jetsetdanny

Thanks for your thoughts, Sendy! 🙂 I don't think we will be able to define the "ultimate purpose" of the game in absolute terms. It depends on the point of view and one's preferences (like pretty much everything else in this world IMO). Undoubtedly, completing the game involves collecting all items, reaching the bed and successfully making the toilet run to end up in the toilet. But then you could claim that for many people completing the game is not important, playing it and enjoying the exploration is. So it all depends. I only expressed my personal point of view above, and explained why I'm not too fond of Secret Gardens. I don't have to be, it's my choice. I understand others have a different point of view and different preferences, and I respect that. I also take these other points of view into consideration when designing games, to increase the chances that they will be enjoyable to people who have a different approach to things. It's a question of balancing my own attitude and preferences (which may be minoritary in some ways) and possible attitudes and preferences of others (which I will admit may be majoritary). My personal "primary dopamine hit" is in completing games, not in exploring them. That's why I play all games recording them and using he Rollback feature, because it allows me to enjoy constant progress. I roll the recording back to the spot where I failed. I never have to start the game from the beginning because I've lost all lives. I get my kicks because I progress and I'm ever closer to the completion of the game. Completing it provides my "ultimate dopamine hit". I don't enjoy having to struggle with the same obstacles over and over again. What's more, I don't have time for it. I'm not 15 any more, I don't have long school holidays, my spare time is very limited, while the numbers of things I would like to do in it continues to increase. I would have absolutely no pleasure in having to replay the game over and over again, passing through the same obstacles, only because I keep losing lives, or fall into a Multiple Death Scenario, and have to start from the beginning. I don't have time for such futile (from my point of view) exercise. I have too many interesting things to do in my life to just keep replaying the same rooms. I don't enjoy exploration for exploration's sake, either, because its aimless (from my perspective), it doesn't lead to the completion of the game. If I explore the game, it is with one purpose: to gain the knowledge necessary to complete the game (learn the geography, tricks related e.g. to the quirky features of the game engine, etc.). I have to admit that I am often amazed that people (let's say "members of the general games-playing public") complain that various JSW games are difficult. I am not referring to the dozen of the "hard core", really difficult games (like "STRANGEL", etc.), but to such games like the recently released "AmAZiNG WiLLY" (I have seen some comments that it's difficult). When you play saving and reloading snapshots, or using Rollback, most games are NOT really difficult. "AmAZiNG WiLLY" has quite a number of places where you need to think ahead before you make your move (great design by Carl Paterson!). You jump onto a certain platform and then realise you are trapped, you will have to lose a life. OK, that can be very frustrating if you are playing in the "regular" mode (some people would call it "without cheating"). Yes, definitely it is frustrating if you only have 7 lives to start with. However, I don't understand why anyone would want to play in the "regular" mode today, having the possibility of "assisted" play, like Rollback or saving/reloading snapshots. For me, it would be a waste of time and a source of frustration. I understand the speedrunners who beat these amazing records of completing the game without any "assistance" don't use it, because it's their objective, to achieve the best completion times without any assistance (incidentally, they are results-oriented like myself, I believe). But casual players? Why would you want to repeat the same struggles if you don't have to? I guess for some people it may be a question of honour (???), the notion of completing the game without "cheating". That's fine, it's their choice, their attitude. I'm absolutely not implying it's wrong in any way, I'm just saying that from my very personal perspective it seems hard to understand why people prefer not to use these "assistive technologies" when they have them at their disposal (and they didn't have them before the emulation era; an infinite lives and other POKEs would have been the most they could get back in the 1980s, I think). Now that I think about it, though, I will share the following reflection. I have a feeling - and I could be wrong - that not too many people complete the new JSW games for the Spectrum which are released from time to time. There are not many comments by people saying "I've completed this game!". So either people don't complete games or they don't bother to comment on it. It could be either, but I do feel that a lot of people have a go, or two, or three at a game, explore it a little bit, maybe even a little more, but fail to ever complete it. I dare say that the reason for this is because they don't use the "assistive technologies" (and don't have enough determination to complete the game without them). How much time can you expect a person to devote to a game? I probably wouldn't have completed most of the games I have completed either if I had had to struggle with them and start from the beginning every time I lost all of the (usually 7) spare lives. But then if you don't complete a game, even if you enjoyed exploring it, etc., you don't get a full experience of it, only a limited knowledge. And no real satisfaction, either, at least from my personal perspective. And authors don't get that gratifying info that someone has completed their game. Okay, enough rambling 🙂 . Once again, this is just my very personal take on things. I'm not saying it's better than anyone else's. But I do claim it's not worse than anyone else's 😉, because I believe all personal points of view are equally valid, as there is no supreme arbiter who could say: This point of view is right, that one is wrong; not even Matthew Smith 🙂.

