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and welcome Dickie! It's good to see another Amiga JSW author on here. I also wrote my version between Uni and Job, just like you. I was very young at the time so it's certainly not my finest work 😁

I remember this well on the Amiga. It was a bit on the "weird" side as the name suggested, but still highly enjoyable!

5 hours ago, DigitalDuck said:

It'll depend on what programming experience you have already.

1. If you've not done any coding before at all, I definitely wouldn't recommend starting with assembly - follow a Python tutorial (effectively the modern BASIC) and learn the basic concepts before tackling assembly.

2. If you have knowledge of higher-level languages but have never done any assembly, Z80 isn't a bad place to start with that. You could follow the links in 3 and it wouldn't be too difficult. However, I do want to give a special shoutout to MarkeyJester's Motorola 68000 Beginner's Tutorial, as even though it's for a more complex processor it really does break everything down and you can apply the knowledge and concepts to every assembly language out there. I definitely recommend reading it, even if you're not interested in 68k ASM.

3. If you've done assembly before or read MJ's tutorial, or you're just feeling brave, then I'd go with two links. Patai Gergely has a breakdown of the Z80 that makes good initial reading for a surface level understanding. And then there's ChibiAkumas which will take you through the entire process of actually getting Z80 programs running. It's initially CPC-based but at the end of the day Z80 is Z80 and it covers a whole bunch of other platforms later.

Thanks DD. I would say my experience falls into your #2 category. I'm no stranger to coding, but assembly has very specific knowledge (such as bit-shifting and CPU architecture) that I rarely use. I'm sure assembly shares many similar principles as modern languages, but it always seemed so different that many people (me included) have avoided learning it in the past.

I've noticed many users of this forum talk "Z80" assembly. What is the best resource out there for learning Z80 in 2024?

It could be a series of modern YT tutorials, or a gem of a book that was written in the 70's/80's.
I'm curious if these was a single resource that made it "click" for anyone.

Thanks.

An exceptional year indeed!

It's possible the lack of feedback is due to such a busy release year? I know that I have a backlog of games to check out, I've just not got around to playing yet. Either way, top-hats off to a great 2023 with some amazing games released. Congrats and thank you to all involved.

On 12/23/2023 at 12:08 PM, Spider said:

I could not get past the first screen , I suspect its me 😮

No, It's not just you! Had the same problem here. Nothing wrong with the level design, but my "jump over the guardians" timing is just plain bad. Every attempt I would say "okay, this time I'll get it"... then fail repeatedly 🤣 (usually at floor level heading right, trying to find a gap to jump between the guardians)

Thanks Gyro, I had 1.02 already, but was missing the original port and game builder 👍

Great job Sendy, excellent work! Love it, the levels are very well thought out. I totally agree with jetsetdanny, the "human version" is challenging enough, at least for me 😁

Was not aware of this! A very interesting and clever use of the JSW engine. I was able to answer many of the questions, but clearly still no expert yet 😂

Quite possibly the only forum in the world where you can post photo's of your Willy with a tape measure. However... I totally want one! 😁

Funky stuff, thanks for sharing!

I don't drink coffee myself, but if I did... that is 100% the mug I would use 😀

I'm running WinUAE 4.10.1, with a Quickstart A500 config.

Once booted, select "Start Game" on the Subway screen, by just moving the mouse up and down to hi-light it, then left clicking. After that you are presented with the "Please Select" screen, select either Manic Miner, Manic Miner II, or Credits. You can select these by using 8 (for up), and 2 (for down) on the numeric keypad, then 0 to select.

I did not see any graphical issues in this version. During the game, using numeric keypad, 4 is left, 6 is right, and 0 is jump.

Below are my Game ports settings... (this may already be set as default)

Interestingly, there was a 1990 Amiga release of Manic Miner by Software Projects. This also included a conversion of the original Manic Miner (mentioned above) and also Manic Miner II, which was much enhanced.

ADF file is attached. Below is a long-play video of both versions...

Manic Miner (1990)(Software Projects)[cr Subway][t +4 Subway].adf

Does anyone know the latest on this being released? Initial release was December 2022. The Kickstarter mentions updates, but never specifies an actual release date. Since the 40th anniversary was April 2022, it's becoming more of a 41st anniversary 😁

Talking of anniversaries, it's the 40th for MM this summer, hopefully there are big plans for that!

