Heracleum

Very sorry I should have double-checked you had a clear idea of the gameplay before the weekend and especially all the Impossible Mission elements that could easily be missed if one hasn't played the original. Most importantly: Willy has to search for puzzle fragments in furniture pieces, press "UP" key to Search while standing against furniture. They are placed randomly in certain spots of the room. A box with a "searching..." progress bar appears and when done the result could be: Nothing here A puzzle fragment A Snooze (freeze all creatures in the room for some time) A Reset platforms (all lifts and crumbles are restored) The last two can be spent in terminals just outside the room (you need to visit at least once the room to use them) The flashing keys/objects are needed to open/search furniture, you don't need to get every flashing item in the room (especially the risky/hardest one to reach, you could skip them to save time/air) getting all of them and completing the mission would be really a nearly 'impossible' one. It says flashing items LEFT (on hand) since you spend them to open/search the furniture pieces. So yes the more you get the higher the score but the main mission is getting all puzzle pieces. A couple links to short videos I recorded at the time, showing: a complete solution of one puzzle (no spoilers it always changes) and a bit of the gameplay to show the search on furniture pieces. No problem I totally understand it doesn't fit the JSW standards 😉 It's just the game I always dreamt to play (mixing two of the greatest titles from the 80's) so I made it ...but of course it might be a matter of very personal tastes 👍

Sure, no problem I subscribed the channel and receive the updates/notifications, in fact I've seen a lot of stuff published recently 👌

Hi @jetsetdanny Sorry I missed the posts! So yes in that spot you have two ways to go: Use the Lift at the left as @Ligan suggested. That Lift is coupled with the other lift two levels above (which going up one step reached the top) so it won't move further up but you can then jump on the cauldron handle and climb up... Down the cauldron, that striped platform is actually a huge lift that can go up/down just a block. @Norman Sword Well that's an unconventional jump indeed, the basic need was to allow for longer jumps (because during the somersault frames Willy advances by 3px instead of 2) and also a way to allow him to jump robots/creatures in a 4block height without hitting his head and fall. This happens only if the ceiling is made by Mission Impossible blocks (including bottom of lifts). So yes the dynamic is weird because Willy starts his normal jump then hits head, does the somersault but then lands in the normal 'less athletic' way (his feet sticking out of the curve is probably what you noticed in your sketch?). I hope I didn't misunderstand!

@jetsetdanny Absolutely, feel free to record/post, I'd love to see how it's played by others! About the forward jump/somersault, it only happens: on elevator shaft corridors, in a room when the above platforms are those Impossible Mission blocks (including lifts) and they're at a height of 4 characters up Willy's ground, instead of banging his head and falling down (as on regular MM walls) he does that jump à la impossible mission, sort of. About the Monty saga, there is one room "Bordeaux - France" which is a tribute to "Auf Wiedersehen Monty" 😉 (same name and room layout). I'm sure the Manic Miner half of the game will be easy for you experts... but since to finish the game -once you've gathered all puzzle pieces- you have to solve the final puzzle it would be convenient to try the "Puzzle Trainer" option in the main game screen (you immediately have all pieces to solve it, for training purposes) unless you're already familiar with the Impossible Mission puzzle of course. Thank you for trying it!

Hi All! I know asking to build new rooms (Community created levels) might be too much.. but what about simply playing it? The main game is complete and fully playable since months. So would you like to try and beat the game? (get enough puzzle pieces in the rooms of the random map, solve the puzzle to know the password and go back to the mad professor lab and stop him)

@CPL zooming out reveals the unexplored surrounding area (ok we all more or less already know the whole map but let's imagine a newbie player). So what about hiding rooms you haven't visited -or got nearby- yet? Depending how you stored map data the rooms could either more roughly appear as room block or -cooler- by explored 'radius', turning on single cells.

