jetsetdanny

Thanks, MtM, I will certainly write about it when circumstances permit, probably a couple of weeks from now 🙂 . I've started thinking about it and have some thoughts I would like to convey (sharing my personal experiences, nothing more), but have no time to do it properly right now.

I'll think about and I will revisit this thread to give some kind of explanation at some point. However, I want to do it without hurrying, and my time is and will be very limited until mid-April. So I'll probably come back to share something here after that 🙂 .

Below are Andrew Broad's comments on "STRANGEL". The first part was posted in the Yahoo! Group on 19 December 2005, the others followed some time later. Andrew once gave a general permission to quote him, provided his statements are not taken out of context/manipulated to make him stupid, so I believe it's OK to put these quotes here, in good faith 🙂 . Andrew's first playtest of strangel, 19.12.2005: "seeing as the special edition is due any day now, i have decided to embark on my first serious playthrough of sendy's classic (but certainly not /classic/) jsw128 game, strangel. ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired unofficial mm/jsw sequel other than my own, due to its ultrasurreal, we-prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative use of quirky features (this was the jsw game that introduced invalid ramps ttbomk), and as difficult a challenge as i've seen outside of the broadsoft games. today i started from scratch, and finished with 52 items after three hours' effort in the real world (jsw-time only 8:30am due to heavy use of snapshots and exploring the alternative paths ahead). the rooms are very cleverly-designed, and the difficulty-gradient is steep from the start, requiring many minutes just to clear a single room of items! the rooms are also exceptionally well-put-together, with hardly any unintended loopholes at all from what i've seen so far. the geography could prove to be a difficult factor, although the paths i've taken so far seem to return me to the choice-points better than those in another jsw128 game i could mention. but i've still had to leave several loose-ends to be tied up later. and the difficulty is such that it will probably take me four more sittings to complete... even *with* john elliott's room-number patch! 🙂 ---------------------- room-specific comments ---------------------- i'm not going to comment on every single room, but i must say that if a room is mundane in strangel, it would be exceptional in almost any other game! [0] "FEIN dish BRICK yarD": a prime example of clever room-design, with quirky jumps through earth-cells. and i like that you get to hide from the arrow in the water-cells! _____it's taken me until today to realise that the title means "fiendish"! 🙂 [8] "NOToRI0US C - O - G": not as difficult as i remember after typing strangel into my real spectrum, except for the philip-bee-esque high jump over the bird! the hook-sprite looks good. [18] "skY laRK!!": the atmosphere is strongly evocative of we pretty's "SKYLIFE A V I A T I O N AVATAR". however, a nasty infinite-death scenario is on the cards if you jump and land on the invisible gap in the platform (the `harmless' fire-cells - harmless my foot!). [25] "in THE spotLITE": this is the room of which i had the fondest memories from playing strangel on my real spectrum. with the guardian-sprites resembling portholes that open and close, the atmosphere is evocative of the spectrum platform-game _booty_. _____is the player supposed to be able to take the top-left item by jumping up from below, or should they have to wait until they have the chance to walk on the top row via "It's a nOIse BeinG Noisy" [44]? [26] "the uNDERpaSs": having to walk along a long, low corridor before an arrow comes is a design-pattern of which i hope to see much more in the future. [28] "cramped-STYLE": a very effective arrows-challenge reminiscent of party willy's "The Devil's Intestines!" (which i wrote without conscious knowledge of this room). [34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": if you jump into the right-exit of this room (a natural thing to do because there's an earth-cell in the way), there's a nasty infinite-death scenario in the next room [35]. [35] "rHythm and blues Angus Steakhaus": i don't like it that down is a one-way exit. you have to go down before you can get the bottom-left item, but since it's clear to the seasoned player, on entering "sisSy TOp" [39], that you won't be able to go back up if you persist with this route, the player should have the option of turning back immediately after going down into "sisSy TOp". [42] "fay's CANceLLATI0n": this room should be upheld as one of the most amazing and innovative jsw-rooms ever written, from the wonderful pun (who's fay?) to the sheer quirkiness of the platforms: air and ramp have the same colour-attribute, which creates the springy-platforms effect, plus the ramp is `invalid' (it has a direction-byte of 105). _____invalid ramps are relatively uncharted territory, along with the quirky features associated with ropes and superjump. [63] "your WAy" [64] "your WAy" [65] "your WAy" my way or the highway! 🙂 [66] ""I wisH i hAd duCK fEeT"": a wonderfully atmospheric room with an innovative design-pattern featuring harmless fire-cells, and it's nice to see the feet from we pretty making an appearance! 🙂 ....* ...*| ..*|. .*|.. *|... |.... (where * are harmless fire-cells) i'll have to remember this pattern if i ever want to write a nightmare-on-elm-street-inspired room where your feet sink into the stairs! _____there's an infinite-death scenario if you jump right into "fILT RAtE" [43] and walk back in here again - the upside-down willy collides with you. [78] "a place with no nAME": this room looks like it was drawn by a sixteen-year-old (it reminds me of "The Cave" in party willy JSW-MM_OLD.TAP) - which i suppose is a neat contrast to all the sophisticated rooms in this game! 😉 [90] "barrier 2": double-jumping out of the underside of a ramp is a simple but much-underused jsw-trick. [104] "X-es mark the sPOTS": "Xs" or even "X's" would be better english, but i just love the design-pattern in the centre of the screen that gives access to the conveyor: ..|..|.. <<|..|.. ........ ..-..-.. --....-- ..-..-.. [105/106] "Trans "mog" riFicatION": some nice earth-cell quirky features here, and the player-sprite certainly appeals to me as a cat-lover. i hope igor makovsky - one of the scene's greatest artists - won't be too offended if i say that i prefer this cat-sprite to frosya. 😉 [114] "Not Like All The Others": an artistic colour-scheme. i spent ages trying to cross the top half from right to left, using my pause-snapshot-timeframe technique, and it took me a long time to conclude that it was impossible (and fortunately not necessary, although it does create an intriguing air of mystique about the forbidden holy ground in the top-left of this screen and top-right of "the PUSH" [116] - much like the inner corners of rooms 54-57 of the original jsw were for me as a child, before i discovered the amazing secret of climbing that mysterious ladder in "West Bedroom" 😮 ). [116] "the PUSH": it's nice to see an invalid arrow, but it's frustrating to have to search for the correct entry-position to jump onto the trail it leaves, and be forced to take a one-way exit each time you miss - thank goodness for instant snapshots! -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew’s second playtest of Strangel: this message follows on from message 5325, and replies to message 5328. --------------------- reply to message 5328 --------------------- Alexandra wrote: > >> ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired >> unofficial mm/jsw sequel other than my own, due to its >> ultrasurreal, we-prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative >> use of quirky features (this was the jsw game that introduced >> invalid ramps ttbomk), and as difficult a challenge as i've seen >> outside of the broadsoft games. > > Thank-you! Coming from you that is wonderful to hear, since > Strangel was a direct response to finishing We Pretty. I even made > the room above the starting room a cave as a nod to your games. Do > you mind if I quote you on the above when I publish the game > (which will be very soon, directly after Manic Person which I'm > uploading later tonight - fingers crossed!)? I give my permission to use my above quote. If the documentation will still be in lower case, you may use it as it is. If the documentation will be in sentence-case, please use the following version: >>> Ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired unofficial MM/JSW sequel other than my own, due to its ultrasurreal, We-Prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative use of quirky features (this was the JSW game that introduced invalid ramps TTBOMK, and it took invalid-arrow technology to a new level), and as difficult a challenge as I've seen outside of the Broadsoft games. <<< If using my original quote, please note the addition of ", and it took invalid-arrow technology to a new level". > I think after a while you can become so accustomed to the > mechanics of JSW that you can see every possible outcome that the > user can get from playing a given room or area, and that is what > enables us to create (and solve) such tightly-controlled > challenges. It's almost like having the game engine encoded in > your brain! I think I've got that nailed now so my next frontier > is of course graphics. That's a most intriguing way of putting it! I have trained myself to spot all possibilities, to the extent that I am probably as near to 100% infallible as humanly possible when I declare that it is or isn't possible to get from one position in a room to another (I have occasionally been known to say that it isn't possible when it is, but that's called "having a brain-freeze"). Graphics are, of course, a matter of artistic talent. I'm never going to be a Vidar Eriksen or Igor Makovsky in this department, but I certainly have my moments when drawing 16x16-pixel sprites. >> the geography could prove to be a difficult factor, although the >> paths i've taken so far seem to return me to the choice-points >> better than those in another jsw128 game i could mention. but >> i've still had to leave several loose-ends to be tied up later. >> and the difficulty is such that it will probably take me four >> more sittings to complete... even *with* john elliott's room- >> number patch! 🙂 > > Should I apply the patch to the SE? I was tempted to but it would > give the teleport-swicthes away awfully. Perhaps it is best left to the user to decide whether they want to see the room-numbers or not. You could even have the BASIC loader apply this patch at the option of the user, but perhaps you don't want to make it that easy for them. Personally, I applied the patch to a snapshot of the game using John Elliott's HEXPAT utility, because, for all but the most linear or familiar JSW games, I like to tick off the rooms I have item-completed on a piece of paper as I play (and mark the rooms I wish to comment on), and I don't like having to scan through the list for every room-title. > The invalid ramps in "trick step" behave like the stairs in C64 > JSW, so it would be nice to be able to use those again sometime. > Using it globally over a whole game would be a nice touch. <painfully looks through room-list to see that "trICK STEP" is [16]> Neat! I don't think I've seen that effect in any other JSW room. I'll have to remember that the next time I write a JSW game with ramps (Afrikaan will have vertical conveyors instead). These kind of ramps have a direction of 2 (valid ramps have a direction of 0 for '\' or 1 for '/'). There is a similar but less elegant invalid ramp in Goodnite Luddite's "A SUNBURST NIGHT", which has a direction of 255. The effects of directions 2-255 (in Offset 218 = DAh) are not yet documented TTBOMK (even values are drawn as '\' and odd values as '/', but the behaviour is still very much uncharted territory). >> [78] "a place with no nAME": this room looks like it was drawn by >> a sixteen-year-old (it reminds me of "The Cave" in party willy >> JSW-MM_OLD.TAP) - which i suppose is a neat contrast to all the >> sophisticated rooms in this game! 