jetsetdanny

After deliberating for half an hour whether this game is spam or not 🤣, I have approved it and it can now be downloaded by everyone. Thanks for creating it, Jet Set Willie, and congratulations on joining the exclusive club of JSW authors! 🙂

After deliberating for half an hour whether this game is spam or not 🤣, I have approved it and it can now be downloaded by everyone. Thanks for creating it, Jet Set Willie, and congratulations on joining the exclusive club of JSW authors! 🙂

Congratulations on releasing your first JSW game, Jet Set Willie! 👍
I was involved in playtesting the game, so I know it already and I can recommend it to everyone 🙂. In some ways it's different from other JSW games created so far, which is refreshing.
A big thank you to Jet Set Willie for mentioning me in the credits 😁.

I recently found these 2 ports, written in C and SDL2 by Github user "fawtytoo". They seem very faithful to the Speccy original with a few bugfixes. You can even enable the copy protection on JSW with a tweak to the source code.
No binaries available but they compiled quite easily on Linux. They are also on Portmaster if you have one of those Anbernic or Powkiddy handheld devices (this is where I found them initially).
https://github.com/fawtytoo/ManicMiner
https://github.com/fawtytoo/JetSetWilly

One of Matthew's early games, the Spectrum version is readily available but this was not:
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/09/monster-muncher/
An interesting read at least.

I never got around (sorry) to actually comparing them. I don't currently own the original JSW2FF Spectrum release***
I had assumed they were the same because unlike other Software Project games that use the 'keypad' type code, the colours for the Spectrum and Amstrad versions were the same (colours) aka:
Blue / Red / Yellow / Green (CPC)
Blue / Red / Green / Yellow (ZX)
Ocurred to me the reason for the slight difference is because the CPC has them slightly differently ordered:
Blue/Yellow/Green/Red (Pen value and keys 1,2,3,4)
Blue/Red/Green/Yellow (Ink value and keys 1,2,4,6)
Sorry for the truncated picture but I wanted to see them side by side, I don't have any decent tools installed currently:

 
*** I do have it somewhere I thought in my clearout I'd find it but alas no.

Curiosity - was the CPC data sheet for the final frontier the same as the zx spectrum data sheet for JSW2. I could not find the sheet easily so I just took a quick photograph - whilst the photographs are not really good enough for usage - they are however good enough to answer my own question - Was the colour code the same. Answer NO.

My game, What a Wonderful World of Willie (no relation) 😋 has been almost published now. You have just to wait until some of the moderators has checked it is not spam. 😉 When I started to make it, I wanted it to be a Willy game, but without Willy himself, so I thought about suitable Willy-ish names and I came to Willie, as it felt good. (no relation) 😄
Originally I was thinking about two different games, an Indiana Jones type exploring game and a spy story.  I don´t want to spoil your playing, I just say that several Indiana type rooms were the first ones what I made. I soon I realised that those rooms alone would need tens and tens of rooms, not to talk about the jungle and other places. The game would have needed at least 256 rooms, but I am not sure, if that would have been enough. And as being busy, too, I chose to just merge my two ideas and trying to fit them in just about 60 rooms.
The original version was much harder, as I was making it just for myself. But I quickly changed it to easier to make it suitable for others. OK - there is still one harder room. 😇
The game can be found from Downloads > Jet Set Willy Remakes. Please load the TZX file first, by using a real speed tape emulation, thank you. 🙂 If I was you, I would load it using a real Spectrum. 😊

View File What a Wonderful World of Willie
Here is my JSWED48 game, What a Wonderful World of Willie.
Using of the TZX file is suggested for full experience! 🙂The .TAP is included, if somebody wants to check my game in JSWED. 🙂 
The built-in helping option will not be activated, if you should choose to load the .TAP.
 
