JianYang

I remember seeing the MSX bee card - It was played on an MSX by Alan Maton, just for me. The card was a pre release demonstration.
 

Exactly. I do occasionally play Manic Panic, but I have to be in an almost masochistic mood to do that. And in regular Manic Miner there is a certain amount of boredom when you have to walk from one end of the screen to the other.
I love both of these games, but the speeds are really at somewhat annoying extremes.
Your version is just right. Not boring in the easy levels and just a bit more challenging in the harder ones.

Although a different game, with JSW it makes Forgotten Abbey a little bit more tricky (the bottom row jumps)
In MM I did note that Skylabs , Warehouse and to some degree Amoebatrons Revenge were all slightly more difficult given the precise nature needed in these, the former two especially. I couldn't really say that Solar Power was any harder as it is all about 'player' speed in that cavern, too much hesitation as you know and there's no air left! 🙂 

This might just be my personal sweet spot of Manic Miner speed. Thumbs up.
 

Further to my post on page two here  , I decided for no real reason to change the scoring and add a bit more air, as well as compress the code to reduce it's loading size. There is a lot more scope to optimise this, it is starting to 'click' now properly with me.
For now , two identical versions with the increased bonus/air , one with a loading screen and one without.
Without screen$
MM_SP_Faster V3_EXTRA_BONUS_WITHOUT_SCR.tap
With screen$
MM_SP_Faster V3_EXTRA_BONUS_WITH_SCR.tap
The game code is identical in each of these two. For reasons of sanity I've named it 'V3' as the one in the linked post is V2
And a quick playthrough:
MM_SP_Faster V3_EXTRA_BONUS_WITH_SCR.rzx
.rzx recorded with Spectaculator, it should play back fine in most other emulators I expect.

So we can see it soon ? 🙂 

SWDEMO.TAP - Released!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YWsWCc-D16ShxHXppiFXyqObCZXgTyi8/view
Original Concept/Character Animations: Gabriele Amore
Additional Animations: Lee Bee
Eugene Sprite: HEXdidnt
Final Barrier image: Grongy, with adjustments by Lee Bee
Programming/Font: Paradigm Shifter
AY music (by Lee Bee) also to be added at a later date.

This is just a rolling demo, similar to the original attract mode, it just shows each level for a few seconds each.
Engine is running at 50fps even while playing the tune on the 48K beeper. Willy will update at 50fps too. Enemies currently update at 25fps (but are being redrawn at 50fps).
Willy movement and collision to be added next, and will do another release (with source code) once the levels are playable.
All feedback is welcome.
See also this thread:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11662
I'm also looking for tile designers, level designers etc. Post in the thread or PM me if you would like to contribute.
swdemo.tap

On fire !! Over 

Downloads 😎
This is amazing  
All the best,
B

Andrew Broad made the following comments on the Yahoo! Group when he reviewed JSWED back in November 2005:
No Kamikaze
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An interesting name for what I would term "item-retention" if I could afford a wider window. 😉
"A sadistic game designer", eh? 😆

Bonus Room
----------
Did I read somewhere that the items in a Bonus Room don't count towards removing Maria? Sacrilege!
It's really cool that the screen colour-cycles when you get an extra life, as in Manic Miner.
Perhaps certain JSW games could give you an extra life after you've collected a certain number of items, or exceeded a certain score (to which points are awarded for collecting items and visiting rooms that you haven't visited before).
There's a bug (or useful quirky feature?) whereby erroneous colour-attributes appear in the playing-area if you acquire too many lives. These colour-attributes behave as Water unless associated with a cell-class (but unlike Custom cells, they don't cause the Cell-Class 1 pixel-pattern to appear).
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There are no other references in the Group posts that would shed any light on the issue in question. However, there was also a comment of yours, Ian, in February 2017:
Re: Patch to reset cells' FLASH-bits
Andrew wrote:
> (I encountered a bug in JSWED when setting "The Off Licence" to be a bonus-room: I ticked "Bonus room" in > "Room properties", but when I checked back there, it was unticked. When I playtested it, it /was/ a > bonus-room: the items gave me extra lives, without colour-cycling.)
I have experienced a similar problem; reopening the Options->Room menu causes the Bonus room box to be unticked (after having ticked it previously).  However, when I playtested it, it wasn't a bonus room (no extra lives and no colour-cycling).
The reason I returned to the Room Options menu was to tick the 'No Kamikaze' option, in order to have both options switched on in the same room.  I thought I would see what would happen if Willy collected all the items in a multi-item room, and then died before leaving the room!  The result: many extra lives, which eventually spilled over beyond the status bar and caused corruption across the range of addresses #58xx-#5Fxx (including the attribute file for the entire screen, the primary and secondary attribute buffers for the playing area and the stack - the latter of which eventually led to a system reset!!)