9 hours ago, IRF said:

Willy also has a cleaning business in Liverpool called 'Willy Wiper'.

Love it. I tried to find a better photo of this on Google Images...  p.s. Don't do it.

Not had too much time recently to pursue my exploration. One quibble I did have (which may not be fixable), was that I would love to have the desktop version minimized, so i can keep it open and explore at my leisure. I can press Alt-Enter, which reduces from fullscreen to windowed mode, and then minimize it. However, once minimized (for some weird reason), it disables my screensaver and monitor standby functions, and my monitor stays on forever with JSW3 open.

Not sure if Stencyl has any control over this behaviour? Also, the windowed mode is a little small, if there was an option to double that size, that would be fantastic.

Whining aside, it's a great game!! 😁

III and 3 are not the same thing.... I'm just kidding 🤣

4 hours ago, Pixel Stonk said:

Yes, the built-in physics in Stencyl were no use at all for this so I had to write a new engine to handle the specific way Willy moves and animates. The biggest hurdle I had was definitely the stairs.

Lol, totally! I wrote mine in Gamemaker and the stairs were a nightmare, especially the jump-through aspect. My code still won't jump-through on every attempt, but even the original has that quirk! 😁

That's great! In 2016, I wrote an unreleased game called "Basteroids" in Stencyl. I found it pretty intuitive and powerful. I attempted a JSW clone at the time in Stencyl, but never got very far with it. You must have jumped through quite a few "technical hoops" to mimic the original game play. Well done for getting that achieved!

3 hours ago, Spider said:

Wonder if its worth retesting this with a different brower if you have another one installed ?

This happened in Firefox. I've tried it in Edge, and seemed to work okay. However, I tried in Firefox again, and could not reproduce.

Actually, I'm starting to notice the random lockups now and then, just for a few seconds here and there. Also, a weird thing happened when I entered "To the Kitchens    Main Stairway", the areas (in pink) started colour cycling, like the collect items.

Great game Pixel Stonk! I'm still exploring at the moment, but so far so good! I didn't notice any lag problems either, but a downloadable version would be nice to have. Looking forward to exploring more.

From a technical standpoint, what creator/engine/language did you write this in?

BTW - Excellent work!! Will keep you posted of any issues I come across.

25 minutes ago, Sendy The Endless said:

I've tried to get into Game Maker, but the whole object-oriented programming system, parent objects and wotnot, just does my head in! I tend to want to just make simple game engines where the gameplay emerges from level design, and AMOS on the Amiga was perfect for that.

I could not agree more! OOP has always done my head in. I totally understand it's advantages in certain areas, but there's something about my logic that makes more sense with Procedural programming. I loved VB5/VB6 when it was procedural, but they transitioned to OOP with VB.net and everything went to pot. Blitz Basic was another procedural language that I was a fan of.

In the last few years I've been forced into using GameMaker, just out of lack of other options really. I've mostly got used to it, but I still find it limiting in certain areas that even AMOS and Blitz excelled at. I used Stencyl several years back, and managed to remake one of my old Amiga games, but found it frustrating to do certain things since it's drag-drop rather than code.

6 hours ago, Sendy The Endless said:

Believe it or not, I was trying to make a JSW clone in Amos when I was a teenager. The fact that I got as far as I did was a miracle. I had a screen editor program that wrote to a seperate data file, a bitmap of game tiles and like a 10x10 room matrix. The big problem I had was reading the room data. It would take like 8 seconds to draw out each room line-by-line. I also wrote a thruster/racing clone where you had to race around bitmaps I made in Deluxe Paint without touching the walls, with things like lasers and water (which was basically antigravity with damping). I really miss that game and AMOS in general.

Nice one! That racing game you mention sounds like one I started, but never finished. It was called "Micro F1". Basically a rip-off from Micro Machines in the early 90's, with a Formula one twist 😁 The thing that I loved about AMOS was it was not too intimidating as a beginner. Most languages nowadays are way to intimidating to get beginners started. I learned VB5 for the same reason.