I will just add that browsing through the old messages from the JSW/MM Yahoo! Group I can see that Stuart once wrote, "I always like to include a secret room which (hopefully) ties in with another game". The "Doc Shiels' Sea-Head Factory" room in "Utility Cubicles" was a harbinger of his second JSW game, "Monstrum!". Similarly, Stuart's third JSW game (and the first one using the JSW64 game engine), "Willy and the Dodecahedron", features a Secret Garden room called "The Lemonade Man" (081), which is a reference to Stuart's planned sequel to "Willy and the Dodecahedron" called "Willy Meets the Lemonade Man". Stuart once wrote that "it would be a smaller game with (ideally) more sophisticated rooms". It hasn't materialised yet, but hope never dies in JSW world 🙂 . I sincerely hope Stuart will make another comeback and present us with the Lemonade Man adventures one day 🙂 .

Thanks for this description, Sendy! I totally agree with most of it 🙂 . I believe the standard name which was used on the JSW/MM Yahoo! Group for the second type you described was "Forbidden Holy Ground". This term was also going to be used in Andrew Broad's unfinished Nomen Clature: A MM/JSW Glossary (you can see it there, but without a definition). I believe it would be best to stick to it to keep the terminology as unified as possible 🙂 . Personally, I am not too fond of these: It's probably because I'm generally results-oriented. If the ultimate purpose of the game is collecting items, it is collecting items. If a room has no items and it is not necessary to pass through it to complete the game, it is pretty much pointless from my point of view. I recently re-recorded a walkthrough of Stuart J. Hill's "Utility Cubicles" (the YouTube video can be watched here). It does have a prime example of a Secret Garden - it's "Doc Shiels' Sea-Head Factory" (63), a nice room hidden to the left of "Ore-Rich Cavern" (39). You won't see it in my walkthrough, though, because my walkthroughs are meant to present elegant, efficient solutions to games. So if there is a room where there is no item and no need to enter, it won't be documented in the walkthrough. While "Doc Shiels' Sea-Head Factory" actually *feels* like a Secret Garden room as per your definition, there are several other rooms in "Utility Cubicles" which do not have to be visited to complete the game, because they have no items and the player does not have to pass through them - but I wouldn't call them Secret Gardens. These are: "Synthetic Lair of the Pac-Worm" [11], "Pathway to the Pyramid" [20], "Confusion Pipe, Primary Level" [26], ""Confusion Pipe, Secondary Level" [32], "West Wall of the City" [48], "Broken Pipe" [54]. So 7 rooms out of 64 do not need to be visited at all. For me, this is the weakest point of this otherwise excellent game which I have always liked. And it has 175 unused items, so it would just be enough to use 7 of them to put an item in each of these rooms to force the player to visit them. I would also like to mention one of my favourite secret passages in JSW games. It's in Matt Doughty's "Maria's Revenge". To access it, you need to start in "The Factory" (you can see it at 26:34 in my walkthrough). You have to go through three following rooms and in the third of them, "The Barn", you are now able to exit upwards, which takes you to two more rooms and one item. I remember when I first played that game it took me a long time to figure out what needs to be done. The beauty of this design is that you pass through these rooms at the floor level, you see them, and yet it's really hard to envisage that you need to pass through them also at a higher level. The starting point is concealed nicely too (in plain view!) - it's not an obvious jump at all. This one is a real classic for me 🙂 .

