MtM

18 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

Amen to that! 👍

And maybe a couple more beyond the 50th... 🙂 

I wonder if in 100 years time, we will all be gone, as will MS, but will JSW still live on? Will people still be interested?

No idea really ...

I wondered Danny if you or Carl had any sort of explanation as to why you give up so much time doing these things! 🙂

It must have taken literally hours and hours to do it for no financial gain, I think you have both earned the right to say

a few words about the process, please do!

I have finally got around to playing this a bit more properly on my Mac. It is a stellar work! And also features a room that if I am

understanding it correctly, has a bit of a rude twist to it, which I think is the first time I remember that in a JSW game, although

I am likely forgetting some kind of innuendo somewhere in some version 🙂 I have counted at least 5 new tunes in the game

going from screen to screen, I am sure there are a load more in there, I don't think I know of any other version with so many

in game tunes but I am sure that Danny will correct me on that. I can only marvel at the work that has gone into this, a real

labour of love for no reward at all except the gratitude of JSW fans everywhere and the kudos of creating such a fantastic

new game. Just amazing that new features are still being added to JSW. It would be good if there are any Spectrum or Retro

shows coming up this and Mirrorverse would be great demos to have on. All those involved, take a bow!

I had some Andy Green stuff somewhere, I can't remember where I got it from, really good turbo loaders

and re done screens, the guy clearly has a lot of talent. Just out of interest Andy who is Andy Green,

or Mick Farrow for that respect, are the old skool coders I guess?

Thanks for the above though, some great screens there.

For MM Andy, the platforms on Processing Plant at the top of the screen have _always_ since being a child playing it then

made me think that if you could just get on to them, there was a room above them! Me and a friend used to try

to get on them, as we thought there was a hidden screen to be found. I suppose it would be easy enough if there

were a single cell invisible platform somewhere. Would the game crash if you could get up there and jump up?

Yes that seems entirely appropriate Danny, to differentiate between mods and what you might say are beyond mods, new music, sprites etc, room layouts / maps.

I think this happened with PC games didn't it a good few years ago, when you would get mods for say Quake 2, but then complete reworks on the same engine you could buy, I am trying to think of the name of one, was Hexen one such game? Anyway it seems like a valid point and way of doing it, and does aid in trying to keep track of them all, and make a more informed selected of what you want to play - something really JSW like, or something with as you say the exquisite game mechanics of MS's timeless originals but a different look and feel and maybe sound. Which one of your games was it that changed the music on the first screen as you moved right, I forget? That was a great feature I thought. 40 years this year since MM, 40 next year for JSW, who could possibly have thought they would still be going so strong all these years later? I hope we all live to see the 50 year anniversary in 10 years time! I hope that MS gets some kind of recognition too - I wonder if there are more mods / reworks for JSW than any other 8 bit game, maybe any other game full stop? Could be a world record? Certainly for longevity and reworks, I can't think of anything else that may equal it?

I have just gotten around to playing this a bit more properly, there have been so many top releases of late.

I particularly like the early screen Subatomic Collapse Imminent, the tiny platforms remind me of a few levels

out of Turmoil which is a very good thing, I really like the visual look of it all. Mind you it is a hard screen that.

I can't imagine the amount of work that has gone into it Danny, it's a completely new game really. I wonder

what MS himself would make of such a rework of his work? I can only say Bravo yet again! I don't know if Carl

reads these forums as well but he and you should be rightly proud of it, it's a great contribution to the world

of JSW & MM. Merci beaucoup!

Excellent work Danny as ever, I don't know how you find the time to do it all!

That Ultimate Manic Miner I have never heard of or seen before, it looks very colourful - another one on the need to play list.

Thanks again!

It makes me smile a bit to see that preview, the photography is just about as unflattering as it could be barring

being black and white. It doesn't exactly look like the world beater it became in those pictures. Thanks for posting

it Andy!

I remember the Lantern advert Andy, not sure I have really seen the other one before?

I have just played the the online version a few times, it locked up under the latest Firefox on MacOS Ventura latest version the first time, but has seemed stable after that. It looks and sounds and plays superbly! Absolutely Bravo for this PS, it is superb work!

I have downloaded the Windows version, I will give it a go on my pc next time it is on. I would happily pay for this game or make a contribution/donation if you have the facility, or a link to a charity you want supporting etc. if that helps.

