jetsetdanny

Thanks for this info, Richard! It's weird and amazing at the same time that today there are people who port 30- or 40-year-old then-mainstream games from (what most people would call) an obsolete platform to an obscure and even more obsolete platform, equally old platform. What a wonderful - and bizarre - world! 😉

Actually, I need to correct both yourself, Ian, and myself! (I let myself be carried by your erroneous and, in fact, slightly blasphemous suggestion! 🤪) Each of the 20 in-game tunes in "Manic Person" is 128 bytes long. If they were 'only' 64 bytes long, there would be enough spare space also for a custom font (1280 spare bytes versus 768 needed for a full font).

Ian, I never thanked you for answering my request and for all the information and code solutions you have provided! Thank you so much, it is all greatly appreciated! 🙂 👍 I remember once in the past I did have a look at the Jet Set Mini code, but couldn't make enough sense of it to be sure what you had done there. I probably didn't try hard enough (I didn't need a 256-byte-long tune 'seriously', I was only toying with some ideas). In any case, it's great to have everything explained plainly in this thread! So thanks again 🙂.

Exactly. Even with 64-byte-long tunes there was no room left for any extras. A suggestion was made after the game was released that it could do with a non-standard font. It was a very good suggestion, but unfortunately impossible to apply without far-reaching changes to the game engine that would optimise the code 'a la Norman Sword' and free up enough space to implement a new font.

That's exactly what happens in "Manic Person"!

In the projects I've been involved in, this mechanism (turning the tune on at a specific moment even if the player was playing with the music off) has only been used for the game's completion, when a new - 'victory' - tune kicks in upon reaching the toilet. I believe you actually provided the code to enforce this, Ian - for which I continue to be grateful! 🙂

The players have been swamped by the authors' prolificacy? This could be it... 😉

Thanks, Ian! I must say that now when I listen to the original 64-byte-long version of "If I Were a Rich Man" in other games (for example when recording their RZX walkthroughs), it seems very incomplete... Ian, in one of your projects, you applied a 256-byte-long in-game tune. Could you explain how you did it (from the technical point of view)?

Great minds... 😁 What's "IIWARM"? IIRC in my setup the note index is set to #FF when the tune is supposed to start from the first note, so that when the in-game music note index is incremented on the first pass through the code *before* the first note is played, it is incremented from #FF to 0 and so the first note is not missed.

You're most welcome! 🙂

2023 has been an exceptional year for the MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum 🙂. It saw the release of several brand-new games: "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" v. 2 was released by Carl Paterson on 10th February (this being the first public release of the game). The release of updated v. 3 followed on 8th December. "Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal" was released by Sendy (Alex Cornhill) on 11th March. "Manic Person" was released by Sendy (Alex Cornhill) on 7th October. "León Willy" was released by Pedro Magallares Ocaña on 10th November. "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" v. 2 was released by Carl Paterson on 22nd December (this being the first public release of the game). Furthermore, "Manic Miner 40th Anniversary Tribute" ("MM40th") was released by Bob The Polar Bear on 24th August. It could be debated whether it should be considered an entirely new game or a continuation of his project whose earlier 'incarnations' are "Manic-4-Noobs" ("M4N") and "MANIC-minor" ("M-m"). 2023 also witnessed some releases of new versions of games originally released in previous years: "Manic Jet Set Willy" v. 3.00 was released by Norman Sword on 1st January and v. 3.01 followed on 7th January. "AmAZiNG WiLLY" v. 3 was released by Carl Paterson on 22nd January and v. 4 followed on 2nd December. Furthermore, a minigame called "Jet Set Willy: Key Code Edition", based on the original "JSW", was released by Andy Ford on 24th/25th March. Finally, bug-fixed versions of "Manic Miner 128" (one based on the Software Projects edition of "Manic Miner" – originally created by Mihai Novitchi, the other one based on the Bug-Byte edition of "Manic Miner" – originally created by Bob Fossil) were released by Bob Fossil on 5th/6th May. I should also note that Sendy's "Strangel 2" is in its beta stage and, as a playtester, I can say it's an incredible game (using the JSW64 V game engine), which brings JSW gaming to a whole new level. The game has not been released yet, but it was effectively created in 2023. I do hope it will be released in 2024 (with some additional enhancements that I will be happy to contribute to as much as possible). I also believe that Jet Set Willie's first JSW game is also in its beta stage, also created this year which is just about to end, but I'm not sure how much info I can disclose about it - perhaps Willie will comment on it if he so wishes. All of these developments show that the MM/JSW-editing scene is still very much alive 😁. I just wish there was more feedback from the players - typically, except for some initial reactions after the game's release there is hardly any info if anyone has actually completed the game. There have been some exceptions, but, generally speaking, what I would call "solid feedback" has been scarce, which is a pity, because, as noted in some of the older Readmes, "the biggest gratification and encouragement for anyone designing free games is to know that someone else has played them!" Happy 2024 to Everyone! 😊