Thank you for the link and for making the game, Pixel Stonk! I've had a brief walk around the game. I didn't experience any lag problems. The game has a nice feel to it and it's great to see new rooms. It could probably even be ported to a Spectrum version one day. How many rooms does it have altogether? The room "Silver Screen" reminds me of my room "The Cinema" from "Willy's New Mansion", best experienced in the Special Edition of the game, where the Patch Vector makes the screen, Willy and the guardians flicker. It can been seen here starting at 26:19.

View File WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE I am thrilled to announce the release of Carl Paterson’s second Jet Set Willy game: “WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE”. The Plot While innocently doing his business in the bathroom Willy looks in the mirror, a sudden flash from a nearby nuclear power plant combined with aliens fighting the drone wars in your loft [so original] create a rip in the space, time continuum. When your eyes refocus after the flash your still in the bathroom but is it your bathroom? It certainly looks like it but little things are different, who left the cap off the toothpaste? My gaze catches the toilet, hmm it shouldnt be there, wait is it moving? The toilet seat suddenly crashes open and closed and then starts coming towards me, i think it wants to eat me.. My mind wanders to my love, "Maria" i must find her.. Willy must traverse almost 60 rooms of mystery collecting all the items as he goes so he may be reunited with Maria and hopefully return to his own universe, well Maria is an astrophysicist, all that sciency stuff she knows im sure she can get us home in some kind of "magiver" episode ive watched but cant remember the ending.. The game features: - 61 newly designed rooms; - New and modified guardian sprites; - 256 items to collect (yes, they can all be collected without losing a single life! - but it's not easy...); - A moderate level of difficulty, which won’t put off a novice and won’t bore an expert; - A new title-screen tune and 18 new in-game tunes, most of which are 128 bytes long and have never been used in a JSW game before; - A custom-made title screen, custom font and other enhancements; - Something extra at the completion of the game. The ZIP file includes the game in TAP and TZX format (this first public release is v. 2), the Readme and info about the game's credits. Please download, enjoy and share your impressions and feedback! Submitter jetsetdanny Submitted 02/10/2023 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

I will announce it here, as I don't want to create a new topic until it actually happens. Carl Paterson's second JSW game will be released tomorrow! It features over 60 newly-designed rooms and tons of new music. Please set some time aside this weekend to enjoy this brand-new JSW universe... or should I say mirrorverse??? 😁

This can be a great start to the PVs database, Ian! 👍 Thank you 🙂 .

