jetsetdanny

Thank you for your suggestions, crem! They are appreciated and I am sure it would be good to implement them. Andy (Spider), the founder of this forum, is the person who has a grip on its technical aspects. Let's see what he says 🙂 .

Welcome to the forum, TobyLobster! 🙂 An impressive entrance, indeed - thank you for improving the BBC Micro version of Manic Miner and sharing news about it here 👍.

Well done, Ian! 👍 Sorry, I missed that information earlier. So there's even less reason to create a comparison table between humans and CPUs 😊.

Thank you, Norman Sword! 👍 I appreciate your contribution. I will use most of these screenshots and update JSW Central soon. I might re-take screenshots of a few caverns for the following reason: I generally tend to take screenshots soon after entering a cavern, so that it can be seen in "all its glory", i.e. without the crumbly cells crumbled, without any items collected yet, etc. Due to this, in "creme de la creme" the visual representation of Willy's movements on the status bar is not displayed fully - just the beginning of it. There are some caverns (like the Amoebatron ones) where even after playing for quite a bit no "glory" is lost, while the whole status bar is filled with the visually represented movements. I will retake screenshots of these caverns so that the visual representation of Willy's movement is seen all along the bottom of the screen at least in some screenshots.

Thanks for this idea, Mtm 🙂 . No, I won't implement it, for several reasons: - It wouldn't belong to the "Manic Miner: creme de la creme" page, because a human can't play the regular rooms in "Manic Miner: creme de la creme". So it's not possible to compare human and CPU performance there. - Such a more general comparison might be perhaps more appropriate on the Manic Miner page, page I don't want to go into this kind of detail there. - There is no difference between the best (Rollback-assisted) human performance and the CPU's performance in 18 of the 20 caverns of the original MM 😁 . There is still a 5-point difference in "The Warehouse" and a 12-point difference in "Solar Power Generator", that's all. See here for more info or here for the download which documents best human (Rollback-assisted) performance. So there would be little to compare in the table you suggest 🙂 .

My statement was a promise, not a challenge, made in the context of Ian's suggestion of inserting the alternate sprites into 'Amoebatrons' Revenge' and different Fire cell/item bitmaps in 'Processing Plant' - i.e. changes in two rooms, not all of them. Still, I will keep my promise, but not immediately, but after a cooling-off period when I decide that a release of another version is not likely. Spending my time taking screenshots only to have to re-take them a couple of days later is not my idea of proper use of JSW-time. Unless you declare solemnly that you have no specific plans to release another upgrade - in which case I might force myself to do the screenshot-taking chore for the whole game again 😉.

Thanks, Geoff! 👍

Thanks for your assistance, Ian! I have added info about the 0.4 beta version release to Chronology. I did have info about the 1.0 to 1.5 releases included already. The release of the other improved versions indeed seems too detailed for Chronology, unless there were other numbered beta versions (like 0.5?) before version 1.0 was released. I had the same dilemma with "Willy does the Great Pyramid!". There were a number of beta versions released there, and then a dozen Release Candidates. Sometimes there would be more than one improved version released in one day. From one point of view, I thought that, to be consistent with everything else on Chronology, it would be good to mention every single release. On the other hand, this would get immensely detailed, especially that many updates did not have any numbers to identify them, they were just improved files with names that had no consequence, so to speak. In the end I settled on indicating the date when Geoff released the first beta version (an historic moment, indeed!), and also on indicating the date of the first Release Candidate, as this shows the progress of the project (then the gamma-release, of course). I hope this is satisfactory for JSW history. However, Geoff, if you happen to read this and prefer that all those details be added to Chronology (date of every single release of files during the beta stage and every single release of Release Candidates), I will be happy to add them 🙂.

Thanks, Ian, so the text on JSW Central will remain unchanged, according to your wish.

The reason for this are Andrew Broad's "Manic Miner 4" and "Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia". Both of these games have scores upon reaching the swordfish sign, but neither of them has a score upon first re-entry into the first cavern, because there is no re-entry into the first cavern. In each of them, the air counter keeps resetting itself after the player has completed the final cavern, causing a constant increase in the score and making it impossible to re-enter the first cavern. The double scores are given mainly to be able to compare the results obtained in "Manic Miner 4" and "Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia" to those obtained in the other games. So, blame it on Andrew! 🤪

The Chronology section on JSW Central has just been updated, after more than a year since the previous update. I've brought it right up to the present time and tried to include everything relevant that's happened since March 2020. Please have a look at the 2020 and 2021 pages let me know if you have any comments, especially if you know of any events that are missing and should be mentioned there. I did have some problems with establishing the correct dates for the beta releases of "Manic Panic". As far as I was able to establish, no 0.1 beta version was ever released. Version 0.2 beta was released on 12 May, 2020 and version 0.3 beta was released on 23 May, 2020 (please correct me if this is wrong!). Then there was version 0.4 beta, it is mentioned in the comments, but I don't know when it was released and I don't have a copy of it. Could Norman Sword or someone else who has this file let me know what date it had, please? (the date is visible soon after the scrolling message on the title screen appears). I am also not sure if there was a 0.5 beta version later on, or any other beta version before the release of version 1.0 on 21 June, 2020. Quite a lot has happened over that last year, actually - some good things (new games, in particular!) and some bad things (the final demise of the Yahoo! Group, the absence of this forum for a third of the year)...