I hope 2023 will be remembered, besides other things, as the year of an "explosion" of in-game music in ZX Spectrum games using the MM and JSW48 game engines. I was privileged to work on the "postproduction" of some of the fine games that have been gamma-released (or updated) this year and I composed in-game tunes for most of them. In total, between September 2022 and December 2023, I coded more than 90 in-game tunes that had never been used in any MM or JSW game for the ZX Spectrum before. They are 128-bytes-long, i.e. twice as long as the tunes in the original "MM" and "JSW". 76 of these brand new in-game tunes (if I have counted correctly) have been made public and can be listened to while playing Carl Paterson's "AmAZiNG WiLLY" v. 4, "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" v. 3 and "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" v. 2, Sendy's "Manic Person" and Pedro Magallares Ocaña's "León Willy". There are also more than a dozen tunes I coded that have not been made public yet but that are ready to be used in future projects (including an individual game project of mine which I hope to continue at some point, hopefully in 2024 if real life circumstances permit). In addition to these brand-new tunes, I creating extended, 128-byte-long versions of "If I Were a Rich Man" (the in-game tune from the original "JSW") and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (the in-game tune from the original "MM" and "Jet Set Willy II"), both coded by Matthew Smith, and a couple of extended, 128-long versions of other previously existing tunes. And a 64-byte-long rendition of Chopin's Marche funèbre (preceded by an alarm sound) for rooms designed as multiple-death traps. I had always wanted to enrich the music in the MM and JSW games, but for many years it seemed to me that coding this music is very difficult. Then I coded my first in-game tune in 2020 while working on the 48K Edition of Fabián Álvarez López (Adban de Corcy)'s "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre" and then suddenly I realised how easy it was. "Easy" thanks to Richard Hallas's document "A Miner Triad. Music in Jet-Set Willy and both versions of Manic Miner" which is instrumental (pun intended) in managing and coding the music. I did have to go through a learning curve (which is evidenced by how some tunes are improved in version 4 of Carl Paterson's "AmAZiNG WiLLY" in relation to their original editions in v. 2), but now I am generally able to code a tune in, say, 15 minutes if the melody is easy and I know it well (and in a couple of hours if the melody is difficult and I have to refer to the musical notation). Most of the tunes I have coded are melodies that come from various areas of the music I love. This includes (but is not limited to) old American folk music, popular European and U.S. music from the 1930s through the 1960s, various songs from Poland, my home country, and from the Spanish-speaking world. A couple of compositions are entirely my own: either renditions of tunes I believe I once created ("I believe", because I can't be quite sure I didn't hear them, or similar tunes, somewhere), literally decades ago, or coded in recent months specifically as JSW in-game tunes. In the future, I intend to create a file which will be a sampler of my in-game music compositions: technically a JSW48 game file, but with only one room and a possibility to input the address from which the in-game tune is to be played, thus making it easy to listen to the various tunes. It will also include a detailed description both showing what each tune is and pointing to where it resides in memory (so that the code can be easily copied to be used in other projects). This will have to wait until my individual game project that I mentioned above is released, as I definitely want to include the currently unpublished tunes I have ready for it in this future music sampler. "AmAZiNG WiLLY", "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE", "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" and "León Willy" also feature brand-new title-screen tunes I coded (while Sendy's "Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal", which otherwise has no in-game music, features a 128-byte-long version of "If I Were a Rich Man" as the title-screen tune). The final note on the music developments in 2023 is that these recent projects feature new code responsible for initiating the in-game tune from the first note. This activation takes place if a different tune was playing before Willy entered the current room or if the same tune was playing in a different mode (in some of these games the tunes play in various modes, e.g. faster or more slowly, or either in their full 128-byte-long versions or in the shorter 64-byte-long versions). Notably, if the same tune was already playing in the same mode, the code ensures the seamless continuation of that particular tune. This is a valuable enhancement of the musical experience (if I may say so myself). Should anyone want to use any of the tunes I coded in their projects, I will be more than happy for this to happen. Please get in touch if you want specific info about any of the tunes 🙂 .

