Richard Hallas

I agree – and it appears that that's what's probably happened with Alien8 and some other familiar titles. But JSW? Surely that's authentic, isn't it? The scrolltext pictured in the video says that the Lynx port is by Tim Titchmarsh for Phoenixx Softwarre (note the double letters!), and it doesn't appear to be a straight port of any other existing version. I've tried Googling Tim Titchmarsh in association with Phoenix/Phoenixx and Lynx, and I haven't found any results – which you'd imagine there probably would be if this were a modern conversion. But if it dates from 1984, it's obscure enough to not have been recorded online. Also, the forum poster who provided the tape (and credits the game to Tynesoft rather than Software Projects) refers to having gone through his "old" Lynx tapes and transferred them – and JSW was one of them. (Notably, the other possibly modern conversions, like Alien8, were not from this source.) He also mentions that the tapes are over 35 years old. This all certainly points to Lynx JSW being authentic from 1984. Was it known about already by any members of this site, or is it new to all of us? Whether it's really from 1984 or is a more modern conversion is immaterial in a sense, if it's a new platform that wasn't previously known either way; it's one more new version of JSW to catalogue either way. But it'd be quite nice to think that it's a new discovery of a previously unknown yet authentic 1984 conversion, as that'd make it one more platform for JSW to have appeared on back in the 80s.

Hi all, I was browsing YouTube recently and came across a video that claimed to demo ALL the games ever published for the Camputers Lynx. Unfortunately it's in French, but never mind. It's broken into chapters and just shows a bitesized bit of gameplay for each game listed. (I'm really not convinced that it's actually complete, as claimed, not least because I know that there were at least three early Level 9 adventures for the machine, and I don't see any of them demoed here, but that's by the by…) Anyway, to my great surprise, one of the included games is JSW! As published by Tynesoft rather than Software Projects (like the BBC versions), apparently. Until seeing this video, I'd no idea that there was a version of JSW for the Lynx. Indeed, I didn't know of any 'mainstream' games for it – but it turns out that there was a handful of 'big name' games for it, including, notably, Ultimate's Alien8, Melbourne House's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and Mined Out! by Quicksilva, plus a few other familiar lesser ones like Oh Mummy. But the highlight for me was seeing a version of JSW that I'd never previously known existed. Here's the video, with playback starting at the JSW segment: JSW for Camputers Lynx on YouTube As you can see, it's an 'interesting' version: plenty colourful, with quite authentic Spectrum-like graphics, but with some weird differences, such as Willy changing colour in each room (including the hard-to-see blue on black combination), and with AWFUL stepped staircases like in the Commodore 64 version. There's also weird corruption in the lower part of the screen (maybe an emulator issue, maybe not) and the in-game music sounds awful (like it sounds when you've lost multiple lives in the Specturm version, but from the outset here). A quick search revels that the archive containing the game tape file (and, separately, a disked version) can be found here, in a forum thread: JSW for Camputers Lynx in tape and disk formats I don't have a conveniently set up emulator to try these out myself, but I thought I should mention the subject here in case it's useful information. I doubt I'm the only JSW fan who previously had no idea there was a Lynx version. (Shame there doesn't appear to be Manic Miner too.) I previously thought the most obscure versions of JSW were those for Memotech and Einstein machines, but I really didn't know of ANY commercial software for the Lynx until the other day. UPDATE: Hm, further investigations suggest that some of the big-name titles (notably Alien8, and probably the Melbourne House adventures from the way they look) may well be modern conversions from the Spectrum originals. I'm not entirely sure. However, the JSW conversion does appear to be authentic, from back in the day…

For what it's worth… I am Mr Scratcher. (It's just an old nickname that I sometimes use online.) I stumbled across Bob Fossil's conversion of Manic Miner 128 to .tap format and was delighted to find it. But on playing it through, I found that it crashed in Skylab Landing Bay. I contacted him to let him know about the problem, and this led to his creating the two nice new versions that we now have. (He gave me a decent real-name credit in his new Bug-Byte version's loader.) You can read the correspondence in its entirety on his dedicated blog page: The Fossil Record: Room for Improvements.

Apparently it is. 🙂

Just as a quick follow-up… I finally got it! 🙂 My own Willy with crash helmet, as seen in Join the Jet-Set!. I requested the 'one foot in front of the other' pose, as I prefer it to the striding position.

Yes, I definitely fancy a lamp with my JTJS version of Willy in it. 🙂 I may be the only person who'd want such a thing, but I think Alan Grier will make one for me; I mentioned the possibility when ordering the one I've got, and he reacted positively. As for your animated illustration, yes, the cycling speed looks pretty similar. It's hard to judge a video like that against real life with LEDs, as they never seem to video as well as they look in real life, but I think the speed of fade is similar. Looking at my lamp in real life, the colours look more intense and the fading arguably smoother, but, as I say, it's probably to do with the video quality. Anyway, the colours produced by the lamp are certainly rich, intense and lovely.

I realised, but it was still worth considering! 🙂

Concerning the ideas for alternative images in the lamp… looking at mine, it's clear that if the same of image size is retained, there's room for a 10×16-pixel design, though note that the curvature of the 'tongue' could potentially affect the top three rows of pixels, so these need to occupy less than the full width. Doubtless it's possible to scale the designs down to fit more pixels in the available space, but still, it's clear that a tall (roughly 1.6:1) aspect ratio is going to work best. Unfortunately, the 'pointing Maria' sprite is nearly square (14×16), so she'd have to be scaled down quite a bit and would come far short of the curved top of the tongue. It's the pointing arm that's the problem, of course; in her folded-arms guise she'd fit a little better, though she's still dumpy compared with Willy (12×16), so would have to be shorter. Concerning the flying pig sprite, in its 'wing up' position it's actually 10×14 pixels, so that should work pretty well, though the top, curved part of the lamp will be largely empty. Also, it's an unfortunate fact that the top tip of the wing is a filled pixel just at the point where the lamp starts to curve, so fitting it in without clipping it may be a problem (assuming there's no scaling down), and even if it can be made to fit, it'll be very close to the edge of the perspex. Anyway, I'm sure that Alan Grier would be open to doing custom designs if approached, and he'll obviously be able to tackle any practical difficulties there may be with particular designs. I plan to ask him to do me another one featuring my version of Willy with a crash helmet from Join the Jet-Set!. And I'd think that a Miner Willy variant (with miner's lamp) would definitely be on the cards, since it's as iconic as JSW.

