jetsetdanny

I am pleased to announce a significant update of JSW Central. All MM games now have their individual pages with some basic information, download links and screenshots of all the caverns and loading screens. Eventually all JSW games will have such pages as well, but it will take time. "Highest documented scores" for each game are mentioned on these individual pages, referring to performances for which there exist RZX recordings showing the whole process of achieving the score. The recordings are hosted either on RZX Archive or as "JSW Central Specials". The absence of a JSW Central Special download for any given game indicates that the recording of the best known performance is hosted on RZX Archive. I would like to encourage anyone interested to send me RZX recordings showing the achievement of higher scores than these currently hosted. I will be pleased to make them available for download as JSW Central Specials (new ones or substituting the currently hosted files) with all due credit given in the text files. Apart from the addition of individual MM games' pages, various minor updates have happened throughout the site as well. Further significant development of JSW Central will probably have to wait until next year, as my JSW priority now will be work on Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz.

Just to make sure we are talking about the same thing, I have attached screenshots of Craig's pages (retrieved from the Wayback Machine) to this message. The page attached as "Craig's Guide" seems to be an understandable enough description of what to do in order to retrieve the "giant keys", which are apparently necessary to complete the whole game (I have never played it seriously, just had a brief look at it, so I wouldn't know from my own playing experience how you progress through the game). On that page he makes a reference to his main JSW page (attached here as "Craig's Main JSW Page"), saying, "So you have used the cheat (hidden on main jsw page - LOOK at the screen shots now click on the 'cheat')". This part is incomprehensible, indeed, as I don't see any 'cheat' on the screenshots of his main page. I suppose this is what you are referring to, isn't it? I won't be able to play Craig's game seriously in the near future (devoting my JSW-time to other JSW-priorities), but I look forward to investigating this mystery the day I have the time to play the game... or seeing it solved by someone else in the meantime ;) .

According to Andrew Broad's summary of the interview with Matthew Smith published in Load 48 issue of Retro Gamer magazine, which came out on 28 February 2008: > The portal in "The Final Barrier" is "omega - the end!", and he says here that the fish and dagger it turns into at the end of the game are simply a couple of sprites he had drawn but hadn't used in the game, although it is claimed elsewhere that they constitute the word "swordfish". According to information from The Spectrum Games Database published on WoS: > When you jump into the exit of The Final Barrier (and you haven't used the 6031769 cheat) the door changes from an omega sign to a fish and dagger, one above the other, the answer being Swordfish. You were supposed to quote this in the competition (i.e. the first person to quote what happened at the end correctly must have won, though I don't remember ever seeing who did it, if anyone). Then the game then starts again from the beginning - in the true tradition of Spectrum Games. According to information published here in 2006 (see the very bottom of the page): > When Matthew Smith did his talk at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham the other year he new mentioned anything about a competition. He said the reason it showed the knife and fish was that you would know those who had the skills to complete the game, as only they would know the final image. (of course, what was to stop every kid in the playground finding it out and boasting they knew what the final image was...) According to information published here: > On the last screen

It looks very promising, Kees. Keep up the good work and let us know when your Atom conversion is ready!

Craig Rothwell. The game features several early JSW remakes for the ZX Spectrum made to run under DOS. Interestingly, it also has "Manic Miner 7", which in its Spectrum version only has 5 edited rooms (the rest are rooms from the original MM) while here I think it is more developed. In fact, I believe Craig gave up the development of the ZX Spectrum version of "MM7" in order to work on this combo JSW/MM for the PC. The game can still be downloaded from Jet Set Willy Remakes page and the direct download link is this. Version 1.01a seems to be the last one ever released, although I am not quite sure.

The TAP file of Andrew Broad's 2004 game "Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman" contains a secret bonus game "Reverse Manic Miner". It is a version of the classic where you play through the caverns in reverse order, starting in "The Final Barrier" and finishing in "The Central Cavern". "Reverse Manic Miner" offers an interesting concept, a smart solution to some technical problems which arise with the transformation (thanks to a patch by John Elliott) and a slightly strange playing experience. An RZX recording of the game can now be downloaded from The RZX Archive. There is also an additional block of 64 bytes of data called "LordDance" within the TAP files of Andrew's "Party Willy" 48K (perhaps also the 128K version, I can't see it there, though). I don't know how to run it to see what it is. Any ideas?