That's as close as MM gets to quantum physics, I guess! 🤣

Yesterday I posted my last video for the year on the JSW Central YouTube channel. I'm up to 123 videos posted so far, so about two-thirds of the way of presenting walkthroughs of what I classify as new MM/JSW games. Updates on the JSW Central YouTube channel since the latest video I mentioned in this thread: "J4 (The Fourth Remix)" "Manic Miner - 2000" "Party Willy" SE Part 1 "Party Willy" SE Part 2 "Party Willy" (JSW128 version) SE "Lena vs Margo" "Jet Set Basic" "willy to the rescue!" "Soul Miner" "Manic Miner C.S.S." "Marina: The Fire Quest" "Clopit!" "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Remix" "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Remake" "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Resurrection" Some comments: "J4 (The Fourth Remix)": I re-recorded the game, improving my completion time (in relation to my earlier walkthrough still hosted on the RZX Archive) from 9969965 to 9971648. "Manic Miner - 2000": I re-recorded the game, improving the completion score by 2418 pts., taking it up to 38 438 pts. "Party Willy" SE (all three games): I used my RZX walkthroughs recorded back in May and June 2007 (considering them to be 'good enough'). "Lena vs Margo": I re-recorded the game, bringing down my completion time from 14:20 to 14:18. "Jet Set Basic": I used my RZX walkthrough recorded back in January 2008. "willy to the rescue!": I re-recorded the game, bringing down my completion time from 8:57 am to 8:42 am. "Soul Miner": I completed and recorded the game for the first time ever. Planning an optimal route was the biggest headache (an important feature of the game is teleporters, which are very numerous and constitute a significant part of Willy's progress), but I think I got it right, achieving a completion time of 8:07 am. "Manic Miner C.S.S.": This is the game that has so far been known as "Manic Miner: comp.sys.sinclair". I have changed its name on JSW Central (in all references that are made to it), because I consulted the original documents related to it (its website, Readme and the author's old posts about it) and I am positive "Manic Miner C.S.S." was the name its author (Nigel Fishwick, aka FishyFish) used when he created it back in 2002. I believe it was christened "Manic Miner: comp.sys.sinclair" by Andrew Broad when he placed it on his otherwise excellent list of MM and JSW games, and then the name made its way onto WoS, SC and other sites. But it's incorrect, not what the author called the game, so I have corrected it. I re-recorded the game, improving my completion score by a mere 350 pts., taking it up to 36 536 pts. "Marina: The Fire Quest": I re-recorded the game, bringing down my completion time from 14:07 am to 14:06 am. I am particularly proud of this, as I initially thought improving the completion time in such a small game (just 6 rooms) is not possible. It turned out to be possible thanks to some jumps from ramps which allowed me to collect some items via these jumps from below, instead of going onto the platforms they're on and outmanoeuvring the guardians there. "Clopit!": I completed and recorded the game for the first time ever, achieving a completion time of 7:23 am. "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Remix": I re-recorded the game, bringing down my completion time from 8:09 am to 8:06 am. "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Remake" and "Jet Set Willy: Fucked Internet Resurrection": I used my RZX walkthroughs recorded back in March 2007. The videos of the last three games mentioned (which together form "The Fucked Internet Trilogy") have been censored by YouTube as age-restricted and can only be watched once you confirm your age by logging in. I am not happy about YouTube's policy on this (I believe there are far more serious problems in the world than someone, even a minor, using the F word), but I can't help it. I can only say that in the future I intend to make all the videos available for download, and then, hopefully, everyone will be able to download also these three without any restrictions. All of the newly-recorded RZX files can be downloaded from the games' respective pages on JSW Central. Creating and adding videos to the JSW Central YouTube channel will be one of my JSW/MM priorities in 2024. It will remain a priority until video walkthroughs of all games I classify as new games are presented there. I will then continue with other videos, prioritising selected minor versions of MM and JSW or some highlights from their gameplay (like new rooms).

You're right, you can't see the real portal when you lose a life there.

