jetsetdanny

What a great moment! 😁

As someone who has completed both variants of the game several times during playtesting, I can highly recommend it to everyone. Good advice: start with the Human Version, it's challenging enough, especially if you play without using Rollback or infinite lives; but then also check out the Inhuman Version.

"Manic Person" has got the delicious combination that Sendy's games always offer the player: lovely graphics combined with a cunning technical design, full of challenges. I'm sure you will enjoy the game as much as I have 🙂 .

I have moved the discussion about the differences between the original "MM" and "JSW64: Manic Miner", which resulted from my comment in the preceding posts and Ian's replies, to a new, dedicated topic. Please visit it for more interesting analyses 🙂 .

No specific plans yet. I'll think about it once the times comes for it 🙂 .

Thanks for this, Gyrominiac! It's nice to have these tunes 🙂 . I've just played them in the VLC media player 👍.

3 minutes ago, IRF said:

Note that Willy's facing direction is switched around between the end of Wacky Amoebatrons and the start of Endorian Forest. So in that respect, John Elliott's cavern startup data from JSW64:MM reflects the original cavern data from Matthew Smith's MM. 

Is there really a cavern startup data in "JSW64:MM"? I thought in "JSW64:MM" the starting point in the next cavern reflected Willy's position in the previous cavern (the way he stood when he entered the portal). So I thought it really depended on the player how they finished the previous room, which made the "Amoebatrons' Revenge" trick (passing the horizontal guardian without waiting) possible.

But perhaps I'm wrong on that.

Thanks for your insightful analysis, Ian! 👍

22 minutes ago, IRF said:

On the other hand, starting off three steps ahead opens up the possibility that you could have achieved an even better score for that cavern? (Depending on whether or not you have to hang around later on in the cavern for guardians to get out of the way, which might undo the time advantage.)

You do hang around later on, so the only thing that does matter at the start is to clear the horizontal guardian. It doesn't matter whether you're two pixels ahead or not at this point.

At least that's my take on it, without trying to produce a pixel-perfect performance in this cavern (or the other ones). 

As for the other caverns - yes, you could certainly make some improvements over the performance seen in the videos. Not necessarily because of the starting points - because in most rooms you do hang around later on in the room, so getting a couple of pixels' head start wouldn't make any difference for the completion time of the room.

I doubt that any small improvements made after the last 'hanging around' point in each room would yield a *visible* result. To yield such a result, the game's completion time (which I consider to be the moment of reaching the swordfish sign, being an equivalent of the toilet in JSW, kind of) would have to be improved by at least one minute (it's currently 7:35 am; you would have to go down to 7:34 am).

That's the big difference between MM scores and JSW times. In MM, where you have points, you can see an improvement of even a couple of points easily. In JSW, where you have the timer (if you have one at all, as it has been eliminated in some games), the only "value" you see as different is a minute of the completion time. 

I'm sure one could go into analysing the state of the timer (how many ticks are missing until the next full minute), but personally, I wouldn't go into such level of detail, which for me would go against the original design (where hours and minutes are what the player sees, not the internal timer's ticks).

So either it's a minute's improvement over the previous best completion time, or no improvement at all...

You're welcome 🙂 . I plan to make the JSW Central YouTube channel a repository of efficient solutions to ALL gamma-released MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum, and I'm gradually moving in this direction.

Videos of both variants of "JSW64: Manic Miner" have now been added to the channel. Here they are:

JSW64: Manic Miner Variant W

JSW64: Manic Miner Variant Z

I re-recorded RZX walkthroughs of both variants in order to improve on my previous recordings, made in October 2006 (currently still hosted on the RZX Archive). I was able to bring the completion time down from 7:38 am to 7:35 am in-game time.

Interestingly, this is approximately the completion time of "MM" expressed "on a JSW time scale". "Approximately", because "JSW64: Manic Miner" plays *almost exactly* like the original "MM", but not 100% (the most notable difference being the ability to jump over the horizontal guardian at the floor level in "Amoebatrons' Revenge" the first time it comes Willy's way after entering the room - this does spare some time in comparison with playing the original "MM").

That's the first impression I've had as well, that this must be the change.

I haven't played V. 3 'properly' yet because I've been immersed in other JSW-related activities, but I will get there at some point once other things I'm doing are finished. I look forward to it, too 🙂 .

Thanks for this contribution, Gyrominiac! 👍

Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to bump an old topic on this forum if I had some new input. I believe it's happened over the years, with good results. One of the beautiful aspects of MM/JSW is that people sometimes come back to it after many years (the most beautiful one for me is that some authors have taken up again and released their unfinished games literally decades after they were first created). So it's kind of natural for some topics to be revisited.

That's just my personal take on it 🙂 .

It seems that something has been modified in relation to this file today - or perhaps only its description, as the download ZIP seems to be the same. What has changed exactly???

