jetsetdanny

Thanks for the detailed description, Richard! 👍

Thank you, crem, that's very interesting 👍. I think that the movements in "Out on a limb" and "Ballroom West" are more efficient than the ones I am used to (I'm actually sure about the former, not quite sure about the latter). I think we might be in for some surprises once you're done... 🙂

All right, I've deleted all the files from the directory where Java wanted to install itself (and was saying it wasn't empty) and re-installed Java. Everything worked fine and I was able to launch the newer version of the game. What's more, clicking works fine now, both on the title screen, and to start the game, and in-game, e.g. to pause it 🙂 .

OK, I've decided to break my own principles - for the sake of JSW! - and reinstall Java. However, when I tried to do it (from the same file I downloaded and ran yesterday) it tells me "The folder is not empty. Please select an empty folder". It doesn't allow me to proceed (like overwrite the existing files) unless I change the folder. Of course the folder is not empty, because I installed Java there yesterday! This whole situation is really annoying (Java which has already been installed supposedly needed to run the program, and then Java telling me to change the folder because the one where I installed it yesterday is not empty), so I will not proceed for the time being. This hasn't got to do with your JSW, Matt, but rather with Java itself, I guess. I'll have to think about it. Does anyone have any suggestions of why it's happening?

Thanks, Matt. I've downloaded the new version. Strangely enough, it - and also the old version when I try to run it now - says that "This application requires a Java Runtime Environment 1.8". But I downloaded and updated Java yesterday, and after that the old version worked on the same computer yesterday. So I'm not sure what happened. I don't feel like reinstalling Java - it would just take a few seconds, but it's more about principles - if I installed it yesterday (and did not uninstall it and nothing happened to the computer in the meantime, it didn't crash, etc.), why should I install again? Any idea what may be going on?

Thanks for the updates, crem! 👍

Thanks, Matt! 🙂 Before you try doing anything about the non-working clicks, please try to duplicate the problem on your computer. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious here - it's just that I wouldn't want to make you do any unnecessary work if it should turn out that it was just myself (a weird mouse problem or something).

Thanks, Matt! I've downloaded the game, upgraded my Java environment and have been able to run the game successfully 🙂 . The only thing is that clicking on the screen isn't working. Where you can choose between Spectrum or C64 music/sound effects/no sound at the beginning, clicking on the options doesn't work. Then on the title screen pressing ENTER launches the game, but clicking doesn't. Then, in-game, clicking on the pause, music and reset options doesn't seem to work either. Not a big problem though. I haven't visited any of the new rooms yet, but - as a general concept - if later on, in the future, someone wanted to recreate them on ZX Spectrum, making a Spectrum version of your version of JSW (like Andrew Broad did with Flash Manic Miner), with all due credit given, of course, how would you feel about it?

Thanks for the update, crem. How much in Bitcoin will you be losing by not mining them but computing JSW room routes instead? 😄

Thanks for the ZIP, Matt! 👍

Your work looks extremely impressive to me, crem! 👍 Regretfully, it's way over my head, I won't be able to help you in any significant way programming-wise. As for the number of frames during the rope cycle, there is only one rope guardian in the original JSW (guardian 01) - in other words, all the ropes are the same in the game. According to JSWED, each of them has a swing of 054 (while the rope length is 032 and rope position is 034). I don't know if this is what we are looking for, but I'm wondering if the swing of 054 does not effectively mean that the rope takes 54 frames while it's on its way (one way, perhaps?).

Welcome to the forum, Matt! I hope you're a box of birds even though your website's down 🙂 . Thank you for re-enabling the JSW section. I have happy memories related to darnkitty.com. I spent a lot of time there back in 2008 and 2009, playing "Manic Miner" (including competing for the best level-completion time against Andrew Broad) and a game called "Cheese Louise". Those were my glory days, too 🤪 - at one point I established a Manic Miner high-score of 135,199 points over there, and then I improved it to achieve 201,773 points, which means (if I am calculating correctly right now, without referring to a video recording of that effort which I still keep) that I completed MM five times in a row and was several rooms into the sixth sequence of caverns when I lost my last life (I probably could have done better still but, to be honest, I had no incentive to concentrate any more, after playing the game, with pauses, for several hours, having crossed the 200,000 points threshold). Matt's website has also left a lasting legacy in the field of MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum. Andrew Broad's "JSW64: Flash Manic Miner" is a conversion of the extra caverns from Matt's Flash version to the Spectrum: Caverns 21 to 43 of Flash Manic Miner map to Rooms 0 to 22 of the JSW64 conversion, with Room 22's portal looping back to Room 3 (because for n >= 44, Cavern n is identical to Cavern n-20). So it's good to see you here, Matt 🙂 . Do upload the ZIP file when you get a chance.

Thanks for the info, Richard! I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere - thanks for sharing it 🙂 .

Yes, thanks, Andy! 👍

Thanks for your opinion, Ian - it's good to hear it 🙂 .

Creating two new ZX Spectrum Manic Miner games by recreating the SAM Coupe's levels is a project I would definitely support and would like to get involved with/be carry to tackle 🙂 . Not right now - I have other priorities - but at some future point. I believe those levels should be "brought back" to the ZX Spectrum 😎.

I would like to share some comments on the subject of "versions" of the original MM and JSW versus "new games". I wanted to start it some time ago, but didn't have enough time to do it. I will start by copying (with edits) something I wrote as comments to Njenkin's review of "Jet Set Willy: Wet Sunday Afternoon Graphical Remix". I hope it's OK to copy and paste here from there - these are my own comments and it will also be useful for me to have them here for future reference. On JSW Central I strive to keep an updated list of "Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy games", which I define as games using Manic Miner (MM) and Jet Set Willy (JSW) game engines, both original and modified. I make a clear distinction (it's an arbitrary, but I think easily defendable one should someone question it) between "new games" created using these game engines on one side, and "versions and minor mods of the original MM" and "versions and minor mods of the original JSW" on the other. Among the "new games", currently there are 50 games listed in the "JSW48" category (using the 48K original game engine of JSW, also in various modified shapes). Additionally, among the 48K games there are 6 games which I've classified not as "new games" but as "Advanced modifications of the original JSW" and 5 games classified as "Artistic modifications of the original JSW" (these are all JODI's JSW Variations). Then there are two JSW II games, 18 JSW128 games (using a 128K modified game engine developed by John Elliott), and 24 JSW64 games (using another 128K modified game engine developed by John Elliott). This is not to mention games using the MM game engine (there are currently 20 of them), games for the ZX Spectrum which can definitely be considered "Willy games", but use still different game engines, and some mini games. Most of the above (with the exception of the "Advanced modifications of the original JSW" subcategory) are listed as "new games", as opposed to "Versions and minor mods of the original Jet Set Willy" of which there are currently some 26 listed on a separate page. I am emphasizing the distinction between what I consider "new games" and "versions of the original JSW" (the same goes for MM), because it is very important. On the "mainstream" websites, such as World of Spectrum or Spectrum Computing, this distinction is not made sufficiently clearly (in fact, not made at all!). They list the "mods" together, due to which some people say e.g. that there are "about 117 different versions of Jet Set Willy". However, this doesn't do justice to what various authors did, and doesn't describe the reality accurately at all. The distinction is so important because we are talking about totally different things. Please consider these two extremes: 1. A "minor" version of JSW which has, for example, just 1 additional room (like the historic "April Showers" version) or a technical tweak (like "Jet Set Mono") - a change that is minimal, perhaps involving just a few bytes, but has some effect on the whole. These are indeed "versions" of the original "JSW" and I wouldn't object to them being called "versions". According to my classification, there are some 26 of them. 2. A new game. Let's take Herve Ast's "Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise" as an example. Dozens of games could be taken as examples, but I'll just describe this one, because I can't describe them all. This is truly a NEW game. It is NOT a version of JSW. It has 128 rooms, more than twice as many as the original JSW. All of them are new rooms - they are not rooms from JSW tweaked here and there, or with just modified graphics, or something - they are brand new rooms, designed from scratch, according to a game map designed from scratch, which has nothing to do whatsoever with Willy's original mansion. The game has new room graphics, new guardian sprites, new items and a new story behind it. Furthermore, since it uses the expanded 128K JSW64 game engine, it features many things that the original JSW does not and cannot have: more cell types in every room, switches, diagonal guardians, etc. The things that "Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise" shares with the original JSW are: the protagonist, the general idea of the game (avoid nasties and collect all items before time runs out) and the exquisite mechanics of the original (albeit expanded) game engine. Other than that, it is a brand-new game, which must have taken many months of intense work to create. Calling "Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise" a "version of Jet Set Willy" is not even an understatement - it's an outright error! "Willy on a Transatlantic Cruise" is simply a brand new game that uses some elements from "JSW". I am making these lengthy comments to try to drive this message home, because I feel that the talk of "versions of Jet Set Willy" or even "mods" or "clones" of Jet Set Willy makes many people dismiss them straight away - many people say "I'm fed up with all of these mods of JSW" and don't even look at them. The reality is, however, that the games listed on JSW Central as "new games" in the JSW48, JSW128 and JSW64 categories are NOT versions of JSW. Most of them are not even "mods" in my opinion - each of them is not a "modified" JSW, but a new