jetsetdanny

Okay, here's the complete result of my playtest, which only goes to show that *everything* should be playtested from start to finish before release: AMI4 playtest.rzx The game is impossible to complete, because there is an invisible item in "A Bit of Tree", in the right half, three blocks to the right from the second lowermost platform. The item can be collected by jumping from the platform, but the collection will always result in an Infinite-Death Scenario (IDS) [without cheating, such as using the Writetyper]. I found out about the item in JSWED, when I started wondering why Maria wouldn't disappear with 100 items - seemingly all of them - collected. Anyway, it's not a big deal and can be corrected easily :) . Now, my impressions after playing the game. The first one - and it doesn't really concern *this* particular game, but theJSW48 game engine in general - is that I played the game after playing "JSW2" and "JSW2+" repeatedly in recent days, many times over. And my first impression upon loading "AMI4" into the emulator was that it was slow... painfully slow! :o It's amazing what happens when you get used to things. I've got used to the speed of the "JSW2" game engine, and the original "JSW" almost seems boring by comparison. Soooo slow.... Well, towards the end of the playtest I forgot about the speed of "JSW2" - apparently I've got used to the speed of JSW48 again. Now, concerning your project, Metalmickey: It was very nice and refreshing to play the new rooms. I liked all of them, I thought they were very good, and I am looking forward to your new projects - I am sure there will be a lot of new, exciting rooms in them. In fact, you did design several new rooms already in another project - isn't this right? I remember seeing them in JSWED a couple of weeks ago, nice ones, too. What's happening with that project, by the way? The shortcut to "The Front Door" is very nice. It induces a change in the optimal route. My recording would have been marginally more efficient if I had done "Ballroom West" right after doing "To the Kitchens / Main Stairway". But at that time I didn't know about the shortcut. I might improve my route if you release a fixed, final version and I re-record it :P . The completion time should be around 8.10 am anyway. I did note some details corrected / improved(?) in relation to the original "JSW", but I am not the best person to comment on these things - I am more interested in new games (and rooms, at least), than improvements on the details of the original. Anyway, thanks for this fine effort and I look forward very much to your future work on "JSW" :D .

I am quite intrigued by what you ended up doing, Metalmickey, and since I have an evening all to myself (a rare luxury!), I will have a go at version 4 of your project after posting this message, and I will post an RZX here when I'm done. Regarding this: > My next project is creating a 128K version (obviously moving away from the as Mr Smith intended theme) which, i hope, will be the first one to use all of the available 256 rooms :o .. i'll start another topic on that once i'm nearing the half way stage .. if the internet is still around by then... or someone else hasn't beaten me to it If you mean a project (a game using the JSW128 game engine, since it's the only one which allows up to 256 rooms) in which there are the 60 original JSW rooms plus 196 other rooms - no, it has never been done before TTBOMK. If you mean a JSW128 game with all rooms edited (not necessarily including the original JSW rooms) - it has been done before. Question 61 in "Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" actually concerns it: Which was the first JSW game ever to feature 256 edited rooms? A "Frosya the Cat" B "Soul Miner" C "strangel" D "where's woody" The correct answer is D. Sendy did it in back in 2000, and I did it (using also other author's material) in 2010. "where's woody?" has 256 edited rooms. So does "JSW: The 2010 Megamix". This is not to say, of course, that it won't be nice if you design another game with 256 rooms - quite to the contrary, it'll be great! :) Plus there is something else you could do, which would be a first: [I would insert it as a spoiler, but I don't know how to do it :o ] Neither of the above games I mentioned requires the player to play all 256 rooms in order to complete the game successfully. If your future project did, it would be a first, indeed ;) .

The beauty of the code? ;)

Considering that in "Jet Set Willy II": - the player has to collect only 150 items (out of a total of 175) to complete the game (= trigger the toilet run which ends in "Oh $#!+!The Central Cavern!"); and - kamikazing some items can yield time gains, and the player has 7 spare lives to use in this way; what is the in-game time needed to complete the game? A. less than 45 minutes B. between 45 and 60 minutes C. between 60 and 75 minutes D. more than 75 minutes Any guesses? :)

Yes, I'm sorry, the correct link is this one. Today I discovered a glaring inefficiency in the route taken in my "JSWII+ 207 items.rzx" recording (the most important one in the whole package, because it shows the game completed with all items collected and no loss of life). It involved not dropping down from "Willy's Lookout" to "Wonga'S Spillage Tray". I have corrected it, re-recording about two thirds of this walkthrough (with some other marginal improvements). As a result, the pre-completion in-game time - when the bed is reached - has been brought down from 1:14:42 to 1:12:00. The updated ZIP is already available on RZX Archive. Please re-download the file if you downloaded it before this afternoon.

