jetsetdanny

I don't think this version has been discussed before. I couldn't find any reference to it on the forum, but perhaps I'm missing something. In any case, there is some relatively fresh news related to it 🙂 . In the early 2000s, Mihai Novitchi created a 128K version of Manic Miner with AY music and a built-in cheat menu. The tune, which is a full-length version of "In the Hall of the Mountain King", goes back to the beginning whenever the player enters a new cavern or loses a life. However, it keeps playing when the game is paused (using the regular pause keys) and during the Game Over sequence. Pressing '1' brings up a cheat menu, in which the player can select infinite lives and infinite air, and turn the in-game tune on or off (if turned off, it actually stays on one note, producing an unpleasant effect, which sometimes disappears after moving to the next cavern). Mihai's variant is based on the Software Projects version of Manic Miner. Mihai announced the project in April 2002. It is not clear when the last version of the game file was created; it was certainly before May 2004. In 2022, Bob Fossil decided to fix the bugs found in Mihai's version, including the problem of the music code playing the last note over and over again when the player turned the music off or ended up on the Game Over screen. He found out that Mihai's code was using an interrupt-based music player for the 128k music and was just enabling and disabling interrupts to start and stop the music. It failed to call the 'stop' routine to silence the AY chip in the music player, which is why the music was getting stuck. Bob first patched Mihai's code and then converted the game into a TAP file with the original Manic Miner animated loading screen. He released his version in August 2022. In April 2023, Mr Scratcher found a bug in Bob's original release (related to Mihai's earlier code modifications) which Bob fixed. Further discussion and playtesting resulted in Bob's repatching the original Manic Miner file from scratch (using the 128k music from Mihai's Z80 snapshot), fixing the bugs that had been discovered, making the teleport cheat work again and adding an invulnerability option. In the process, Bob eliminated the in-game trainer menu and instead added a trainer menu at the start of the game (which means the player has to reload the game in order to change an option). He also released a re-packaged, fixed revision of Mihai's version of Manic Miner 128 based on the Software Projects edition. The game's page on JSW Central is here, and the discussion and download links on Bob's website are here. A file with Mihai's original Z80 file and Bob's TAP files is attached to this message for your convenience. Since from the comments there it seems like there may be still be some 'unfinished business' regarding "Manic Miner 128" (bugs?), I am planning to playtest both of Bob's versions in the near future and report back with the results 🙂 . If anyone has a go at them and notices any issues, please let us know! Manic_Miner_128.zip

Thanks for v. 1.1, DigitalDuck! I hope to be able to play it soon 🙂 .

I've just tried it and I can confirm that it also happens when you enter the Central Cavern with 298 items collected (which is the minimum number of items necessary to trigger the toilet run).

Thanks for mentioning this, Ian! Due to the nature of the project I've mentioned, this is not a problem there... (and I won't say any more about it right now 😉). Well, I'm back 🙂 . I've just moved back to Warsaw, Poland from the United States (where I worked for the last five years) and I'm catching up with things that have been happening on the scene. I do hope I will have more time for JSW in the foreseeable future, and I definitely want to dedicate a significant portion of my spare time to it (various aspects of it: developing JSW Central, developing the JSW Central YouTube channel, assisting with other people's projects and ultimately resuming creation of my own games).

That's extremely impressive! Something that I was already taking for granted (the previously established highest obtainable scores) has turned out to be wrong. Congratulations on obtaining even higher scores and thanks for sharing the video! 🙂 👍 I wonder if this is really it, or if there may still be a surprise or two lurking in those caverns... 😉

Thanks for your recent message, DigitalDuck. I've just tried it. I tried killing Willy in the Central Cavern both after entering it for the first time (with 325 items), and after collecting the additional 5 items there (so with 330 of them), and after exiting the Central Cavern and reentering it with 330 items. Every time the result was the same, i.e. Willy just died. It was only after I killed him repeatedly in the Central Cavern, losing all lives, that I got the "Well Done" screen, which serves as the title screen. In fact, it seems to stay on - after I started a new game and quit it (by pressing the BREAK key, that is, CAPS SHIFT and SPACE), it was still there as the new title screen.

Hello, DigitalDuck, Thank you so much for "Manic Miner Redux"! 🙂 It sounds very impressive from the description 👍. I have just downloaded it and I look forward to actually playing it, which I hope I should be able to do soon. I will certainly report back with some feedback when I've had time to play it (but don't let that stop you from releasing the tweaked version 😉).