Thank you for your kind words, Andy, but I claim no credit in case of this particular project - it was yours and Ian's only 🙂 We did an "awesome threesome" job (if I may say so myself) in case of several other projects though 😄. I believe one of the reasons "Jet Set Mini" did not get "enough exposure though to the general game playing populace to all the elements in it" is precisely because there is no description of these elements available anywhere. The game is super-rich with new features, applied thanks to modifications of the code (including PVs of various kinds), but I personally believe it is unrealistic to expect a member of "the general game playing populace" to pay attention to such details, especially conscious attention (like wondering: "Wow, that's a cool feature, I wonder how they did it"). I imagine people generally concentrate on playing/completing the game (i.e. collecting items and not losing lives) and just accept whatever happens in the game for what it is, without trying to understand the technical side of it. That's what I do, at least, and, to be honest, there may be various features in "Jet Set Mini" that I missed because there is nowhere to easily read about them. The bird example discussed above: something kills you in one of the rooms. I may find it strange what it is and wonder what happens, but what is really important to me is not to find out what happens, but to find out how I can overcome the problem. Once I've figured it out (pop out of the room, pop in, pop out, pop in, etc.), I move on to the next room and forget about this room and its strange problem. That's one of the reasons I suggested above that it would be helpful to (even slowly and gradually) publish disassemblies of the PVs used in "Jet Set Mini" (also in "Willy does the Great Pyramid" and any other games that use PVs and novel technical features that are not described anywhere), so that they become "public knowledge". I realise there are different attitudes and I am only expressing mine. I believe that Ian (IRF), for example - Ian, please correct me if I'm wrong! - has an EXTREMELY inquisitive mind, which pays attention and tries to explain every single detail of an issue, and that he also likes puzzles. From this perspective (if it's correct), it is logical that on the one hand, he will (I imagine) investigate the technical side of other people's games to see how they work and, on the other, he might enjoy not having some information given openly and thus being forced to investigate and discover the inner workings of something himself. This is, of course, an entirely valid (and admirable, in a sense) attitude, but I don't think (correct me, everyone, if I'm wrong!) that it's massively shared by other people. People hardly have time to play games; they have even less time to ever comment on them. And they are even less likely - extremely unlikely, in my opinion - to investigate their inner workings. At least that's the case with "the general game playing populace", I believe. You could make an argument that JSW authors - if they want to be authors - *should* have the time and curiosity to wonder about how things were done in others' JSW games by their authors and investigate it. I can only respond to this with my own attitude (about which I feel quite strongly): I find no pleasure in investigating what other people did. I'd much rather have a detailed description given openly, so that I can easily decide whether this is something I can apply in my own project or not, and if I do want to apply it, to be able to do it easily. Trying to disassemble the code is a waste of time for me. I'd much rather devote this time (and my overall time *is* limited, as everyone else's, I suppose) to working on my project, applying other people's solutions (if it's OK with them to do so, of course) as efficiently and seamlessly as possible. I *will* investigate some technical aspect of a game which is not described anywhere *if* I have to, but I perceive it as an unpleasant necessity, not a rewarding challenge. I would *never* try to disassemble a code myself if I had access to a published disassembly, because I would consider it a waste of time. Period. I am extremely grateful to Geoff for documenting his early PVs, and to SkoolKid for his outstanding disassembly of JSW (and of MM, although I have mostly used the JSW one so far), and to Andrew Broad for documenting all the technical novelties he introduced in his games, and to Norman Sword for all the code he has published on this website. And to anyone else who has shared/described/disassembled their solutions that I may have failed to mention (obviously, I am extremely grateful to Ian for his great input into and technical assistance with my projects, most notably the SE of "Willy's New Mansion" and the 48K Edition of Fabian Alvarez's "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre"). The fact that I find code descriptions so useful is the reason why I spent a huge amount of time myself documenting in detail the technical changes applied in my projects. I hope they will be useful to other people, and I actually find them very useful myself to refresh my memory how things were done when I want to reapply them in new projects. And so I am all for having a database of PVs on the "Designer's Forum" and I'm ready to contribute to it (by copying the info from my Readmes, or by adding new stuff if I ever come up with it) 🙂 .

There is no database AFAIK. The main topic about PVs on this website is here. Incidentally - a note to Andy - this is one of the topics that could be moved to the "Designer's Lounge" forum (the other one I can think of is this one (Playing around with the in-game tune in JSW) - I think both would be best placed in "Designer's Lounge" now that we have it. PVs used in Geoff Eddy's older games are documented here. All of the PVs used in "Willy's New Mansion SE" are documented in its Readme, which can be downloaded from here. The numerous PVs used in "Jet Set Mini" are not documented, unfortunately. Neither are the PVs used in "Willy does the Great Pyramid". While it would probably be unrealistic to ask their authors to suddenly produce complete documentation, I will dare float the idea that perhaps we could have a new topic in which individual PVs would be disassembled and that they (Ian, Andy and Geoff) could add the descriptions of their inventions there bit by bit (pun intended). In this way, a database of PVs could indeed be created gradually, which might be very useful to other authors :). While the game does not have any PVs, I will also add that the Readme of the 48K edition of "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre", which can be downloaded from here, features extensive documentation of the many changes made to the game engine. P.S. While I was typing this reply, two other replies have been posted. I am posting mine without reading their content - I will reply to them separately if necessary.

