jetsetdanny

A few days before this forum was revived, I launched a new YouTube channel to complement the information presented on JSW Central. The channel is here. Please visit and subscribe if you find it interesting. The main aim of the channel is to showcase videos of walkthroughs of Manic Miner (MM) and Jet Set Willy (JSW) games for the ZX Spectrum, keeping high standards of quality. The videos, made from RZX files (recordings of Spectrum gameplay), will show games completed as smoothly, elegantly and efficiently as possible, aiming to achieve the best completion time (in JSW games) or the highest score (in MM games), with no loss of life if it can be avoided (unless indicated otherwise, e.g. in case of speedruns). The walkthroughs will show the protagonist (Willy, or whoever it is in a given game) moving forward firmly, without hesitation, waste of time or unnecessary moves, taking the shortest, most efficient route possible. Videos of walkthroughs of MM and JSW games, created from my RZX recordings made using the Rollback feature, are the only content I am planning to upload to the channel in the foreseeable future. I will do my best to update the channel periodically and expand the ‘game solutions database’ it constitutes gradually, alongside updates to JSW Central. For the time being, I have uploaded 16 videos to the channel. (#10 – that’s my little tribute to the hexadecimal numeral system 😉). They include all of the games from the official Miner Willy canon (Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Jet Set Willy II and Allan Turvey’s excellent conversion of The Perils of Willy) as well as the better part of my JSW game projects. I would like to thank Paolo Santagostino, the director of the film "WILLY, 48K about a Legend", for letting me use an excerpt from the rendering of the MM in-game music featured in his movie for my opening theme. His YouTube channel is here, his Vimeo channel is here and his Twitter channel is here. Enjoy! 🙂

I have just commented on WoS about my recent update of the high scores for each cavern. My post on Wos is here. The highlights: - My updated ZIP package with recordings of every level of "Manic Miner - Highscore Challenge" can be downloaded from here. - I have improved all-time high scores in 7 caverns. They are: 02 The Cold Room - 1967 06 Processing Plant - 1821 10 The Endorian Forest - 1835 12 Return of the Alien Kong Beast - 4276 14 Skylab Landing Bay - 1808 16 The Sixteenth Cavern - 1830 19 Solar Power Generator - 1125 - I have also reproduced the best scores reported by others on all of the other levels. So in the current complete set of my RZX recordings you can watch all of the caverns completed as efficiently as anyone has ever done 😁 . The remaining scores (for a convenient reference) are: 01 Central Cavern - 1724 03 The Menagerie - 1903 04 Abandoned Uranium Workings - 1854 05 Eugene's Lair - 1748 07 The Vat - 1825 08 Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast - 4047 09 Wacky Amoebatrons - 1345 11 Attack of the Mutant Telephones - 1720 13 Ore Refinery - 1866 15 The Bank - 1709 17 The Warehouse - 1909 18 Amoebatrons' Revenge - 1314 20 The Final Barrier - 1776 With all this, the highest confirmed possible score in "Manic Miner" is 39,402 points. My recently updated RZX recordings of the whole game, available for download here, are not very far off, showing the completion of both variants of the game with a score of 39,388 points. If you are interested, you can also watch videos made from them, the Bug-Byte version is here and the Software Projects version is here.