Wow it looks fabulous! 👌 I love the classy fade in/out on background colour. Also the zoom-out! Is the zoom level controlled by the player? (or just a demo / god-mode option)

Thanks @Toki for trying it! I hope you like the Impossible Mission part as well (better try it on desktop 😉 ) and except for the first cavern that's always the same everything else is shuffled by the map generator that also changes the exit doors. But yes although it looks like it's playable on phone (the Manic Miner part works) a few things are not yet supported on mobile (e.g. Imp. Mission puzzles). I'd love to see you guys creating a cavern (or two) with the Level Editor so that I can finally gather enough caverns to unlock the "Community created levels" option (custom rooms made by other contributors instead of the usual official ones) in that case the randomness of a map will be high enough to always play a very different game every time 💛

👀 Really? on Spectrum too? Wow I always thought it was Lancaster's fault. Now I'm curious to try that walls layout on my engine (Manic Mission) although I worked on it to make walls as walls, they're solid 😅 (still curious, I'm trying it) Update: Nope

Welcome @Toki! Very nice work, especially on music! I loved the Moonlight Sonata during the demo (cool bass part 👌) Also thanks for fixing the piano keyboard octaves display on title screen. While playing in Eugene's lair this happened (maybe it was also in the original c64? I remember there were a couple bugs about wall collisions)

Ok in the exe file Properties, "Compatibility" tab, I checked "Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution", "Disable full-screen optimisations" and "reduced colour mode: 8-bit" and now it's even too fast lol. Screen walk across is now 6 seconds 😅 After a few screens the JSW feeling intensifies, nice. It's just the multicolour gfx that causes mixed feelings. I'm in Top Landing, if I walk & fall down from an height of 4 Willy dies?

@Norman Sword I just extracted the 2 files in a folder and run the exe, Win10 blocks/asks me for confirmation if I'm sure I want to run obviously but then it runs full screen, correct size. The main issue is that it runs extremely slow: walking from left to right of one screen takes exactly 62 secs 👀 Is it normal? Edit: I'm referring to "A Very Willy Christmas Part Deux"

Great job everyone! Excellent teamwork 😄👍 @Norman Sword If the tables were turned and I was asked the same puzzle in all honestly I would have reacted the same way you did: "I recognised it as one iconic old picture", I would have the photo very clear in my visual memory (remembering they were looking at a computer monitor) but could not come up with a direct reference to the magazine advertisement page. Even if I mainly bought local 8bit magazines here in Italy I luckily had the chance to have several UK magazines as well and that's probably where I memorised the photo and their faces. @jetsetdannyfor reaching the main objective 🏆 and find the actual photo @JianYang big kudos to you ✨ for finding the most relevant link to miner Willy! Eugene (Evans on the right) Here's a very interesting article about the actual story (and also how it inspired Netflix Black Mirror episode) and especially how the Bandersnatch game idea somehow survived the failures (years later I have seen pics of Brataccas for Atari ST in mags but could never imagine it was somehow related to that hype)

No it's still about 80s games, actually an interesting piece in the history of video games industry so that even recently this story has been used for a film episode. You said "music group", if you had used the short synonym for it I'd say that term ( + what I've greyed out in the pic) was very relevant 😉

Thanks! Of course having no memory limit and/or no character constraint (virtually all the blocks of the charset can be placed in the same room) makes it way easier compared to actual 8-bit machines. Also in the last rooms I've created I even inserted some graphics (monochrome image but still colouring the blocks in the old-school attribute clash way, later with the level editor) and of course you can walk/jump on the graphics elements (e.g. on their heads and arms). ❓ I wonder if this (example below) particular reference is familiar to you guys?

@Tuna did you also implement the Beam as in Solar Power Generator? I lazily avoided those in my engine 😅

@Tuna It's really good! 👌 The only tiny remarks I can make: looks like the conveyor belt animation is 2 times slower than the original (or 0.5 game clock) which isn't really a glitch at all, looks nice; Willy has a slight flicker (but might as well depend on how the machine work) For the rest it really feels and behaves like the ZX's version, also on the only thing I can't really stand: jumping in the opposite direction jumps up! Ugh Matthew why? 😅 That's why in my HTML5-canvas Manic Mission (thread) I definitely avoided that quirk, so you can zig-zag jump with more agility. I even changed the "walk/jump on conveyors" behaviour but I see you accurately adopted ZX's way. I'm curious: did you also faithfully follow the "whatever pixel a guardian collides it must be WIlly" rule? Btw two thumbs up for me 👍👍 I love monochrome games.

Not sure if it's just me or the web emulator (I played it via Toby's link) but in Eugene's Lair: at the very bottom-left corner I can't face left to jump or I'll hit the plant (even in the safest way to avoid a step forward, facing left having the wall at my shoulders, jumping up and jump left). The only way I've found is: face right against the wall, jump up and as soon as he lands jump left. And it's curious since afaik on ZX MM would have usually jump up.. instead he managed to successfully jump left over the plant starting from a jump up, face right. It's weird since in the long playthrough of the BBC Micro original MM I've watched on YouTube they did the safe jump as expected.