You are welcome 🙂 . There are several JSW games designed, in their entirety, with Willy not dying from long falls (with the fall-any-height POKE applied by default). I believe Andrew Broad's "We Pretty" was the first of them, several others followed. So there's no reason why your future "Sendarchaeologist" could not use the same principle 😉 .

https://jswcentral.org/jsw48-a-50_pyramid.html

This should be considered one of "classic" Patch Vectors because of the way it saves the player from a Multiple Death Scenario! 👍 I think it should also be noted that the conveyor flipping directions on a timer is another classic PV - classic in that it was created by Geoff Eddy and used in (at least one of) his early games, which actually inspired the use of PVs in newer projects.

Sendy, A very nice map! It should definitely be released! What exactly is the problem? Did you fail to create the title screen and the loader because you didn't know how to do it or because you didn't feel like doing it? Do you know why the AY sound doesn't work? Is it related to the loader? I haven't ever worked with AGD, so my questions may reveal lack of experience with this tool. I'm just trying to understand the situation related to "Trundle's Trials" and what exactly stops it from being released 🙂 .

It's a great idea! I do hope you will indeed complete this project and I will be happy to help 🙂 . In fact, we discussed this some years ago on the old JSW/MM Yahoo! Group. I published a review of the game on 19th February 2015. I am pasting it below: -------------------- "The Archaeologist" is a game by Paul K. Sneesby (Sneesby Software), published by Spectrum Computing back in 1985. The game was mentioned on this forum once before 2015, in message 151 on 23 May 2000, posted by Andrew Broad on behalf of Carl Murray (however, Andrew did not include "The Archaeologist" in section "Other Games of MM/JSW Interest" on his list of MM and JSW games - I can only presume that it was because at the time of the post his list did not have that section yet). The purpose of the game, as described on the menu screen, is to "enter the volcano Sneffels Jokul and pass through the earth's core to finally reemerge at Mount Etna collecting the various artifacts as you go". According to the information on World of Spectrum, "The Archaeologist" "appeared on side B of electronic magazine Spectrum Computing 18" and was "originally planned for a commercial release, but the publisher went bust before the game was finished". It is indeed a shame, as the game has the potential of being a very enjoyable 8-bit platformer, IMHO. It looks and feels very JSW-ish to me during gameplay, in spite of some features alien to JSW. In the lower part of the screen there are 5 meters (counters) marked by colourful pictures of items: a red apple (marking the level of food or health, perhaps?), a magenta petrol can (?) (fuel?), a green... - I'm not sure what it is, perhaps some kind of container or water bottle, or fire extinguisher, or battery???, a cyan pickaxe (?) (tools?) and a yellow revolver or pistol (ammo?). From my playing experience, the levels of substances (energy, vitality, health or whatever it is) shown by the first two meters decrease visibly during gameplay, and when they go down to zero, the protagonist loses a life. I did notice some changes in the next three meters - going up from time to time and going down, too, but never to zero - but I could not relate them to any specific impact on the protagonist (maybe because I did not try hard enough). A feature similar to JSW128 and JSW64 game engines, but not the original JSW48, is the superjump (called "Supa Jump" on the menu screen). It can be activated by pressing A during the regular jump. It drains the level of the protagonist's health (the red apple) very quickly, so you have to use the feature VERY sparingly. If you are not careful, you can lose your lives so quickly when applying the superjump that you actually think it's a bug which is killing you. But it's not a bug, I think, but a conscious design meant to limit the use of superjump. From my playing experience I can say that the superjump is indispensable to collect the uppermost item in the room "The Haunted Hall of Abu Hassan" as well as to get out of "Root of Volcano" (after exploring this room and "Stalactites and Stalagmites" below). The problem is that it drains your health so fast that you end up losing lives. Since you also lose lives periodically just from the "wear and tear" due to the passage of time (or using up your energy irrespectively of the super jump, or however you want to describe it), I think that the game would be impossible to complete without an ability to somehow replenish your health / energy / whatever it is (the red apple meter especially). A map of the game created by Pavero in 2004 is available on WoS and, as Sendy mentioned, on Speccy Screenshot Maps (http://maps.speccy.cz, which is the original upload site, I believe). In my playtest I got more or less halfway through the game, as far as "Lava Flow". Just before it, in "Saknussemm's Camp", you can see beyond doubt that the game is incompletable, because there is no way to collect the items in this room (the first time it happens since the start of the game). In my playtest I reached the score of 50% (the items you collect are not numbered, you see a percentage score instead), which confirms that I was halfway through the game. I believe that if one did not collect the items along the way, but just tried to get as far into the game as possible, he or she could go much further than I did - because you would not waste any time or energy, which would mean that the periodical death from health / energy loss / passage of time would come relatively later. I did not think it worth trying, as we know the game is incompletable anyway, but it makes me wonder how Pavero created his map - was it by exploring the game while playing it, or just by using some smart software, without even trying to play the game??? -------------------- My incomplete RZX recording of the game is attached below, for whatever it's worth. Back then we also discussed the playability of the game. Sendy said it was "virtually unplayable" and I opined that it was "pretty frustrating when you lose your lives just because of the passage of time or because you try to use the superjump. And very frustrating once you realise you will not be able to complete the game no matter how hard you try". Sendy also wrote that she "quite liked the look of the screens and the game map" but "had more fun looking at the map (on Speccy Screenshot Maps) than trying to play the game directly". To which I responded: "I like the look of the screens, too, and the sprites, and that's why if someone were able to batch-transfer the rooms and sprites to a JSW file (using one of the JSW game engines), I would be willing to try and finish the game and offer it to the community as a completable, regular JSW game, without the extra features (like the loss of health with the passage of time or the energy-consuming superjump) and preserving the original design as much as possible. Any volunteers to figure out the transfer trick?" What a nice suprise that now Sendy herself thinks of remaking the game! 👍 thearchaeologist.rzx