Great! 👍 My personal take on the two versions is as follows: Both versions of JSWED - 2.2.9 and 2.3.7 - are excellent tools. I don't find version 2.3.7 to be unstable. I mentioned it to John Elliott, the creator of JSWED, once and his reply indirectly confirmed to me that there is no real reason to regard version 2.3.7 as unstable. However, for some reason he prefers to call it that. He does frequent these pages so perhaps he'll express his current opinion if he reads this. [The only problem I've had on Windows 10 once was that JSWED seemed to freeze after being launched. The simple solution for it would be to grab the upper edge of its window as if you wanted to move it around on the screen, and then it would work just fine. I haven't had that problem recently though]. So for me both version 2.2.9 and 2.3.7 are equally stable for all practical purposes. There are, however, the following factors to take into account when you decide to start using one or the other: 1. Version 2.3.7 can do some things that 2.2.9 cannot. I can't remember off the top of my head whether it concerns the editing of JSW64 games (which perhaps 2.2.9 cannot edit at all) or whether it's something less important, but 2.2.9 does have some limitations in comparison. 2. There are some differences between how you use them. So, for example, when editing a JSW48 game (which uses the same game engine as the original JSW), in order to achieve the same result, you do some things differently in 2.2.9 than in 2.3.7. It is something like: in 2.2.9 you enter the guardian editing options from the list of guardians in the room, but in 2.3.7 you have to leave the editing of the room, go to the "Guardians" section and then edit the guardians in the room of your choosing - this example may not be 100% accurate, I am writing it from memory just to illustrate what I mean. I remember that when I first started using a 2.3.x version after using 2.2.9 and its predecessors for a long time, I couldn't get used to the "other" way of doing things, and, in fact, I kept using 2.2.9 as long as was practical. But then, when I needed to use the functions in 2.3.7 that are unavailable in 2.2.9, I switched to the most current version and finally got used to the way things are done there. And I have been using it as default version ever since, I don't even have 2.2.9 installed on my current computer any more (as I did on the previous machines I was using). So, taking all of the above into account, my personal recommendation would be to start using JSWED 2.3.7 straight away. Good luck, and let us know how it went 🙂.

You sound like a really good candidate to become addicted to JSW editing 😁. If you have never used JSWED, I would encourage you to give it a try, one day when you have just a little more spare time than usually. Nothing really big, without thinking that you need to design a whole new game, just to see how it works, design one room perhaps... That's where the second part of the magic starts - in being able to design new rooms, to create something that looks like JSW but is brand new, coming out of your own inspiration. That's what I did back in early 2004: I installed John Elliott's JSWED version 2.0.3 (the current one at that time, now we're up to 2.3.7), just to see how it worked, and I played around with it for a bit, designing a room which later became "Jump 'n' Jive". And then I started working on another room, and then another, until I realized I wasn't getting enough sleep and I was definitely neglecting my family... And then I released the original edition of "Willy's New Mansion" in November 2004, and I haven't left Willy's 8-bit universe ever since 🙂.

Your enthusiasm is very welcome here, MtM. I hope it will be contagious 😁 I don't know about a Next version, but I've got to point out that there is a wonderful tool which anyone can use to create new MM and JSW versions or entirely new games. It is John Elliott's JSWED which allows anyone interested to edit games using several different game engines, such as the original MM and JSW game engines and also newer, expanded ones created by John (JSW128, JSW64). JSWED is easy to use, it comes with a good manual and it doesn't require any knowledge of the Z80 machine code or any programming knowledge at at. It's got a GUI, you just redesign whatever elements of the game you want using your mouse. And, on top of everything, it's completely free, there's no need for a fundraiser whatsoever 🙂. So you could easily change "a few sprites and cells" yourself if you have some spare time. WARNING: You can become addicted, and then you'll be spending all your spare time designing JSW games! Which would be good, actually... 😅

There a question by JianYang over on Wos: "Is there a way to slow down Manic Panic? That unusually fast speed is really confusing me." I guess Norman Sword would be best placed to answer it...

Yes, my original idea was of a game of some 20 to 30 rooms, I would say. I didn't try to count exactly (from the game map image I have in my head), but I think that would be more or less correct. Personally, I wouldn't call it a "mini-game" with this number of rooms. For the purposes of classification on JSW Central I have defined a "mini-game" as having "fewer than 5 rooms". This one would have significantly more than that. I am glad various people seem to like my idea and I wouldn't mind at all its being developed as a "community project" 🙂 . I won't be able to participate in it right now, and personally I don't think it would be a good idea to rush this kind of game just to create "something" before Christmas 2020, but if serious development along the lines presented above happens at some point (perhaps aiming at next year's X-mas release?), I might be able to make some contribution to it.

Thanks, Ian 🙂. Yes, the items will most probably be Christmas presents 😍. Done!

Following Ian's suggestion, this is a new topic to discuss ideas for Christmas-themed Miner Willy games. There aren't any explicitly Christmas versions of MM or JSW, which is strange, given the number of versions and variants in existence. I'll start this topic by describing an idea for a Christmas JSW game I've had for some time. NOT a version of the original JSW, but a new game using one of the JSW game engines. If I ever find the time, energy and propitious circumstances to launch this project, it will be called "Willy's Christmas Caper" and it will feature a giant Christmas tree forming the vertical axis in the centre of the game map, splitting it in two. Willy will start out at the entrance to the house in the lower left corner of the game map (there will be no house as such, only the entrance, the giant Christmas tree will be outside). He will be able to go to the right side of the tree at the ground level, but when going up, he will only be able to explore the branches either on the left or on the right side; the trunk of the tree will not let him through at any point, creating a lot of "Promised Lands" on its other side. The tree graphics will be repetitive to streamline the designing process. The toilet run (or whatever-it-will-be run, as it won't involve a toilet in all probability) will take place at the bottom of the tree. So that's "Willy's Christmas Caper" at the back of my mind 🙂.

I am not aware of the existence of any explicitly Christmas version of MM or JSW, which is strange, actually, given the number of versions and variants in existence. I'll mention for the record that I have a certain idea for a Christmas JSW game. NOT a version of the original JSW, but a new game using one of the JSW game engines. If I ever find the time, energy and propitious circumstances to launch this project, it will be called "Willy's Christmas Caper" and it will feature a giant Christmas tree forming the vertical axis in the centre of the game map, splitting it in two. Willy will start out at the entrance to the house in the lower left corner of the game map (there will be no house as such, only the entrance, the giant Christmas tree will be outside). He will be able to go to the right side of the tree at the ground level, but when going up, he will only be able to explore the branches either on the left or on the right side; the trunk of the tree will not let him through at any point, creating a lot of "Promised Lands" on its other side. The tree graphics will be repetitive to streamline the designing process. The toilet run (or whatever-it-will-be run, as it won't involve a toilet in all probability) will take place at the bottom of the tree. So that's "Willy's Christmas Caper" at the back of my mind 🙂.

The revival of the site has been announced over on WoS, as mentioned in the "Welcome back!" thread 🙂 . Regarding Pgyuri, he released/uploaded a 'dark cavern' MM version at some point earlier this year, didn't he? If this is right, I will discuss this version on JSW Central as a "minor" version of MM, independently of "Manic Panic" (which will fall into the category of "Games using other game engines", I believe). I've got some serious catching up to do with things that happened between March and August...

I have announced the forum's comeback on World of Spectrum, Spectrum Computing and in a Yahoo! Group mail message 🙂. I included some promotion of Norman Sword's latest game as well 😊.

Good to see you again, Norman Sword! Thank you for creating and uploading "Manic Panic" v. 1.5 to the Downloads section. I look forward very much to exploring it in every mode soon 🙂 , after I've finished some other MM/JSW-related things I am engaged in right now. When I next update the Chronology section on JSW Central (which I do want to do before the end of the year), I will show 9 December 2020 as the date of the gamma release of the game (including the version number, considering 1.5 as the first gamma release). If you would like me to include also the dates of some beta releases - when you uploaded previous versions of the game to this forum before it went offline - please let me know what they were. Please correct me also if my understanding that v. 1.5 is the first gamma version is incorrect.

It's good to see you again, Ian and Andrew! 🙂 Bad news about the Yahoo! Group, but I think one could see this coming after they had reduced the Groups to e-mails only last year...

Welcome back, Everyone! The forum is back up, running on a new server, with upgraded software. Hopefully, you will like its new look. Please report any issues you come across in this thread or by e-mail to: Let's pick up where we left in August and create some more fantastic Miner Willy stuff 🙂 . Andy and Daniel

A cunning use of the OR command, indeed! :)

I'll second that! :thumbsup:

My replies are in green below.

The only released mod of JSWII - if you can call it that - is John Elliott's "Jet Set Willy 2: Super Pre-School Edition". The room "Shouldn't this be the Attic?" [039] was the first completely edited new room in a game using the JSW2 game engine since the original JSWII.

It looks cool :). And the jumps during the toilet run are one of my favourite features of the game!

I am a fan of "The Fucked Internet Trilogy", including its third part, "The Fucked Internet Resurrection", which uses the Geoff Mode I game engine :).

Interesting experiments, Ian, thanks for them! :)

It is sad to know that JSW continues to be second to tennis in your heart and spare time, Andrew :( . And good to know it might profit from this otherwise depressing situation :lol: .

No, I've tried it as well (using your file), but I don't think it's possible. These Fire cells are too close to each other to make a safe jump.

Congratulations, Ian! :thumbsup: I was wrong on both accounts, then. Errare humanum est... :)