😉 > > It's always fascinating to hear opinions like this. I can see what > you mean, but I would have never made the connection by my own > accord. The ambiguity of 8x8 and 16x16px graphics and the > atmospheres they produce really is what makes them so 'magical' > to me. Ambiguity? Like whether the item in "Watch Tower" is an apple or a bag of gold? Yes, the sprites in the original JSW are certainly open to multiple interpretations! 🙂 I don't see this ambiguity in my own games, but perhaps other people do... >> [104] "X-es mark the sPOTS": "Xs" or even "X's" would be better >> english, but i just love the design-pattern in the centre of the >> screen that gives access to the conveyor: >> ..|..|.. >> <<|..|.. >> ........ >> ..-..-.. >> --....-- >> ..-..-.. > > I always like those diagrams you seem to generate out of nowhere > :). Are you using Specsaisie (I think I spelled that right!)? SPECSAISIE RoomJSW (or RoomMM) generates these diagrams, although ramps, conveyors, items &c. still have to be inserted by hand. If it's a small diagram (as in the above example), I just draw it by hand rather than redirecting the output of SPECSAISIE RoomJSW to a text-file so I can copy & paste. > I tried to get that running one day but I can't remember what I > needed to run it that I didn't have. I do care about making the installation-instructions as helpful as possible, so please let me know of any difficulties you have. I'm even thinking of installing Java and SPECSAISIE on a new PC so that I can document the exact steps required. > It really would benefit from a seperate jumping sprite. I guess > that would be doable in JSW64 somehow. That would require a patch to the game-engine, regardless of whether it's JSW48, JSW128 or JSW64. > I love promised lands and forbidden grounds because they blur the > distinction between display and gameplay, which is also the reason > I like little areas which you can explore but are there just for > atmospheric purposes, like a spare branch on a tree that you can > walk on or something. I would always give the player an incentive (e.g. an item) to visit such areas, unless I was trying to lull the player into doing something useless (as recently discussed in Daniel's review of Manic Scribbler and Darth Melkor's reply thereto). --------------- second playtest --------------- [24] "NUULL--HAANDSHAAKEE!!": i like the design-pattern for jumping up onto the platform next to the leftmost hg: ||*** ..... ..... ..... ---.. ***-- [45] "Noted": a unique room visually, with nice use of a fire-cell to provide access to the room below (you can jump through the fire-cell and fall through the adjacent platform). [47] "Key bored": another unique room-design, and it's interesting how you can pass the two black hgs either by jumping over them both together, or by nestling in between them and hoping that you remember the right hg's right boundary correctly! [48] "leafy LANE": i remember my real spectrum crashing on me as i struggled with this room in 2001. a rare exploitation of having to use ramp-cells to `duck' under guardians, and it's intriguing how the following pattern of fire-cells can only be passed from right to left: ..//.* (these ramp-cells are purely decorative) .../.. ...... ...... *..*.. |||||| [52-57] "nye eve ity": an innovative use of teleporters to apparently change the screen-layout - this is the advantage of having many more than 64 rooms at your disposal. but it would have been nice to reward the player with an item at the end (it's easy to forget about having collected the one under the ilb in "stolen THUNDER!" [40], and to think "what was the point of going through "nye eve ity"?). [58] "EXTRA terrestRIAL gratIFicAtion": nice use of invalid-arrow pairs to allow willy to jump up for the items. it's a shame we haven't seen many more invalid arrows in the five years since strangel, as strangel really took invalid-arrow technology (which was introduced with one very simple example) to a new level. _____the use of a blank white conveyor to hide the arrows themselves is an elegant aesthetic touch, and the ghost ramp-cell (which behaves as air) left by the invalid arrows is a cool quirk. _____the ink-colour of air will be the ink-colour of any ghosts in the room (other examples: ghosts left by the premature-crumbling bug in manic miner, and ghost-conveyors - not supported by jswed, which gives no way of extending conveyors beyond the bottom-right of the screen). [60] "Tricky lake": if you jump up off the top of the screen, it's infinite death in "the ART of FLYING" [59]. clearly this room should loop back to itself at the top, as it does at the bottom. _____you also encounter infinite death by /walking/ out of this room via the earth-cell at (12,30). [72] "< DETATCHED >": is this spelling deliberately solecistic? _____it's intriguing how you /can/ jump left out of this room, but that you have to step back from the edge of the platform to do so! [129] "Micro Climb It": some deceptive jumps are needed to cross this room from right to left, and the stationary butler is a nice aesthetic touch (stationary guardians can be horizontal or vertical, but vertical makes the guardian-class more reusable as all guardian-instances will stay in the columns you put them in - (start-)column being an instance-datum). phantom giZmos: 099 Tyme 09:43am i estimate three further playtests. -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew’s third playtest of Strangel: this message follows on from message 5399. a tough day for me today, as i hit a part of the game with lots of one-way exits, and spent ages contemplating the collectibility of the bottom-left item in "er tAp Darnce" [49], eventually having to leave the area without either success or a proof of uncollectibility 😮 (could be a job for SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW, although it doesn't recognise teleporters yet... but then i saw the answer in jswed, and extended my playtest to collect it). phantom giZmos: 143 Tyme 11:35am ---------------------- room-specific comments ---------------------- [1] "Ins ( HADOW )": some nice quirky features, including having to stop on a conveyor to jump straight up, and jumping over a fire-cell to land inside adjacent water-cells, but i spent far too long trying to jump left from /under/ the diagonal guardian. _____the upper green butler has unidirectional animation - is this intentional? [5] "venDed F0OD": what a truly quirky invalid ramp! (direction =85). is it the overhead ramp/floor-cell that dumps you through the conveyor? an amazing discovery! [9] "BAD HAiR daY": you have to jump into this room at the bottom-right, but it's easy to encounter infinite death if you jump fromtoo far to the left. _____i like the ascent-avoidance challenge at the top-right. [20] "FUMbling in the DARk": a darth-melkorish room reminiscent of the four extra rooms in pm-jsw, with its near-random cell-placements and many items. _____it's intriguing what black-paper air does to a game with the "black willy" patch applied. [29] "betTER shape UP": it's intriguing how the combination of an ilb and a ramp gives you the illusion of being able to fall through 8 cell-rows without dying! ....|. ..|... |..... ...... ...... ...... ...... ...../ ..../ [30] "clueLEsS": visually unique. [34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": it's intriguing how the blind entrance from the conveyor in "in THE spotLITE" [25] makes you think you're still on a left-conveyor and induces you to run into a guardian! [35] "rHythm and blues Angus Steakhaus": an intriguing room of quirky features once i got past the unfair one-way exit from my first visit. particularly noteworthy is the cunning use of a sticky conveyor, forcing you to make a pixel-perfect jump through the ramp-cell: ||..........|| ......--...-.| |-$.../....$-| |||========||| however, there's an infinite-death scenario if you stand on the water-cell at (7,28) and jump right into "clueLEsS" [30]. [39] "sisSy TOp": several interesting quirky design-patterns here, such as: (a) the jump through the overhead earth-cell needed to get up onto a platform without hitting a fire-cell: *... |||. ...- .... .-.- (b) the way you can walk through the tall, blinking horizontal guardian (technically two of them); (c) the two different cell-rows in which you can land by jumping left into the following column of earth-cells: | | . | | [49] "er tAp Darnce": an intriguing take on "The Bathroom" from the original jsw. [51] "M T rOoMs": an intriguing array of quirky features in the middle of this room: ......|....... *---|......... -----------..| |||>>>>>>>>>.. ........-..... ........|*...- .....*..|-...| .../|||||||||. but there's a pretty serious flaw in the geography, as you cannot take both the bottom-left item in this room and the rightmost item in "trICK STEP" [16] (two rooms to the left) before you are forced to take the one-way exit down from this room (it takes seven room-exits to get back here if you know the shortest route, which starts with the nightmarish descent of "walK tHe paTH OF THE PRECiOUS 1s" [71]). [59] "the ART of FLYING": an inventive use of invalid-arrow pairs to make the player fall through moving gaps from a great height (there's a similar feature in the brilliant spectrum platform-game _bruce lee_, which is basically jsw + ladders + kicking and punching, with more intelligent guardians, but without the intricate set challenges and quirky features of jsw). [68] "fuLLy Clothed": jumping through the ilbs at the bottom-left are nasty one-way exits if you haven't collected the items in the correct order. i had to roll back to a not-so-recent snapshot on disk to rectify the mistake i made on my first visit. [79] "the BAL cony": this room reminds me of the spectrum-game _freddy hardest_ (part 2), with its split-level screen-layout and the monkeys(?) that look like they're brachiating along overhead rails. [86] "so yOu ThiNk You're Clev": a really cruel trick to make the player think they should be able to collect the bottom-left item in "er tAp Darnce" [49] this way - i spent ages agonising over it before i gave up and left the area. [108] "Strange BIRD": a delightfully `manic miner' atmosphere. [111] "water is BlUE": a prime example of using an item to lure a player to his/her death - it looks as though you should be able to escape after jumping up onto the main wall, but you have to sacrifice a life if you do it this way. -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew’s fourth playtest of Strangel: this message follows on from message 5414. ---------------------- room-specific comments ---------------------- [13] "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT": cool room-title 🙂 [14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre": another cool room-title (which references a painting by rené magritte, "ceci n'est pas une pipe"), this is an intriguingly quirky room of invalid ramp-cells with a direction-byte of 59. [20] "FUMbling in the DARk": the air-cell at (0,9) is just crying out for an item to fulfill the WIN-pattern (wall-item-nasty). i suggest moving the item at (1,10) to (0,9). [21] "fast ACTING MELTUS!": good use of an invalid arrow to wipe out a platform after a certain time has elapsed, making the player have to reregister his/her start-position strategically. _____but the infinite-death scenario if you jump