Sendy The Endless

Thanks IRF, I appreciate that. Imagine if he could be coaxed into releasing the tool he gave me to use all the features of Erix-1 mode? That would open the door wide for a new breed of 48k JSW mods. When he gave me a copy of the vaunted "MvsSB hackulator tool" he said he wanted it to be a Sendy-exclusive, but it's been a long, long time since then.

I don't think we've changed, the media landscape has. Take some comfort in that. People know things aren't right anymore. Enjoy Coke. 👽

This one: https://zxart.ee/eng/software/game/arcade/action/redbird-and-rat-plays-shaolin-deathbasket/ I just tried it, no contact info. Also, sport. I don't go on Twitter, but if someone who does would like to try and contact him on my behalf, I would appreciate that. What I will do is try looking at the forum of the ZX Art sites and see if anyone's up for doing it. Failing all that, I will have a go at doing a screen myself : )

I haven't been to Facebook in a while but keep meaning to stop off there 🤔 I will give it a shot tomorrow, thanks for the suggestion : )

You mean The Deeper Caverns etc? They look really good! I was more thinking about opening it up to people more for the sake of fun, for people to put their own ideas in, but your levels are now on my watch list.

I found Vidar himself seems to have released a game in 2022, but no way to contact him... Nothing else up there except his screen for MvsSB.

Back from the dead after about 15 years (oof!), Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal is based on the engine of Erix1's Maria vs Some Bastards and features a complete rehaul of the JSW mansion and surrounding area. As the name implies, you play as Maria, who has to collect all the flashing garbage before Willy will let her sleep. She IS the house-keeper, after all, and while I don't think the mansion is OSHA compliant, she took the job, and she is gonna prove she can do it... or die trying! Let's presume she is getting danger money on top of her salary : ) The game is fully editied, tested, balanced and is just being finalized by Danny and myself, due for release imminently. If anyone has any artistic inclination and the time, we are hoping for some kind of loading screen based on the theme of the game. Back in the y! club days, Erix1 himself made an awesome title/loading screen, but I can't find it. I THINK it was posted to the club but he might have just emailed it to me, in which case it's long gone in an old email account and/or gathering bit rot on one of my old PCs : ( Danny doesn't have it in his archive of club data, but maybe someone else does? It's a long shot but I thought I'd mention it. If anyone wants to help out with art, please let me know. Failing that, we will knock something together ourselves 🤔

Good idea JSW, I will look into that and see what I can do with Soundtracker (I've never used the Speccy version but I am a bit of a chiptune maker). There was a game called Journey to the Centre of the Earth on the C64. I might look to that for inspiration when it comes to expanding the game, though I don't want to go overboard (though I probably will lol). If anyone has any ideas for rooms/sections in this remake, or even wants to submit some rooms or whatever, message me! Design your rooms using JSW64 version X. Preferably, they should be in the style of the original game, i.e. a bit rough and janky looking, but that's not essential.

Jet Set Willy - Pastel Edition : )

Some work has been done.

You can mess around with ramp values in ordinary JSW and get some funky stuff to happen. Check out the room "Trick step" in Strangel: Time 9:19 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE75Af3AY3U Just as you can have invalid conveyors, you can also mess around with the ramp value in a room to make funky stuff. I believe the room to the left of it (Ceci n'est pas une chambre) also uses messed up ramp values, as do a couple of the other rooms such as Fay's Cancellation.

All platforms seem to be turning to 💩 Apart from the ones in platform games 🙃

For me, this is THE JSW III that we all wanted but never got. It's exactly what I'd hoped it would be. Can't recommend it enough! I recon I'm at about 10% exploration, if that... and I keep finding awesome things that make me smile! Though I wish you used \ ramps on the other side of the bridge, lol, don't listen to me! Just being nitpicky : )

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. I generally tend to agree, but I like a smidge of purposelessness and illogic in my worlds : )

I have tried in Firefox and Edge. Firefox is on a 12 year old (but powerful) computer. Edge on a 3 year old laptop. For me the lag gets so bad that both of my computers lock up and I have to wait like a minute to get the task manager up. Can't stress this enough though, brilliant game, and I love the way you can gain lives by collecting items!