At the moment I'm working on making a 128K version of the Lost Levels as I can put a lot of the features that were missing from the 48K and avoid having 2 separate games.
Here is my working list for the levels;
Not Central Cavern
The Dragon Users Bonus
Home At Last?
Back To Work
Down The Pit
In A Deep Dark Hole
Eddie’s Forest
The Hall Of The Mountain Kong
At The Centre Of The Earth
The Channel Tunnel
The End Of The World
The Space Shuttle
Where's The Hyperspace Button?
The Meteor Storm
The Airlock
Flunky Punky Munkie
The Catacombs
Mummy Daddy
Nightmare Before Last Night
Helium House on the Highlands
Metropolis Bingo
Eugene’s Other Lair
Tokyo Uh Oh
Jester Under the Bed
Clockwork Satsuma
The End
The Final BBC Barrier
This, folks, is the Last Cavern
Ending TBA
So Far all the levels have imported into the editor and I will change them to make them as close to the original platforms as possible. The progress is going well and I can see a light at the end of this tunnel!!

If there any suggestion about the running order or additional features please let me know.
All the best, B
 

Good points.
There are several options:
- Put all the SAM-levels in one file (we already have that) and all the non-SAM-levels in another
- Put all levels in one file but remove some items
- Put almost all levels in one file and remove the worst ones
- Fix the engine to allow for more items
The last one would probably be the gold standard, but right now I don't see it happening.
All the other cases are aesthetic trade-offs. In any case nothing will be lost unless Bayron goes crazy and deletes all his work so far. We just have to load different versions of the game.
I guess I favour to remove some levels because there are some levels that I think don't belong in a Manic Miner game (The two Twilight Zone Levels from the SAM and In a Deep Dark Hole(?) from the Oric come immediately to mind) and feel more like Nintendo/Mario levels.
In the end it's an artistic decision and the artist is Bayron.
I trust that Bayron can find the 10% good ideas between the 90% nonsense that I suggest. And I appreciate you supporting him/her in the process.
 

Personally, I'm not fond of this idea. It would contradict (what I feel is) the original premise behind the whole project, i.e. presenting (all of) the MM levels that were 'lost' for the ZX Spectrum (because they only existed on other platforms). If only some ('the best') levels were chosen, the ones that were left behind would continue 'lost' in a sense... Furthermore, choosing the 'best' levels would have to lead to some arbitrary and possibly controversial choices regarding which rooms to include, and which to leave out.
That's just my personal feeling about it 🙂 .

Yes, to quote from JSWED's manual:
"Bonus Room If this is ticked, each item collected gives Willy an extra life."
If I understand correctly, if this option is ticked in JSWED's GUI, each item collected in the room where this option is ticked will give Willy an extra life. So if there are e.g. 5 items in this room, Willy will receive 5 extra lives if he collects all of the items.
This would be one way of doing things. Other things could be done, too, but would have to involve manual modification of the game engine (e.g. using JSWED's Hex Editor).
I'm not sure the question quoted above is directed at me or @The-Red-Bayron. I don't have a strong opinion here. I do think adding extra lives along the way could be used, by all means, but it's Byron's call if and how to modify the game further.