left at the bottom-left is gratuitously nasty (there's no /direct/ option of walking out at this level). [38] "gunzan money": the combination of a ramp and fire-cells creates a simple yet unique (afaik) challenge, as it would not be possible to get past these fire-cells without the ramp: |-..../. -..../.. ..../... .../.... ../..... ./...... /*$$*$$* ======== [40] "stolen THUNDER!": a beautiful example of how you can pass through fire-cells in column 0 or 31 as you enter a room from the left or right respectively. because you have to jump rather than walk in, you don't experience repeated loss of lives until you move (please excuse the ambiguity of that sentence). [41] "hiGH PAsS Filter": it's all too easy to fall to infinite death in the room below, which could be prevented by fire-cells in the top row. [44] "It's a nOIse BeinG Noisy": falling through the leftmost hole in row 14 is an infinite-death scenario; falling through the middle or rightmost hole is a one-way exit (and it's a very long way back to this room). [58] "EXTRA terrestRIAL gratIFicAtion": it makes no sense to be able to go down to "fuLLy Clothed" [68] by jumping through the ilb. [62] "STICKY end ?": it's nice to see some more invalid arrows, but it's quite a long way back to this room if you fall off the bottom without collecting both items. [83] "HEY! HEY! CAN YOU RELATE?!": infinite death if you walk off the bottom-middle platform to the left. [84/85]: "iTemerAnts by tHE po0l": a really cool room-idea (was it inspired by "itemerant" in Philip Bee's _JSW (again)_ in any way?), flairsomely executed, especially with the use of a teleporter to animate the fake items (colour-cycling guardians). [86] "frostie plaice": this reminds me of my afrikaan room-idea "FROSTI" (named for the björk track), which will also have white-paper background, but will feature a rope from which you have to jump for items. _____the forbidden holy ground is most intriguing as it gives the illusion of moving holes in the platforms, when in fact you have to jump up for the item from below (through an overhead earth-cell). [107] "turnabout": a major choice-point in the game. if you go right, it takes fifteen room-exits (through done-and-dusted rooms) to return here. if you go up, it takes many many more. phantom giZmos: 241 Tyme 1:56pm -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew’s fifth playtest: this message follows on from message 5429. ---------------------- room-specific comments ---------------------- [34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": that seemingly unreachable rope giving access to "NUCLEAR c@s GeT new HOME" [36] (which i thought was purely aesthetic because i didn't have my lateral-thinking cap on) is one wicked trick! i had to go in deep, using SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW, to find a way into [36] - this is the only way to collect all the items in [36] itself, "MicroVILLi" [37] and "i nformation" [46], which i thought for a long time was impossible! 🙂 [37] "MicroVILLi": the most spectacular use of invalid-arrow pairs in the game, to create narrow, fast-moving platforms which in turn inspired the technical design of goodnite luddite's "APOCRYPHALLY APOSTOLIC APOSTASY!" and "STATIONS OF THE KNIFE". [45] "Noted": who would have thought diagonal guardians would have opened up such a new field of quirky features? (erroneous colour-attributes in rows 0 & 1, which behave as water, thus nullifying some earth- and fire-cells). _____i can't tell you how long i spent trying to find a way from the top middle to the top right before i discovered the secret of [34]! [46] "i nformation": another room which drove me mad for a long time until i discovered the secret of [34], as i could only collect one item and kamikaze another. _____in fact this room is a prime example of items which are easy to kamikaze, but much more challenging and satisfying to collect without sacrificing a life. _____the room requires a couple of very tight jumps under vertical guardians, and i find it most intriguing that exiting this room to the left - which looks like one of those unintentional loopholes i see so often in others' games - is the only way out of the [36,37,44,45,46] cluster. phantom giZmos: 250 Tyme 2:08pm ---------- SPECSAISIE ---------- RoomReachJSW is an inverse lookup-function that tells you the direct connections to a given JSW room - the exits TO that room, not FROM it. RoomReachJSW is written for 48K JSW games: currently it iterates over 64 rooms only, and does not recognise John Elliott's teleport-patch either. But RoomReachJSW can be applied to JSW128 games by calling it for each of the four banks of 64 rooms separately (after using SPECSAISIE Split 3 6 to extract them as individual TAP files). The target room-number (the input to the function) is the same in every bank, but the source room-numbers (printed by the function) have to be offset by 0, 64, 128 or 192. I do intend to write a proper version of RoomReachJSW that handles JSW128 and JSW64, but first I have to implement SPECSAISIE's model of 128K memory, and methods for loading 128K SNA files and JSW128/JSW64 TAP files into SPECSAISIE, not to mention a bank:offset notation that can be used anywhere that an address is expected. Today I wrote SPECSAISIE TeleportJSW, which lists the teleporters in a JSW48 or JSW128 game that uses John Elliott's teleport-patch. Some of that code will eventually help RoomReachJSW to recognise teleporters. -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew’s sixth, final playtest: (this follows on from message 5431) i finally completed strangel with a toilet-time of 3:06pm! 🙂 the toilet-run really is an extraordinary effort - far more than i can imagine putting into an end-sequence. why did it take me so long to complete my playtest? the sticking-point had been the following items: [2] "Extra Lucid OUTlet": (12,8) [14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre": (9,28) [16] "trICK STEP": (6,25); (13,24) i can't believe it took me so long to realise that "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] was crossable from left to right. 😮 most of this long time was spent trying to reach the bottom-right of "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] from the room itself - i even found a quirky jump through the conveyor (across the room-boundary from "trICK STEP"), but it's not helpful. i even used SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW to analyse all possible connections leading to the above 4 items, and i think it is instructive to post this analysis: --------------------- reachability-analysis --------------------- [2] "Extra Lucid OUTlet" is reachable by going: - right from "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] (would solve my problem) - up from "Ins ( HADOW )" [1] (useful if i could get to top-left of [1]) - down from "cAvernOUS-MUSings" [6] (useful if i could get to bottom-left of [6] and fall under the ramp) - left from "skY laRK!!" [18] (not helpful) [1] "Ins ( HADOW )" is reachable by going: <snip useless connections> [6] "cAvernOUS-MUSings" is reachable by going: <snip useless connections> [17] "laying down <THE LAw>" is reachable by going: - up from "trICK STEP" [16] (would solve my problem) - left from "Extra Lucid OUTlet" [2] (not helpful) - right from "clueLEsS" [30] (not helpful) - right from "iTemerAnts by tHE po0l" [84/85] (the eventual solution) [16] "trICK STEP" is reachable by going: - right from "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] (would solve my problem) - down from "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] (would solve my problem) - left from "the BAL cony" [79] (would solve my problem if i could come down at (0,0) on willy's leftmost frame) [79] "the BAL cony" is reachable by going: <snip useless connections> [14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre" is reachable by going: - up from "LEAST significant BIT" [11] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-right of [11]) - left from "trICK STEP" [16] (would solve my problem) - right from "suSpensIoN BREAKDOWN" [10] (not helpful) [11] "LEAST significant BIT" is reachable by going: - left from "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT" [13] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-left of [13]) - down from "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] (not helpful) - right from "the gRoPing spacE" [19] (not helpful) [13] "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT" is reachable by going: - right from "LEAST significant BIT" [11/12] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-right of [11/12]) - left from "Fl0oR flAW" [7] (not helpful) [12] "LEAST significant BIT" is reachable by: - teleport from "LEAST significant BIT" at (9,24) (not helpful) ------------------- new quirky feature! ------------------- i wanted to see if it would actually be possible to enter the main body of "trICK STEP" [16] by falling down into the top-left of "the BAL cony" [79], which has a fire-cell at (0,0) - would willy be able to dodge it by coming down on his leftmost sprite-frame and walking left immediately? the answer is yes - if only there were a room from which willy could go down from the leftmost cell-column, facing left with his leftmost sprite-frame. there is no such room, so i edited unused room 130 ("the pipe room") as follows: ________________________________ ||||||||*|-----|.....|*||||||||| ________________________________ .......|*|||||||.....||--------- ________________________________ .......|*...*..|.....||||||||||| ________________________________ ||||||||*...*..|................ ________________________________ *...*...*...|--|................ ________________________________ ||--|..........|-------|........ ________________________________ |......................*........ ________________________________ |......................*........ ________________________________ ||--|...............|--|........ ________________________________ ........*........|.............. ________________________________ ........|-----|..............||| ________________________________ ........*.....*..............||| note the earth-cell in this row> ...|----|.....|--------||||..... to force willy to land on his___ ..............*........||||..... leftmost frame!_________________ ..............*........||||||||| ________________________________ ..|--|--|-----|........||||||||| ________________________________ __________the pipe room_________ |||||||.........-|||||........-| *|-|.*|**.*-.|.*--*|-..-|*--*-** ...............-||...........-|| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ..............-||...........-||| |.....|..|......|....|.........| ||||.........-||...........-||.| ......|..|..........|||........| ...||.......-||...........-||..| ......|..|.....................| ....||.....-||...........-||...| |............................... ..........-||...........-......| ................|..--|||........ .........-||.......*...-....|||| .......||.......|||||||||......| ||.....||||.......-|||||.......| |||||||||--...--|||||||||||||||| .................-...-.||*.....| |..............................| ................-...-..-||.....| |..............................| ||.............-...-..-.-||....| |..............................| |||...........-...-..-.--.||.... ...............-...............| ||||.........-...-..-.--...||... ................................ |||||.*.....-...-..-.--...*|||.. ....*...*.........*....*..*..... |||||||||||-|||||||||||||||||||| |------------------------------| ___________trICK STEP___________ __________the BAL cony__________ it's a vertical variant of the quirky feature whereby you can walk past a column of fire-cells in the leftmost or rightmost cell-column of a room. -- dr. andrew broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