No, these are exactly the kinds of discussions I was hoping for. Not to find out who's right, but to see things from other people's perspective (and show mine)! There are a million different ways to approach designing a game, even within the realm of what's possible in base-game JSW. That's what makes it interesting, we're all building ships in the same little "bottle". And to be honest, I don't consider save states/rollbacks cheating, they've been a main part of modern games ever since, what, Wolfenstein 3D? Excluding long plodding adventure games where you could save off your progress because the game is so long (that usually took time) - the ability to jump back in time and redo something in an instant has just made games more playable to more people. And many consider the concept of lives outdated anyway, especially if there's no way to replenish them by score or something. An infinite lives option and other "accessibility" options are good, look at the hit platformer Celeste - no lives system. In JSW we still have the problem of infinite death loops, but those can be eradicated with meticulous design. I still put a deliberate IDS in JSW:RR though, because I want speedrunners to feel tense, and have to make the trade-off of starting their run with that bit or saving it for later when it could ruin everything. Even then, the jumps are pretty basic. I'm still considering whether to seal the IDS off though. Anyway, just to give a practical example of how this all comes together. I played Willy in the Mirrorverse last night, no saving etc, to see what it would be like. First room, OK, this is a bit long but interesting. Second room, it's the same but in reverse. Third room, I'm thinking, conceptually, this is really cool, but it's the same gameplay almost as the first two... by the time I saw something new, I think the Void screen, I had already lost 4 lives from rushing. Then on the next screen, the Particle Collapse room (from memory), I died a few more times working out where those single pixel platforms ended (eventually I remembered to use Willy's sprite as a reference), and then of course bumping my head on a fire block with only one pixel in it. By the time I got to the really interesting screens (something to do with plants), I was on my last life, and when I died... well, nobody would replay those first few rooms. Next time I play I'll use savestates, but I like trying things out "vanilla" first. It's a very interesting game, and I love the concept of it, but without a branching path near the beginning to mitigate repetitiousness, savestates and infinite lives are a must! When I die in regular JSW I don't feel this way. I can pick a different route, try different things, etc. I think it's easy (and I have done this tons of times) to forget about the "player experience" when designing, and just express your own creativity and vision, without thinking how it will appear to a casual player. Not to knock this game, I really like it. I'm just using it as a case study for "vanilla" play vs. "assisted" play. I have more to say about this in a future thread ; ) And I had an absolute blast playing We Pretty and Goodnite Luddite with savestates. It's like rock-climbing. Each stavestate is a new safety cable, and the rest is sheer force of will to inch upwards : ) It's a good idea to figure out who you're designing for, what kind of audience, and make that known in the "marketing" and on-ramping text of the game, as Andrew did in his games. Agreed, I like that. And same acronym as FHG ; )