Thanks for this guide, Sendy! It's an excellent start for the new forum 👍

This is just to point out that there is a separate thread about this game I started back in 2018 😉 .

Should anyone else have a problem, here's a walkthrough by Pavel Pavel Plíva.

to hell... or to Hades? 😉

It is my great pleasure to announce, on behalf of Carl Paterson, the release of Version 3 of his game "AmAZiNG WiLLY". [The first gamma-released version of the game, back in October 2022, was v. 2; v. 1 had been an unreleased development file.] This new version: A. Game enhancements - offers the player some well-loved (and well-known 😉) music to relax after all lives have been lost; - has an additional surprise for the player after the game has been completed (play and finish the game to experience it! 😉); - features extended (128-byte-long instead of 64) versions of two of the (otherwise numerous) in-game tunes; - features a couple of new guardians with a new sprite; B. Increased player-friendliness - eliminates the loss of life which would happen in v. 2 if the player collected the leftmost item in "Master WiLLyZz BeDCHaMBeR" as the very last one; - allows the player to jump safely through the Innocent-Looking Block in "ThE MuTaNT DiLDoZz FRoM MaRZz". If you haven't played or completed the game yet, you are strongly advised to play v. 3 to experience these enhanced features. The game can be completed without losing a single life. Please download, enjoy and share your feedback! 🙂 And don't take too long, because Carl's second JSW game is scheduled to be released before this (northern hemisphere's) winter is over... 🙂

I am not sure if this problem has been solved already. If it has, skip the rest of this message. If it hasn't, the only thing that comes to my mind than different cells having the same attributes is that you happen to be experiencing the so-called Cell-Graphics Bug. It's described here, in the section "Corrupted conveyors" (also "Corrupted nasties"). SkoolKid (the author of this excellent disassembly) gives some POKEs there to fix the problem. I am not sure (without checking, which I won't spend time on doing) whether the fix is for the problem in this particular room or a generic one. There *is* a generic fix for this problem - a fix to the way the game engine works - which eliminates *any* occurence of the bug. The generic fix is described here and I *think* (I'm not 100% sure it's about the same problem, but I can't think of any other) it is also given in this thread as a POK file.