I have played and completed "STRANGEL"*. My walkthrough can be download from its page on JSW Central and the video on YouTube made from it is here. I will quote below excerpts from my review of the game which was published on 25 September 2008 in the MM/JSW Yahoo! Group. Since my review refers to Andrew Broad's earlier comments, in the following message I will also quote what Andrew published on the Yahoo! Group forum. "It took me three days of intense playing (using every spare moment of the day, including two weekend days, and a portion of each night) to complete "strangel" for the first time. Then it took me two more days of similar effort to RZX-record it to my satisfaction. I must say the game is so good I just couldn't resist the temptation, I wanted so badly first to confirm that it is really completable and then to see how efficiently I could complete it. I played after having read the text file included with the game and with some help "from" JSWED in analysing some rooms, but without any other outside help, such as reading messages about "strangel" posted previously in the Group. Towards the end of my first run I got seriously stuck with 11 items to go, four of them in the cluster "Extra Lucid OUTlet", "ceci n'est pas une chambre" and "trICK STEP", and five in the room "i nformation". At that point I finally consulted the Group messages and found Andrew Broad's summary of his full, six-part playtest of "strangel", which gave me the hints I needed to figure out how to complete the game. (...) I completed my first go at the game with a toilet-time quite similar to (in fact, slightly worse than) Andrew's (3:24 pm versus 3:06 pm) and I got stuck in very similar places (although I had solved the "rope puzzle of room 34" earlier, but then I didn't know how to enter "i nformation" on the right-hand side). I feel there is little I can say in my review that would not be a repetition of Andrew's comments, so I will just say I generally agree with all he said, and particularly with the generous praise he gives to the game. "strangel" is a fantastic work of JSW art, brightly devised and "flairsomely executed", extremely interesting and innovative from the technical point of view and impressive in the sense of the graphics. Plus it has this weird atmosphere which is a quality in itself. It shows what a great JSW author Sendy is, and while I am at it, let me say (again) that I earnestly hope that she will release more games soon (...). If I were to express some criticism of "strangel", I would say that the geography of the game is really frustrating until you get a good grasp of it. Ultimately it is not an obstacle for completing the game efficiently (which I hope my RZX walkthrough proves) since you don't have to pass through too many rooms already cleared of items if you follow the right route, but until one starts to remember the exits and interconnections between the rooms, one gets easily annoyed over the complicated layout (well, this may not really be criticism – who says a game should be easy or that the layout should be easy?). Also, purely as my individual preference, I am not really fond of the font used. It is not easy to read, which combined with the strangeness of many of the room-names and mixed upper- and lower-case spelling makes it difficult to remember the names, which complicates the problem of geography even further. The "font problem" abates in JSWED. But using JSWED to crack the mysteries of some games can be very misleading too, which I painfully found out while analysing, with the colour attributes changed to my "standard" ones (black for Air, blue for Earth, green for Water, yellow for Fire, red for Conveyor and Magenta for Ramp) how to exit "Noted" in order to enter "i nformation" on the right-hand side... The unfair infinite-death scenarios which Andrew pointed out are probably the only "objective" flaws which I can find in the game, but then there are just a few of them, and in the snapshot-saving era of emulated gaming they are not that much of a problem, either. Now, just to highlight some points on the positive side, the invalid ramp technology is very impressive and deserves further study and development. The invalid arrow technology is great, too, and a number of design patterns requiring the player to make difficult jumps deserve to be reused in other games. (...) The final sequence is fantastic. I was proud of the innovative elements of the final sequence of "JSW: The 2005 Megamix", which I had designed without ever playing "strangel", but I can now see how primitive they are in the visual sense (while their technical value still holds, I believe). I should really try and link the technical with the visual in the final sequence of "JSW: The 2009 Megamix" – but now I won't be able to avoid drawing on some patterns set by "strangel", I'm afraid... [2023 comment: "JSW: The 2010 Megamix" features the longest and most challenging toilet run ever designed, during which the player still has to play the game - not just sit back in enjoy, and it's very hard in the Hard Version. Several of the rooms during the toilet run are rooms copied from "STRANGEL", as a tribute to Sendy's game, with added challenges.] So, to sum up, congratulations, Sendy, on this classic 2001 contribution of yours to the scene, and I look forward to enjoying new fruits of your designing genius 🙂 ." * When creating its webpage on JSW Central, I had a careful look at the spelling of the game's title and, based on the game file itself and the Readme, I decided the correct spelling was all in capital letters. I have used it consistently ever since.