Same! 😆 So convenient in fact! In my Manic Mission (HTML5) all the data of each room/level is stored in JSON: {"info":{"l":14,"r":4,"name":"The Sand Vat","bg":0,"defs":"5b94965b6----b----"},"dcs":{"8,7":"9-"},"grds":[{"pos":[56,144],"sprite":3,"horizontal":true,"forward":false,"pathlen":17,"speed":2,"origin":[56,144],"color":4},{"pos":[80,8],"sprite":3,"horizontal":true,"forward":false,"pathlen":11,"speed":2,"origin":[80,8],"color":5}],"frns":[{"x":13,"y":0,"w":6,"h":3},{"x":26,"y":18,"w":4,"h":2},{"x":26,"y":11,"w":3,"h":3},{"x":3,"y":11,"w":3,"h":3},{"x":2,"y":18,"w":4,"h":2}],"xts":[],"keys":[{"d":"0608007"},{"d":"081300d"},{"d":"1206006"},{"d":"211100c"},{"d":"2508006"}],"blks":[{"d":"00000401"},{"d":"01080202"},{"d":"01090809"},{"d":"01100808"}, ...

Nice, great job! 👍 I've seen the flicker in Willy's sprite was terrible in the original so you really fixed that (oh and I imagined you changed the last two levels but I see they were already different in the original) I tried to find a Pause command; according to the original screen: Ok the Delete is "backspace" on the keyboard.. but I can't seem to find the key for "COPY"?? How to resume pause on our keyboards? Edit: Nevermind, found it! It's the "Esc" key (shift+Esc if you have Num Lock on like I did)

Thanks to both for testing it so quickly! About slow loading times, yes definitely it's going on since a couple hours; I contacted my hosting service and they confirmed it's a general issue, they're working on it. (Everything was going too successfully today so.. something had to go wrong 😅) Oh about positive things and jetsetdanny's message about McAfee blocking my domain: It should be fixed now! They finally accepted my review and categorised the domain correctly (Personal pages - Minimal risk)

@MtM Great news! I've thoroughly investigated what caused Firefox to lag so bad and I've rewritten and optimised the screen blocks colour rendering. Now it runs way way faster using Firefox! Walking the whole screen from side to side takes the usual 8 seconds like in Chrome and other browsers. Would you like to try if it's fixed for your version/setup/OS + Firefox as well? 🤞 @Norman Sword when you've time, could you please check if the lag is solved for Brave as well? I really hope so. Thank you so much to both!

Creating more rooms I couldn't help making a reference to another game I loved, Skool Daze EDIT: a short gameplay video to see it in action (otherwise if you want to play it directly and solve the room you will find this one near the top of the map, rooms sequence is not randomized at the moment, new levels are in the top row of the map)

I loved it! 👍 I particularly like Willy's outline and also the Trainer mode makes it very enjoyable. Great job! I tested with ZXSpin: not sure if I have strange default settings but it looks like the game clock runs too fast compared to Manic Miner?

@jetsetdanny Thanks! I investigated and followed McAfee suggestions (here) in case a trustworthy website is blocked by NetGuard. Using their online check my website resulted simply as "Uncategorized URL" (weird choice to block domains in this case meh). So I just submitted a change specifying categories Art + Games. It says it will take an average of 3-5 business days 😓 @Norman Sword Searching items: yes that's the Impossible Mission part, you search furniture pieces for passwords (snooze guardians for 30 secs or Reset platforms, restores crumbling floors and lifts) or, most importantly, you will find puzzle fragments of a picture. In the Elevator screens if you press jump (up, no left/right) the Puzzle solver interface shows up, where you will combine these fragments into blocks, finally forming a complete picture and reveal the final password to complete the mission (stop the evil professor Atombender). All of these elements belong to Mission Impossible (one of the coolest games of that era, personally). Saving room projects: absolutely, yes, select "Room" in the dropdown box to show room related options and there's the Save Room button (it's saved locally, browser's localStorage). There's no "submit"/upload room online yet (that was the plan when things are more complete, server-side and there's interest). But yes at the moment you can still share your room project contents (plain text data) in the Discord even here actually.