Jet Set Willie, I think I know what you mean, but I can't quite relate to it, because I generally don't believe there is a problem of the kind that you set some parameters for the guardians in JSWED, they look good to you, you press OK and leave the room (or perhaps just the guardian editing box), you come back to the room and the guardian movement is messed up. I don't think JSWED has this kind of problem, UNLESS you are trying to set invalid guardian parameters. Then problems of various kinds can appear. I have reproduced one of them. Please have a look at the video attached to this message. I modified guardian G20 in "Under the MegaTree" so that its bounds are from 010 to 030, and I also placed its starting point outside of its range, somewhere in between 000 and 010. The guardian's starting direction is to the left. So at the start (when Willy enters or re-enters this room) it goes to the left (outside of its regular boundaries), leaves the screen, reenters it on the right, and even though from then on it moves within its regular boundaries, its animation is not what it should be, it looks like it's using just one frame instead of 8. Is this the kind of problem you have been describing? If it is, then the only thing I can say is that I believe it arises because you are setting "abnormal" values for the guardian, and something happens that causes a problem. I *think* (wouldn't argue about it) that it's a limitation of the game engine, not JSWED (the only accusation against JSWED could be that it shouldn't let you do it at all, like it shouldn't let you input animation numbers higher than 07). With horizontal guardians, you can get away with placing their starting position outside of their regular range provided that their starting direction is so that they get into their regular range without leaving the room. So if in the attached example I set guardian G20's starting direction to the right, it would go to the right when you enter the room (only once outside of its range!) and fall within its regular boundaries, preserving the correct animation. Such tricks have been applied in games before. However, if the guardian leaves and re-enters the room, something happens that messes it up. As mentioned above, I believe it's a limitation of the game engine. JSWED lets you set "abnormal" values, but the results may be abnormal, too. It's your risk. If you stick to "normal" values, you should be fine. So my general advice would be to just stick to "normal" values, regular guardians, so to speak, because I don't recall JSWED ever creating any problems with these. Of course, if you want to experiment, it's up to you, but you have to keep in mind that your experiments may be doomed to failure 😉 . If you want further feedback, it migth be useful if you could also show us in a recording what exactly you are doing in JSWED - when one sees it, it should be easier to react than from a verbal description. Unless you don't want to reveal your creative secrets yet 😉 . P.S. I have also tried playing the game in the emulator, with guardian G20 set as in the attached example. The guardian goes to the left at the start of the game (as expected) and then Willy gets killed repeatedly, because the guardian seems to crash against something when re-rentering the room from the right. So evidently this is not something you can do in JSW, at least not in the standard JSW48 game engine (the one used in the original "Jet Set Willy"). guardian_issue.mp4

Yes, I do 'there and back' thing as well if I want to check the guardians' initial position. It's a useful hint 🙂 .