Yes, it is a very nice and atmospheric place indeed 🙂 .

Thank you for your kind words, Mtm! 🙂 As in the case of "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE", the credit and praise go first and foremost to Carl Paterson, the creator of this excellent game! This statement, concerning "AmAZiNG WiLLY", does not need correction, unless you also include "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" in your comparison - if so, the latter has even more musical variety than the former. Let me elaborate. At the time of its release, "AmAZiNG WiLLY" (v. 2, which was the first version released) was the most music-intense JSW game for the Spectrum ever released. As of v. 3 (which expands a little bit in this compartment in relation to v. 2), "AW" features a brand-new title screen tune, 12 in-game tunes which are 128-byte-long, one... erm... let's call it "special in-game tune" which is also 128 bytes long plus 3 in-game tunes which are 64 bytes long. Byte-wise, that would be an equivalent of 29 standard 64-byte-long in-game tunes (!). Additionally, as of v. 3 the game also includes the Moonlight Sonata (the original title-screen tune from "JSW", of course) used as an additional 'after-Game Over tune'. Among these tunes, most were coded for a JSW game for the very first time. The exceptions are: the original tunes from "Manic Miner" and "Jet Set Willy" - however, both of them are featured in extended 128-byte (rather than 64-byte) versions, with a modified second part, and "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini", which was the first tune I ever coded - I used it in "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre 48K Edition", but in a 64-byte version only. "AW" features an improved 128-byte-long version. All of the remaining tunes, i.e. 9 128-byte-long tunes and 3 64-byte-long tunes have not ever been used in any Spectrum JSW game before. Furthermore, there are some tricks like featuring some of the tunes playing at different speeds, or a 128-byte-long tune in one room playing only its first part (64-bytes-long). These are things that I believe have not been applied in any JSW game before. "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" takes this musical variety even further. It features a brand-new title-screen tune, 13 brand-new 128-byte-long in-game tunes which have been coded specially for it (TTBOMK they have not been used in any JSW game before. To be exact, two of them share 64 bytes between them, so you could probably say the game features 12.5 brand new 128-byte-long in-game tunes 😉), one... erm... "special in-game tune" which is also 128-byte long and unused before, two brand-new 64-byte-long in-game tunes coded specially for this game and unused before, and one 128-byte long in-game tune which has also been coded specially for this game, but has been used before, in a shorter, 64-byte-long version and coded in a different key (by Andrew Broad in "Goodnite Luddite"). It should be mentioned that Richard Hallas's document "A Miner Triad. Music in Jet-Set Willy and both versions of Manic Miner" was instrumental (pun intended) in managing and coding the music for both games (and various other projects). Furthermore, Richard's 1985 classic "Join the Jet-Set!" offered the player a choice of ten in-game tunes. However, the chosen tune is POKEd into memory before the game starts, so effectively there is only one in-game tune every time you play and it can only be changed by reloading the game and choosing a different tune. Moreover, information provided by Ian Rushforth (IRF) was essential for the modification of the length and speed of the in-game tunes.