That's great! :)

"JSW2+" is an "updated" version of "Jet Set Willy II: The Final Frontier" (Software Projects Ltd, 1985), created by Derrick P. Rowson, the author (or rather: co-author, with Matthew Smith) of the original game. The new version was released in November 2016 and is available for download from Julian D. A. Wiseman's website, which also offers a lot of valuable information about the game. The game can be completed without losing a single life, although the ending is different from that of the original "JSWII". I have just recorded a couple of RZX walkthroughs of the game, which can be downloaded from the RZX Archive. The technical novelties introduced in "JSW2+" are impressive, and there are several new rooms, including "The secret lab". Interestingly, the name of this room is written in sentence case in the file which can be downloaded from Julian D. A. Wiseman's website (which seems to be the final revision of the game - apparently Derrick P. Rowson said, "This is the only update I plan on doing"), while it is written in title case in the screenshots which Andy posted above. I would encourage everyone to have a go at it: it is a great feeling to play such a familiar classic with a new feel to it :D . Great thanks go to Derrick P. Rowson for creating the new version, and to Julian D. A. Wiseman for making it publicly available! :) I am also wondering if there is any chance that John Elliott will ever update JSWED to make it able to open this new variant of "JSWII" properly and edit it...

The Chronology pages for 2014, 2015 and 2016, and the PDF file have just been updated on JSW Central. The 2016 update concerns the most recent developments. The 2014/15 update fixes an error: the original release date of "Jet Set Luis: Rumbo a la Costa Blanca" was mistakenly placed in 2014, while in fact it took place a year later.

It's cool, Mickey, that you are working on redesigning "JSW" in various ways :) . I haven't playtested your releases in this thread in any way yet. However, I would be happy to playtest and record an RZX walkthrough of the final version. I take it there will be some more changes to the game itself and the loader yet. Please let me know when you upload a version you will consider really final, and I'll have a go at it then :) .

Speaking about the IDSes and recalling the 1980s, I think it's also important to remember that most people play on emulators these days (at least that's what I imagine). On emulators, it's very easy to save and reload snapshots or use the Rollback feature (frankly, I don't understand anyone who doesn't do it, unless you want to prove that you can complete the game without these modern "cheats"). This being the case, the IDSes are hardly important at all from the practical / gameplay point of view. I think it's good to avoid the unfair ones, but it's just for the sake of a "fair" / "elegant" / "proper" / call it what you wish game design, and *not* because they are a real problem for the player.

Jonathan (J. G. Harston) is acknowledged in the Credits section of SkoolKid's disassembly. Since I believe his fix has been available online for a long time (before SkoolKid's otherwise great disassembly was created), if the two solutions are similar (or the same, perhaps?), I wouldn't be surprised if Richard (SkoolKid) had actually copied Jonathan's solution.

Thank you for this contribution, Andy! :)

"Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" now has an updated individual page on JSW Corner. It can be downloaded from there, just like from its individual page on JSW Central :) .

JSW Corner has just been updated to include "Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz". So, apart from its individual page on JSW Central, the game can also be downloaded from its page on JSW Corner. Great thanks go, as always, to Xabi V

Thanks for this new tool, Andy! :)

No, there are, regretfully, a couple of billion people on this planet who have never even played "Jet Set Willy" :lol: .

Well spotted, Ian! It hasn't been optimised in "WNM SE". Having said that, there was no need for it, because a one-byte saving in that particular location in the code wouldn't have been too useful anyway.

Thanks for this, Andy! :)

Yes. Actually, I've just checked. In "JSW II" for the Spectrum the room is called: "Dinking Vater ?" So, there are two "irregularities": the lack of "r" in "drinking" and the "v" instead of "w" in "water". While I would agree that the latter can make the word look German, kind of (although the German word is "Wasser", so it's actually spelt with a "w" in German!), the former doesn't contribute to such an effect, IMHO (the Germans wouldn't miss the "r", they would just pronounce it differently). Which is not to say that the "typo" was not intentional, but, if it was, I don't think it makes much sense as imitating German. I actually always thought (without ever checking it properly) that it was a play on words involving some kind of meaning of the word "dink". Anyway, just a couple of thoughts... :) EDIT: Well, three irregularities, to be precise, since there shouldn't be a space in front of the question mark. That one is not intentional, though, I think.

Thanks for this, Andy, and especially for taking the trouble to play the whole game to take screenshots! :) I believe (off the top of my head) there is a typo in the name of the room "Drinking Water" in the Spectrum version. I'm not sure about the Amstrad one? I would think typos in the other, later versions are intentional, picking on the one in the original.

Thanks for the info and all the screenshots, Andy! :)

It's an interesting observation, Ian, and indeed food for thought for future projects :) . Thanks!

That's a good reason to go back at some point ;) .

Thanks for this fix, Ian, which has been successfully used, thanks to your advice, in the Special Edition of "Willy's New Mansion" :) .

Thanks for this info, Andy! :)