Jet Set Willie

23 hours ago, Spider said:

I do have a Manic Miner 'custom' artwork however I cannot recall the author offhand

Do you mean the author of some special version or the author of those above ones? According to world of spectrum, the inlay author of above mentioned Bug-Byte games is Roger Tissyman.

This roles reversed project just got a new twist as Erix1 appeared from nowhere. 😶

Welcome Erix1! 🙂

Sendy, my loading screen$ is not ready yet. It´s a slow job, I am using ZX Paintbrush (have forgotten most how to use it) and drawing it pixel by pixel with laptop´s user-unfriendly built-in mouse. At yesterday, I arranged time to draw a bit more to it.

I haven´t got much time lately. After my last post I had time to change Maria a bit, but she´s in very unfinished state now.

I test-played this just a bit, but I did certainly notice, how much nice details you have put there! Like that delayded "sliding colour" of room names and great Norman Sword presents title screen! The neat yellow-blue-loading-bars sync´ing with the title tune! Was this feature ever used in any other Spectrum game? The fast speed made this to feel like brand new totally different (great) game! There was one problem with this game, though. It would have made all the other Spectrum games of the day look and feel crap!  😂

Congratulations!! 🙂

That blue miner picture looks familiar, where it is from? 🙂

I started drawing it at last evening, currently the screen$ includes a partly drawn Maria and a bit scenery.

I have one idea already for the loading screen, I will try. 🙂

Congratulations, too, for the new game! 🙂

Sendy, I might try it. Just give me time, ok? 🙂 If you want to personally discuss more about the loading screen, please send me a PM(s).

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. 🙂

About MSX JSW2 cursors down + space + caveman, I remember a case that it works and many cases it works not. Maybe it won´t work with emulators? This was so long ago, I don´t remember....

This song is used in one game already, in Commando 86/Duet on Commodore 64. You might want to listen it through the AY in advance before making an arrangement? Please try some SIDplayer what will play SID tunes through the AY, I am not sure, though, if Commando 86/Duet tune worked on AY Sidplayer? But I think it worked. If you want to use Commando 86 arrangement as a "base" for your own arrangement, please remove or soften those drums. They´re great, but in my opinion they won´t suit to Spectrum Willy game. 🙂

MSX JSW2, I think you had to type "CAVEMAN" as a password after pressing down all the cursor keys and space. If I´m wrong, please delete this post.

May I suggest, if you make this game real using JSWED, that you or somebody else, will arrange the song called "The battle" as a tune for title screen. As you´ll make the game using JSWED64, then you could use it as an ingame tune as well. 🙂 I´m afraiding beeper version won´t have enough notes to have enjoyable (not irritatingly too repetitive) ingame tune, though with 128K Spectrum, you may not need to make the beeper tune. The song is from Rick Wakeman´s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth LP, 🙂 the entire LP is based on that book. 🙂

On 2/15/2023 at 12:24 AM, SymbolShift said:

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! 😁

Now please model Commodore 64 stairs. 🙂 On a Spectrum it was a mere ramp.....

17 hours ago, Sendy The Endless said:

Danny's just stating what he prefers, and how he thinks.  I can see his reasoning - you make a nice room, give the player a reason to go there.

Yes, I understood that. 🙂 I meant to point out, that anybody wanting to make a JSW game, should read this topic through and to take all the comments into account, but not necessarily to obey them. 😉 Otherwise we might not see some interesting rooms 🙂 as somebody might obey the "rules" too strictly, fearing the others may not accept the game with "unwanted" features.

Please don´t forget the way the micros handled too big games back in the day:

Multiload.

48K Spectrum with tape recorder can handle this "JSW Mega-game", by using multiload. 🙂

Commodore 16 had both Jet Set Willy games! They were just loaded in separately, most C16 users must have been happy to have a chance to play JSW on their micro. 🙂 Please don´t forget that 16-bit micros used multiload, too! Disk drives were faster than tapes, but multiload was used anyway.

48K Spectrum, tape recorder and multiload are not a problem. It´s possible with (lots of ) extra work to choose and arrange certain rooms to fit in each "room block" to be loaded into 48K and when the edge of the playing area is reached, "JSW Mega-game" will ask if player wants to load the next part and tells the needed loading time, too. 🙂

Sendy, in your starting post in this topic, you said aloud my thoughts about JSW/-type game design! 🙂In a better way, though. I like the idea about "secret gardens", one could put up a room what is beautiful or interesting in players´ eyes.🙂

I´d want to say to anyone, either being a master in JSW game designing or a novice thinking of possibly making a JSW game, if you want to make a room(s) you´d like to make, don´t listen to anyone who don´t like that kind of rooms or feels they are useless, just use your imagination and make your game real, no matter a big or small! 😃 But I want to note, that I understand other views too. 🙂

My problem is that when I see a 'mnemonic listing', it´s just a 'mnemonic listing' to me. I don´t understand it. That´s why I hoped it could be possible without too much work (for others). Those few rooms will be designed the way they are "one-way-rooms", you can (must) enter each of them from the right and the only exit is always on the left. Because of the forced starting position of Willy and guardians movement tracks, it´s not possible to go back to the previous room on the right. In every other room, you can freely enter the neighbouring rooms the normal way.