If you could port it to MacOS too then that would be even better 😉

I can see that the online version saves certain info, if there was an actual save game facility say if you needed to go to sleep! that would be really good too, it is so vast, you will need several sittings to play it all, and map it. But again what a tremendous achievement, thank you for bringing it to fruition! This and Sendy's recent RR have been superb, incredible contributions to the JSW & MM world.

It doesn't give off those vibes. It's a great game which is of benefit to all JSW & MM fans around the world, thank you very much for it!

We are all waiting with baited breath Sendy for the release!

I think it would be a really good idea if you named a screen after me 😉

3 hours ago, Jet Set Willie said:

This topic was about a modern remake of JSW. I started to talk about Amiga, wishing someone could convert this modern remake to Amiga too. 🙂 Amiga could then have JSW more close to the original version. 🙂

Ah, my mistake, apologies! I just saw what looked like the original Amiga version being mentioned. I thought it was a very poor version imo, it was the map scrolling that just didn't work well, I know other people on these hallowed forums have since come up with again imo better implementations of the scrolling screen idea.

A new version of the game really ought to have some kind of game save feature to it for me anyway, especially if we are talking about a vast map of a game.

Just for everyone's reference, I am sure you have seen it before, here is the official Amiga version of JSW2

https://hol.abime.net/790

Norman, did you know anything about this version or the people behind it at the time?

Or likewise the Amiga version of Manic Miner

https://hol.abime.net/2407

Written by two of the same people, Stephen/Steve McMaster and Paul McMaster.

I am surprised at some of the generous reviews given at the time to the above games, perhaps I need to go and re-visit them myself 🙂

On 2/17/2023 at 3:08 PM, Sendy The Endless said:

All platforms seem to be turning to 💩

Apart from the ones in platform games 🙃

I agree about the platforms. Games have gone the way of films, big sequels, franchises, it doesn't excite me like it used to do. Oh well.

Sorry folks not been monitoring for a bit. Are you talking about the Amiga version of JSW, which used the map of JSW 2? It was written

by Stephen McMaster as I recollect, and I think his brother Darren was it? did the music. I have the original on my shelves but not

to hand, I can take pics and post them if that helps? Apologies if I am on completely the wrong track! It is a distant memory though,

it may not be 100% correct. Personally I thought it was a poor conversion of JSW / JSW 2, as soon as you lose the flip screen element ...

These are exciting times!

Incredible! Thank you Norman!

A list of _all_ known MM & JSW games, both official and unofficial that covers all formats would be an interesting and useful list to have.

I think some criteria might be helpful, either they are official versions of the games, such as the Amiga version of Jet Set Willy, an official version

albeit if memory serves it was JSW II really and scrolled, but it was still an official release, so part of the 'Canon'. For that matter JSW II is an

official game, but not the original engine etc.

Any 'home-brew' that uses an engine from the original could count as an unofficial version? This could include

Danny's quiz game for me anyway, if it uses the engine.

I note on Danny's list there are titles such as 'Roller Coaster' by Elite, which are technically at least nothing

to do with JSW or MM, other than having some kind of similarity in appearance, game play etc. Maybe they

are a third category, such as 'unofficial clones / inspired by' etc?

Perhaps a fourth category for works in progress or demos, I was just thinking of that MM 3D from a few years

ago, I can't remember if it ever became playable or not?

Such a list could soon be knocked up, it might not be complete for a while but it could be done if everyone chipped

in something that they knew of.

A few things I have forgotten to mention about this new version. I love the sun on the title screen shimmering in the

water. There are some real proverbial quality of life features too, number of screens visited, how many MM

screens have been completed and items found, the attract mode and the multicoloured words look great,

those little details really help set it apart. The only downside is I started to complete version 2, and now I will

have to start again on version 3! Still it's a good problem to have.

Thanks again Norman for this, truly a great piece of work, and if it is your last then it is a good way to sign off.

On 1/2/2023 at 7:01 PM, IRF said:

To answer my own question, after having checked out the V3 game file, the bouncing horizontal guardian behaviour does seem to have been fixed.  However, in the process of investigation I have noticed another bug/glitch/(feature?) which is present in both V3 and (although nobody seems to have noticed it before) in V1.05.  Namely that when you lose your penultimate life:

- the current room is reset as it was at the point of Willy's previous death (instead of him being at his earlier point of entry to the room, and also guardian positions don't reset themselves to their initial starting positions for the room);

- the flashing death effect repeats;

- and Willy immediately loses his last life and the game ends. i.e. two lives are lost consecutively.

The effective consequence of this bug is that you have one fewer life to play with than you think you have.

I would surmise that @jetsetdanny never noticed this, despite his extensive playtesting of V1 of the game last year, because he tends to try to avoid losing any lives (using a Rollback feature to assist in this endeavour), and so wouldn't normally proceed to the point of only having one life remaining.

In truth I had forgotten about the paying for the lives feature of the game, Norman, is it possible for a definitive tape inlay-card style explanatory paragraph to be put somewhere that explains all the features, keys etc? I remember reading one at perhaps the start of this thread but maybe a slightly updated definitive version? - apologies, edited, as I had forgotten about the word doc in the archive! Stand down!

I try not to lose lives playing games, but I do it by re-loading saves if I get killed.

Very sorry if this is your last game Norman, that will be an incredible loss for all Spectrum fans, but if it is better for you then completely understandable.

Just seen this lovely piece of MM inspired art on this webpage in case other people

haven't seen it.

https://zxonline.net/do-you-have-other-friends/

Very Christmassy!

It's Christmas time!

I hope everyone has had or is having a wonderful day!

Time for Norman's MJSW!

On 12/16/2022 at 9:42 PM, SymbolShift said:

I don't really associate many Christmas memories directly with MM or JSW. I was an early adopter of the ZX Spectrum. Must have been late 1982, or early 1983. My dad came home a shiny new ZX Spectrum 48K, but it just sat in the box for ages. We were not really excited, since I was young and not even 100% sure what a computer was for, or why you would even need one. We tried some of the bundled games it came with, but there were not great. Also, the thought of reading a thick manual or programming code didn't really appeal to kids back then (does it now?). That said, I did own a Big-Trak already, so I knew programming had potential.

This all changed when MM was released (Summer 83). I remember playing MM at first on a tiny B&W TV. When we switched to a colour TV, I was blown away by the vibrant colours! Oddly, I soon realized that I was not very good at playing MM, and my brother was much better. I was content with watching, and helping him to progress through the levels. We never actually finished it, but I remember getting pretty close. Annoyingly, you only had a few lives, and had to start over and loose all your progress. I was very impressed by the simplicity of these games, that got you coming back for more.

Some other games from that period I have fond memories of are... Ant Attack, Oracle's Cave, 3D Maze of Gold, Chequered Flag, Ground Attack, The Horace trilogy, Jason's Gem, Lunar Jetman, Moon Alert, Maziacs, Stop the Express, Time-Gate, Zzoom.

I remember going to places like WH-Smith's, Woolworth's (even Boots!). Those places back then were a wonderland for kids, and had a good selection of ZX tapes, and would lure you inside with amazing toys and new technologies. We would always get new cassettes for Christmas, and then spend endless hours trying to figure them out. The tape player's would always drive us crazy. Either the game would refuse to load, or the tape would get chewed up.

I remember going to some other kid's house (must have been around 1985) and finding out about the 6031769 and WRITETYPER cheats. This was exciting stuff! We had not played MM/JSW in ages, and then discovering that cheats had been built into the games all this time, without any Pokes!

I kept with the ZX Spectrum through most of the 80's (my brother got a Spectrum+, then I got a +2), but they started to collect dust after a while. I bought a friends CPC-464 around the late 80's, which was pretty neat and the audio being superior to the ZX. By 1991, I had moved onto Amiga's, and by 1995 I was using a combination of Amiga & PC's.

I would say that some of the best memories I have are that of the ZX Spectrum and playing those early games. My brother has lots of the old ZX tapes we used to play, but I kept hold of MM and JSW.

 

I remember all those games SS, some classics there, and I remember going into retailers like Woolworths etc to buy Spectrum Stuff. In fact if you remember John Menzies, they used to have big shops in town centres, a year after I got my first Spectrum I had saved up my Christmas money and Menzies was the only place

that had a Microdrive and Interface 1 in stock near where I live, I think it cost £95, but briefly I had a colour portable, an int 1 and micro drive, an amazing set up!