Using the JSW64 game engine, it is possible (and easy) to add extra lives.
I would just caution against adding too many of them, in order to avoid what happens e.g. in "Terry The Turtle", where it is actually necessary to lose lives during the gameplay to prevent potential game corruption. Initially, the player has 7 visible spare lives, with 4 more appearing as extras are gained. With the 15th spare life acquired, flickering begins on the bottom left turtle icon. Subsequent extra lives cause flickering on additional turtles. Once the life count exceeds 28, room name display is affected, with letters disappearing starting from the left. Having more than 28 lives can slow down or crash the game due to issues like paths blocked by "rogue" cells. Therefore, it is advisable (especially if you're playing using Rollback or saving/loading snapshots and do not normally lose lives) to repeatedly commit suicide throughout the game, especially when the life count approaches 28.

I've just made it for the first time past Son of Kong Beast in Deeper and Down and I see you were way ahead of me. Great job!

Just see that Deeper and Down had over 150 Downloads !!
A big Thank You to everyone that has take the time to comment and Download the game.

This is greatly appreciated 😎
All the Best, B

I've just made it for the first time past Son of Kong Beast in Deeper and Down and I see you were way ahead of me. Great job!

Thanks very much for doing this! It's a really great conversion to have, and – again – something I've wished someone would do for a long time.
I'm also pleased that you've given the caverns proper mixed-case names this time, as I really didn't care for the all-caps names in the Lost Levels release (my only major criticism of that game).
I have two points of feedback that I've noticed so far, during my initial look, one trivial and one major:
1. In the title-screen scroll-text, you credit the "JSW46" engine (should obviously be JSW64).
2. The title screen music is just intolerably awful! I don't think this is your fault, Byron; I'm sure I've heard it before somewhere (is it the default music in JSW64 or something?) – but it should have been strangled at birth and badly needs to be replaced. I mean, the melody is OK and correct, but the accompaniment (a) is in completely the wrong key, and (b) doesn't fit even if it were in the right key – and the overall combination makes me wonder how on earth something that sounds so appallingly dreadful was ever created and released in the first place. As far as I'm concerned it really ruins the game, as I find it really hard to listen to it. No music at all on the title screen would be a far, far preferable alternative to this.
I'm sorry if my comments about the music insult someone (e.g. John Elliott, if it's his handiwork), as I really don't want to offend anybody. Nevertheless, I find it hard to put into words just how dreadful the title-screen music really is. It's like a study in what it must be like to be tone deaf. I know the original Manic Miner title screen music is pretty screechy and awful, but I always took it as being an attempt at rendering a honky-tonk piano sound, and as far as it goes it's quite succesful at that; it works because it sounds 'deliberately bad' (and it's also in tune in its own terms, and uses valid harmony). This 128K AY rendition, though, fails because the notes are perfectly in tune but are just completely wrong (in the accompaniment line). Maybe the data is simply corrupt (seriously). Either way, it REALLY needs to be replaced with a fixed version or a competent new rendition, be it of The Blue Danube or of something else.

Hi JianYang,
Thanks for the idea about making a combo, you have given me a lot of ideas and I haven't even started !!
There could be a start level where you could choose from The Lost Levels, The Deeper Caverns or Down, Down, Deeper and Down.
I would have to reduce the amount of items from The Deeper Caverns and Down, Down, Deeper and Down as the editor will not allow me to put in more items after 256.
For The Lost Levels I could get the sprites and Gameplay closer to the originals with the 128K game engine.
Any more ideas, keep them coming 👍
All the Best, B

@The-Red-Bayron you have a great game here, thank you for all your work and this is my tribute to you sir...
 