I don´t know either, if Pixel Stonk will continue to get his game published as an official sequel, but I thought that maybe my suggestion might help anybody else who has similar thoughts.

If you really want to know the answer who owns the rights to Miner Willy games, maybe you could arrange a fund-raising campaign to get the money to hire a lawyer to find out the real right owners and to know what rights they really own. Of course, the copyright owners (or possibly the ones who falsely claim that) might then hire their own lawyer to show they have the rights. That may mean that you still can´t know the truth. But with such fund-raising to hire a lawyer you may not lose anything, except your time. At least if you can get enough money to pay the expenses if you go to the court and lose the case. But just having the lawyer to find out things is "cheaper" and you don´t have to go to the court if you don´t want to. That is, in the more democratic countries, at least.

Pixel Stonk, if you are still reading this, I was very interested about your Willy sequel! Only problem was, that it was not made for 1/2-1Mb Amiga 500s. 😉 🥺

I don´t know enough about legal things, but if you can´t get a permission or rights to use words "Bug-Byte" in your game, maybe you could get around that problem by simply calling your game as an "enhanced version of Matthew Smith´s first version of Manic Miner" or something like that. I´ll suggest you to use some lawyer even just to get few answers what is possible. Depending on your salary, you might get free lawyer services if your income is small enough? Try to find and ask where and how you might get free advice. But this probably depends on where you live.

On 2/17/2022 at 11:10 PM, MtM said:

In truth, is anyone really going to try and sue anyone these days over such an old game? No one is going to make any money really. How much would you make from a new official jsw game? Very difficult to see more than a few thousand pounds to me, not really life changing sums, not in the long term. I would just publish and see what happens, worst case scenario make a donation to a charity to offset any legal challenges.

I would say "The big N", if this was about their copyright. They even were nasty enough to make money with the other guys´ work, the guys´ who started to steal their money with Great Giana Sisters, as some years ago "the big N" published a Giana Sisters based game..... sounds like a revenge.

Also, Big Five is still making money (at least they were few years ago) with their old game character Bounty Bob. They had published a cell game based on their Miner 2049'er. 🙂 This "such an old game" is even older than Jet Set Willy or Manic Miner. 🙂 😉

On 2/18/2022 at 9:21 AM, Pixel Stonk said:

Things were going well and we had almost reache d an agreement when, about a year ago, he decided to back out due to the dispute with Matthew Smith over ownership. Although I suggested bringing Matthew Smith into the conversation and perhaps trying to come to a mutual arrangement that would benefit us all, Steve Wilcox was not interested and insisted that I do not release the game.

I don´t know the truth, but to me it sounds like Mr. Wilcox may not own all the rights or at all, as he suddenly backed out after there should have been a dispute about Matthew´s ownership. I can´t say anything about this, but there are cases people acting that way when they are claiming to own something but are actually lying.

I will bring in my own suggestion now. Why not publish the game as "A highly enhanced version based on Matthew Smith´s original Bug-Byte®️ game Manic Miner®️"? 🙂 If Matthew owns the rights to Bug-Byte®️ version of Manic Miner®️ and if you can make him to allow you to publish your game as a highly enhanced (Bug-Byte®️) Manic Miner®️ game with a new "Free-walkies™️®️" system what allows Miner Willy®️ to freely walk from room to room, this would make things much more easier. 🙂 I wrote the name "Bug-Byte" there, but you shouldn´t use the words "Bug-Byte", unless you ask a permission from somebody who owns rights to Bug-Byte or make an agreement to pay royalty or something to use their "Bug-Byte" name. Please re-design some of the graphics to be more Bug-Byte Miner Williesque, at least Willy´s hat. 🙂 Just my thoughts.

On 2/24/2022 at 3:45 PM, Spider said:

From MobyGames. Some of the text below is from MobyGames as well as my own notes:

Machine: CBM Amiga

Requirements: It is listed for A1200 so quite likely needs the "AGA" chipset (instead of the 'OCS') to function. It might work on the 'ECS' set. Untested.

Lemonamiga.com mentions it works on OCS and ECS. I haven´t played this, so I don´t know.