Greetings all, I'm posting this at the suggestion/request of Spider. Recently on Facebook, a guy called Alan Grier advertised some LED lamps he'd created that feature Miner Willy in his Jet-Set Willy guise. Here's the thread: Facebook thread on JSW LED lamps He'd only made five of them, and they all sold out within minutes. I was lucky enough to get the last one. However, he's making more. Should anyone here want one, it's probably best to approach him via Facebook (direct-message him). However, he divulges his email address on ordering, so I have that too. I don't want to publish his email in public here, but if necessary (e.g. if someone tries to contact him via Facebook and can't get through), contact me privately on this forum and I'll supply it. The lamps cost £15 each, inclusive of everything (even postage via Hermes) – which seems like excellent value to me. Here's mine, illuminated blue in a dark room at night with the other lights off: It appears a little over-exposed here, but in real life it looks fantastic. It's illuminated from below by a row of LEDs, and they're surprisingly bright and distribute the light pretty evenly. If I were being picky, I could say that there's a slight dimming in the centre of Willy's head and a touch of extra reflected brightness at the top of his hat (which you can see in my photo), but that's being overly critical. It's not bad enough to worry about, and the lamp looks really great. Also, the lamp is bright enough to be very easily visible and solidly coloured in full daylight. The lamp arrives as the plastic base unit and the clear perspex 'tongue' containing the engraved artwork, which just pushes into a slot and is then quite secure. (But also easily removed, if you happen to have more than one insert and want to swap them.) Also included is a USB cable and an infra-red remote control (with battery already included). The engraved perspex tongue is very nice quality: extremely clear and ideal for its purpose. The base unit is just plastic and not especially high quality plastic, but it's perfectly fine for the job. It's maybe a little lightweight, but it's heavy enough to do its job, and won't blow over if you walk past it too fast! The base unit can be powered by the USB cable or you can instead insert three AA batteries into a compartment underneath. There's a touch-sensitive on/off control on the front (which you can see easily in my photo): holding a finger over it will power the lamp on/off, and touching it briefly will cycle through a series of steady colours. For full control of the lamp, you need to use the infrared control unit, which offers a surprising range of options, as follows: • On/off buttons. • Brightness control buttons (seven levels, from 'clearly visible' to 'very bright', though the levels only appear to work with steady colours). • Solid colours: White, plus three 'scales' from R to Y, G to C and B to M, each with three intermediate steps. In other words, there's a grid of colour buttons with RGB at one extreme and CMY (in the order YCM) at the other, and three intermediate buttons between each of those colour pairs. Plus White. So, there's a choice of 16 steady colours if you don't want the lamp to flash. • Four animation effects: Flash, Strobe, Fade, Smooth. These all appear to work at full brightness only. Their effect is as follows: † Flash: Makes the lamp rotate through the solid colours Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, White, spending about a second on each colour. † Strobe: Same as Flash, except that it only uses the colours Red, Green and Blue. A bit boring. † Fade: Makes the lamp cycle slowly through the same set and order of colours used by Flash mode, but this time slowly fading from one colour into the next. Each fade takes about four seconds (with one second spent in each colour-stop), so the lamp is constantly changing but in a very non-distracting way. Also, because the fades are so smooth, you get some nice colours along the way (e.g. on the way from Red to Green you get a brief orange and yellow). It looks really great. † Smooth: This uses a similar fade effect to Fade mode (though faster, at only about two seconds), but it only alternates between two colours: pure white and deep blue. A bit boring, frankly. So: two good animations and two ho-hum ones. Flash is good if you like flipping between seven solid colours; Fade is good if you prefer a slower and gentler fading version of the same thing. I personally like Fade best: it's nice and gentle and non-distracting, but allows you to see the full range of lovely rich colours. (And they really are lovely and rich, especially red, which seems incredibly intense.) As a final note, Alan Grier has reacted positively to the idea of doing alternate and/or custom designs. So I intend to get him to produce a version featuring Willy wearing a crash helmet, as designed by me for use in my own game, Join the Jet-Set!. If I do get such a version, I'll post a photo of it here. Anyway, I think the lamp's great. I'm really pleased with mine and plan to leave it on all the time. I've got it plugged into my Mac and it continues to illuminate even when I've put the Mac to sleep, so it also acts as a night light during the small hours and possibly helps to avoid stumbles on the way to the toilet!

I get the strong impression that the Elkulator version is there just to work with Elkulator, which evidently doesn't get the timing quite right. I think the non-Elkulator version is intended for real machines and other emulators that do get the timing right. Certainly, with Clock Signal, the 'real machine' version works perfectly, whereas the Elkulator version has some slight colour bleed in the high score numbers on the title screen. (Haven't noticed any other problems with it yet, but I haven't spent a lot of time with it.)