I have just completed posting videos of walkthroughs of the six variants of "Jet Set Willy 64" ("JSW64") on the JSW Central YouTube channel. Here they are:

JSW64 V

JSW 64 W

JSW64 X

JSW64 Y

JSW64 Z

JSW64 [

I re-recorded RZX walkthroughs of all six variants in order to improve on my previous recordings, made in October 2006 (currently still hosted on the RZX Archive). I was able to improve the completion time of Variants V and W (which have JSW rooms plus MM rooms and John Elliott's Clock Tower triptych) from 8:43 am to 8:37 am in-game time, and of Variants X, Y, Z and [ (which only have JSW rooms plus the Clock Tower triptych) from 8:01 am to 7:57 am.

You can download my improved RZX walkthroughs from the game's page on JSW Central.

Yes, they do look gorgeous! 🙂

Thanks for your input, Gyrominiac, and welcome to the forum!

It would be nice if one of the old-timers had them and shared them here...

I am not aware of these games ever being released to the public.

I joined the Yahoo! Group in November 2004 and was a member until its sad end. I *think* these files were not released in that time frame, because if they had been, I would probably have them. It is possible that they had been uploaded to the Files section of the Yahoo! Group earlier and had been deleted by the time I joined the Group.

The only trace I can find of *probably* one of these games is a picture from the Photos section of the Group, from a folder called "1507278557-Willy-goes-to-the-moon". The picture is called 749492550-The-first-3-rooms.jpg and looks like this:

On 9/18/2023 at 6:24 PM, SedricAndCharlie said:

Merci Daniel, I shall, though I think all I've got are some obscure tech demos lying around. Sadly although I used to obsessively keep every single thing posted to the MMJSW yahoo group, including some extremely minor edits of JSW and games that never progressed past a few rooms, a lot of what I had got lost years ago in a software crash

You can surely send me (preferably by e-mail) anything you have you don't see on JSW Central and I will consider whether it belongs there or not. 

As mentioned before, unfinished projects are not listed on lists of games on JSW Central. This rule is a little bit more relaxed regarding what I classify as versions/minor mods of either MM or JSW, because sometimes it would be even hard to tell whether a certain project is finished or not, and even if they are finished, they may not have 'official' launches as new games would typically have. So there's a chance that some obscure tech demo may qualify to actually be included in the list of MM or JSW variants 🙂 .

Hi SedricAndCharlie,

JSW Central should be up to date at this time, with everything that has been gamma-released mentioned there (it does NOT list unfinished projects except on this page). I hope it will help you to catalog your MM/JSW games. You can also download most of them (with an exception or two where the author would not approve of it).

Please let me know if you find that anything is missing from JSW Central! Or any incorrect/outdated information that would need correcting - I will be happy to add/change it.

Cool! 👍

Thanks for sharing 🙂 .

Welcome to the forum, AukonDK! 🙂 

43 minutes ago, DigitalDuck said:

I wanted to release in stages for a similar reason - if I just tried to put everything I wanted in the game all in one go then it'd never be done.

That's a very wise approach 🙂 . I applied a similar one when creating JSW Central - I started off with a very basic website, and I am gradually developing it both by expanding the already existing resources (like adding walkthrough videos or screenshot galleries to individual games' pages) and by expanding the site itself (by adding new sections). The scope of interest of JSW Central is still limited to the ZX Spectrum games though (and will be in the foreseeable future, because I don't have time to go beyond Speccy).

Whatever one prefers to call them, they are all great to play 🙂 . I have enjoyed playing them so far, and I look forward to the time when I will make a 'proper' recording of "MM40th" for the JSW Central YouTube channel (striving for a high-quality performance)😁.

Bob The Polar Bear has kindly sent me his notes about his three games, i.e. "Manic-4-Noobs" (M4N), "MANIC-minor" (M-m) and "Manic Miner 40th Anniversary Tribute"  (MM40th). I've just published them on JSW Central. This is exclusive content, he wrote the notes especially for JSW Central, for which I'm very grateful 🙂 .They are an interesting and valuable background to his three excellent remakes of "Manic Miner".

When I look at the graphics on the label, I believe the name of this product *is* JSW-related - they have this cool platform-game feel to them 🙂.

https://www.eebriatrade.com/products/beer/neon-raptor-brewing-co/52765-jet-set-billie-funky-fluid-collab

Disclosure: 

I have no relevant financial or nonfinancial relationships with either Neon Raptor Brewing Co. or Funky Fluid to disclose 😉.

This sounds intriguing 🙂 . And it's great to know you have a MM project - that your "bassification" is not complete 😉 .

Or "Ian's Bassment" to drive the point home! 🤪

45 minutes ago, PB268 said:

I think it's fun, bright, with good flow, and enough of a challenge to keep the average player wanting just one more try.

Yes, that's exactly how it is! 🙂 

Thanks again for MM40th and also for posting here! It's a pleasure to know you are visiting these pages 🙂 .

Thank you, Ian 🙂