Thanks, Ian! I usually give it at least half a year now since the release of a new game before publishing any visual materials related to it apart from the few initial screenshots which are also used to advertise the launch. In fact, it will be longer in many cases, because I may be into other things before thinking of adding screenshots to the (relatively) new releases. In any case, as mentioned before, I do intend to ultimately provide complete screenshot galleries for each game, so this will also include all of the projects you've been involved in so far*. Of the ones you've specifically mentioned, "Jet Set Mini" already has a full screenshot gallery, while "Manic Mixup" is still waiting for one. * I look forward to your future projects! 😉

Thanks for your detailed and very interesting analysis, Ian! 👍 The fact that the location of the portal can be seen when Willy loses a life is also very helpful in It's great to know that JSW Central can be useful! 😁Providing screenshots of every single room of every single new game (and of every single room of every single minor version of MM and JSW provided it is worth it, i.e. 'different enough' from the original) is one of my eventual goals for the website. They way I do it (taking every screenshot from a game actually being played or from its RZX recording being played after the game had been played and recorded) is a very time-consuming and, to be honest, a very arduous process. So it will take time before that goal is accomplished, but I definitely want to get there some day. My current priority for JSW Central is, apart from adding new released games and versions, enriching the games' individual pages with embedded walkthroughs from the JSW Central YouTube channel. This, of course, presupposes creating these videos in the first place, which also means playing and recording them (or re-recording, if I'm not satisfied with the quality of a recording I once made). I am planning to focus on creating the videos first, but once this stage is finished, I will devote more time to adding screenshot galleries wherever they're missing. Obviously, the videos will be very helpful in this process as a lot of the screenshots will be taken from the RZX recordings used to create the videos - there's a nice synergy between both processes 🙂 .

You're most welcome! 🙂 I did enjoy a lot working on the 'postproduction' of Pedro's game and I hope that playing it will be enjoyable to whoever has a go at it 🙂 .

Yes, you do!

Thanks for playing the game 🙂 . To be honest: 1. The jump indeed needs to be pixel perfect in that you can only jump from one position (if you jump from one step farther or one step closer to the edge, you will die). This is how Willy has to be positioned to jump successfully: 2. As Ian pointed out, there is no time pressure, because once you're beyond the yellow guardian's reach, it won't harm you. So you can slowly position yourself for the jump. 3. After adopting the right position, if you want to make 100% sure you won't 'misjump' (by taking a step forward before jumping), you can jump vertically first and then, before Willy lands, press and hold the JUMP and RIGHT keys together, and you will be guaranteed to jump correctly. In view of the above, it's not a difficult place, really. Wait till you get to the trap doors in the "Overgrown Subterranean Chamber"... 😉

Where is the issue, Andy? Is it at the floor level by any chance?

It certainly could! 👍

View File JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH I am thrilled to announce the release of Carl Paterson's third Jet Set Willy game: "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" 🙂. It is the first JSW game in which the protagonist is not Willy, but... his son! Yes, the years have passed by and Junior is not only a fine young man, but also an intrepid explorer, just like his dad. The two were taking part in an expedition to Egypt where they raided multiple tombs despite warnings that stealing the items carries a vengeful curse. And that curse has now struck Jet Set Junior who awakens in darkness surrounded by hieroglyph-covered walls, transported to the time of the pharaohs. Will you help him find his way home? Please refer to the Readme to check out the whole background story. And then embark on this new adventure, where you will face underground tunnels and flooded chambers, spirit guards, cursed tombs, flesh-eating scarabs, magic pools, flowers of fear and interdimensional generators. Remember that the All-Seeing Eye is following you... or is it Hatshepsut's gaze??? Collect all 256 cursed items, find the mysterious queen and help Willy get back to his reality through the Toilet of Time! You can achieve this without losing a single life... if you are an incarnation of the mighty ancient warriors... or if you save and reload snapshots or use Rollback. The game features: - 64 newly designed rooms; - Mostly new and some modified guardian sprites; - A difficulty level higher than in Carl's previous two games; - A custom-made title screen, custom font and other enhancements; - A new title-screen tune and 13 new in-game tunes, all of them 128 bytes long, never before used in a JSW game for the Spectrum; - Something extra at the completion of the game. The ZIP file includes the game in TAP and TZX format (v. 2 - this is the first public release), the Readme and info about the game's credits. Please download, enjoy, and may Amun-Ra and Osiris protect you during your quest! 😁 Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 12/22/2023 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

A couple of links for those who may feel disoriented: https://jswcentral.org/jsw48-a-27_vampirelord.html