jetsetdanny

JSW Central has just been updated. Screenshot galleries have been added to the pages of Jet Set Willy: Spectrum Computing, Jet Set Willy III, Willy's Flashback, Willy's Hoard, Lena vs Margo and Marina: The Fire Quest. The page of Jet Set Mini has been modified to include info about the best documented completion time, a link to an RZX walkthrough and an embedded YouTube video. Info about the number of rooms which need to be visited and the number of lives which need to be sacrificed to complete the game has been added to the page of Jet Set Willy III. Chronology has been updated. In the months to come, I am planning to offer such small updates of the site more often than before, mainly adding complete screenshot galleries to various games' individual pages :).

I posted a farewell message on the Yahoo! Group today, or at least I tried to post one. Unfortunately, it hasn't shown up so far, either on the website or in the mail, and I haven't saved it. If it doesn't appear tomorrow, I probably won't bother to write another one (as I would have no certainty that it would ever get posted). Oh well...

Thanks for this (sad) news, John! Apart from the messages, photos are worth saving, too. IIRC, there are some of rooms from unfinished projects - games which were never released and whose files have not been available publicly. These pictures are all that is left of them in public, I believe.

Thanks, Andy! :) I've had a look at the videos of both games. Roller Coaster is on the list because it was "inherited" from Andrew Broad's list (including the short description). It does differ from JSW in e.g. the ability to walk through guardians, but it is OK for the "Games of MM and JSW interest" page. Tarantula seems too different from JSW to me. The protagonist can apparently fly, which is a big difference, and he doesn't die when he touches the enemies, only seems to lose a bit of energy, a la Dynamite Dan. Visually and because of the gameplay Tarantula looks more like Underwurlde to me than anything else. I will give the matter another thought later on, but at the moment I am not inclined to include it. However, thanks for the suggestion - any suggestions for this section are always welcome! :)

Great stuff, Geoff! :) Congratulations on porting Manic Miner to the Colour Maximite and thanks for sharing the news here! :thumbsup:

It's great to see the forum back online! :D Thanks for restoring it, Andy! :thumbsup:

Thanks, Andy! )

I am pleased to announce another update of JSW Central :). The highlights: 1. A "proper" main page has been created, giving an overview of the site (previously links to the Home page led to the main list of MM and JSW games). 2. Two new sections: "Authors about their games" and "What's new?" have been added to the site. The section "Authors about their games" was created at this time because I received "exclusive" input from Paul Equinox Collins, the author of "JSW: The '96 Remix" and "It's Wet Jelly", and from Leslie Marwick, the author of "Spaceman Willy", and I wanted to put it online. To make the section a little more than a nucleus, I added descriptions of games by Richard Hallas (copied from his website - with his kind explicit permission), Andrew Broad - using his generic permission to quote his texts: "I give my permission to quote anything I ever posted in public (provided of course that it's properly attributed, and not taken out of context to make me look bad)", and myself. I would like to extend warm thanks to Paul and Leslie for sending me their input and to Richard for allowing me to use the texts from his website! There are links from the authors' texts (their titles, to be exact) to the games' individual pages, and there are links from the games' pages to the authors' descriptions. One doubt I have is whether it is better that these open in a new tab (as is currently the case) or not - please advise if you have a strong opinion on it after browsing JSW Central. I will develop this section gradually, but it is not a priority for me - my next big (and slow) task will be to provide a complete screenshot gallery for each game's individual page. However, I will prioritise the addition of new entries to "Authors about their games" if authors send me their input - please do, I will be happy to publish it on JSW Central! :) The "What's new?" section is self-explanatory, of course. Its creation responds to a suggestion I've received of making the updates more visible so that people know the site is up to date. 3. The "About JSW Central" section has been modified and renamed "Brief history", to reflect its content better and in order not to duplicate the current home page. 4. The panel on the left side has been modified to reflect the changes in the section layout. 5. Links to their recently-created pages on Spectrum Computing have been added on several games' pages. 6. Chronology has been updated. There have also been various other minor updates here and there which are not worth describing in detail. Enjoy! :)

Ian, thanks a lot for these detailed explanations! :thumbsup: You have designed these features in a very cunning way, in my opinion, and it's good to know how they were implemented exactly :). Recording a smooth RZX walkthrough of "Mini" will be my next JSW task, after I have recovered from the recent hardships at work, which have fortunately just ended...

OK, I couldn't sleep and so I had a go at it and I found it :D The attached recording shows it: Don't watch the recording if you prefer to find the exit yourself, Andy! It's not difficult, to be honest, once you know you need to look for it somewhere in this room. A more difficult task to perform, when time permits, will be to meditate on how that affects the most optimal route through the game... Anyway, thanks for this little mystery, Ian, and for leading us to the solution! :) :thumbsup:

Thanks, Ian! :) I will have to call it a night now, so finding the secret exit will have to wait until tomorrow. I just hope I'm not in for some nightmares tonight :lol: .

FIND SECRET EXIT - that's it, isn't it? :D

"Extincted fires" would work as an anagram, but that's just two words...

I think it might have "extincts fire" in it. I thought it was "Ted Extincts Fire" - making a reference to Technician Ted sprites - but that's one "t" too many...

It's getting like "Da Vinci's Code" or something :o . Nice! :) This tool finds 241 solutions to the anagram, but none seems satisfactory, although some are nice, like e.g. deft sex crinite or incised fer text. Most of them actually sound like some kind of quasi-Latin to me. How come you are still online though at this time?