Yes, it's an impressive achievement. In terms of the screenshots, it may be worth deleting all that black space at the top of the screen, since it's just wasted space. I'd be interested to know how this looks on a real Electron; i.e. whether the graphics really do appear at the bottom of the screen, or whether the timings of the 'custom mode' cause the image to be vertically centred (which would obviously be preferable). Concerning the cheat… yes, I agree, it's a good solution. I only wish I knew how to turn it off again once enabled, short of just reloading the game! I also had a bit of trouble discovering the Delete/Copy key mappings when using my favoured Electron Emulator on the Mac, but I discovered that Delete is mapped to both Backspace and Delete, and Copy is mapped to the `/~ key, immediately to the left of Z on a Mac keyboard. Obviously, your mileage may vary… Speaking of emulators, the one I now use for emulating an Electron is a little-known and quite new multi-emulator that supports an increasing number of systems (including Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, ZX80/81, Spectrum, VIC 20, Apple II, Mac, ColecoVision etc…). It's called Clock Signal, and it seems to handle the Electron very well. (It doesn't need the 'fudged' version of Manic Miner that was specifically created for Elkulator, anyway; it runs the 'proper' version perfectly.) Give it a try; it's an impressive piece of work and appears to aim at being able to handle 'everything' eventually. Clock Signal may be found here: Clock Signal on Github EDIT: Forgot to say… Clock Signal appears to be for Mac and Linux, not for Windows… though who knows; I haven't looked into that, as I'm not a Windows user. Anyway, it makes a really nice change to have a good emulator for Mac that isn't available for Windows, rather than the other way round, which is the norm!

Yes, it'd be great to have it here too, in a similarly nicely presented format. That in-development screenshot's interesting, but I hope it doesn't put anyone off! The final release looks *much* better, and doesn't have the half-screen of visible garbage. Admittedly having the score line and Air bar above the playing field feels a little eccentric, but it makes this version unique! And it retains the nice new colour-switch from the BBC version, which gives the Air/Score area a different palette from the rest of the display and makes the whole thing look better and more colourful. One final point worth noting is that the cheat mode from the BBC version survives intact. (Well, it's more a practice mode than a cheat mode, because when you've got it turned on you can access and play any screen directly, but if you complete it, you restart the same screen rather than progressing to the next one.)

OK, hoping that this hasn't already been covered in some other post that I've missed… Further to all the recent stuff about TonyLobster's amazing work on the BBC version of Manic Miner… A chap calling himself 0xC0DE has adapted TonyLobster's work to produce a brand-new version of Manic Miner for the Acorn Electron! This is actually an amazing achievement, as the Electron wasn't all that powerful a machine, and it was a lot slower than the BBC too. Its memory constraints show up in the fact that this new Manic Miner port uses the minimum amount of screen space it can get away with, and just occupies the bottom half of the available space, in effect. Some screen elements have had to be redistributed because of this (in particular, the Air bar and the score/lives/status line are now at the very top). Nevertheless, this is a really good conversion – just like the new BBC one, really – and could have been a very successful Electron release if issued back in the 1980s. And it's the first time Manic Miner's made it to the Electron, which is quite something. It only took 38 years… Find it here, in both tape and disk versions: Manic Miner for Acorn Electron (2021 release)

Thanks. And as for hosting it in this way – excellent. 🙂 What better place for a copy to live?! Yes, it's a really great improvement, isn't it? Finally, it feels as though the BBC has a decent version of Manic Miner to do the platform justice, rather than the rather clunky reduced-fun effort it was before. It was always quite an interesting version because of the differences in the final two screens, but now it's a good and playable game too. Indeed, it'd be nice if TonyLobster would apply his skills to the BBC versions of the JSW games, as they're very much in the same class as Manic Miner…

Oh… sorry about that; obviously I hadn't realised. He didn't post about the disassembly he made only a couple of weeks ago, so I assumed it would be helpful for me to post again on this same thread. Guess I should have checked first. Apologies for the wasted bandwidth.

