jetsetdanny

The Invisible Man is JSW hacked by Lee Prince in 2002 so that that you play as an invisible sprite and guardians cannot therefore collide with you (but precision jumps are very difficult). It was an entry in the comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2002. The game has a custom BASIC loader and loading screen, and a modified title screen and scrolling message. The rooms are unmodified. The game is impossible to complete due to the same bugs which make the original JSW incompletable. The official Software Projects POKEs take care of that, so it's not a problem. I would like to record an RZX walkthrough of the game and make a video of it to be placed on the JSW Central YouTube channel. I've started the recording and got as far as "The Beach". However, I've come across a problem I don't seem to be able to solve satisfactorily. Apparently - that's a general remark, concerning all games - Willy has to have some pixels in order to be able to land on a rope. If all frames of Willy's sprite are pixelless - as is the case in The Invisible Man - Willy cannot get hold of a rope, he goes right through it. Hence, rooms where Willy has to use the rope are impossible to complete/pass through. I've had a look at SkoolKid's disassembly and as far as I can tell, the check in the code to see if Willy has landed on the rope is at #92C6 - #92D5: I *think* that the problem must be that the code checks if a given segment of the rope is touching anything else that's been drawn so far, e.g. Willy, but since Willy hasn't been "drawn" (because he has no pixels), the check is negative and so the signal that Willy is on the rope is not set as it should. Please correct me if this explanation is inaccurate. Now the question is: would anyone be able to suggest how to modify the original code so that Willy, while remaining invisible, would be able to get hold of the ropes as usual?

I look forward very much to your own game, Byron! 🙂

Thanks for this question, SymbolShift. I will have to defer the answer to Andy (Spider) as he is the admin that knows all about the technical side of things here.

I am thrilled to announce that a complete archive of the messages once posted on the defunct Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group is now available on JSW Central. The Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group was founded by Dr Andrew Broad on 20 December 1999 (initially as the Yahoo! MM/JSW Club until March 2002). It existed for over 20 years until 15 December 2020, when Yahoo! shut down all Yahoo! Groups. The Group, which offered a message board, picture galleries and file hosting, quickly became a focal point for the MM/JSW community. Over the years nearly 7,300 messages were posted and by the end of its existence the Group had 742 members. Dr Andrew Broad remained its Owner throughout its entire lifespan. The early 2000s marked the heyday of the Group’s activity while the number of messages declined sharply after 2010. Following a period of near-inactivity in 2013–2014 the Group experienced a modest revival. However Yahoo! first deleted user-created content from its Groups in December 2019 and then closed the service entirely in 2020. The Group’s messages form an important part of the history of the development of MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum. They contain insights and information that remain useful even today for those interested in creating such games. For this reason the complete archive of the Group’s messages is preserved on JSW Central. The messages, archived before the Group’s closure, were converted into HTML format for presentation on JSW Central by Michał Gromann. I am very grateful for his assistance in this endeavour 🙏. The archive contains all 7,186 messages that still existed when the Group went offline (the last message visible online was #7256; in total 70 earlier messages had been deleted either by their authors or by the Owner while the Group was still active). In addition the archive includes 37 messages (#7257-#7293) that were never published online and existed only as emails sent to members after December 2019 but before Yahoo! terminated its Groups altogether in December 2020. Some edits were made to this final batch to protect email addresses and conceal certain restricted content. This archive does not preserve the original message threads. Nor does it preserve emoticons (with the exception of the last 37 messages), which appear only as missing image placeholders. You can browse the archive by moving from message to message or by entering a specific message number. Errors will appear if you input a number outside the 0–7293 range, a non-numerical character or the number of a message deleted while the Group was still active. I will be grateful for feedback if you discover any problems such as messages cut off prematurely. I do know that a lot of links in the older messages are messed up (I believe that's due to the original HTML code) and I will correct these progressively. However, if you discover anything else that needs correcting, please let me know here or by email.

This sounds great 🙂 . However, I have playtested the game today and my attention was caught by what I consider a significant structural problem. I have engineered a solution to it that I have privately described to Byron and I hope he accepts it. If he does, I will provide him with a modified file tomorrow. He might then want to work on it a little further (e.g. to change some of the things I will propose according to his own taste) and more playtesting will be in order, but this weekend's release will still be on the cards (Byron is a fast worker!). So, to repeat after him: Hopefully available for download soon 🫰

Great news! I would be happy to playtest before the release, just in case 🙂 .

That sounds great, Byron, thank you for doing this and for sharing info about your progress! 🙂 The name of the room "HELLO GUYS I'M MR PERKINS" is missing a comma after "GUYS" and a full stop after the R in "MR". I would be happy to compare the other room names to check if the spelling is the same as in the original rooms, but for that, I would need screenshots of the original rooms.