Yes but I think my term sounds cooler. 🤠 The concepts of "forbidden" and "holy" are nicely wrapped up in "hallowed", and it feels like a more secular/neutral term (even though I coined the term "Hand of God" for when an invisible force saves you from death, I borrowed that from football, which I'm not really a fan of... I don't know where this parenthetical is going, lol). Andrew lists "vanishing wall" as a synonym for "opening wall". I think my term has its own merits, but I'll agree to also use the terminology from Andrew Broads list in forum postings if you prefer. But the ultimate purpose of the game is NOT neccecarily collecting items, just as the purpose of running is not to reach the end of the course, but to get fit and enjoy the adrenaline rush of challenging your body; the purpose of a platform game is exploration, the joy of discovery, and to test planning and reflex skills. The average player of any JSW-like picks their battles when it comes to items, seeing how many they can collect, perhaps challenging themselves to best their record etc. Getting all of them is a big task way off on the horizon, often prohibitively difficult for casual players (even with cheats and save-states and the like). Yes, placement of items is very important, as they're nodes on a journey that makes planning an optimal route for an experienced player more compelling, and of course, touching things and collecting them is just something gamers are satisfied by (hunter/gatherer instincts which are now redundant being expressed, perhaps); but the primary function to me is to create a miniature world with atmosphere, and the exploration aspect of these games, and the payoff of getting past hazards to reach new locations is the primary dopamine hit. The fact that Secret Gardens don't appear in longplays makes them all that more special to me. It solidifies their point as something off the beaten track that only a few curious minds will see. They can also fill out a screenshot map and make it seem more "organic". It's obviously a super subjective topic, but S.J. Hill's ones are a perfect example to me. What neat little easter-eggs they are! Interesting point. In this case, I'd classify these just as junction rooms, but as they have gameplay challenges in them, I agree it's a shame those 7 objects aren't there. OMG, yes! I love stuff like that, where entering and exiting rooms in a certain way is part of the puzzle, and making use of verticality in a room to split it up. There's also what I consider to be one of the lamest examples of a secret passage in Where's Woody, lol. Right at the beginning of the game, and I believe it's the only way you can actually go, unless you want to take that vertical "tour" all the way down to the bottom of the map and lose all your lives : ) I was so happy to see Willy and the Dodecahedron. I really thought Monstrum was going to be it. I can tell he enjoys making these so I'm fairly sure, whenever he has time and inspiration, he'll surprise us with Lemonade Man!

I'd appreciate a downloadable verision, too. I understand you may not want to do this, but it guarantees that your game will live on even if it's taken down. Throw in an ad for your commercial game or link to steam page - boom, everyone's happy. I will check your other game out soon! EDIT: Oh, and seeing both conveyors in The Butler's Pantry animate properly in opposite directions makes my inner nerd so happy! On the C64 version, both are animated, but it's a two-frame animation shared by both conveyors. A cop-out : ) I guess I just really like looking at conveyors lol

Played on both my computer and (newer) laptop, and while this really does feel like JSW3 and I love what I'm seeing, I'm getting lag spikes, tiny ones at first that don't bother me, but as I continue to play, they evolve into 10-second long pauses. Memory leak perhaps? Your approach to room design really captures the original, though, and that is no mean feat! More to come later...

I hope these ideas open up allsorts of new gimmicks for designers to use in future JSW games. Yes, this one works as you suggested! Conveyor Logic test of newerer logic.sna

Like this? I call it the "turbo platform" : )) Conveyor Logic test of newer logic.sna

Modern law and corporate culture feels like walls caving in on us. I've noticed this in the music scene - copyright suits over chord sequences, snippets of music from passing cars in casual videos getting censored. Zooming out we have large companies like Disney and big record labels scooping up entire catalogs of artists' works and prolonging copyright laws... And more recently, we have in I.T. and A.I. the entire works of the human race being used as training data for algorythms (which are, to be fair, genius and terrifying at the same time) - similarly to how when Big Blue beat chess master Kasperov, IBM had all access to Kasparov's prior games, openings and stategies. It was an asymmetric battle designed to boost IBM's stocks. And all these artists' hard work is being used so that they can be made obsolete. I mean, even more obsolete than they are in this age of micro attention spans and overworked/stressed/gaslit populaces. Sorry, bit of a rant, and probably not very helpful to the O.P. I just find the way corporate and legal strata are growing WAY beyond their remit, into our culture, our minds and memories a bit Orwellian, or perhaps even Kafka-esque. Mods, feel free to move this to the general chat... but this does remind me a bit of that whole Jester Interactive debacle that happened on the Yahoo forums. THAT turned out to be a nothingburger, but times are different now. To the O.P; the only thing I can suggest is to change the name and appearance of the main character. Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner aren't exactly juggernaut I.Ps these days, so I don't know why that would be needed, but there you go.