There's an interesting follow-up to the release of the BBC Manic Miner disassembly. The same chap who recently disassembled the game – he calls himself TonyLobster – has now put a lot of effort into improving it too. The results are spectacular. Whereas it used to be slower than the Spectrum original and feel really clunky, it's now faster and plays much better. The graphics are now flicker-free. The in-game music, which was worse than on the Spectrum, now sounds good (as befits the BBC's sound chip). The AIR indicator is back to being horizontal, like on the Spectrum, and a split-screen effect is now used to allow it to use the traditional red/green/white colours (usually! – Eugene's Lair is the exception) regardless of the choice of four colours for the playing area above it. It's surprising how this single change makes the whole game feel a lot more colourful, like the Spectrum original. All in all, it's a vast improvement on the original, and now plays really well. It's actually the enjoyable game that it always should have been – shame it wasn't released like this in the first place! TonyLobster's own summary of the improvements (quoting from his StarDot forum post) is as follows: * Fast * Flicker free player movement * Fixes to cavern layouts, graphics, and colours * Better air bar and colours * Fixed the shape of the jump to match the Spectrum * Better collision detection * Better music * 'GAME OVER' added * Master compatible Full details about what's been done are on Github: https://github.com/TobyLobster/ManicMiner2021 Anyway, anyone with an interest in the BBC version is encouraged to download the "NEWMINER.ssd" disk image and give it a go. Prepare to be impressed. Also, the recently discovered cheat mode from the original still works. To recap: • During a game, press PAUSE (DELETE key) • Type A SECRET (including the space); if registered, a sound will play • Press UNPAUSE (COPY key) Now, you can jump directly to any level of the game by pressing F0 to F9 (levels 1 to 10) or Shift-F0 to Shift-F9 (levels 11 to 20). Once enabled, the level-jump cheat remains active for the rest of the session. Very useful for getting to the substantially different final two screens.

Yes – my reaction was a bit exaggerated too, for entertainment value, but… the basic points are correct, I think! 😉 I do agree that the Next group is a shadow of itself. I'm really not at all sure why. It went – all of a sudden – from being extremely active and fascinating to being… just a lot less active than it was. And it happened at a weird time, too, when KS2 was fresh in people's minds and you'd expect there to be a lot more active interest. Perhaps it's a result of a slow-down in development work. Clearly things are still going on behind the scenes, but new features aren't coming thick and fast in the way that they once did, not least because most features have now reached a certain stage of maturity. Just to name one example… back in the early days, I suggested that the Pi0 could be integrated into the audio system and used as a TZX player, and that idea was actually taken up and implemented. It took quite some time, effort and experimentation to get it working properly (and I helped a bit with testing)… but now it's 'there' – finished and working – so there's nothing else to do, really (unless they decided to support PZX files as well). I was under the impression that TRD disk support was also on the way, and I hope it still is… but I've heard nothing about it recently. Maybe it's on the list to do after the next major core update has been issued. I do find it odd that Phoebus announced he'd be issuing a new distribution "within the next day or two" at around Christmas, and we're still waiting for it nearly four months later. But then again, it's not as though it's needed urgently; everything's working fine. Maybe the want to make a big splash with some major upgrades just in time for the launch of the KS2 machines. I do miss the time when the group was a lot more active and interesting, though. It was my main reason for visiting Facebook, and I actually had a lot of fun with it, despite the odd negative aspect. There are indeed some very good people on there, and indeed the community as a whole is very friendly and helpful. Anyway, thanks for your kind words – they're appreciated. Yes, he does make a good point. I personally use Facebook through a web browser on my Mac in the main, but I do sometimes look at it on either iPad or iPhone, and there the dedicated app is definitely to be preferred. Well, on the iPhone anyway. On the iPad it's a blurrier choice.