Thank you for asking, Spider. 🙂 The flu got me, I am quite recovered now, but not quite. I have other things to do now, but I will come back to my "project" eventually. There are many rooms already and many of them will need proper playtesting to prevent unnecessary deaths as there are places where it´s possible to wander off the screen. I will have to block those possibilities off somehow without deleting graphical detail too much and some of those rooms will need neighbouring rooms, though I am not sure if there will be enough rooms for that. 🤔

Also, few rooms will really need Hex´ing, as Willy should be placed to the certain position when he enters the room (the same starting position for all those few neighbouring rooms). It is possible to make those rooms work without Hex´ing, but it would look strange and the player would clearly notice it´s done clumsily. Is such Hex´ing possible without too much work?

I don't know the answer, but could somebody please make an Amiga and ST remakes, using these graphics? Please?!? 😀

I will gladly pay some extra for the blank Amiga disk(s) to get this game! 😁😋 I suppose there won´t be an official Amiga game these days 😔thus I am talking about blank disks to get a fan made free game, unless Software Projects is rejecting such thing.

On 1/19/2023 at 7:16 AM, jetsetdanny said:

 

The value of guardian animation has to be between 0 and 7. Other values are incorrect, so forget about them. JSWED is right in correcting them back to the proper range.

I did tests with my Mass Collaboration room using those original Willy sprites. Combination of ALT 1-8 + animation numbers in guardian editing box seemed to offer "unlimited" amount of Willy sprite frame possibilities, that confused me. It´s confusing that JSWED allows to put bigger animation numbers than 7.

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So the value of "animation" determines how many frames will be used. I can't explain exactly how this works, I think it's more or less like the value 0 corresponds to one frame, the value 01 to two frames, and so on, until the value 07 corresponds to eight frames. Well, certainly 0, 1, 3 and 7 work like this (for 1, 2, 4 and 8 frames), I am not sure about the other values, because they are not 'typical'.

This is one parameter you set. Then comes another - which frames you actually use. This is controlled by pressing - on the main editing screen, NOT in the 'Guardian - Edit' box! - the ALT key and a number defining which guardian you are modifying. The guardian number can be from 1 to 8 (I am talking about editing a JSW48 game, so like the original JSW), because there are up to 8 guardians in a room. Pressing ALT + guardian number will only affect these guardians which are in the room, of course, so if you have added two guardians to the room, if you press ALT + 1 something will happen, if you press ALT + 2 something will happen, but if you press ALT + 3 or any higher number, nothing will happen because there are only two guardians in the room at this time (there is no guardian No. 3 or No. 4, etc.).

Yes, thank you, I was aware of using ALT + 1-8. 🙂 And partly aware of "0, 1, 3 and 7 work like this (for 1, 2, 4 and 8 frames", now I know that better, too. 🙂

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I always do it by trial and error. There are various combinations there, I couldn't describe how they work exactly (how the ALT + guardian number frame selection process works, how exactly frames are selected). I just do it by trying all possible options and seeing which one I like best. Just one word of caution here: sometimes it's impossible to get exactly what you want.

Same here. Some things will become possible only by using mix of coordinates and speed you was not thinking of, otherwise, if you can´t alter coordinates of guardian movement, you will just have to accept wrong kind of animation or think of something else.

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I mean, for example you choose animation number 3 - the guardian is supposed to be using four frames - and want it to use only the first and the fourth frame, the first one being used twice and then the fourth one being used twice in the four-frame sequence. I have no idea if that particular combination is possible. It may be that it's not possible, and if it's not possible, I believe there's nothing you can do about it if JSWED does not show you such a combination. The only thing you can try would be swapping the guardian's frames in the Sprites editing box

Yes, I have thought the same, and I am making such frame changes in the sprites editing, when I need something "out-of-ordinary".

But there is still the very problem, what seems to be a bug in JSWED. Yes, the same what I have described already. I may get a perfect (or near enough, so the player won´t notice or care) vertical sprite movement and animation, in guardian editing box. In a way that guardian moves up using frames 0 and 1 only until reaching the top limit of the movement and then moves down using frames 2 and 3 only until reaching the bottom limit of the movement and then goes up again using frames 0 and 1 only, etc.. It looks perfect, until I close guardian editing box by pressing [Ok]. I then switch to other room and back to see the current changes, and what I will see is that guardian animation timing is all wrong. Ie "going-up-frames" will get changed to "going-down-frames" too early or too late, and vice-versa. Hopefully you will understand now. 🙂

18 hours ago, Spider said:

Excellent description Danny.

Yes that guardian edit has caught me too.

Although not 100% neccessary I do find it helpful to make sure the guardian I am altering is the selected one then use ALT+(number) for it.

As you say sometimes you have to try it a few times until it looks OK. I also find moving screens, even just a quick left / right back to the original screen is helpful as it resets their initial positions.

Also, at least on "my" JSWED, a quick left / right also changes previous guardian movement to current guardian movement changes. But you probably meant that, too. 🙂