I think there's a teleport there once this message is on, and I think it leads to "I'm not sure anyone believes it?" and perhaps one other destination. I hypothetise the teleportation happens once you step onto the red conveyors, when the message is on. I have just tried checking this out (after deciphring the first part of the puzzle after giving it some thought after Ian's penultimate set of clues, without reading the solution), but I'm not sure what turns the message on. I thought it was collecting all of the items in this room, but apparently not, it must be something else (or something else in addition to the collection of items). EDIT: I've just checked, using my test RZX recording, with the message on. Teleportation doesn't happen...

My replies are in green:

Yes, I downloaded the game "afresh" for playtesting. I always do it, out of convenience and also precisely to make sure I am using the latest version there is. So everything should be OK :).

OK, almost two years have now passed since the release of Jet Set Mini, and I have no qualms about revealing any and all secrets of the game to anyone who may be interested. Apparently, I don't know all the secrets yet, because Ian mentioned that he had a better completion time of the game than I did thanks to "insider's knowledge". So there are still things I haven't discovered. In spite of this, I am planning to make a "decent" recording of the SE of the game and submit it to RZX Archive. "Decent" according to my standards, taking advantage of the secrets - and revealing them - if I manage to discover them, or perhaps less efficient if I don't. I am giving you heads up, Ian, because if you want to submit your own recording (which quite likely may have a better completion time than mine will), you can still do it. It will take me a few days or more to record the game, and my JSW time tomorrow and in the next few days will be very limited. If you submit a high-quality (as far as efficiency goes) recording to RZX Archive, I will have no reason to record the game and will desist from it. If you don't, and/or I happen to submit the recording first, and then you produce a recording with a better completion time, I will be happy to host it (with a standard description giving you credit ) on JSW Central as "JSW Central Special", i.e. an RZX recording better than the one hosted on RZX Archive. This would be the first instance of such a "Special" being a recording by someone else than me, which would actually be a welcome development :) .

OK, I've had a look at the screenshots and I'll give it a quick multiple try: - The items in "Back Stairway"? (there seems to be something unusual about them) - The airplane in "Banyan Tree Top"? - The upper Fire cells in "Ballroom East"? - They change colour from green to red and back to green and I believe they are harmless when green. - "Kitchen's Cold Store" - the room becoming multicoloured when all the items have been collected. - Multiple shapes of the items in "The Chapel"? If none of these is the correct answer, I will not be trying to solve the puzzle any more. This is because to solve the puzzle you don't only have to know "Jet Set Mini" well, you also have to guess which particular feature among so many you have in mind, Ian, and to know what other people have or haven't commented on. Spending time on verifying this seems pointless to me with so many other JSW-things to do and so little time...

An RZX walkthrough of Manic Mixup can now be downloaded from RZX Archive. The ZIP contains two recordings, one of the Slow version and one of the Fast version of the game. I recorded the Slow version first and the Fast one second. I managed to improve my score on the Fast version marginally in relation to the Slow version. My score upon the second re-entrance to "Back in the Central Cavern" was 72,396 points (44,335 on the first re-entrance to the initial cavern). In the Slow version, the end results are, respectively: 72,252 and 44,142 points (all of this without any loss of life, of course). I have to say that, playing the game some time after I last played it during the playtesting, I was very impressed by its technical quality and the innovations that Ian and Andy introduced in it. It was a pleasure to play - it's not too easy, it was challenging to press for a good score, also when re-recording the game (doing the Fast version). Congratulations on this fine game, guys! :thumbsup:

My replies are in green. Did the project present any unprecedented problems because of the protagonist's prominent proboscis? (Collecting the item in The Chapel, perhaps?) Only in the Chapel, I think. I had to use a different route that I normally would have done, because it is impossible to stand in one-character column on the far right to avoid the monster. So I had to climb up the ramp instead. But I don't think it added anything to the time needed to complete the game. **** Out of interest, I wonder if, after completing the game, you pressed SHIFT+SPACE whilst still recording, in order to showcase (as part of the recording) the final passage of the Noseybonk theme, which is played during the Game Over routine? No, I didn't. I really enjoyed playing the Mr. Noseybonk Edition though :).

I have recorded an RZX walkthrough of Jet Set Willy - The Mr Noseybonk Edition and submitted it to RZX Archive. It can be downloaded from here (alongside the other JSW variants I have submitted) or directly from here: jswnoseybonk.rzx I have completed the game without any loss of life at 8.00 a.m. in-game time, following my standard JSW route :).

Congratulations on your score, Andy! :) I have created a JSW Central page for Manic Miner - The Big Bonus Edition. It is here. Since you have submitted your recording to the RZX Archive and there is already a video of it, I have embedded the video on the JSW Central page. I have managed to beat your score by over 30 000 points (achieving 392,690 points at the entrance back to "Central Cavern"), and I am hosting the recording of this walkthrough on JSW Central. I am curious if it would actually be possible to go over 400,000 points, without losing any lives, of course...

I have recorded RZX walkthroughs of all three variants of the game and submitted them to RZX Archive. They can be downloaded from here (alongside the other MM variants I have submitted) or directly from here: mmtencavernchallenge.zip I did not capture the loading screen, but I did let the music play the whole title-screen tune in each recording before starting the actual gameplay :). My scores, achieved without any loss of life, at the re-entrance to the first cavern, are: Easy variant - 27518 Fair variant - 19061 Hard variant - 18705 This actually means that while there is a significant difference in the scores the player can achieve between the Easy variant and the other two variants, the difference between the Fair variant and the Hard variant - when playing using Rollback - is minimal. So the Hard version is probably not that hard after all... :unsure: