
 
(Another example which I've just noticed - the range of variable addresses #8000-#813F [representing the buffer for the current room and its guardians] don't all hold zero values in 'AMI', as they do in an original JSW game file.)
 
Anyway, one of those game variables is the WRITETYPER key counter at #85E3.  Its default value (as per the SkoolKit disassembly) is 00, but in the 'AMI' game file, it holds a value of 01.
 
To recap what you probably already know, the way that the WRITETYPER counter works, is that it is only updated when Willy is in First Landing and he is located on the floor of that room.  It is incremented each time a correct letter key is pressed, but is reset to zero if an incorrect number key is pressed (see 'Main Loop(2)' in the disassembly).  Once #85E3 reaches a value of 10 (by pressing each of the letters WRITETYPER in the correct order), then the Cheat Mode is activated.
 
The value of 01 at #85E3 in 'AMI' suggests that the 'W' key was pressed whilst Willy was on the bottom of First Landing, but that this wasn't then followed by 'R', etc (which would have incremented the variable further).  And the only way that I can think of in which the variable avoided being reset to zero by any key other than 'R' being pressed, is because Willy was then moved out of the zone (bottom level of First Landing) in which keypresses can influence the value of #85E3.
 
Of course, 'W' is one of the Move Right keys, so if it was pressed for that purpose whilst Willy happened to be walking along the bottom of First Landing, then that would explain why #85E3 was incremented to 01.  Willy presumably then proceeded rightwards because 'W' was continually pressed - either up the First Landing ramp (so that he was no longer at the correct y-coordinate for the WRITETYPER activation code), or else he walked rightwards under the ramp and then dropped through the bottom exit into To the Kitchens...Main Stairway (the wrong room for the check for WRITETYPER keys) - prior to the snapshot file being created.
 
From this analysis, I deduced that Metalmickey (who presumably created the snapshot file upon which 'AMI' is based) is a left-handed player, who uses 'Q' and 'W' for Left and Right movement respectively.  (In contrast, a right-handed 'O' and 'P' player would not cause the WRITETYPER variable to be 'accidentally' incremented as they passed along the bottom level of First Landing.)
 
So to summarise, by studying the game code I was able to - correctly as it turned out - deduce that Mickey is a left-handed Willy player.  Elementary, my dear Watson!

Following on from here , here's JSW - Willy's Holiday.
 
This was more tricky than the other due to the extra code.
 
The 'Basic Loader' present in the snapshot:
 

 
The original loader appeared to load quite a few sections in heardlessly, I would speculate this was because the differing parts of the game were saved individually aka: rooms, sprites etc.
 
It was however possible after a bit of digging around to preserve the 'block' effect by interrupting the code immediately it returned to Basic to execute the for/next loop. The game code also appears to be a bit compressed too.
 
The following are provided:
 
1. As best as I can sensibly make it without resorting to compression and / or headerless loading of chunks of data, a conventional tape file of it including the 'effect' after loading. Note I've also used the original Basic loader for this too to preserve as much as sensibly possible. This is about as near to "original" as you're likely to get without splitting it into several headerless sections:
 
JSW WH full.tap
 
2. A raw game file only, this is ready to be edited in JSWED etc as required
 
JSW WH game file only.tap
 
3. Finally a 'new' loader , this is quite conventional incorporating the loading screen and codeblock. It does not however have the 'special' effect present but it does mean its more suited to editing. It is in effect just (file 2) with a screen and Basic loader added on.
 
JSW WH new but no effects.tap

View File Screen Compress
This is a very much modified version of the Spectrum 'Artist' screen compressor.
 
I have rewritten most of it to make it a lot, lot easier to use as well as more friendly and more friendly by providing 'step by step' instructions during its use.
 
Simply load the compressor then load in your screen$. You can elect to load in a normal screen or a headerless file, the latter was added as it permits you to load in a screen that is shorter than standard length if necessary for any reason too.
 
Once a screen is loaded, the reduced size is shown and you are offered the option to save it or load a new one. Also offered is a simple colour change for the menu itself as its new default is black text on yellow, but a keypress will cycle through other combinations.
 
The code is saved at 28350 however it is completely relocatable (above this address) without further modification. It is generally recommended to issue a CLS after loading the screen code before executing it and ideally the paper and ink colours should be set the same before the CLS but this is completely optional.
 

Enjoy!
Submitter Spider Submitted 05/26/2017 Category Other resources  

Thanks for pointing those out Danny .. dead giveaway that i never ran it thru a spellcheck before posting!  :blush:
 
I agree it's Easter egg as Easter is an entity in itself, by the same token one would write Christmas tree, only the event is capitalised as whatever follows it is usually a noun (except Easter Sunday) or something like that...