jetsetdanny

And so it has been done 🙂 .

Thanks, Norman Sword! 🙂 Are these your scripts or did you use crem's algorithm? > Not carrying on- interesting one night exercise. Wouldn't "Solar Power Generator" be an interesting technical challenge? Balancing between the most efficient movements and the necessity to avoid the solar beam...

I really like the screens I see in the screenshots 🙂 . One task I might envisage to try some day (in a rather distant future) would be to transfer some of them to the ZX Spectrum format (probably using the JSW64 game engine to allow for more game engine features that the original MM engine), if you or the authors of the respective levels agreed, of course. Can you actually play the game right now? I don't seem to find any such option there.

Previously I tried the first link you posted: https://heracleum.org/games/manic-mission/test/ Right now I've tried https://heracleum.org/en/, but the result is the same, also when I go to https://heracleum.org/. Right now I've also tried it in Brave, but the result is the same. So I don't think it's a question of the browser. [after a while] OK, I've solved it. I am using McAfee as antivirus firewall and its NetGuard was blocking your address. I have turned the NetGuard off and just registered at Discord, but it won't be very convenient if I have to turn it off (and then remember to turn it back on, as I prefer to have this protection!) every time I want to have a look at your website. The question is why McAfee's NetGuard considers it unsafe...

Heracleum, Heracleum, thank you for creating Manic Mission and posting about it here. It is greatly appreciated! 🙂 My primary personal interest are new ZX Spectrum games using MM and JSW games engines. Due to the lack of time, if I have to make choices on what to spend my limited spare time, I will typically prioritise spending it on a Spectrum-based game than on a non-Spectrum one. Nevertheless, I tried to have a look at your game, as I like your description and screenshots and I very much appreciate the fact that you have provided an editor. Being able to create new rooms is the greatest thing about MM and JSW, IMPO. Regretfully, each time I try to open your website, I get the message "Your Internet access is blocked. Firewall or antivirus software may have blocked the connection." Please see the attached screenshot. This is happening while various other pages I go to are working just fine. The screenshot was taken a couple of minutes ago, while I'm here on this forum and I've also visited some other pages, so there is no problem with my connection as such. Any idea what might be wrong? EDIT: I'm using Chrome, but I've just tried it in Edge and got a similar message.

ALERT!!! Humans are behind the algorithm by one point! All hands aboard to equal the score! 😀

Thanks, crem, it's very interesting, and a great discovery about Amoebatrons! 👍 The route is pretty much what I've been doing for a while now, with the exception of the "home stretch", where I failed to see that you could jump over the cyan guardian and then the horizontal one like this. So that's a second level on which I'll have to improve my recorded performance...

Interesting 👍

Thanks, Andy! 👍

I have now created a web page on JSW Central for this variant. It is here 🙂. The game's name does not appear anywhere in the game (unless hidden in the loader or something) and Andy hasn't been entirely consistent with the spelling - on the main download page it is called "MM2020 Special Edition" and then "Manic Miner 2020 - Special Edition". I opted to list it as "Manic Miner 2020 Special Edition", as the spelling with the hyphen (copied by Spectrum Computing, RZX Archive and Speccy Screenshot Maps) creates a wrong impression IMHO - it looks like it's a Special Edition of a game called "Manic Miner 2020", which is not the case. If there had to be a hyphen, it would be more appropriate before the year: "Manic Miner - 2020 Special Edition". However, since I didn't feel authorised to move the hyphen, taking into consideration that Andy also presented one abbreviated spelling without it, I opted for a full name spelling without a hyphen, which I hope is also correct. This sentence: "Pressing Break during play will save the highscore" is misleading, IMO. Pressing 'Break' does result in the highscore being saved, but the first thing it does is it resets the game. So the highscore is saved (if the current score exceed the previous highscore), but the player cannot continue their play, they've just lost the current game so to speak. There seems to be no reason to do this - if you press Break, your game will be over and you won't be able to improve your current score. If you continue playing, you still have a chance to improve your current score and then, once you've lost all your lives, the highscore will be saved anyway after the Game Over screen. So using 'Break' doesn't seem to make much sense. My personal highscore upon re-entering the first cavern is 41,842 points (the RZX recording is here). It qualifies for the highscore table 🙂.

Thanks for these, Andy! 🙂 It's interesting to see what happens in versions for other platforms.

It's nice to be talking to a pro 🙂.