Amen to that! 👍 And maybe a couple more beyond the 50th... 🙂

Thank you! 🙂 This happens in the Special Edition of "Willy's New Mansion". The in-game tune in "The Front Door" (60) changes in mid-room. It is "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (from "Manic Miner", also used in "Jet Set Willy II: The Final Frontier") when Willy is outside the house, and it turns to "If I Were a Rich Man" (from the original "JSW") as soon as he steps inside. When creating "Willy's New Mansion", I wasn't yet able to code in-game tunes (I didn't realise how easy it is). If I had been, I would have probably coded two new tunes there. Still, the original tunes from "JSW" and "MM" are always great to hear 🙂 .

Yes, that's absolutely correct! I'm not sure you can say the place is 'inaccessible', though, it's just that Willy would get killed if he tried to be in that particular position/location. Which still does not make it a Forbidden Hallowed Ground, of course. This is where Willy can stand (until he gets killed by the arrow or the boulder guardian):

Thanks for your kind words, Mtm! 🙂 Inspired by your mention of "Ultimate Manic Miner", I have just posted an extensive 'historical' comment about it in another thread, which I believe is more appropriate than this one.

The release of Igor Makovsky's "Ultimate Manic Miner" was a much-expected event on the MM/JSW scene back in 2005/2006. This was due to Igor's pre-release announcements and teasers. After the release, there were quite a lot of reactions, ranging from awe and high praise to strong criticism, and a fierce debate regarding the use of the so-called "quirky features" (or "bugs", according to the critics) in JSW games ensued. Igor went out of his way to impress the audience with exploiting all possible features of the JSW64 game engine. He also carried out a strong 'promotion campaign' on the Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group before the game's release. To quote from a message he posted back in September 2005: "It uses JSW 64 engine. Every of 64 rooms presents you some interesting effect of the JSW engine (both old and JSW64) or a quirky feature, not letting you feel boring. Tons of triggers, stoppers and MANY MORE!" To quote from some other posts in the Yahoo! Group he made later on: "I want this game to be a really surprise for all the members, so I will keep all the secrets about it now. You won't regret about waiting for so long. 😃 promise..." "In fact, this game is the result of all my JSW-editing experience since 2000 and I want it to be such a game, that won't make you regret for waiting it for so long." "I warn you that UMM is strictly restricted for playing to those people, who keep their mental health ok and don't want to see all the scenes, I've included to keep the atmosphere of the panic, horror and appearance of the unknown forces in a mine, where Willy came to work (because of Willy, himself)." "I wish to create UMM with unusual effects of engine, not changing any code only with my own secrets of designing rooms (...)". "I now work under the last quarter of rooms making some unbelievable effects so that player would be interested in trying to solve the whole game and not to stop playing." "...and wait for UMM where all the rooms will bring more surprises and won't make you feel boring!..." "I just advice you to put something fast'n'heavy like Apocalyptica in your hi-fi system when playing my game. =)))" The expectation in the Yahoo! Group was high. Before the release, there were comments like: "Anyway from what you say about UMM it should be an almost euphoric experience to play when it finally arrives" (comment by the DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!); "(...) UMM looks like it will be incredible" (comment by Carl Murray) and "This new screeshot from UMM confirms that your future game will be really a very great game! it's very beautiful" (comment by Herve Ast). The game was released on 20 February 2006. There were a lot of very positive reactions from the Yahoo! Group members: "And what a game it is. The intro blew me away. It's... it's... so beautiful... You totally took us to a new level. You are _the_ master. *bows down*." - Jet Visy "I love the atmosphere and the overall graphical style, it's very vivid and leaves a lasting impression in the imagination (...) Wonderful stuff :)" - Sendy "Your new game is fantastic. The quality of the graph of the rooms is incredible. It's an enormous work to arrive at this result. It's a strange atmosphere, unknown and it will take much time before explored whole." - Herve Ast "Igor I think UMM is unbelievible, I've spent most of yesterday playing it, and I'm not very far yet. The gameplay itself doesn't seem ridiculously hard but it's working the secrets out so far that seems to be the way of progressing. All in all it blew me away (...) All in all, all I can say is well done you've far outdone yourself this time (...) It was well worth the wait!!! Cheers you've made my week." - the DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! "WOW! I am soo amazed! 😄 its just so great (...)" - Dasse "I had a quick, casual go of UMM today, and it was enough to see that the game deserves full marks for novelty, amazing graphics, and a unique atmosphere. It seems to be an excellent showcase of what can be achieved withJSW64 with the extra cell-classes, cell-types, and guardian-types (...) It's also nice to see some quirky features. (...)" - Andrew Broad "Wow! Wow! Er, wow! What else can I say? It's smegging incredible! I thought ZX Heroes pushed the JSW engine as far as it could go, but this... It's like comparing Half Life to Quake 2! The ideas, the graphics, the animation... Without meaning to sound like one of those pompous "intellectuals" on late night BBC 2, you've elevated JSW design to a new level, to a new art form. Wow!" - Carl Murray "I have had my first look at "Ultimate Manic Miner", and I have to say that "ultimate" it really is! I haven't played it very seriously yet, just wandered around a bit (...), but I can already express my very high praise to Igor for this groundbreaking product. It does set new standards, indeed, and it is a very powerful show, for me at least, of the possibilities offered by the JSW64 game engine (...). Igor, your game is truly wonderful in the sense of the atmosphere, graphics and new ideas. When playing it, I had the feeling I was not playing a JSW game at all, so different it was from the "traditional" games." - Daniel (myself) There was also some criticism. Andrew Broad pointed to two aspects of the game: "One downside of UMM (and, I guess, of JSW64) is the uncertainty. Because there are so many cell-classes, it's hard to know what to expect in terms of cell-behaviour, whether something is a guardian or not, whether it is stand-onable or not. The other downside of UMM is the lack of items, most of which seem to be hidden inside portals, or to be extra-life items (not necessary to fulfill the ending-condition if the sole aim is to escape?). So I guess I'll miss the joy of being able to tick off rooms as I clear them of items." After completing the game recently, I have to say that the lack of collecting items is the biggest downside of the game for me. Collecting items is a BIG part of MM and JSW, and being deprived of this particular pleasure is not something one can enjoy. Andrew Broad summed up the feelings in the Yahoo! Group when he wrote, on the World of Spectrum forums, "the general consensus in the MM/JSW community is that Ultimate Manic Miner is brilliant". Outside of the Yahoo! Group, i.e. outside of the circle of people particularly interested in and fond of "MM" and "JSW", reactions to the game were mixed. Some were very positive (e.g. "Thanx for this gem ! One of the best JSW clones ever created" - Tom-Cat), but there was also much criticism regarding various aspects of the game: "It's too messy (...) Seriously, the programmer's tried to impress soo much with screen design (awful choice of colours in some places - yellow and white???), and cluttered it up soo much, that it kinda ruins the game for me. (...)_ It's too messy, and on a couple of screens, I'm clueless on what's going on. I tire of this game far too easily." - The Starglider "It's like a prog-rock version of Manic Miner. There's an astonishing amount of detail and a lot of time and talent has gone into it and yet... there's not really any game left." - Zagreb "(...) the game appears very, very poorly designed." - Dunny "hm i dont really like it tbh." - mel the bell "I agree with Dunny on this, don't like it very much." - Daren Much of the criticism was related to the use of the "quirky features" (or "bugs", as the critics would have it) of the game engine: "Relying on engine quirks really makes it a game for a select club of people only. It makes the gameplay counter-intuitive, if not downright illogical. It's a bit like saying "jump into the cabbage to deactivate the power station"." - JMK "That is a *very* bad idea in game design in general. To rely on quirks (or to be absolutely fair, BUGS) which the player may or may not know of is grossly unfair to a player than may be new to the whole JSW phenomenon. You won't get many new JSW/MM gamers liking this at all, especially when they find out that you've *punished* them for getting past the intro." - Dunny "It would appear that unless you have knowledge of every single bug (sorry, "quirk") in MM you won't stand a chance of getting anywhere anyway. I'm still stuck on screen 4 and I give up. Finding the random holes in the scenery by sacrificing 200 lives each time is not my idea of a fun afternoon." - Malc74 "Great graphics and use of the engine, but it's possibly the least enjoyable game I've played in years. Manic Miner and JSW were fun because you could see what you were supposed to do generally, even if it sometimes took a lot of skill to do it. But a game where you can't even see what you are supposed to do to get off a screen, and instead have to pause the emulator, read this forum, a page about JSW "quirks" etc - that's just a waste of everyone's time." - Neil^P More criticism (partly by the same people) was also expressed on the comp.sys.sinclair forum (there were also some positive or balanced reviews there): "It just looks like the guy's gone all-out trying to get a MM/JSW style game to do stuff that it wasn't intended to do, and made a right mess of it in the process. You can certainly *play* it. But as there's very little that can actually kill you, it's no real fun." - Dunny "Graphically, it's been superceded by many other games in your own archive. I can appreciate that you're a fan of MM/JSW (as am I - there's been some fantastic work done with the engine), but you can take fanboy-ism too far. Not every new release is "fantastic". This is just abysmal. The guy has really tried to break through the barriers thrown up by the engine and just not succeeded at all in anything other than an insult to the original games." - Dunny (replying to Andrew Broad's message) "I can't say that I found this game enjoyable at all. It was annoying, it had attribute clash all over the place, the screens had no clear objectives. I would have to give this a 4/10. Only saving grace was the excellent music, but that doesn't make a game great. And I have played many other versions of JSW, that were far better implemented than this effort." - Daz "Ultimate Manic Miner" was the last major JSW project ever released by Igor Makovsky. Afterwards, Igor released two more JSW64 games, but they were smaller projects, one having 21 edited rooms, the other 6, incidentally, both inspired by his girlfriends (different ones in each case, AFAICT 😉) at the time. I have always thought that the lack of uniformly positive reception of "UMM" must have been a disappointment for Igor and must have affected his enthusiasm for the creation of new JSW games. That's just my personal theory. I hope he will make a comeback someday, though, like other authors have done...

Thanks for posting the screenshots, Andy! 👍 I would have two suggestions. One is to use the term "Forbidden Hallowed Ground", which was recently discussed between Sendy and myself in this thread. I believe adding the word "Hallowed" adds an air of importance and mystery to this term 🙂 . My other suggestion would be to delete "Cuckoo's Nest" from the screenshot selection, as it is definitely NOT a "Forbidden Hallowed Ground". By definition, this should be a place which the player cannot reach without using the Writetyper cheat or POKEing the game. The spot in the "Cuckoo's Nest" which you show is, in fact, very easy to reach: Willy only has to jump through the ramp (at the floor level) and continue walking right, then jump up vertically at the edge of the green leaves (once he is beyond the Fire cells above him). It is true that once he is in the position you have shown, he will not be able to go back safely and will have to lose a life (or all lives if he drops down to the room below). However, the concept of "Forbidden Hallowed Ground" is NOT about being unable to get out/back safely, it's about being unable to reach the given spot. So "Cuckoo's Nest" does not belong there.

Thank you for your feedback, MtM! 👍 The congratulations and gratitude for creating this great game go to Carl Paterson, its author 🙂 . He designed all of the beautiful rooms we can now enjoy (I only assisted with some 'postproduction' aspects, such as music). Thank you, Carl! 🙂 I'm glad you have mentioned that, because it is one of the things I've been 'preaching' very hard all along: that it is good to have a clear distinction between games that are evidently new games (using the excellent JSW game engine and its general concept, and perhaps some other elements, like selected sprites - but still new games) and 'products' which are not new games as such, but modifications of the original JSW (and MM, respectively), sometimes very minor, sometimes a little more expanded, but still not enough to be considered new games. On JSW Central, the distinction is made at the level of the lists: the "List of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy games for the ZX Spectrum", with all its sublists, is the place where (what I consider to be) new games are listed, while there are separate lists for what I classify as "Versions of the original MM" and "Versions of the original JSW". It is an arbitrary choice of how to classify a given game, of course. In some cases, the classification is not so obvious, which has led me to create a sublist called "B. Advanced modifications of the original Jet Set Willy" within the list of "II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48) Games using Matthew Smith's original Jet Set Willy game engine for the 48K Spectrum and its modifications". Fortunately, in case of "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" (as well as Carl's first game "AmAZiNG WiLLY") there is no doubt whatsoever: they are new games, allowing the player to experience brand-new parts of Willy's universe, while still using the exquisite game mechanics of Matthew Smith's timeless original 🙂 .

It's quite a cruel punishment for being inept enough to lose a life! 😉

Updates on the JSW Central YouTube channel since the last video I mentioned in this thread: "Willy's Afterlife" "Manic Scribbler" "Jet Set Willy: Spectrum Computing" "Goodnite Luddite" "Ultimate Manic Miner" "Manic Panic" "Skint Willy" "Willy the Rogue" "Still Stealin'" "Manic Miner Mythologies: Eugene - Lord of the Bathroom" "Monstrum!" "Willy in the Islands of Mystery (Part 1: Exploration)" The videos of "Goodnite Luddite", "Manic Panic", "Skint Willy", "Willy the Rogue" and "Steal Stealin'" were made from RZX walkthroughs I had recorded previously (back in 2007 in case of "Goodnite Luddite", in 2019 in case of the three parts of the "Down and Out Trilogy" and in 2021 in case of "Manic Panic"). The video of "Ultimate Manic Miner" was made from an RZX recording I made recently, as I had not played this game to completion before. I managed to complete it at 11:35 pm, which is an improvement over the other publicly available recording(s) of this visually-stunning game. For the other six videos, I replayed and re-recorded them in order to improve my own earlier performances. I hugely improved my previous score in "Manic Scribbler" - from 25,465 points to 32,730 points. I moderately improved my earlier score in "Manic Miner Mythologies: Eugene - Lord of the Bathroom" - from 26,428 points to 27,001 points (I got my kicks out of beating the 27,000-point mark! 😁). Furthermore, I brought down my completion time of "Willy's Afterlife" from 8:08 am to 8:02 am, of "Jet Set Willy: Spectrum Computing" from 7:57 am to 7:51 am, of "Monstrum!" from 8:36 am to 8:24 am and of "Willy in the Islands of Mystery (Part 1: Exploration)" from 8:38 am to 8:26 am. All of the newly-recorded RZX files can be downloaded from the games' respective pages on JSW Central.