Thanks for all your comments 🙂 . Yes, the initial one-byte optimisation I came up with is at #904C, as described by Ian above. I have since rewritten this code completely, gaining a few bytes. The way Matthew set the attributes for Willy and the swordfish (starting at 9052) is unnecessarily complicated and takes more bytes than a simpler solution. He does this (as per SkoolKid's disassembly) like this: Yet it is easier and takes fewer bytes to just set the attributes by doing a series of instructions 21 LD HL,0000 and then 22 LD (0000),HL. Until now I would never have thought I would one day judge and criticise the code Matthew Smith wrote! It sounds like blasphemy and I'm all trembling as I write these words! 😉 But the truth is that by modifying this code I gained a few bytes, which allowed me to achieve what I was looking for 🙂 . Incidentally, this is for a project which is NOT my game, I'm merely adding some finishing touches to it. It's a fantastic game, and it should be released really soon, before the (European) summer is over... Before the release happens, though - or, to be precise, until the end of July - I will be extremely occupied with real-world matters and may not be able to post much here or react to posts I would otherwise like to react to. Please bear with me, I will be back in August 🙂 .

Thanks, Andy! 👍 Yes, I know BC is 0000 just before we get there, that's why I think it's safe to eliminate the instruction in question. However, I haven't tried to "backtrack the history" of BC before #9075, i.e. to see when it becomes 0000 and what makes it become 0000, which is why I asked the question. Having a closer look at it now, I can see that C is set to 00 by the instruction at 903E. At this point (when the game is stopped) B is also 00 (when I checked, but I'm not sure if always). Afterwards, before getting to the celebratory sound, the program draws Willy and the Swordfish graphics and sets attributes for them. As far as I understand the situation, this portion of the code is always executed in the same way (it does not depend in any way on what the player does, as there is no room for any input related to the player's actions or inaction), so the end result always has to be the same. Since C is set to 00 by the instruction at 903E and evidently is also (perhaps: remains, or perhaps: is again) 00 when we get to 9077, after the sprite-printing/attribute-setting code at 903E - 9076 has run its course, I am not really worried about C. I'm more (potentially) worried about B, which apparently is 00 at 903E and continues to be 00 at 9077 (which is great!), but I don't know when and "in what circumstances" it becomes 00 *before* we get to 903E. In other words, I don't have a 100% certainty that I can discard a scenario in which for some reason B would be something else than 00 when we arrive at 903E. Actually, writing these words, I believe I have actually come up with a solution for my uncertainty 🙂 . I do have one spare byte in that general area (thanks to an optimisation which can be applied in relation to the sprite-printing code). So if - taking advantage of that one spare byte - I change the LD C,00 instruction at 903E to LD BC,0000 instruction, I won't have to worry any more, because BC will definitely be 0000 at 903E (no matter what happens before), and if it remains 0000 at 9077, after the sprite-printing/attribute-setting code at 903E - 9076 has run its course, the instruction setting it to 0000 at 9077 can be safely eliminated, because there is no way BC at this point could be anything else than 0000. I believe this solves my problem, but please correct my reasoning if it's flawed in any way 🙂 .

I have the following question in relation to something I am working on right now: In the original "Manic Miner" (BB version), the code starting at #9077 plays a celebratory sound effect. As per SkoolKid's disassembly: The code at #9077 - #9079 prepares C and D for the celebratory sound effect by setting them to 0. However, I believe they are already set to 0 after the previous portion of the code is executed, so this instruction seems to be unnecessary. Freeing up three bytes in this particular spot would be of great use to me. However, I am not 100% sure that it is safe to eliminate the instruction in question; in other words, I'm not 100% sure that C and D are *always* set to 0 at this point anyway (without this instruction in place). Could someone have a look at the code and either confirm or deny that this instruction can be safely eliminated? Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated 🙂 .

No, he hasn't. I agree it may be worth sending him a PM (or trying to get hold of him in another way), but it's low on my priority list right now. I feel an author should be interested in their game being present on the internet in a bugfree form. "We" (without specifying who did what, of course you came up with the fix) raised alarm about the problem, diagnosed it and offered a solution. All Vidar would need to do it is to confirm he approves of this solution to make it "official". If it's too much to ask of him, I don't feel like chasing him, at least not right now.

In the evaluation of the game, they had a category called "Lastability". That's, as I understand, "the degree to which something will last or endure". They gave the game 69% in this category. It's interesting to look at it almost 40 years later. Was that a correct evaluation? As for "Jet Set Willy" itself, I would give it 100% (provided you cannot go above 100% 🙂). As for the Amiga version - I don't know, I've never had direct experience with this platform...

Hahaha! Thanks for your kind words. I would be perfectly happy to just be among the audience, incognito 😉 . I will be moving back to Warsaw at the end of July, so should be there for any future events 🙂 .

Fabian, I am extremely sorry to hear about your father and your anxiety-depression. Thanks for this info! I would be happy to accept your files - you know my e-mail, please send them to me by e-mail if you want. This is NOT to finish "Jet Set Jason in Röddenwald" straight away, but to keep your files, as their custodian, just in case, to preserve backup copies of the latest versions, so to speak. It is my sincere hope that you *will* complete the game at some future point, and I will certainly continue to encourage you to do it. I will be happy to keep the files in the meantime (again, as a backup) and *if* in the future (say, some years from now) you confirm you won't be willing or able to finish the game, I might do something about it. But I do hope you will do it yourself - after all, depression can be overcome, and life is worth living for JSW...