I have worked on improving my scores to bring them up to the standards set by crem's algorithm. I have succeeded in most cases. I am the first human (at least recorded on this forum 😉) who has completed "The Menagerie" with a score of 1904, "Wacky Amoebatrons" with a score of 1376, "The Endorian Forest" with a score of 1840 and "Attack of the Mutant Telephones" with a score of 1749 😁. I have improved my score in "The Warehouse" to 1946, but it still falls short of crem's algorithm by 5 points. I did not try to improve my "Solar Power Generator" score (1125), which is 12 points short of crem's algorithm's best achievement (assisted by Ian's insight). The updated ZIP with my RZX recordings of all caverns is here.

Manic Miner - Light Modification now has its own page on JSW Central. After a careful consideration of what really is the title of this variant, I opted for "Manic Miner - Light Modification", for the following reasons: - It is the name Pgyuri used on WoS (although not this exact spelling); - It is what Andy put on the loading screen (although not this exact spelling); - It is what makes most sense (to me) as a play on words - it's a "light" modification in the sense of not being very heavy (not too much has been modified in the game's code), and at the same time it has to do with light (inside the cavern). I've got the RZX recordings I made showing the highest documented scores I mention on JSW Central. They're not public yet, but hopefully will be made public in the next few days. As always, I tried to do my best describing this version of the game concisely and giving credit to its creators. However, if anyone has any comments or suggestions for improvement, please let me know and I will be happy to consider them and most likely update the info on JSW Central accordingly 🙂 .

Ian, Thank you so much for your suggestions of changes to the text on JSW Central. I implemented them fully, but I do think you should receive some credit there for your contribution to the discussion and solutions applied. Initially, I gave you credit for the enhancement of the overall score (this being a very specific and "measurable" contribution), but I was half-hoping that you would suggest some wording that would describe your contribution more fully. Would you suggest some wording to that effect? I will be happy to insert it on JSW Central if you do 🙂 .

I couldn't tell you. I got accustomed to using the # prefix, because I saw it used by some people on the JSW scene (probably by Dr. Andrew Broad who would have been back then and continues to be an authority for me on this kind of subjects) and just followed suit 🙂.

I have now created an individual page on JSW Central devoted to "Manic Miner: creme de la creme". Norman Sword, crem, Ian and everyone else who has been involved or is following this topic: please let me know if you have any suggestions for modifications of that page's contents. I have tried to describe this variant as best I could and give due credit to everyone involved, but I am sure there is room for improvement in the info published there 🙂 . The page features a full screenshot gallery, but if Norman Sword follows Ian's suggestion expressed above, I will be happy to update the screenshots accordingly.

That's strange. I *think* if something like this happens, there must be a reason for it. It can't be that one post gets archived/restored properly, and another one - doesn't, without some underlying conditions. Could it be that you don't have enough information, e.g. because the underlying condition is not related to the posts themselves (like their structure, etc.) but to the way the backup was made? I am just thinking aloud, trying to understand something that's rather puzzling... And yes, I also dread to think how many more posts might have been affected across the whole website. I almost prefer not to look to avoid despair 😒

Ian, With your brilliant mind, do you see any pattern to the posts there are missing? Can you see any shared characteristics of the posts that are truncated (versus those that are OK)?

Thanks for the fixes, Andy! 👍

Thanks for this new version, Norman Sword! 👍 I am almost ready to launch an individual page of "creme de la creme" on JSW Central. In fact, I'm glad I've waited with it until this release of yours, but it means I do have to update some info I've got ready to put online.

I don't think the Wayback Machine has everything archived. I remember searching for something I needed while the site was offline and I couldn't find it. I don't remember the details though.

I hope Fabian will resume work on "Jet Set Jason..." and bring this fantastic project to completion at some point in the near future 🙂 . He revealed the answer to this puzzle to me in a private e-mail, I think. I'm not sure if I'm authorised to reveal it here... Hopefully, Fabian is still following these pages and will let us know 🙂 .

Thanks, Andy! 🙂

I am getting ready to create an individual page for Norman Sword's "Manic Miner: creme de la creme" on JSW Central. A couple of questions: 1. Am I right that the latest version of "MM: creme de la creme" was released in this message? The highest achievable score in the BB version being 39,530 points? 2. It has been established elsewhere (or perhaps here in this thread, I can't tell right now) that the highest achievable score in the SP version is 1 point higher than in the BB version (because the Warehouse can be done more efficiently by taking a different route, due to the difference in guardian sprites which allows a jump that is impossible in the BB version). In view of this, are you by any chance going to release an SP-based version of "Manic Miner: creme de la creme" to show the maximum scores that can be achieved there, Norman Sword?

I'm not sure I understand 100% what you mean, Andy - I hope I do. I've added the original author's name (Matthew Smith) to the download description and I've added Pgyuri's name and your name as Third Party Authors. Thus you are both credited and I believe justice is done. However, please correct it if you don't think it's right 🙂 .