 

Just a short note about the Lost Levels, I have just put out Manic Miner: Deeper and Down and I learned a lot doing this as the editor gave me a lot of extra possibilities, so I was thinking of going back to the Lost Levels and making a 128K version that had 26 levels rather than the 2 versions that there are at the moment.
Just wanted some feedback on this 👍 and are there any more levels from the DS version that I missed ?
All the Best, B
 

He's Back... In an all new old adventure!
This follows on from the Lost Levels and Lost Levels DS in that it is a conversion from another system in this case it is the Sam Coupé version.
After the first 20 levels that follow the original Manic Miner, there were another 20 called The Deeper Caverns then another 20 called Down, Down, Deeper and Down.
This gives the game its title Manic Miner: Deeper and Down as Manic Miner: The Deeper Caverns and Down, Down, Deeper and Down was a bit of a mouthful and wouldn't fit on the cassette label!
As before it tries to do this as close as the original game mechanic allows but this time using the JSW64 128K game engine as some features like trampolines and switches were impossible to replicate in the original game engine. There is a demo version of The Deeper Caverns for the 48K as initially it started here.
Sam Coupé original                                                                                                                           Spectrum Conversion

You will need to collect all 256 keys to escape the caverns and get Willy home.
 

The Deeper Caverns
The Gameplay follows the order of these next 20 levels, level 20 The Final Frontier is used as a link into Down, Down, Deeper and Down so the top of this screen is slightly different to the original Sam Coupé version.
01 The Hollow Chamber
02 The Office
03 Cheese-Plant
04 The Dodgy Mine Shaft
05 The Big Drop
06 Order Processing Department
07 The Rocky Outcrop
08 The Twilight Zone, Part I
09 Son of Kong Beast
10 Trainspotters' Paradise
11 Battle of the Bits
12 A Night on the Tiles
13 The Twilight Zone II
14 Dante's Inferno
15 The Freezer
16 Blue Stick-Waggling Bananas
17 Round The Bend
18 Teddy Bears' Picnic
19 The Clock Tower
20 The Final Frontier
         
 

Down, Down, Deeper and Down
This follows on directly from The Deeper Caverns with an additional 20 levels.
There is an ending level (Up Up and Away !) but it is not playable, like JSW the game just stops here (until the air runs out and then it loops).
01 In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan ?
02 Bleugh
03 Wibble Flowerpot
04 Wibbly Wobbly
05 Caveman Willy
06 No Way Back ?
07 Bouncy-Bouncy
08 Son of Bride of Kong’s Revenge 2
09 The Haunted House
10 The Mouse Trap
11 The Bonus Round
12 Still No Way Back ?
13 The Pink People Eaters
14 April Showers
15 Bottom of the mine shaft
16 The Building Society
17 The Control Room
18 The Assembly Plant
19 The Computer Room
20 The end of Willy as we know it ?
21 Up Up and Away !
         
Credits:
This version was made using the JSWED v2.3.7 (JSW64) by John Elliott, and a big thanks to John for his support with some of the questions that I had about the game ending.
The loading Screen was adapted from the Sam Coupé original and edited in Multipaint from Tero Heikkinen.

 
And Finally:
A big thanks to “Spider” for suggesting doing this version to me as well as testing all the levels and the tips about the loader.
Also Daniel Gromann at JSW Central for testing all the levels and the advice about the gameplay. And answering my constant questions, many thanks.
This was another great learning experience putting the levels together and designing the new sprites, the JSW64 opens up a lot more possibilities within the level gameplay.
As before it tries to capture the spirit of the original levels but now within the limitations of the 128K Spectrum.
Thanks to everyone in the community for being so positive about the Lost Levels.
I hope that this continuation will be received as well and that you enjoy playing it
All the best,
B
 
 

Thank you for this - had a lot of fun playing this PC version across all stages.
Here is my tribute, I gave myself limited lives for each section so I could showcase all parts...
 

Not really a JSW game by any purist's standards, but it's fun.
https://sloanysoft.itch.io/willie
Review (not mine): 
 

Ah yes I saw this on Spectrum Computing the other day, its AGD based if I recall.
I did have a quick go at the first two screens. 🙂