Apparently, the film will have its premiere on 26 May, 2023 at 6:15 PM at Warsaw's Pixel Heaven Fest 2023 event. Please see here (scroll down for English) and also here. The screening will be preceded by a conversation with Anthony & Nicola. Warsaw is my home town, but I'm not there right now and unable to travel there for this event. What a pity! 😯

Sendy, thank you so much for all the info about "Strangel 2"! The screenshots you have posted look great 👍. Also your descriptions of the development of the game file, including the possibilities offered by the various variants of the JSW64 game engine, and the problems with JSWED, are very interesting and instructive. It's great that you are creating this game and I look forward very much indeed to info about the new rooms you create and then one day to actually playing (perhaps even playtesting) the whole game! 🙂

Oh, yes, the Allerton Oak must have been the inspiration for the MegaTree! 👍

Now, this is a beautiful one. I know there are many MegaTrees around the world, and I guess they are all JSW-related in a sense. However, when I saw one of the lessons we can learn from this 400-year-old MegaTree - GO OUT ON A LIMB - I immediately loved this tree more than the others I have come across, because I KNEW it was related to Jet Set Willy. So first, a few pictures of the tree itself: And now the memorable lessons from "Sammy" the Samand Tree:

This one, I believe, explains how Miner Willy became Jet Set Willy - he sold the gems he found in the mine! Apparently, he is still selling them (that's why Miner Willy and Jet Set Willy always coexist, like the Schroedinger's Cat, I guess 🙂). It's up to 75% off right now, so take advantage of the sale if you feel like buying some Miner's Gems! 🙂

Thanks for Willy Wiper, Ian! 🙂 It is amazing how many MM/JSW-related things you can find when you are mindful of them. Below are two more from my current trip (which sadly ends tomorrow). I will post them in separate messages.

Thanks for these, Andy! In my understanding, a Forbidden Hallowed Ground (FHG) is a place where Willy could stand if he could reach it - but he can't reach it. Based on this understanding, I believe picture No. 3 from top presenting the Deserted Isle is incorrect - Willy would die there immediately because of touching water, which is Fire. However, if you moved him one row up and one column to the right, so that he is perched on the Water cell to the left of the red tree trunk - that would indeed be an FHG. I am not sure about picture No. 4 from top - presenting the room "cheat" - because TBH I don't remember how it works and where Willy can be and where he cannot be therein. I've just tried it by setting the starting position to that room in JSWED and Willy is perfectly fine where you show him in that room - so I don't think it is an FHG, unless it works differently in the 'real game'. I believe the rest of the graphics are OK and indeed show FHGs.

Thanks, Sendy! It's amazing how many different things JSW has inspired! Even poems! 😮

Good news: a few hours ago Igor has subscribed to the JSW Central YouTube channel! Apparently he also has a YouTube channel of his own and it's right here. I hope Igor will join this forum soon. If not, I will post something on his channel (to which I have subscribed) to draw his attention 😉 .

Thanks for all your thoughts, Sendy! I generally agree with everything you wrote. I think it all comes down to the author's intent. If he/she wants to reach a wider audience, quirky features should definitely be either avoided or somehow explained. I tried to do the latter with "Willy's Hoard" - the official release ZIP contains, among other files, a PNG file called "Willy's Hoard: The Quirky Spoiler", which graphically explains every single quirky move you need to make in the game. A higher quality file of "The Quirky Spoiler" can be downloaded from here. Now, if someone chooses to design an ultra-difficult, quirky-features-based game that only 5 or 6 people in the world will enjoy (if that many, actually!), I wouldn't criticise this choice in any way. I would just say this author should be perfectly aware of and fine with the fact that the remaining 7 billion people (or a million JSW fans, or however many there are 😉) will not enjoy this game, period. A possible solution would be to design such a game (for the sheer pleasure of designing it!) and then produce an easy version for the general game-playing populace. This is something I did with the rooms I designed for "Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" - I am referring here mainly to the rooms which belong to The Land of the Great Hardship part of the map, plus some others. I had no 'brakes' whatsoever in making them as difficult as hell, but then I called the final product a 'Hard' version and modified it to produce an Easy version of the game, which should be accessible (or at least much more accessible than the Hard version) to most players. However, I still consider the Hard version - as mentioned in the Readme - as 'primus inter pares', first among equals 🙂 .

Well, I've come across another sight today that triggered an immediate association with Willy in my mind. I took a picture, too, and I'm sharing it below. I'm not sure if this is another Willy's new business, but I'm pretty sure I can see Maria there on the right, looking at her smartphone and waiting for clients 😉 . Oh, it's in Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, should anyone want to check out Maria's services 🙂 .