But I took the micro drive back and got a CBM128 instead - but that is a different story. But I can relate to going into the likes of Boots, WH Smiths etc to buy

Speccy games, as well as issues of Crash of course too. Great times! Thanks for telling us about them.

On 12/16/2022 at 5:49 AM, jetsetdanny said:

Regretfully, I don't have any ZX Spectrum story explicitly related to Christmas going back to the "real hardware" days. I am sure Christmas and the holidays around it was a happy time for me back then as I could spend a considerable amount of time playing on the Spectrum-compatible Timex computer I had (still have, in fact). However, I don't have any specific recollections.

My generic (non-Christmas 😉) story of involvement with the Spectrum and JSW goes back to 1986. My parents bought me a Spectrum-compatible 48K Timex. "Jet Set Willy" happened to be one of the first (if not *the* first) games I ever loaded into it, and I fell in love with it right from the beginning. I only played "Manic Miner" after playing "JSW". I also loved "Jet Set Willy II", I spent a huge amount of time exploring it and trying to finish it without an infinite lives POKE (I remember that back in those days I never figured out how to reach the Deserted Isle). I also remember playing "Manic Miner 2". Come to think about it, it was related to my first attempts at editing, as I translated the German room names into Polish. I also designed a loading screen for "JSW", which years later (in 2007) I recovered by transferring it to emulator format. I may still use it one day in one of the "modern" projects, as a little historical curiosity.

For the context, all of this took place in Poland, which was under the communist regime at the time. My Timex was purchased, together with a tape recorder, at a a special hard currency store for $130, while at that time, due to the way the finacial and social system were structured, a monthly salary in Poland averaged the equivalent of US$30 (people who could would travel to do some physical work, like pick berries, in the summer in Germany or Scandinavia, and after returning to Poland they could live comfortably for the next year... or buy a personal computer). I never had a colour monitor back then - I used a Polish-made monochromatic (greenish) monitor (the first time I played JSW or MM in colour was years later, on a PC, already in the emulation era). Later on, my parents also bought me some additional hardware, expanding the Timex's memory (to 128K, or perhaps 256K, I can't remember exactly), a 3-inch floppy disk drive and a printer. I still have all this hardware, as well as all the software tapes I had back then. The last time I used them was in the summer of 2007 when I transferred all of the software I had written back in 1980s to the emulator format (and submitted the two games I had created in BASIC to the Crap Games Competition (C.S.S.C.G.C) - you can check out the two parts of the infamous "Spider Attack" here and here 😄).

After I stopped playing on my Timex some time in the early 1990s, I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of ZX Spectrum emulators for PC computers until 2001. Then I suddenly became interested in the subject, for no apparent reason, and I also discovered and downloaded the already numerous fan-made MM and JSW games. I had a brief look at them, arranged convenient shortcuts to them in my Windows start menu with the intention of playing them at some point, but then, after having to reformat my system HDD, I let them slip into oblivion again.

At the beginning of 2004, after another reinstallation of my operating system (Windows 98 SE, back then), I fired up John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.0.3 and played around with it for a while, designing a room which later became "Jump'n'Jive". And then I started working on another room, and then another, until I realised I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was definitely neglecting my family... And then I knew I wanted to finish and release my first JSW game, which I did in November 2004, when the world was stunned with the launch of the original edition of "Willy's New Mansion" 🙂 .

In the years since, the Christmas period has sometimes been a time of intense work for me in order to finish some projects and have them ready for release before the end of the year. That was the case back in 2005 (Sendy's and my "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control" was released on 30th December), in 2010 ("Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" was released on 29th December) and 2016 ("Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" was released on 30th December).

And finally, when I think of JSW and Christmas, this room from Steve Worek's "Jet Set Emily: Baby on the Go" invariably comes to my mind:

That is a good story Danny, really good you had a Timex and it got you into the MM/JSW world, and you have never looked back!

Your knowledge of all the different versions is a constant source of amazement, and I imagine like the rest of us you probably

never thought all these years later since the 80s you would still be so involved.

I hope I can do like you did and one day and the time to use an editor and release a new MM and then a JSW mod. We live in

hope! it is a labour of love though and you know you will not make any money off spending all that time writing it, i can't really

afford that at the moment.

I have downloaded JSW Baby on the Go to give it a go and find that screen at least! So thank you for that.