The RZX Archive now hosts a set of recordings of Andrew Broad's Manic Miner game "Ma jolie" (and its easier version "Ma jolite"), which includes the 2009 Special Edition, which has not been hosted there (or elsewhere, TTBOMK) before. I have spent quite a considerable time (holiday season!) recording and re-recording both hard and easy versions of the three editions of the game (the original one from 2003 and the special editions of 2006 and 2009) so as to produce streamlined, efficient solutions to them. I have been able to achieve decent results, if I may say so myself, including the score of 40,040 points for the original "Ma jolite" upon first re-entry into the first cavern, with no loss of life, which seems to make this game relatively easier than the original "Manic Miner", where I think (and I wouldn't mind to be proven wrong) such a score is impossible to achieve. The "sixpack" can be downloaded from here.

Thanks, Spider! I will incorporate these into the quiz somehow. There is more than one MM game which is not in English, but this is not a problem, because the test consists of multiple choice questions, so the question will feature the titles of three MM games which are in English and one which is not, and the player will have to pick the correct answer. I hope to work on the quiz in the coming weeks, so if you (or anyone else) have any more suggestion, I will be glad to see them.

Beta version 1 of Dreams of Willy - a JSW128 game by Prophet - has been released on the (recently resurrected) World of Spectrum forums. The discussion page is here. It contains information by the author, a download link and various reactions by forum members, including the results of my beta testing and a download link to an RZX recording of my playtest. I will not repeat here everything I said on WoS, but I would just like to say that the game Dreams of Willy is really fantastic. It is well designed, visually attractive and appropriately challenging. It is heavily influenced by Sendy's games where's woodyand strangel, which is great. The mixture of classic sprites from the original JSW, Sendy's sprites (copied from or inspired by Monty games, I believe) and brand-new sprites (very good ones, too!) works very well. The game feels both familiar and innovative thanks to it. The same goes for the graphics. There are various nice and cleverly done references to the original JSW and MM. For me the game has an optimal difficulty level. It is not really diffucult (not when you can reload snapshots or use the Rollback feature; it would be a nightmare on the original hardware), but it is not extremely simple, either, and it does require some well-timed jumps and offers some interesting technical challenges. The biggest challenge facing the player though is the game's geography - it is very difficult, with many Promised Lands. It is a great joy to see a new (in fact: created in the early 2000s and now revamped by "vigorous polishing") JSW game and I look forward very much to Prophet's completing the project and gamma-releasing Dreams of Willy. __._,_.___

Thanks for the detailed instructions, 8bit, they are very helpful!

I am pleased to announce the creation of a new game using the JSW64 game engine (variant V). It is called "Willy Games: The First 30 Years Quiz" and it makes a VERY unorthodox use of the game engine. It will be a multiple-choice quiz in which the player will have to choose the right answers to 120 questions (divided into four sections: Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert) related to MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum created between 1983 and 2013. Choosing a wrong answer will cost the player one life (and he/she will have 12 lives to start with). The game will use all 128 "rooms" available in JSW64 V, with 120 screens devoted to questions (30 in each section) and 8 "special" screens (the opening one, a "small congratulations" screen after completing each of the first three sections, a "big congratulations" screen after completing the whole quiz and three screens belonging to the toilet run). The game will probably be the least WYSIWYG game ever as far as JSWED is concerned. A large part of the design process will involve using JSWED's Hex editor. The game will not require any of the traditional skills or manual dexterity needed to complete a MM or JSW game, only knowledge (and intelligence to make intelligent guesses ;) ). The special screens are all ready now as well as the first question screen. It contains the following challenge: The question: Who created Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner? The answers to choose from: Jeff Minter Matthew Smith Steve Jobs Bill Gates :) This is, of course, trivial for anyone even remotely interested in the subject. However, the next questions will get progressively more difficult, with the ones in the Expert section truly requiring an in-depth knowledge of MM and JSW games. If anyone would like to put forward proposals for the questions, I will be very interested to hear them. I cannot promise unconditionally that I will use them in the quiz, but it is probable, since my problem will certainly be a tendency to make the questions *too* difficult. So I might use some more balanced suggestions. I was inspired to start working on this project by my research while preparing the launch of JSW Central and then the Chronology section of the website. I felt that such a game would both be a tribute to those "first 30 years" of the MM/JSW scene for the ZX Spectrum, the people involved and the games created, and a proof that the JSW64 game engine can be used in most versatile and unexpected ways. I would like to say a big thank you to John Elliott for helping me out with technical problems relating to inserting patch vectors which print text on the screen. I look forward to your suggestions for the multiple choice questions for the quiz! Daniel

I have created a chronology of the development of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy games for the ZX Spectrum. It is now available on JSW Central. You can browse through the pages split by years or download the whole document in PDF. Please let me know about any suggestions of corrections and additions or any other comments you may have. Your help will allow me to improve these resources for the benefit of the JSW & MM community. Please report also any broken links you may find. All your feedback on JSW Central will be appreciated! Daniel

Thanks for letting us know about it, 8bit! It's good to know that people are still porting JSW to other platforms and that they are so meticulous about it :) .

Thanks for your post, SkoolKid, and the permission to build and publish hexadecimal versions of your disassemblies on other people's websites. I won't be able to do it on JSW Central in any near future, because the website itself has just been launched and requires a huge workload yet to attain its "basic" shape as planned. Perhaps one distant day, when it's all done... If that day comes, I will certainly get in touch with you. In the meantime I have posted about your disassemblies again at the Yahoo! Group, as promised. I have also tried to locate John Elliott's old disassembly of the original JSW engine on the Wayback Machine and I was pleased to find it here. No right to be forgotten for it, fortunately ;) .

SkoolKid, I did not mean to belittle your disassembly of JSW in any way. I "advertised" it as soon as I came across it, in good faith, and used the "yet another" descriptor (and the "not exactly a novelty" one) mainly in the chronological sense, as I was aware of the existence of four other disassemblies of the JSW game engine which had been around for years. These are: 1. J. G. Harston's documents, to which you have a link on your website. 2. John Elliott's disassembly, which I think must have been here once and must have been well documented, judging by John's following comment in his MM disassembly: "Compared to my JSW disassembly, this is very thinly commented indeed". 3. Disassembly of the JSW game engine on the Jet Set Willy Variations page. 4. Disassembly of Geoff Mode, which used to be on Geoff's website and which today can be retrieved from the Wayback Machine (e.g. at http://web.archive.org/web/20041106094606/http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/jsw/geoff_dis.html). Geoff's document contains the link mentioned above to what I believe used to be John Elliott's JSW disassembly before (as I assume) he altered his page to just give tips of how to disassemble JSW instead of a complete disassembly (please, correct me if I am wrong, John, I know you follow this forum). I know that Geoff's is a disassembly of a modified game engine, but it still gives one a lot of information about the original one. I did not compare your disassembly with the ones mentioned above, I just quickly let the folks at the Yahoo! Group know that it existed. I have to say that both your MM disassembly AND your JSW disassembly are VERY nicely done, an excellent read, indeed, and they are very valuable and useful for anyone interested in the subject. I will soon post another message in the Yahoo! Group to do them more justice. Would you consider publishing their hexadecimal versions? That would be very handy if one wanted to use them to modify any addresses e.g. in the hex editor of JSWED. Incidentally, I believe the information you give about the alleged sticky bed bug is incorrect. Willy does not get stuck after jumping onto the bed at all and the game is perfectly toilet-completable. You just have to move him to the right, off the bed, in order to start running, using any "Right" key *other* than P. Willy's behaviour on conveyors during the toilet-run was discussed in detail in this message and the following messages in that topic. Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix is, TTBOMK, the game which makes the most extensive use of this phenomenon, making the toilet run a real nightmare in the Hard version. To quote from my own ad: During the toilet run the player has to be active and use the correct keys both to stop running / remain unmoving on the rope and to move forward (on conveyors), has to avoid moving guardians, use those ropes which are helpful and get away from those which are obstacles, hide behind Water cells to outmanoeuvre arrows and use moving platforms to get over gaps and static guardians. The player also has to make a choice at one point as to the route he/she is going to take ("the most fateful of all choices"); if they choose the wrong way, they will reach the very end of the game, but without being able to complete it (the wrong ending).

Thank you, and here's the RZX recording. The game can be completed with a loss of three lives, in the rooms: "Reception Antechamber" [27]; "Womflechompies" [43]; "Psychic Bread and Butter" [57]. In all cases you have to lose a life because it is impossible to get back down safely from the upper part of the room after collecting an item / items there. Additionally, there is a time limit in "Womflechompies" imposed by the arrow which shoots the yellow duck (which occurs after it in the guardian instance list). However, perhaps it might just be possible to get out of the room after collecting the items (or at least the rightmost item - and if you could do that, you could collect all of them by going after each of them individually after re-entering the room) - it can't be verified though, as there is no way to get down safely from the third-from-the-bottom Water cell on the left side of the room.

Thank you for your kind words and the links to the disassemblies :) . I will add them to my Links page at the next site update (soon). In fact, I came across your JSW disassembly a few weeks ago and advertised it here. I wasn't aware of the MM disassembly though.

Thanks, Spider :) . The map is very useful, indeed, as they all are. Pavel Pliva has done a great job mapping JSW games and hundreds of others. I only posted the question yesterday and it turns out I can give all the answers today (I truly didn't expect that!), thanks to some assistance from Andrew Broad and John Elliott at the Yahoo! Group, and thanks to the tips in the text file accompanying the game given by Geoff Eddy himself as well as some intense analysis and playtesting. It only occurred to me today to consult the text file (I should have done so long before!) and the answers are all there, basically, although in a somewhat cryptic form. Here are the solutions to the questions I put forward: 1. "The Store Room" There is a green object above the "S" in the room name which seems to be a Fire cell, because it kills you if you jump against it from below. However, when you drop onto it from above, from the right hand side, it teleports you to an invisible platform in "Downhill". You have to walk right and then, before hitting an invisible Fire cell which limits the platform from the right (there is another one on the left as well), you have to jump up and you will get teleported back into "The Store Room" where you are now able to collect the three previously inaccessible items. 2. "A Quiet Corner to rest in" There is a blue horizontal guardian in that room which should catch a trained player's attention because it moves erratically, kind of. This guardian is, in fact, a horizontal lift which allows you to cross the upper middle part of the room from left to right. Then you can cross its upper part back from right to left, exit upwards into "Nineteen - Not Out!" and collect all of the previously inaccesible items in this and three other rooms. 3. Reaching the upper part of "Weeds" There is a teleporter at the bottom-right corner of "The Hideaway".which takes you to the bottom-right corner of "Iain's Stomach" (I think it must be activated only at a certain point in the game, because the teleportation doesn't happen when you first collect the items there - AFAICT without double checking). From there you can make your way up to the uppermost platform on the right of "Iain's Stomach", which in turn teleports you to the upper part of "Weeds". Once you are there, you can explore the whole zone which, according to Geoff's notes, "pertains to a certain recreational herb" :-) . As a result, Willy Takes a Trip is indeed toilet-completable. I am now working on a streamlined RZX recording of the game for the RZX Archive. I didn't really expect the mystery to be solved so soon. What a day :-) . And what a delightful challenge Willy Takes a Trip is - hats off to Geoff, wherever you are! :)

I hope this topic belongs here, as it refers to one of the JSW remakes for the ZX Spectrum. Willy Takes a Trip (2000) is a beautiful game by Geoff Eddy, notable for its technical innovations (modifications to the JSW48 game engine and patch vectors). But is it completable? Has anyone ever completed it? I have recently tried to play Willy Takes a Trip to completion and so far I have failed to do so. It seems to me that the game is not completable. However, I may be wrong. I would like to share my doubts and ask for everyone's help in establishing the truth. There are 213 items ("thingees") to collect in the game. I have managed to collect 184 of them and then got stuck. The 29 items which I have not been able to collect are: - 3 items placed together in "The Store Room". I can't see any way to collect them other than teleporting in from another room or a patch vector opening the wall or providing some other way to reach them. - The leftmost item in "The Arches of Despair, I fear", the item in "Nineteen - Not Out!", the middle item in "The Windowbox" and the two items in "Oh no! CLIFF". All of the above belong to a section of the game map which I am unable to access. It looks to me like it should be accessed by going up from "A Quiet Corner to rest in" - but that's impossible to do, AFAICT. - The middle and the two left items in "The Promised Land (tropical)". I cannot access this part of the room, either from the left side, or coming up from "Willy's Drinking Licence", or from the lower left of "The Promised Land (arctic)". Am I missing something? - The upper item in "Weeds", the 5 items in "Don't Inhale, Billy", the 5 items in "Good Skunk" and the 7 items in "...". This is another section of the game map which I don't know how to access. It looks like the player should be able to drop down into "Weeds" from the room above, but no room has such an exit, AFAICT in JSWED. Andrew Broad once mentioned in the Yahoo! MM/JSW Group (message 6482, third paragraph from the bottom) the possibility that thanks to one of the patch vectors in Willy Takes a Trip collecting all the items in one room causes a wall to disappear in another. I haven't observed any such phenomenon in the game, which doesn't mean, however, that it's not there. If it is, it might indeed offer access to an otherwise inaccessible section of the game map. Does anyone know if it occurs, and if so, in which room(s)? Some other problems appear in Willy Takes a Trip, namely the necessity to sacrifice one life in order to collect the items in "Psychic Bread and Butter", one life in "Reception Antechamber" and two lives in "Womflechompies". These problems, however, do not affect the completability of the game. So, is Willy Takes a Trip completable? Any help or comments?

Check out Speccy Screenshot Maps. There are links there to ZX Screen Snapper and ZX Maps Creator, free (I believe) utilities with which the author of the site, Pavero, has made over 1100 maps of Spectrum games so far (!). I haven't used these utilities myself yet, but I imagine they must be good. I've only made one or two screenshot-based maps up till now and I did it as suggested above (using a massive blank canvas size and then pasting and moving each image into its proper place, in Photoshop, then resizing at the end). It worked out well. However, if I had to make a lot of maps, I would look for specialised software.

Dumb Waiter, you must be JammaJup of the Purple Unicorn fame, aren't you? Before going to the proper topic of this thread, let me take this opportunity to tell you that I enjoyed both (or all five) of your games very much :) . As you may know, I recorded their RZX walkthroughs for the RZX Archive, and an hour ago I posted a review of Terry the Turtle in the Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group (message 6797). I do hope you will make more JSW games in the future! :) Could you please tell me how you prefer to be credited whenever your games are mentioned? Is "Jammajup, Purple Unicorn Software" OK? If so, should it be spelled Jammajup, or perhaps JammaJup, or JAMMAJUP? Or differently still, with your real name perhaps? I would be grateful for your guidance on this. Now, the "Final Edition" of Steve Worek's Jet Set Emily: Baby on the Go, which I prepared (with his consent) back in 2006, is probably the only JSW remake for the Spectrum (at least was at the time of its release) which features a working attract mode. I remember I worked hard to adjust the rooms (swapping them around) in order to achieve this (to make sure Willy didn't get killed during the preview of the rooms). There turned out to be a problem with the Softricks' code for attract mode used in conjunction with John Elliott's teleporter extension, leading to a semi-critical bug in the game (which became impossible to complete if the attract mode was run, because it turned off the teleportation needed to get to a room with two items). Andrew Broad kindly helped me solve the problem. He offered technical explanation for what happened. I am not sure if it can be helpful for this discussion, but just in case, check out messages 6035, 6039 and 6044 in the MM & JSW Yahoo! Group.

Thank you for your approval and editing :). Could you please capitalise the "SW" in the topic (to make it JSW Central)?

Thank you for the welcome :) . I have just posted a message in the Site Links section with an announcement of JSW Central. I have also posted a message on the Yahoo! MM/JSW Group to make the people there aware of the existence of this site. Surprisingly, it has not been mentioned over there before.

JSW Central (www.jswcentral.org) is a brand-new website (launched 1 March 2015) dedicated exclusively to games for the ZX Spectrum using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines. Its most important feature is a complete list of gamma-released games (based on the work of Dr. Andrew Broad and sort of picking up from where he left off in May 2009, with some minor changes to the methodology). I hope to develop the website gradually, creating individual pages for each gamma-released game, with screenshots, etc., and adding other resources. I am currently working on a chronology of the development of MM/JSW games. I have just added a link to this forum and, once again, I am thrilled to have found you online! It is great that there are still some people around interested in those timeless classics :-). Please let me know if there are any games that are missing from the list on JSW Central (please see the Contact section for my e-mail address). Also, I will appreciate any other comments and feedback on JSW Central's content. Daniel

Hello Everyone, First of all, it is thrilling to find this community on the Web! I think this site was down at some point a week or two ago, but when I revisited it a few minutes ago and saw it worked, I joined immediately! I have just launched a new MM/JSW website at www.jswcentral.org. An updated list of MM and JSW games (using the list created by Andrew Broad, which was last updated in May 2009) is there. I plan to keep it up to date, so if anything is missing, please let me know (see Contact section for e-mail address). Also, I will appreciate any other comments and feedback on JSW Central's content. I will add a link to this community on my website before the weekend is over. Daniel