I extended the death effect in "Willy's Hoard" to make it longer (and different) than in the original "JSW" . To quote from the Readme: I modified the value of the addresses #8C1A - #8C30, copying the code from the 1985 version of "Henry's Hoard", to change the "lose a life" special effect.

There are at least two ways in which the issue of Willy dying several times in a row after getting killed has been addressed, I believe: 1. Safe restart positions. You respawn not where you died, but at a location within the same room where it's safe (you won't die again immediately). I believe (off the top of my head, without checking) that this is something that was initially done in "Jet Set Willy II", but there is also a patch for a regular JSW48 game that does it. My recent description of it is here. 2. Norman Sword's immunity. Right after being killed, Willy is immune to, I believe, any kind of danger for a second or two: he does not get killed by guardians or Fire cells or by falling from an excessive height. Norman has applied it in "Jet Set Willy in Altered Reality" (where Willy is flashing while the immunity lasts) and "Manic Jet Set Willy" (where a receding horizontal bar below the screen shows the immunity) [please note that the JSW Central web page for "Manic Jet Set Willy" needs updating, it's on my to-do list]; possibly also in some other projects, I'm not sure right now without checking. The 'side effect' of this solution is that it in some cases it allows the player to take an alternative route through the game (by sacrificing one life to be able to fall from a great height and land safely, or pass a guardian or a Fire cell that would normally not be passable), which can accelarate the completion time (by sacrificing a life/some lives you can complete the game faster than normal).

Without understanding exactly how Erix1's code modifications work, I don't think the changes I've made to the file should interfere with what can be modified using Hackulator, possibly with the exception of some changes falling within one 'class of changes': those that concern special, PV-like effects in some rooms. There was (at least) one special effect from "Maria vs Some Bastards" that was not used in "JSW: RR" (the opening of the Temple of Frogs and the related message that was printed on the screen). I wiped out that code completely and replaced it with other code, useful for "JSW: RR". I also 'built up' on some other similar code, e.g. adding the printing of guardian sprites in addition to a message being printed. Again, I'm not sure how Hackulator handles these particular special effects, but if it does, it'll certainly be confused and not do its job any more in these few particular cases. Also, in some other cases, I compacted Erix1's code related to these special effects a little bit. So there can be problems related to two issues: the code being moved up and down (if Hackulator looks for a particular address to modify a particular special effect in a given room, it may not find it where it expects) and the code being optimised. For example there was an LD A,00 instruction somewhere (3E 00). I changed it to an XOR A (AF) instruction, which produces exactly the same result, but takes only one byte (instead of two), because I needed every single byte I could get in that particular area of the code (to add some more code). However, if Hackulator should be wired to be able to insert different values there (by modifying the operand of the LD A instruction, so for example doing 3E 01 instead of 3E 00 to change the value of the address in question to 01 rather than 00), it won't work any more and, in fact, by introducing *any* changes, will actually completely mess up the code. I don't think there should be any problems with modifying the building blocks (cells) of each room. TTBOMK, I did not interfere with that at all. [EDITED: Another potential sources of problems was added.]

I'll second what MtM has said 😁.

Thanks, Ian! 👍 It's based on what you wrote, of course. Let's wait for Vidar then, to see if he approves the 'official' bugfix.

Great job, Ian! Thank you! 👍 I've done it, the results are attached. The fixed file comes first, the unfixed second. The only difference above #8000 is the #AF at ##8633. The comparison shows some differences below #8000, in the Attribute buffer at #5Cnn and #5Dnn (cavern + Willy + guardians + items + portal). I'm not sure why this happens, as the TAP file with a JSW or MM game only contains data from #8000 to #FFFF (it's a block of code loaded starting at #8000), doesn't? So what does SPECSAISIE compare below #8000? In any case, to be on the safe side, I have prepared a fixed TAP file which is only different (as analysed by SPECSAISIE) from Vidar's original file at #8633, and I also saved it as a TZX file. It is attached below, as a 'draft proposal', with a description typical of the bug-fixed versions of games I host on JSW Central. Ian, would you have any suggestions for changes in the description in the ZIP file? And Vidar, would you be so kind as to 'officially' approve it as a bug-fixed version? I mentioned your endorsement in the attached text file, but of course it's only tentative, awaiting (and hoping for) your approval. Please let us know! 🙂 eugene.txt UNAPPROVED_Please_do_not_spread_Eugene_-_Lord_of_the_Bathroom_(bugfixed_version).zip

Great, thank you! I look forward to it! 🙂

So the TAP file that has been circulating on the internet (the one that can be downloaded, among other places, from the game's page on JSW Central) is dated 09.05.1999. The game was released (according to the Chronology I once created, and it was a fruit of a careful investigation) on "17 May (or a little earlier)". So I think there is every reason to suspect that it's always been like that. [The TZX file that is also available on the web, dated 30.12.2001, is secondary; it must have been created from your original TAP file in order to be placed on the TZX Vault; it behaves exactly in the same way, i.e. jumping from the title screen to start the game immediately.] In the recording hosted on RZX Archive, the title screen and the scrolling message are indeed displayed properly. The recording was made by "Fil" (Philip Bee, I believe), and published on the RZX Archive on 19 January 2005. I have downloaded it and wanted to compare a SNA file saved it and a SNA file saved after launching your original TAP file to see if they are different (I meant to do it using Andrew Broad's SPECSAISIE). As it turns out, however, Philip Bee recorded "Eugene..." in 128K mode. Because of this, I cannot compare the files in SPECSAISIE, as it only compares 48K SNA files (I don't think it's possible to save a 48K SNA file from an emulator when the emulator is running in 128K mode, which is enforced by the RZX recording). The files could still be compared 'manually', so to speak, especially the areas of the code where the different behaviour of the program may lie. It's a little mystery then. I did try to launch your original TAP file on an (emulated) 128K Spectrum, but it behaved exactly the same way as described before (starting the game immediately). So it looks to me like Philip used a modified/different file for his recording. One thing I have not tried (because I don't remember offhand how to do it) is to try launching your original TAP file on a 128K Spectrum but in the 48K mode. I don't think it will make any difference, but perhaps someone could try it. In any case, if you checked what the problem is and released an updated version with the title screen and the scrolly displayed properly, that would certainly be good 🙂 . Your game is so fine it deserves to be available to the world without any glitches!

Hi Vidar, (or do you prefer to be addressed as Erix1?) Thank you SO MUCH for your kind words and official approval of the fixed version of "MVSB"! This is really fantastic and extremely gratifying 🙂 . I am speaking for myself now, but I am sure Ian (IRF) and Andy (Spider) who were involved in creating it share my sentiment. Also, congratulations on "MVSB" winning the Manchester PLAY Expo competition! I was there, in person, it was a very memorable weekend for me, meeting Matthew Smith, Richard Hallas, Daren Pearcy (who has since passed away...) and other guys for the first time. Good old (pre-pandemic) times 🙂 . So thank you once again, your approval and endorsement are greatly appreciated! I will post this now and then reply regarding "Eugene" in a separate message.

Ian, I'm glad you like the loading screen I created for "JSW: RR" 🙂 . Erix1's loading screen looks like that: