jetsetdanny

Thanks! I'll have another go and try to shoot my way through 😉 .

Thanks for the pre-pre-pre-alpha version 🙂 . I've tried it, but cannot get past the wall Willy is standing next to in this screenshot: and not much seems to be happening...

No, I'm not aware of anyone reporting completing it, but of course it doesn't mean anything other that I haven't heard of such thing. Since I focus on ZX Spectrum games, the only interesting element of Craig Rothwell's game for me is "Manic Miner 7", which, as I understand, is complete in the DOS version. Craig started writing it as a Spectrum game and it is listed as such on JSW Central, even though that's controversial - it's really an unfinished project as far as Spectrum goes, with only 5 edited caverns (the rest are original MM caverns). It shouldn't really be listed as a complete, gamma-released game, but it is for historical reasons, as it appeared in this capacity on older lists of MM games for the Spectrum. In any case, Craig's DOS game features, as I understand, a complete version of "Manic Miner 7". I once had a look at it to see if it would make sense to try to transfer/ port it back to the Spectrum. I decided then that it would be hard, because it has elements that go beyond what the regular MM game engine on the Spectrum can do. I also seem to remember that I was surprised because the first caverns in the DOS version were different from the edited caverns in the Spectrum version, as if Craig started creating the game anew (or modified it significantly) in DOS. I believe "Manic Miner 7" is an interesting MM game and certainly one that would be recommendable for people who are interested. In my case, I have a huge amount of plans related to JSW and MM games for the Spectrum and little time to carry them out, so I won't be playing the DOS "Manic Miner 7" in the foreseeable future. The other games included in Craig's package of games are not that interesting, I think, because they are just DOS versions of various JSW and possibly (I can't remember off the top of my head what's included) also MM games (mods) that were in existence when Craig created his set of games. Still, IIRC from the description, the challenge was to complete them all one by one, so if there is some kind of final prize at the end for completing them all, it could be a nice challenge for people who are interested and have enough time to dedicate to this quest 🙂 .

Regretfully, I don't have any ZX Spectrum story explicitly related to Christmas going back to the "real hardware" days. I am sure Christmas and the holidays around it was a happy time for me back then as I could spend a considerable amount of time playing on the Spectrum-compatible Timex computer I had (still have, in fact). However, I don't have any specific recollections. My generic (non-Christmas 😉) story of involvement with the Spectrum and JSW goes back to 1986. My parents bought me a Spectrum-compatible 48K Timex. "Jet Set Willy" happened to be one of the first (if not *the* first) games I ever loaded into it, and I fell in love with it right from the beginning. I only played "Manic Miner" after playing "JSW". I also loved "Jet Set Willy II", I spent a huge amount of time exploring it and trying to finish it without an infinite lives POKE (I remember that back in those days I never figured out how to reach the Deserted Isle). I also remember playing "Manic Miner 2". Come to think about it, it was related to my first attempts at editing, as I translated the German room names into Polish. I also designed a loading screen for "JSW", which years later (in 2007) I recovered by transferring it to emulator format. I may still use it one day in one of the "modern" projects, as a little historical curiosity. For the context, all of this took place in Poland, which was under the communist regime at the time. My Timex was purchased, together with a tape recorder, at a a special hard currency store for $130, while at that time, due to the way the finacial and social system were structured, a monthly salary in Poland averaged the equivalent of US$30 (people who could would travel to do some physical work, like pick berries, in the summer in Germany or Scandinavia, and after returning to Poland they could live comfortably for the next year... or buy a personal computer). I never had a colour monitor back then - I used a Polish-made monochromatic (greenish) monitor (the first time I played JSW or MM in colour was years later, on a PC, already in the emulation era). Later on, my parents also bought me some additional hardware, expanding the Timex's memory (to 128K, or perhaps 256K, I can't remember exactly), a 3-inch floppy disk drive and a printer. I still have all this hardware, as well as all the software tapes I had back then. The last time I used them was in the summer of 2007 when I transferred all of the software I had written back in 1980s to the emulator format (and submitted the two games I had created in BASIC to the Crap Games Competition (C.S.S.C.G.C) - you can check out the two parts of the infamous "Spider Attack" here and here 😄). After I stopped playing on my Timex some time in the early 1990s, I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of ZX Spectrum emulators for PC computers until 2001. Then I suddenly became interested in the subject, for no apparent reason, and I also discovered and downloaded the already numerous fan-made MM and JSW games. I had a brief look at them, arranged convenient shortcuts to them in my Windows start menu with the intention of playing them at some point, but then, after having to reformat my system HDD, I let them slip into oblivion again. At the beginning of 2004, after another reinstallation of my operating system (Windows 98 SE, back then), I fired up John Elliott's JSWED v. 2.0.3 and played around with it for a while, designing a room which later became "Jump'n'Jive". And then I started working on another room, and then another, until I realised I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was definitely neglecting my family... And then I knew I wanted to finish and release my first JSW game, which I did in November 2004, when the world was stunned with the launch of the original edition of "Willy's New Mansion" 🙂 . In the years since, the Christmas period has sometimes been a time of intense work for me in order to finish some projects and have them ready for release before the end of the year. That was the case back in 2005 (Sendy's and my "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control" was released on 30th December), in 2010 ("Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" was released on 29th December) and 2016 ("Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" was released on 30th December). And finally, when I think of JSW and Christmas, this room from Steve Worek's "Jet Set Emily: Baby on the Go" invariably comes to my mind:

Thank you for your reply. It sounds like a very interesting and creative project, and something I don't believe have ever been done before. There is something about destruction that fires up one's imagination and makes "Skylab Landing Bay" a charmingly attractive room. I once created the room "Skylab Recuperation Bay" (for Sendy's and mine game "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control"), which you can see here starting at 1:13:17 - it was inspired by the fascination with the destruction theme. I don't have any good ideas for the other rooms for you right now, but if something comes to my mind, I will certainly share it 🙂 .

IIRC, Craig Rothwell's game runs in DOS. I believe it won't run on a newer system unless you use a DOS emulator like DosBox. I was able to run it successfully on a modern PC a couple of years ago and I believe I used DosBox then. Give it a try, it's free 😉 .

Hi Steve, Thanks for sharing info about your project. Are you creating a ZX Spectrum game or one for another platform?

Updates on the JSW Central YouTube channel since the last video I mentioned in this thread: "Miles Mad Mission" "Willy the Hacker" "ZX81 Manic Miner" "Utility Cubicles" "Jet Set Willy X" "STRANGEL" "Jet Set Willy: The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" "Jet Set Willy: The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! Special Edition" The videos of "STRANGEL" and "Jet Set Willy X" and were made from RZX walkthroughs I recorded a long time ago, in September 2008 and May 2013, respectively. The videos of "Miles Mad Mission", "Willy the Hacker" and "ZX81 Manic Miner" were made from RZX recordings I made recently, as I had not played these games to completion before. I managed to complete "Miles Mad Mission" at 8:25 am, "Willy the Hacker" at 9973769 (please see this thread for more info), and "ZX81 Manic Miner" with 21,911 points upon the first re-entry into the first cavern, all of these results being significant improvements over other publicly available completions of these games. For the other three videos, I replayed and re-recorded them in order to improve my own earlier performances. I brought down my completion time of "Utility Cubicles" from 8:40 am to 8:31 am, of "Jet Set Willy: The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" from 8:16 am to 8:13 am, and of the Special Edition of "Jet Set Willy: The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" from 8:33 am to 8:25 am. All of the newly-recorded RZX files can be downloaded from the games' respective JSW Central pages.

Yeah, I somehow felt it was very natural that it was *our* Willy. Willy the Builder (an idea for a future game title 😉 ).