game created using the game engine (original or modified) and, in some cases, some other elements of the original JSW, such as e.g. guardian sprites. "Jet Set Willy: Wet Sunday Afternoon Graphical Remix" (whose review on YouTube inspired this discussion) is an interesting case, because it did give me some ontological headaches. I initially classified it among the "Versions and minor mods of the original Jet Set Willy", as it only has graphics modified. It does not feature any modifications to the room layout, guardians' paths or any other elements (such as music) that could be modified. However, when some other "dubious" game files appeared - balancing between being "new games" and "minor versions" - I decided to create a new subcategory in the new games list: "Advanced modifications of the original Jet Set Willy", to classify them as seemed best. The few games that are currently listed in this category are, in my judgement, "modified too much" to be considered just "minor" versions, but at the same time "not modified enough" to be considered "new games". They are somewhere in-between, but I would not object at all to "Jet Set Willy: Wet Sunday Afternoon Graphical Remix" or "Jet Set Willy: The Nightmare Edition" being called "versions of JSW", while I would strongly object to e.g. (just to mention the latest additions to the JSW48 list) "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre 48K Edition" or "Willy does the Great Pyramid!" being considered "versions of JSW". They are not "versions" - in relation to the 1984 classic, they are truly brand new games. A related topic is a distinction between whether something is "a proper game or a homebrew". Such division is VERY UNFAIR to the homebrew games, as it suggests they are NOT "proper" games. What a lie! Please look at "Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings", or "Maria vs. Some Bastards", or "where's woody?", or "Jet Set Willy 5: ZX Heroes", or "Willy and the Dodecahedron" or "Terry The Turtle" (again, just a few examples) and tell me they are not proper games! In each of them you will find something that is significantly more advanced than in the original "JSW": either improved game engine, or more rooms (the largest homebrew games have more than 4 times the number of rooms in the original JSW), or better graphics, or more interesting technical effects, or all of the above together. In comparison with some later games, the original "JSW" seems empty, easy and almost dull. This is not to denigrate the original, of course. It was a work of genius, it started it all and it has a certain charm/sense of humour that most later games don't match (but they have their own charms). These later games were created using tools that made designing them a piece of cake (such as John Elliott's fantastic JSWED - if anyone wants to design their own game OR a version of the original JSW, they can do so easily using JSWED, without any coding knowledge, and it's free!), taking advantage of deepened knowledge and detailed analysis of the way the original game engine works, using improved game engines that built on that original, etc. Many later games are way more advanced than the original "JSW", but it doesn't mean that their authors have more "merit" than Matthew Smith. However, if you just wanted to judge the games without looking at their history and time and circumstances of creation, I am sure that many "objective judges" (say, people unfamiliar with the history of JSW, who are suddenly given the original game and one of the new games and are asked to tell which one is better) would pick a new game over the original. Again, this is not to diminish the original in any way - this is to say that it is VERY unfair to distinguish between "proper" games (that would include the original JSW) and "homebrew" ("improper"?) games (that include the later creations). A fair division would be between "commercially-released" or perhaps simply "commercial" games and "homebrew games". Such division would only refer to one aspect of the circumstances surrounding their creation and release, without entering into value judgements of whether they are "proper" games or not. Comments? 😉

I've made an RZX recording of Jet Set Willy Mono Plus, with a sample colour selection, pretty much to prove that the game is completable and document the best recorded completion time. You can download the recording from here.

Anyone interested in my RZX recordings of Manic Miner - Light Modification can downloaded them from here. The scores I achieved in both versions of the game are not as good as the maximum possible scores that have been established recently on this forum, but I think they're not too bad given the circumstances... 🤪

Ian, is there any reason I should refrain from re-recording the whole "MM" at this time? Do you think the maximum final score can still change?

Thanks, Andy, especially for restoring my post with the announcement of the release of "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre 48K", which is very important from my personal perspective! 👍

Would it not distract one from reading the site's contents? An "overfocus on Willy"? 😉

I haven't succeeded in reaching the portal in time yet 😯.

OK, I have completed my algorithm-matching update of "Manic Miner - Highscore Challenge" 🙂 . I have managed to obtain 1137 points in "Solar Power Generator" and my scores in all caverns currently match the highest scores ever achieved either by a human or an algorithm 😁. The file with my RZX recordings of all levels has been updated and continues to be available from here. The high score table has been updated accordingly 🥰.

I can't do it for the time being. It's a room that definitely deserves to be included in a very difficult puzzle-based future game, if you ever release one 🙂 .