I don't really understand what the problem is, so I'll try to describe the way guardian editing works with a hope that it will be helpful, plus there is one piece of counterintuitive behaviour in JSWED which may be confusing, and I'll describe it too. The value of guardian animation has to be between 0 and 7. Other values are incorrect, so forget about them. JSWED is right in correcting them back to the proper range. This animation value determines how many guardian frames are used. Guardians can use up to 8 frames. They can also use just one frame, or two, or four. I am not sure right now if you can have guardians using 5 frames. I don't think so, but I can't say that definitely off the top of my head. A "fully designed" horizontal guardian uses all eight frames. Its movement is more 'detailed' than if it only had four frames, its animation is "more full". It can have four frames only and be a nice guardian too, but especially if it's a 'humanoid' kind of guardian (like Willy or a walking skeleton or something), I think it's always better for it to use 8 frames. Vertical guardians typically use between two and four frames, I think. It's probably possible to design an 8-frame vertical guardian too, I'm not sure right now, I can't think of any. So the value of "animation" determines how many frames will be used. I can't explain exactly how this works, I think it's more or less like the value 0 corresponds to one frame, the value 01 to two frames, and so on, until the value 07 corresponds to eight frames. Well, certainly 0, 1, 3 and 7 work like this (for 1, 2, 4 and 8 frames), I am not sure about the other values, because they are not 'typical'. This is one parameter you set. Then comes another - which frames you actually use. This is controlled by pressing - on the main editing screen, NOT in the 'Guardian - Edit' box! - the ALT key and a number defining which guardian you are modifying. The guardian number can be from 1 to 8 (I am talking about editing a JSW48 game, so like the original JSW), because there are up to 8 guardians in a room. Pressing ALT + guardian number will only affect these guardians which are in the room, of course, so if you have added two guardians to the room, if you press ALT + 1 something will happen, if you press ALT + 2 something will happen, but if you press ALT + 3 or any higher number, nothing will happen because there are only two guardians in the room at this time (there is no guardian No. 3 or No. 4, etc.). When you press ALT and the guardian number, the frames which are used change. Here's JSWED's counterintuitive behaviour I mentioned earlier: you can have one guardian highlighted on this main editing page. In this screenshot, for example, guardian No. 3 is highlighted (G32): You would think (I would, at least) that whatever you do will affect the highlighted guardian. However, when using ALT + guardian number, it's not like that. The change of selected frames will affect the guardian whose number you have chosen, NOT NECESSARILY the selected guardian. If the guardian number you chose is not the selected (highlighted) guardian, you can see the change in the sprite of this guardian moving on the screen (in the centre of JSWED's window, where you see the room), but NOT at the bottom on the screen where frames of a guardian are displayed. These are the frames of the highlighted guardian. In this example, f you pressed ALT and 3, they would change, because the selected (highlighted) guardian is number 3 in the guardian list in this room (the G32 one). However, if you pressed ALT and 1, the frames of the first guardian will change (the G30 one), because he is first on the list. This is the misleading, counterintuitive part: one may think that the guardian frames displayed at the bottom of JSWED's window should be changing, but they won't be, unless you press ALT and the number of the guardian that is currently selected (highlighted). Of course if you want to work on the selection of frames seeing them clearly at the bottom of JSWED's window, you can do it. You just need to select (highlight) the particular guardian whose frames you want to modify. Then you will see the changes you apply by ALT + guardian number both in the guardian itself (moving on the screen in the middle of JSWED's window) and in the guardian frames displayed at the bottom of JSWED's window. Once you realise that, the rest is easy. You need to set two parameters: the animation number to the desired number of frames the guardian is supposed to use (value between 0 and 7, so the number of frames between 1 and 8), and then, by using ALT + guardian number, choose the frames you actually want the guardian to use. I always do it by trial and error. There are various combinations there, I couldn't describe how they work exactly (how the ALT + guardian number frame selection process works, how exactly frames are selected). I just do it by trying all possible options and seeing which one I like best. Just one word of caution here: sometimes it's impossible to get exactly what you want. I mean, for example you choose animation number 3 - the guardian is supposed to be using four frames - and want it to use only the first and the fourth frame, the first one being used twice and then the fourth one being used twice in the four-frame sequence. I have no idea if that particular combination is possible. It may be that it's not possible, and if it's not possible, I believe there's nothing you can do about it if JSWED does not show you such a combination. The only thing you can try would be swapping the guardian's frames in the Sprites editing box, for example: the combination I described above - a four-frame guardian using first frame No. 1 twice and then frame No. 4 twice may not be possible. But a four-frame guardian using first frame No. 1 twice and then frame No. 3 twice may be possible (I'm giving a general example, I'm not checking if the examples I give right now actually work or not). So the solution for you would be to move the sprite graphic you have in frame 4 to frame 3 and then set the combination of animation and frame selection that works. This is easy, but if you have other guardians using the same sprites, it might get tricky, because they might require different frames. However, that's a pretty 'advanced' problem, generally editing guardians is not difficult once you're aware of the things I tried to describe above. I hope that helps 🙂 .

I sometimes thought about the mythical Hackulator tool over the years, but never realised it was so powerful! It's a shame Erix1 never made it public, and that he's not on the scene any more. Perhaps he'll be back one day, some people come back after many years, we even have a very recent example 😉 . It's good that the current lack of Hackulator will not affect the release of 'RR', I was a little worried about it.