Great stuff, Byron! I wish you excellent progress in this interesting and valuable work and do keep us updated! 🙂

OK, I wasn't quite sure what you meant by "the Caveman way", but Lemmy has explained it to me since. For those who may still fail to grasp the meaning: Lemmy called creating a JSW128/JSW64 music file using a text editor and decimal-to-hex converter "the Caveman way", as he felt it was not an efficient way of doing it. All right, so I coded the title-screen and in-game music for Herve's Welcome to Willy’s Fun Park! also in a very "primitive" way, pretty much inputting a value after value into the Hex editor, after figuring out what they should be by using piano keys and a reference table. A possible improvement was that I didn't use a decimal-to-hex converter but rather a ready-made reference table with Hex value that correspond to specific music notes. I will include that table in the text I'm going to write about coding the 128K music. Now, regarding this bit: "I think the multi-channel ingame tune was too long to ever fit in if it was tried to be made the "Caveman way"" - I believe this is misleading or at least not logical in that it doesn't matter how you code the music - "the Caveman way" or any other way - it will either fit into the spaces allowed by the JSW128/JSW64 game engine or not. In other words, whether it will fit or not doesn't depend on what way you code it, but rather how long the resulting tune will be (how many bytes it will occupy). As John Elliott explains, the title-screen tune can occupy up to 2774 bytes (that's all three channels plus 6 bytes of header) and the in-game tunes can occupy up to 256 bytes (again, three channels plus the header). I would say it's actually too much for the title-screen tune - who would want to listen to the initial music for a few minutes before hitting ENTER to start playing the game and, in fact, before being able to see the scrolling message? (the scrolly kicks in once the title-screen tune has stopped playing). Conversely, 256 bytes is too little for the in-game tune. I mean, you can fit a decent tune into this space, but one would wish to have more room, especially taking into account the fact that the title-screen tune has so much space that is not really needed. I *think* (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the reason for this imbalance is the fact that the space for the title-screen tune is located in contested memory, which can be used safely before the game starts but not while it's running. You are certainly right that it will be easier for an in-game tune to fit into the 256 bytes of space it has allocated if only has one channel than if it has more than one channel. That is, of course, if the data for each channel is to be different. If you wanted to have a tune that would play the same music over two or even three channels, the length of space needed for it would be the same as the length of space needed for a tune that plays over only one channel and has silence in the other two channels*. That's because in the header you still need to indicate where each channel starts, and so you can indicate for two or even three channels to start at the same spot, and in case you want to have silence over one or two channels, you still need to point to the address where the data for each channel starts. I'll explain it better when I write the post about coding the music I've promised. OK, I'll do my best to do it sooner than I had planned, but I don't want to promise any specific ETA - I'll just do it when circumstances permit 🙂 . * As I think about it now, to be precise, I believe that in this hypothetical case you would *theoretically* need one byte less for the same music over three channels than for music over a single channel and silence in the other two. That's because in the case of the latter you would need to sacrifice one byte to hold a value of FF to let the program know, concerning the two silent channels, that they are supposed to be silent. You wouldn't need this in case of all three channels playing the same tune. However, that's theoretical, because I guess you could point to the FF value anywhere else in the code and so spare yourself the one byte.

I'm definitely interested! 🙂 Thanks for developing this project, Byron! 👍

No, the title-screen and in-game music weren’t made with Lemmy’s “Caveman way.” They were coded manually – first in ZX-Blockeditor, and later in JSWED (which makes inputting the values easier). The title-screen music is “Sobre las olas” (“Over the Waves”), a waltz by Juventino Rosas, and the in-game music is “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, first performed by Brian Hyland. Both the title-screen and in-game tunes use three channels. The first and third channels both carry the melody, while the second channel plays the accompaniment. So all three channels are active, but two of them play the same line (the melody). I’m not sure if your post was suggesting changes to the music in Welcome to Willy’s Fun Park!. If so, the answer is no — there are no plans to alter it. I do intend to write a post explaining how to code music in the format used in JSW128/JSW64 games (to make the process easier for anyone interested). But this will have to wait until I finish coding the music for Hervé’s The Temple and have the time and energy to do it. I can’t give a firm date, but hopefully it will happen later this year.

Thanks for releasing v. 1.2, Byron! 👍

Thanks for releasing v. 1.2, Byron! 👍

Fantastic! Do keep us updated on your progress 🙂

It looks beautiful! 😊

Thank you for your kind words, Hervé! It's the same feeling for me, and I swear that I thought many times over the years how great it would be if you came back to the JSW scene. So your comeback is a dream come true for me, and I'm very happy that we can continue working together and that I can offer some small contributions to your excellent games 🙂 . I want to thank YOU for letting me playtest "Welcome to Willy's Fun Park!" and add some small enhancements to it. It was both an honour and a great pleasure for me, and I couldn't imagine a better use for my vacation time 😁. I look forward to working on my small - and I can't stress this word enough! - contribution to "The Temple" 🙂 .