"My powerful influence"?! 😃 LOL! Well, that's certainly a different take on things, and unusually flattering – if somewhat misplaced! I don't have any influence in the Next community; indeed, I may be a negative influence in some ways. For example, one of the active members of the Next team told me explicitly that I was so tediously long-winded and boring that he always ignored any post with my name on it, because reading it was a waste of his time. Another core team member simply blocked me entirely, so that he could no longer see my posts and I couldn't see his. To be fair, there are other, more central members of the core team who have been a lot more pleasant and who do treat me like a human being… but I'm under no illusion about the level of influence I exert! (And, frankly, why should I have any influence? I've contributed a few minor things, but nothing of any real substance. Having said that, I did offer substantial help at an early stage – help that they could really usefully have taken advantage of – and was completely ignored. But that was up to them…) I do agree about Facebook; as a solution for hosting a discussion forum about something like the Next, it's crap… and I've said so several times. I'm also not really a fan of it in general terms either (and certainly don't trust the actions and motivations of the people behind it…). But unfortunately, regardless of its shortcomings, much of the population clearly loves it and even thinks of it as 'the Internet'. Rants from me aren't going to change that. Moreover, as you mention, there's a perfectly good dedicated forum for the Spectrum Next at the machine's official website, i.e. https://www.specnext.com/forum/, and although some people do use it, the vast majority of users simply ignored it and went to Facebook instead. This wasn't anyone's choice, and presumably if the team had wanted to use Facebook, they wouldn't have provided a dedicated forum in the first place. Anyway, I'm afraid it would need something more momentous than words from me to cause people to abandon Facebook in favour of the official forum. Maybe if all the developer team rebelled against Facebook and said they were only going to participate on the Next forum in future, that might do it. Or, it might have done it a couple of years ago, when a lot more visible, interesting stuff was happening in public (again, as you mention). Now, I think, it's all too late. As for me, probably the best thing I can do is to continue posting my tediously long and boring messages on Facebook in the hopes of scaring people away!

As Ian has just said, he emailed me this question directly a few days ago. I might as well reproduce my response to him here… PS Further to the above, it's also worth noting that there are actually only two phrases in the Alchemist theme (both of them repeated), and although the second phrase sounds faster and more complex than the first, that's only because of the pedal note (the repeated upper note, on the fifth of the scale). Without that pedal note, the two phrases actually go at the same speed and are very similar indeed. So really, it boils down to being a single short and slightly modified extract from BWV565, as far as I'm concerned.

Hi, This is nothing to do with me as such; I merely pass on the information. Someone on the StarDot.org.uk forums has just done a comprehensive disassembly of the BBC Micro version of Manic Miner. It's on GitHub.

I was always under the impression that the revised Amoebatron guardians in Amoebatrons' Revenge were supposed to be bugs out of the Bug-Byte logo. But if so, this use of the logo was complemented by the Software Projects impossible triangle logos in The Warehouse, which is the previous screen. So, Software Projects logos in Room 17, Bug-Byte logos in Room 18. I don't know whether there's any real significance to this (e.g. Software Projects now being 'ahead of Bug-Byte').

That's all true, but I was speaking as an experienced Manic Miner player who does know the layouts very well. Certainly, the mod would provide extra challenge if applied to one of the third party MM games with less familiar (or new to the player) layouts. But as someone who's been playing Manic Miner since 1983, I don't find the lack of normal colour attributes in the standard rooms to be a hindrance at all. Also, don't forget that for players who grew up with the Dragon version of the game, there wasn't actually any colour in that one in the first place! :-)

I really like these mods! Gloomy Cavern restores the difficulty to being the same as the unmodified Manic Miner

Hi Daniel! Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful reply. In fact, we're in complete agreement about most things you say

I've just belatedly noticed this thread, so as one of the people who was there, I thought I'd say a few things from my own perspective, particularly about the competition. Danny is correct that my "Join the Jet-Set!" came second in the competition, after "Maria vs Some Bastards". As for the competition itself, I had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I was pleased to have one of my games picked at all; that in itself was a real honour, considering the sheer number of JSW games developed, and also considering that mine is one of the very oldest, having been completed back in 1985. But on the other hand, the way the competition was presented and run was simply not fair on any level. What was the criterion on which the games were supposed to be judged? How they played? How they looked? How much they stretched the JSW engine in terms of quirky exploits or new routines etc.? Having a competition for which one is "best" is actually pretty meaningless. The only criterion that the audience was permitted to judge, really, was how the games looked