On second thoughts: But then you would have to cross the room again from the top to go to the Yacht, so it's probably no good...

RB, thanks for your replies and for these awesome comparison videos 🙂. You mention a "back-and-forth into the Tool Shed" and one can see it done in your video, but it's not necessary - you don't have to exit the room, you can jump through the stairs without exiting the room, which will save some time. Please see the attached RZX recording. tool shed jump.rzx

Ian, You're most probably right about how it works. I can't replicate the effect now. It must have been that I did not switch the Forcefield off back then, I must have switched off Antigravity only, and it just seemed to me that I had switched both off when I wrote my message.

Thanks for the additional info and tips, Ian! 👍

In my particular experience it didn't work. I toggled both special modes (invincibility and antigravity) off, but Willy didn't get killed. It was as if he wasn't there to get killed (or reappear), sort of...

Congratulations on your SUB-20 run, RB! 👍 You've just made history 🙂. You can be very proud of it, indeed! Your masterful delivery of JSW combined with your idle chat make for an intriguing combination 🙂. I think they just prove that such mastery can only be achieved when your actions are so automated that you are able to do something else besides executing such a lovely run. I've heard some comments to that effect from one of the top ski jumpers recently (ski jumping is a sport I particularly like to watch) and I couldn't agree more. A couple of comments: I think that when you lose a life in the Nightmare Room, you don't have to jump; if you just walk right you will still get killed, I would think. The lack of jump could save you a split second, perhaps. Wouldn't losing the last life in "Out on a Limb" (by kamikaze'ing the second item) be more efficient than losing it in "Under the MegaTree"? Just wondering. Thanks also for your explanation. A question: how do you pronounce Any%, I mean the % symbol?

I'm glad the FUSE problem has been solved 🙂. I've had no experience with FUSE (never used it). Unfortunately, I don't know how to dump the contents of input frames of an .rzx file, either 😮.

Yes, I remember about the Cold Room and I will have to record a "proper" solution to it (matching the current human- and logarithm-established high score). I will do it soon, when I will also update >>cryptic reference here to my current activities<< some other MM recordings of mine... 😎

Thanks, Ian! 🙂 If I ever find a room in JSW called "Lop Landing", I'll certainly collect the item in there first 😁 [Sorry, just couldn't resist it! 🤓]

It will also work in Spectaculator. Thanks for uploading it, Ian! 👍 The complete set of my RZX recordings showing my personal bests in each MM cavern be downloaded here. Thanks for the automated walkthrough of "The Processing Plant", crem! It's good to know that the algorithm confirms that my highest score there cannot be improved 🙂. I take it you are still working on "Eugene's Lair"?

RuffledBricks, many thanks for this comparison! 👍 It is very interesting to see this matter investigated so thoroughly, and the comparison video is just brilliant, great stuff! 😁 So your analysis confirms my choice of doing the Top Landing first when doing a Max Lives (Rollback-assisted) run, which is what I mostly do. It's good to know. When you mention 'doing an Any% (or Warpless) run, which requires losing all your lives bar one before the end of the game', do you mean that losing your lives is actually required (by the rules of that run, or by the hosts of the event, or something), or that's it's allowed (because it speeds you up), but you don't actually have to lose lives if you don't choose to? And what exactly are Any% and Warpless?

Ian, thank you so much for your detailed explanation of how the code works to form the password that activates the cheat mode! 👍 Your explanation has allowed me to understand how it works and it's all clear to me now, which I have confirmed by making a test and modifying the password successfully 🙂.

Ian, Thank you for providing the Invincibility and Antigravity cheats! 👍 On my Spectaculator running on a desktop computer the keys that activate them are exactly the ones you mentioned: Invincibility (Forcefield) is f + left SHIFT and Antigravity is g+ left SHIFT. I really like the icons that appear when these cheats are activated! 🙂 I treat the cheats as a curiosity rather than a real tool, because using them to play the game would make it 'unreal' and perhaps even limit the playability in some cases. For example, using both cheats, I got out of "Root" and went up to "The Drive". I propelled Willy upwards to hang in mid air, then turned Antigravity off (leaving Invincibility on). He fell down to the ground and didn't get killed, but all sprites disappeared - Willy and all of the bird guardians. I am staring at an empty Drive, with the cheat-mode in-game tune playing in the background, and I don't think there's anything else I can do other than reset the game. Even the fast inter-room teleportation (which could be a useful tool perhaps) isn't working any more...