Thanks for sharing your ideas, Willie! 🙂It's good to know that you are thinking about creating more games 👍 Here's the upper part of SymbolShift's image converted to the Spectrum .scr format to be used for the loading screen: sprucelee.scr

Welcome to the forum, José Manuel! I hope you will find it to be a friendly place with supportive people 🙂 . If your main interest is just playing the existing games, JSW Central offers a complete list of released new games as well as minor mods and versions of the original MM and JSW (with download options). If you are interested in creating a new MM or JSW game yourself, John Elliott's JSWED will allow you to do it without any knowledge of how to code whatsoever. I recommend using v. 2.3.7, which John calls "Latest Unstable Version", but that's something where I don't agree with him at all: it is stable and it has been used for over a decade now, with great results.

Personally, I love the simplicity of the original games and I'm not interested in developing MM/JSW games for the Spectrum Next that would exceed hardware limitations of original Spectrum. The JSW64 game engine, while not exceeding the hardware limitations of the original Spectrum, allows one to create games that have many more cells and/or many more guardians than the original JSW48 game engine (Herve's "Welcome to Willy's Fun Park!", released just a few days ago, is a great example). I haven't yet tried creating a game using these possibilities, other than Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz which does use the JSW64 engine but is not a platform game (!). The main reason (apart from general lack of time, of course) is that I like using the possibilities offered by the engine to the fullest extent, like all available cells, all available rooms, all available guardian sprites and classes, etc. Creating a JSW64 game based on this premise would take me ages. I can't afford it timewise at present and I doubt that I will ever be willing to devote my time to it in the future. At the same time, I greatly appreciate games created using the JSW64 game engine by others. So if someone develops a new MM or JSW game for the Spectrum Next or one of those new machines, I might appreciate it too. Who knows, a new MM/JSW game could even cause me to buy one of them, which is something I'm not planning to do otherwise...

Hi Uncle Wan, The method I always use for testing the toilet run, without modifying the game file itself, is applying one of the following POKEs when testing (playing) the game in an emulator: POKE 34271,1 to make Maria disappear or POKE 34271,2 to start running anywhere.

Thanks for the update, Willie, it's great to know both of your new games have reached such an advanced stage of development! 👍

I will be happy to assist with anything I'm able to help with. If it's a question of changing the sprites on the Game Over screen, it will be easy. I don't know what the "bigger Hexing needed for the Diner" involves exactly, but I will be happy to help with that too if it's within my abilities 🙂 .

Hi Paul, Welcome to the forum! 🙂 What platform does your game run on? Is it PC? My personal response to your question about whether to complete the original game or to create new levels is: first complete the original game and then complete a whole new set of 20 levels. That's the more ambitious suggestion. If it's too ambitious, my answer would be: just create a whole set of new levels or, in other words, a brand-new game based on MM. That's just my personal preference, because my particular focus is new games for the ZX Spectrum (I don't have enough time to also embrace other platforms) created using the exquisite MM and JSW game engines. It'll be interesting to see if you will get any other replies and, if so, whether they will advise you to go in the direction of recreating the original or rather creating something new... Regards, Daniel

View File Welcome to Willy's Fun Park! I am very pleased to upload, on Hervé Ast’s behalf, the release files of “Welcome to Willy’s Fun Park!” 😊This is Hervé’s fifth released JSW game and his third using the JSW64 game engine—variant Z, in this case. The launch of “Welcome to Willy’s Fun Park!” marks Hervé’s triumphant return to the JSW scene after an 18-year absence. The game is released in four language versions: English, French, Polish, and Spanish. Set in an amusement park that Willy apparently owns, the game sees him facing a familiar challenge: he must clean the entire place—otherwise, Maria won’t let him enter the parking lot where his vehicle is waiting. The game features 64 brand-new rooms inspired by classic funfair attractions: an impressive rollercoaster, a Ferris Wheel, a haunted house, a hall of mirrors, a maze, and bumper cars, among others. You’ll also find a pirate ship, a casino, archery, hook-a-duck, and stalls offering food and souvenirs. Some well-known characters from Hervé’s earlier games—like the Yeti and the extraterrestrials—make appearances, too. I’ve had the privilege of playtesting the game and contributing a few small elements. It’s beautifully atmospheric and not especially difficult if you play using snapshots or Rollback. The game makes excellent use of the JSW64 engine’s features, such as switches, and offers many interesting challenges, including some where you really need to think rather than just collect items. So go ahead—download it and enjoy this fantastic adventure in the language of your choice. It’s a wonderful treat from Hervé - it’s so good to have him back on the scene! 😊 Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 07/26/2025 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]