Apparently Willy has a new business, related to concrete. He may have moved to America, too, unless what I have witnessed is a branch of his British company (there are branches in the background, in fact - perhaps they're a hint 🙂). These pictures were taken in Washington, DC, earlier this month. Not the greatest quality, but I took them through from the car, stopping where I shouldn't have. However, I just couldn't let this go undocumented 😁.

I like "The Endorian Forest" a lot, although I haven't associated it with Christmas until now, at least not consciously.

Thank you so much for all the information, it does indeed make some things much clearer! 🙂 . It's great that you've managed to actually create a game of your dreams! 👍 That's what it's all about here - doing stuff we like and fulfilling our dreams in a way, and, hopefully, at the same time providing fun and nice experiences for the others 🙂 . As I said, my MM/JSW priorities call me elsewhere at this moment, but I will keep "Manic Mission" on a list of things to come back to one day. Who knows, perhaps I'll even practice the puzzle part 'secretly' to become good at it and able to produce a nice recording of the game being solved some day 😉 .

All right, I've spent a couple of hours playing the game. I first toyed with the Puzzle Trainer and then played the game proper. I ran out of time twice. The first time I managed to collect 59 flashing items: and the second time - 48 flashing items: My feedback: I liked the Manic Miner part. The game mechanics are very nice, they seem to reflect the Spectrum ones (which are the ideal for me) quite well, and the (non-Spectrum) somersault jump is very nice too. I did not have any problems arising from inexact collision detection that has been a drawback in some other PC versions I've tried. I like the room ideas and designs. If there are 32 rooms, I probably haven't seen them all yet, but certainly a good part of them. IIUC, the map is drawn anew every time you play, but constructed in such a way that you will actually access all rooms, only in a different order. That's a nice touch and something I would perceive as a cool feature, especially if someone wants to play the game many times - it makes it more interesting. IIUC, the game has infinite lives, but also a time limit, which makes you lose the game if you run out of time (or Air). The infinite lives part is good in that playing the game with a limited number of lives (like several or a dozen) without being able to do a Spectrum-style snaphot saving and reloading or some other form of safeguarding your progress would be frustrating (for me, at least). On the other hand, especially in view of the time limit, it leads (in my case at least) to the player preferring to get killed many times instead of trying to negotiate their way back safely after collecting an item. This *is* the logical thing to do, from the player's point of view, given the time limit (unless I am missing something here, like that you need to find the puzzle pieces after collecting some or all items in the room but before losing a life, or something like that). However, it goes against my idea of "elegance" of ZX Spectrum JSW games which for me is: being able to complete the game without losing a single life, even if it is assisted by reloading and saving snapshots. It's just an observation, not criticism. A possible criticism might be that it also goes against the Manic Miner rules, where if you lose a life, you also lose the items you have collected in the room you are currently playing. If you were to apply the above 'No kamikaze' rule to the game (you lose a life, you also lose the items collected in this room so far, you need to recollect them after respawning), it would make it way harder. I would say this is an option to consider should you want to introduce an "Extreme" or "Hardcore" mode of some kind 😉 . The time limit seems quite challenging for me. I'm not sure how many items there are in the game, but by my results so far I would say it may be really hard to complete the game on time if you need to go through 32 rooms and then solve the puzzle from the collected pieces. Some questions come to mind here: On the Game Over screen it says, "Flashing items left", but the number it shows is really of the flashing items the player has collected. So why does it say "left" (not "collected")? On the Game Over screen it also gives the number of "Passwords saved". I don't know what this is about, where these passwords can be found, how you save them, what the purpose of this is, etc. Is the time limit reset/extended after the player has collected all items and puzzle pieces and starts solving the puzzle? If it's not, I would say it's really tight. The Impossible Mission part is mostly lost on me. When I tried the Puzzle Trainer, I found it difficult and confusing. Within the game, I did not find any of the puzzle pieces. I did try pressing the Search key many times, in some rooms also after collecting all of the items in the room and trying it on every furniture item I could see, but to no avail. All in all, I think this is a very exciting project for people who are "open-minded" and "time-possesing" MM/JSW fans, willing to try new things beyond the most classic elements of the game. As for myself, I don't belong to either category for the following reasons: my focus is on MM/JSW games (or: games using the MM/JSW game engines) for the ZX Spectrum. Narrow as this focus might seem, there are still tons of things I would like to do in this particular field, such as playing all of the released games to completion and recording nice RZX walkthroughs of them, developing JSW Central and its YouTube channel, resuming the creation of my own games (which I have been putting on the backburner for the sake of the development of JSW Central and because of real-life constraints) and assisting others in creating their Spectrum MM/JSW games (by playtesting, etc.) if necessary. With all this, and the restrictions of the amount of spare time I can devote to my leisure activities (that we probably all know well), my readiness to devote time and energy to projects that are outside of the scope of my immediate interests is limited. That's to explain why I am reluctant to learn the puzzle part of the game, and why I probably won't be struggling to complete "Manic Mission" in the near future. However, I will definitely keep it on my list of things to come back to in the more distant future, if and when my Spectrum projects and activities allow room for other things, or I feel a desire to expand the scope of my interest 🙂 . And I do hope there will be enough interest in the community to create new levels for "Manic Mission" 🙂 .

