jetsetdanny

No idea. Maybe because at one point I thought you were Chinese 🤣.

My JSW/MM-related activity has diminished sharply in recent months. I did do some things – like finalising, together with Lemmy, the release of "Jet Set Lemmy" v. 2.0 – but that was only "a final push" to make a public launch of a project on which a lot of work had been spent in the preceding months. My greatest regret in these last months was not assisting Hervé in any way before his release of "JSW in London". I am genuinely sorry about it, and I would like to explain the reasons behind this shocking development and behind my reduced involvement in JSW activities, which will continue in the foreseeable future. The reason is that back in May I discovered that it is now possible to do something that I had always dreamt of, but couldn't do in the past: to turn the songs I write into high-quality recordings using the technological tools now available. I dived headfirst into this new activity, which has an enormous appeal to me and wholeheartedly captures my interest, energy and time. And I will admit something, and I'm not saying it lightly: at this time, more than JSW/MM. It is a consuming passion for me and an extremely time-intensive activity, and at present it is where I want to devote most of my spare time. As a result of this new passion, I started releasing my music, created with the assistance of AI, on the internet on 1 August 2026. It is available at: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Daniel_Gromann Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/380jWlyChc0cA9jcNzefDw Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/pl/artist/daniel-gromann/6792966854 TIDAL: https://tidal.com/artist/83098429 Bandcamp: https://danielgromann.bandcamp.com/ SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/daniel-gromann and almost 20 other platforms. At the moment, there are 19 publicly available songs illustrating the different types of tracks I create. For the foreseeable future, new songs will be added every Wednesday and Saturday. The music is quite varied, but lyrics are always important to me. I write songs in my native Polish as well as in English and Spanish, with occasional songs in other languages. Many draw inspiration from musical traditions and styles I admire, particularly those of the 1930s through the 1960s and the work of singer-songwriters of various eras; others follow an entirely original path. Whatever their style or language, my goal is simply to create the kind of songs that I myself would love to discover – and that perhaps some other people will enjoy too. I will not give up my JSW/MM activities altogether and will try to keep JSW Central updated as best I can. However, if I have to choose between music creation and JSW/MM, music will have priority. In practical terms, this means that, until further notice: I will not create any new games of my own; My involvement in other authors' projects will be diminished; JSW Central will be developed mainly in "update" mode, without really adding new sections, missing screenshot galleries, etc., and its updates may be delayed; New videos on the JSW Central YouTube channel will continue to be posted, but less frequently; I will limit my JSW/MM activities even more strictly than before to the topics that really interest me, i.e. new games for the ZX Spectrum. The topics that I will not be actively involved in include, inter alia, the original MM and JSW for other platforms and any other non-ZX-Spectrum games, as well as very detailed musings related to the original MM and JSW for the Spectrum. So I will still be here, but with less involvement... but maybe some of you will like my music if you should happen to enjoy the kinds of music that I love so much 🙂 .

Great news, Hervé! 🙂 Thank you so much for keeping us updated about your projects. It is great that you are working on them, as there's no doubt that they will end up being fantastic new JSW games 🙂 .

So how is your work on "Roddënwald" going, Adban? 🙂

Thanks for making the GIF, Wan! It's an excellent way to explain this difficult challenge 👍 It's actually the first time ever I recall anyone explain "a quirky feature" of the JSW game engine (I prefer this name to calling it a bug) using a GIF file. It's really a great way of showing what the player needs to do! 🙂

Hello Paula, I don't know how to contact Matthew Smith, but I know a person that might know. I have just e-mailed him. If he responds affirmatively, I will let you know (probably via a PM). Daniel

Thanks for sharing all this info! Here's Tom & Chris's house fixed (reimagined?) by AI:

I am thrilled to announce that a significant upgrade has been made to the archive of the old Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group messages available on JSW Central. Apart from ironing out some errors, two important new functionalities have been added: 1) The search function It is now possible to search through the messages. Several options are available: you can sort the results by "Best match" – an intelligent (although somewhat arbitrary) search – or by "Oldest first" or "Newest first". You can also tick or untick a box called "Include all messages in thread". If ticked, the search results will show not only the message or messages found during the search, but also all other messages in the same thread. You can also choose how many results should be displayed (10, 25, 50 or all). 2) Browsing through the threads It is now possible to browse the messages by following their threads (use the "Previous in thread" or "Next in thread" arrows instead of "Previous message"/"Next message"). It should be noted that while the thread structure has been restored faithfully from the preserved files (thanks to JSON files saved by John Elliott), there were evident errors in this structure at the time when the original Yahoo! Group existed (some messages that should evidently form a thread don't, and some threads are composed of messages that should evidently be separate). Any errors that were present in the original thread structure will NOT be corrected – the intention of having it on JSW Central is to preserve the rich content of the Yahoo! archive, not to correct it. All this fantastic work on enhancing the functionality of the archive has been carried out by my son, Michał, who is a young IT professional and who has enriched JSW Central in ways I couldn't even have imagined how to achieve – and I'm extremely grateful to him for his contribution! Michał is planning to publish some technical information about how the search engine works to produce the "Best match" results as well as about the filtering and restoration process of the original messages. When he does, I will post the link here in case anyone might be interested. So go ahead and browse through the Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group messages archive on JSW Central like never before! 🙂

Congratulations on releasing "JSW in London", Hervé! I look forward very much to playing it very soon 🙂 .

Hi Adban, It's great to know you are back and that you are motivated to finish "Roddënwald"! 🙂 It definitely deserves it! 🙂 If I can help with further/final playtesting when the game is ready for it, I will be happy to do it. Also, for the record, your identity on JSW Central is established as "Fabián Álvarez López (Adban de Corcy)". I hope "Roddënwald" ("Jet Set Jason in Roddënwald" I think may be the full title, if I remember correctly) will be released under the same author, not to create any confusion 🙂 . It's great that you're back, really! 😁

It looks like the downloads in the Download section are not highlighted as new by being shown in the 'What's New' section after they are updated. So, to draw everyone's attention to this recent release, I will post this message. Version 2.0.0 of Jet Set Lemmy was released last Friday: a result of Lemmy's and my work over the last year and a half, roughly. Please have a look at Lemmy's comments posted where you can download the game from. I will just elaborate on the game's being unprecedented in terms of in-game music variety. It features a title-screen tune and 25 in-game tunes, custom-coded in the JSW128 music format, most of which have never been used in any JSW game before. This is possible thanks to a technical solution whereby the in-game tunes are stored in Memory Bank 4 (normally used for room data), and the tune for a given room is copied to a buffer in Memory Bank 0 upon entering the room and played from there. And I believe this makes the game much more enjoyable than having the same tune throughout. Jet Set Lemmy now also has its own page on JSW Central.

Thanks for the inside info, HAL! 🙂

I received this link a couple of days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_13ewhXFWgY ... ... so I'm sharing it here 🙂 .

Hello obo, Yes, this is something that has been known before. I believe Geoff Eddy, the games' author, was told about this during the playtesting stage, but chose not to change it. Personally, I'm not a fan of JSW rooms where there is a time limit imposed by guardians crashing against each other (I think it's inelegant), but some authors have chosen to apply it consciously. Andrew Broad did this, for example, in his game "Party Willy". There are several rooms with time limit there, imposed by guardian collisions: "The Funny Farm", "Where I Ends and II Begins", "Marilyn Mansion", Tulips in Amsterdam" and "Karina Habsudova Hangout". All of those time limits are recognised in the Readme (have a look here and search for the word "limit" if you're interested). IIRC, there is also such conscious design in one of the rooms of "Jet Set Mini", and I believe also in some other games - I don't remember the details right now. There are also games where I believe the time limits are accidental. This is the case in (at least) one of the rooms in Fabián Álvarez López (Adban de Corcy)'s "A Bulgarian Requiem" (I don't remember the room's name right now and cannot check it easily). While I don't particularly like these cases, they are not bugs at all if they were introduced consciously by the games' authors, and they are not critical bugs if they happened inadvertently - the games are still perfectly completable, only they impose on the player either the necessity to move fast in some rooms or actually leave and re-enter these rooms to be able to cope with the time limit.

Thank you for this update, and I'm looking forward to your adding JSW128 and JSW64 games 🙂 .

Thank you for this update and for all the work you have put into this project! 🙏 I would say they mostly (or perhaps even entirely) are. I don't recall seeing any problems with his maps of JSW games (apart from those games that are practically impossible to map, with various illogical exits, overlapping rooms, etc. - but then probably Pavero's maps show them as accurately as possible under the circumstances). I seem to recall from years ago that I noticed a couple of minor errors in the map of "Stay Kool". I did mean to let Pavero know about it, but never did that back then, and now I can't remember the details of the problem and probably couldn't force myself to spend time investigating it. But it's not a JSW game anyway. I'm very glad to hear this 😁 Regarding your website: I've had a look at my game "Willy's New Mansion" Special Edition. It was truly a "Wow!" moment: seeing the whole map in all its splendour (if I can say so myself) was a truly emotional experience 😊 . I was very impressed both with the fact that everything is in place - including two rooms that were added in the SE (in relation to the original edition) and are placed in the code not in the "normal" #C000 - #FFFF range, but in the #8000 - #BFFF range (namely, "The Temple of Passing Time" is at #A700 - #A7FF and "A Forest Clearing on Fire!" is at #A800 - #A8FF). I was also impressed and, quite truly, moved with the map's showing special flashing-screen effects in some rooms (engineered with the so-called Patch Vectors; working on the SE of "Willy's New Mansion" was my first major venture into the PV territory and I spent a lot of time on it, that's why seeing the effects I applied back then faithfully reproduced in your map is so moving to me 😊). I've also had a look at "Plants vs. Zombies", the latest released JSW48 game, and it was also great to see it all at once, mostly Wan YuXiang's beautiful rooms and also the ones that I contributed to the game 😊. So, congratulations on delivering this fantastic resource with such precision and quality - and, once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH for it! 👍😊

You're welcome. It's always a pleasure 🙂

Thank you so much for your immediate reply and valuable assistance, John - it's greatly appreciated! 🙏 🙂

Hi Cheez, thanks for joining the forum! And yes, it's a friendly forum ❤️, I'm sure you will enjoy being here 🙂 . It's great you want to make your own JSW game! As you probably know, the source code of JSWED, the best editor out there, is posted on John Elliott's (its authors) site (here's the direct download link). I've had no experience with Linux, so I couldn't help you myself, but I've just written to John Elliott pointing to this thread and asking him for assistance - I hope he will help.

Thank you! A fine mélange of two classics 🙂 .

Hi, my reply to your question would definitely be "Yes", with the understanding that you're not asking others to embark on this task (I couldn't right now or in the foreseeable future due to lack of time) but rather checking if others would be interested if you went ahead with the conversion 🙂 . Yes, it will be nice and definitely appreciated if you do it 🙂 . I will also be happy to playtest as usual before the final release. And I will second JianYang's affirmation: "There can never be too many Manic Miner levels." 😁

Glad my post was useful! Thanks for letting us know it helped 🙂 .

Sure. I'm sad that there are some negative feelings within the community and problems with respect for other people's work and with acknowledging their authorship.

Ken Knight (itsmethyroid), the author of Jet Set Willy: Australian Cousin, has drawn my attention to Plat 3064, a game for the C64 inspired by Manic Miner, created by Tom Walker for the Minigame Competition 2003 in the 4K Category (it ranked at #31). I don't think it's ever been mentioned here before. The pertinent links are: https://www.lemon64.com/game/plat-3064 https://csdb.dk/release/?id=10852

I have just updated the Links section on JSW Central. Please let me know if you have any comments and suggestions (especially for things to add, etc.).