Tuna

I've not done Beams (yet)... it's a particular challenge with a limited number of character definitions left to handle the parts where the Beam overlaps a guardian, but I've got an idea in my head how it could work. I'm also thinking of making Exits a bit smarter. At the moment (MM style) you can only have one exit per level, unlocked after a certain number of items, but I was thinking about having two distinct item types - room items and game items, and then exits that open according to thresholds of each (including permanently open). Then, exits could either have a graphic or not, and could specify the room (and entrance point) to follow. That would allow you to have both MM style "collect X items in this room, go to the exit and it takes you to the next room" and JSW style - "Walk to this gap in the wall and you go to this room" logic, as well as other combinations "Collect enough game items and this teleport will take you to another room". But I'm getting ahead of myself here... still haven't coded vertical guardians yet!!

Since I've started from scratch on this one, I'm trying to make it a general MM engine (which may end supporting some JSW features). The screen is character based, which places a limit on the number of unique sprites you can have on screen, but the level format is open ended and doesn't impose any limits. All of the 'effects' (switches and so on) are planned to be data driven, so whilst you should be able to write traditional MM levels, it wouldn't be impossible to do something more JSW-like.

This is a fantastic job, love it! (BTW, you're not the only one to be surprised by the number of people who will not use Chrome)

Thanks! The conveyor belt animation ended up as being what felt comfortable, I must admit I paid more attention to the overall speed of the guardians and air than to the belts! The slight flicker is a feature of Cerberus - the hardware video system is completely asynchronous to the CPU, so you can't avoid hitting the beam occasionally. In that sense, the video emulation in browser is 'faithful'! I tried to reproduce the behaviour for jumps and turns accurately in my code (though I note the original uses a table which somehow seems overkill for the actual logic), as the original was such a good template. There are frustrations like the turn/jump behaviour, but the levels tend to be designed around those oddities, so it doesn't hurt. For collision, I actually test for Willy hitting a guardian rather than the other way around. If nothing else, it's much faster as the guardians are just character cells, whereas Willy has to be pixel shifted into place, so I can test for collisions simultaneously with drawing him. It does make the logic around the penguin behind the exit in Level 2 a bit of a pain though.

Which version of Firefox are you using (and which OS)? It works fine on mine (91.0.2 (64-bit) on Windows 10)

Found the bug.. turns out the very last frame of the crumbling floor wasn't solid, so you couldn't complete the last step. One interesting (maybe!) feature of the engine is that the whole screen is a valid playing area (40x30 characters). escape.mp4

That is such fantastic feedback! Thank you! I'll take a look at what's happening with those two platforms and see if I can fix the fall.

Thank you! I'm glad you like it. Cerberus is a black and white, character based machine, so getting it to work has been an interesting challenge. The bonus is that the play area is actually 40 characters by 20, so it's possible to define much bigger levels than the original game. There is no limit on the number of guardians, and conveyors can go both left and right in the level. The 'wipe' effect is a substitute for the original colour flash. I hope to get it working in Firefox at some point, but yes, the emulator does require that you click "Assemble" before you can run the game.

Hi, I've been working on tools for a new 8-Bit computer, the Cerberus2080, which has both a Z80 and 6502 processor (some details here: https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/cerberus-2080.html ) As part of this, I've developed an online IDE and emulator, and have used it to write a Manic Miner style engine for the computer in 6502 assembler. The code is written from scratch, with the level data using my own fairly efficient format (about 350 bytes/level, sprites are stored without mirroring). So far I have the first couple of levels working (no vertical guardians yet!) and I think it's fairly accurate to the original. You can see the source code and try it out in the emulator here (Chrome or Edge browser required): https://feertech.com/legion/cerberus.html?p=miner/rtz/&f=miner.asm,utils.asm,sprites.asm,graphics.asm,level1.asm,level2.asm I'd be very grateful for any feedback.