Thanks for your support, Heracleum! I appreciate it 🙂 . I will do my best to play "Manic Mission" 'seriously' this weekend 😎.

I don't really know, but the search for "willyisback.com" on Google produces only one result: Download Manic Miner (E) (M5) [!].gba - NES Ninja http://nesninja.com › downloadsgba WILLYISBACK.COM~ LA CONTRASE A ES~ EL MANIC MINER~ MUY BIEN HAS COMPLETADO~ INFINITA~ SALIR~ DITOS~ SALTAR NIVEL~ VIDA~ OPCIONES~ JUEGO MEJ.~ JUEGO ORIG. Following that link - by doing "Save link as" - you can download the file "Manic Miner (E) (M5) [!].gba". Could this have been the treasure?

Thanks for the explanation, Heracleum! I haven't played your game since that last post of mine, because some very important Spectrum stuff cropped up and I gave it absolute priority. Now that it's done, I should be able to have a proper go at Manic Mission. I will report back 🙂 .

Very nice, JianYang! 👍 Does it go on forever? (I watched over 100 screens, it doesn't seem to stop)

Thank you, Norman Sword - a great overview of your beautiful game! 👍

View File AmAZiNG WiLLY I am thrilled to announce the release of a new Jet Set Willy game: “AmAZiNG WiLLY”, created by Carl Paterson (CnP Projectz). The game features: - 59 completely redesigned rooms; - A fairly familiar map layout, which will nevertheless surprise you with brand-new, atmospheric screens and many exciting challenges; - New and modified guardian sprites; - 256 items to collect (yes, they can all be collected without losing a single life! - but it's not easy...); - A moderate level of difficulty, which won’t put off a novice and won’t bore an expert either (lots and lots of running around and jumping is required to complete the game; oftentimes you’d really better think before you jump!); - A richness of music incomparable to any previous release: a brand-new title-screen tune and more than a dozen in-game tunes, most of them 128-byte-long (twice as long as the original one) and most of them never heard before in a JSW game; - A custom-made title screen, custom font and other enhancements; - A toilet run like you’ve never seen before! The ZIP file available for download includes the game in TAP and TZX format, the Readme and info about the game's credits. Grab it, enjoy and please share your impressions! Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 10/09/2022 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

The bugfixed version of "Willy the Hacker" is now available for download also from this forum. The video of my walkthrough of the game is on the JSW Central YouTube Channel. And the RZX recording of that walkthrough can be downloaded from the game's page on JSW Central. Once again, huge thanks to Geoff for endorsing the bugfixed version of his game! 👍

View File Bugfixed, completable version of "Willy the Hacker" "Willy the Hacker" is a 1999 game by Geoff Eddy. The original release of the game was incompletable due to a critical bug in the room "The Right-Hand Edge of the Map" (27): it was impossible to jump over the foot on the right, and therefore impossible to collect the item. In 2007, Andrew Broad suggested a fix for it (in a post on the JSW/MM Yahoo! Group, which used to be here, but Yahoo! Groups are not online any more). Andrew said, "POKE 56116,4 (Hex DB34: 04) puts a Water-cell at (6,18), which is possible to jump onto if you stand to the right of the foot with your legs apart." In May 2008, Robin Clive submitted a recording of the game to the RZX Archive, which is still hosted there. In order to be able to complete the game, Robin applied a different fix than the one suggested by Andrew. Strangely enough, he also modified the game to show only 7 remaining lives, while in the original game there are 16, occupying the whole bottom part of the status bar (as a matter of fact, the game has the infinite-lives POKE turned on by default, so it doesn't really matter to the player how many spare lives there are left, and their number does not decrease if a life is lost, but this change does make a significant visual difference on the status bar). Robin never released his modified game file (however, an RZX recording can be used to play the game it was made from). I prepared a bugfixed version of the game while creating "Willy the Hacker"'s page on JSW Central in April 2019. I applied the same fix that Robin Clive had applied to eliminate the critical bug in room 27. However, it was done in ZX-Blockeditor so that the rest of the game remained unchanged, the only difference was that it was made completable. I did not correct another, non-critical bug which Robin had corrected, which is the necessity to lose a life in the room "Purple <hic>" (29) (where the only way to collect the two items on the mid-air platform is to jump for them from below, which kills Willy upon falling from an excessive height). I made my bugfixed version available for download from JSW Central in TAP and TZX format, hoping that Geoff Eddy would approve of this, but without his explicit approval. It was a great joy to learn that Geoff did endorse it in September 2022. I am very grateful for Geoff's approval and support - thank you so much, Geoff! Thus, this ZIP file contains bugfixed, completable, original-author-approved version of "Willy the Hacker" in TAP and TZX format. Play, enjoy and complete the game! Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 10/09/2022 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

For those of us who love JSW games, the joy never ends. Geoff, who posted in this topic just before you, graced us with "Willy does the Great Pyramid!" last year. New games *are* still being created 🙂 .

To answer my own question, I've solved the problem, although probably in a different way than Ian would have done. I used the timer (tick counter) to increase the music note index only every other tick. Here it is (ignore the NOPped addresses, I can't be bothered to consolidate the code right now): 8B3C 3A CB 85 LD A,(#85CB) pick up the timer 8B3F E6 02 AND #02 do it every other tick 8B41 28 0A JR Z,#8B4C jump over the code that increments the music note index 8B43 00 00 two bytes are NOPped out 8B45 3A E1 85 LD A,(#85E1) pick up the music note index 8B48 3C INC A increment it 8B49 32 E1 85 LD (#85E1),A 8B4C 00 one NOPped out byte 8B4D 3A E1 85 LD A,(#85E1) pick up the music note index and then the code continues as usual. In other words, the music note index is only incremented every other tick of the timer, which produces the effect of the in-game tune playing at half speed. As far as I can tell by listening - and also from thinking about the way both solutions work - I believe this effect is exactly the same (the player listens to a tune playing in exactly the same way) as the solution invented by Ian, which involves manipulating the value of #8B48 (i.e. the operand of an AND command). Please correct me if I'm wrong. It requires more bytes to apply, but it also has a certain possible advantage - it can be used to play a tune of ANY length at half speed, even a 256-byte-long tune Ian applied in "Jet Set Mini". Again, that's my theoretical understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong. While I was at it, I also came up with a similar solution, where every other tick the program jumps to #8B70, omitting the playing of the in-game tune altogether. This produces a choppy playback, a constant staccato, so to speak. While I wouldn't recommend setting the in-game tune to play in this way everywhere, the effect may be very suitable for some rooms...