This is partially based on a discussion from the old Y! JSW/MM Club (RIP), between (at least) Andrew Broad and myself. We were talking about a few ways in which you can go beyond functional box-type rooms in flick-screen games, and create intrigue and the desire for exploration. The first of these are frequently referred to as Promised Lands, aka "How do I get there?!" where one room has at least two parts which are inaccessible from eachother. Think of The Security Guard in the original JSW, and the little tunnel it connects to in The Drive. The dreaded Banyan Tree has two mysteries to new players coming in from the right - the cave under the tree with the ring, and actually getting to the left side of the tree (let's face it, none of us got through the Banyan when we were kids, right. Right?!) Going outside of JSW, there is the top-right part of the screen on the second room of Monty On The Run. Especially when I was a kid, there was something seductive about this. Even today, as a jaded adult (disguising a still fairly unblemished inner child lol) I still love this feeling in games. Geoff Eddy's games seem to employ this a lot, even to the point of one room (I forget which) which splits the room down the middle, and getting to the far side gives a real dopamine hit. Whether it's a tunnel running through a room that goes to some part of the map you haven't visited, or something more complex, I feel this is an oft-overlooked design tool which is easy and fun to impliment! The second type are called Hallowed or Forbidden Grounds (or Forbidden Holy Grounds in Dr. Broad's nomenclature in Nomen Clature). Places like the top of the off-licence roof and the platform mid-right of The Ballroom West spring to mind. There's no reason to think, as a novice, that you might not step foot in these places eventually, but, without cheats, it's never somewhere you can actually be. Unreachable exits, side areas you can see but can't get to; just to add atmosphere and get the player wondering... All part of worldbuilding and piquing curiosity and commonly underutilized. The third type which I just thought up, a fusion of the first two, where passage is either prohibitively difficult or otherwise ambiguous. Getting through the Banyan Tree is a good example. If you can do it, it's a shortcut, but it's quite difficult until you master the game. Technician Ted had "The Photocopier", I remember reading a review of this game in a mag when I was a kid, and the reviewer remarked that it was "almost impossible" to get through it, but it provided a significant shortcut if you could pull it off. This also extends to disguised or ambiguous passageways, like for example the passageway to The Forgotten Abbey. The animation of the conveyor is a nice clue that something's not quite right here, but I should think first time players parse The Wine Cellar as having no exits at all to the right. It's only when the player gets more experienced with how ramps and collision work, that they can finally get rewarded by one of the hardest rooms in the game, and then wish they could go back to not knowing 😆 More trivially, think of the cracks too small to fit through in the mineshaft section of Wanted: Monty Mole. It's a space in the game you can't utilize, and hence it adds a richness to the environment that sells the fact that you're underground. The fact that they're non-functional and might as well be walls is actually the point in these cases. Finally, perhaps the least "useful" one, but sometimes I like to put rooms that are just nice to hang out in, don't lead anywhere, and have nothing to collect or do in them. I tend to call these Secret Gardens, but they don't have to be secret. It just sounds nicer than "pointless rooms" : ))). Good things to put here are low-risk "playground"s, sight gags, or if you're feeling fiendish, a completely obscured invisible passage to someplace else (usually a shortcut, extra life, shout out to player, teleports, etc). A room that's non-essential but rewards inquisitive players. The whole crux of this long and rambling ode to exploring in platform games is, going beyond pure gameplay considerations can allow an ambience to be built around your little world in miniature. Does anyone have a favourite instance of this kind of thing, or a memory from childhood (or post-adult covert childhood 😉)?

Perhaps my "safe trampolines" question should be moved to the Lounge as well then? It's a job to know where code mods and basic level design cross over, isn't it? Sort of like how (if you'll pardon the "sound" analagy) rhythm crosses over into pitch as it increases in frequency... Anyway, thanks Danny, for going through the trouble of linking to me what's available. I agree, a database of PV modules would be a huge boon to all future JSW games, and I'll be sure to thank each and every contributor whose work I steal or modify should this happen : )))

I've explored a fair chunk of it, but it's quite difficult, but equally impressive! : ) Good to know that it's possible, though (the safe fall trampolines that is). I have a basic understanding of programming logic, but never learned any kind of actual coding. I will have a look at the JSW disassembly with commentary, John Elliott's notes on patch vectors in JSW64, and make an effort to see if I can achieve anything on my own, starting simple of course. And I'll release the pending games I have on my conveyor belt before I come back with more coding questions (or more like, wishes, lol). Give and take, sort of thing.