You can find the release related post from here. Welcome to write any feedback there! 🙂 
Thanks to JetSetDanny, it´s listed now on JSWcentral, too! 🙂
 
Submitter Jet Set Willie Submitted 09/18/2024 Category Jet Set Willy [Remakes]  

Thank you Norman for the detailed answer, that´s good to hear! 🙂I will soon publish my game, as JetsetDanny has testplayed it now and he didn´t find any bugs. 😍I will just make little last minute fixes and I will publish it after that. 🙂 After Norman´s answer, I think I will release a faster version later, too. 🙂 

It is so hard to finish a game and put it out there. I completed the 20 levels last weekend after a holiday where I thought I would actually have more time to work on the game than I do during my working week. Turns out that its easier to grab time with a routine in place. Anyway, my kid is back in his Saturday scratch school and my starbucks time waiting for him is being put to use again. I think I'm going to do my own sound rather than just copy the game sound. That of course can go horribly wrong. Not sure what to do yet about the game music. I guess I have a bit of testing stuff out ahead of me. I think I'm also going to allow folks to continue after there lives run out but penalise the scoring somehow to still encourage perfection. What do you think of that? I'm in two minds about it. One one side, it lets you enjoy more of the levels but on the other, that is kind of what made the game so addictive... trying to get to that next level and then trying to get to it with 1 more life in hand so you didn't just die immediately...
I'm also assuming that I won't get into any legal issues with this as 83 is kind of a long way back and the scratch game is all free etc.
off topic but when I was back in my home town over these holidays I passed the pharmacy where a tall man in the white coat and moustache sold me my ZX Spectrum 48K. Back in the day, that was the only place in town that sold home computers and games. They are still trading under the same name but the computer counter is long gone and replaced by beauty products etc. They used to have a nice window display also of the latest demos running. How I'd love to see the inside of that shop as it was again and chat to that moustached man.
Here are the 20 levels running through the demo mode.
 

Thank you! What a nice increase in speed! 🙂
My game could benefit with this and as just small amount of space is needed, it will fit there then. But I think I will publish my game as it is and after people have played it, I might then publish a "speed up version", so everyone can compare them, if they want to.
I tried the original and the faster version sound turned off, so please tell me, does that code speed up the music and sound effects, too? If it does, I am not sure, if that´s a good thing.

Most pictures I have seen of the code sheet are blurred. This copy whilst not a photgraph or a scan of the original, is far clearer. No idea who can get the credit for setting out these graphics.

Thanks, Andy, I believe the Spectaculator recording will do for my purpose! 👍 In that one, you did *not* fail any keys as far as I can see, right?

I recorded it in Spectaculator. This does not play back in Spin. Can redo if needed. I set Spectaculator on flash load , using the 48K model and just recorded the whole lot to the title screen.
Its the original tape not the re-release*** so it asks for a code which I provided (yes the correct one, the code was not modified)
jsw2_spectac.rzx
 
I re-did this in Spin , its the whole lot , but you can save as video and trim down. It did not speed up loading for some reason with this emulator. Note I had to record this in 128K (Sinclair toastrack model) because my Spin 48K rom is quite modified whereas the 128K one is not.
jsw2_spin.rzx
Please say if anything needs redoing. Note I failed the first key entry, my fault.
 
*** Re-release, its quite different. The original should be one short piece of Basic containing the loader then a large headerless block, nothing else. The re-release tends to be about 3 pieces of code to 'bypass' the keycode. Best I can remember with this version (re-release) without having looked into it in details for many years is its a snapshot in effect of the game at the title screen. This was -not- used here for the above, only the original tape. complete with seven pages of keycodes! 🙂
 

I will be happy to playtest it, but it will be a few days before I'm able to get down to it. I'll do my best not to keep you waiting for too long 😉 .

I will be happy to playtest it, but it will be a few days before I'm able to get down to it. I'll do my best not to keep you waiting for too long 😉 .

Manic Miner "maximum score" TAS has just been published to TASVideos. I originally submitted it as "maximum score, no deaths" as it's possible to score infinitely high otherwise, but I'm not in charge of the final naming. Total gameplay time is 2:17:43.

Thank you, Norman and Spider! I had forgotten that. The second program works now 🥰 so the whole game works. 🙂
The problem with the LINE was that I have used Klive emulator. When I go to extended mode and press symbol shift and 3 together, it goes to K mode. I tried ZXSpin now, it brings me LINE. 😀

Should not need to repeat the CLEAR 🙂 
With ZXBasic its extended mode (assuming 48K Basic) then symbol shift and 3 together to get the keyword LINE
 
With ZXEDitor (block editor anyway) you can choose a type of header "compose datablock" and pick either tzx or tap to match and choose "program autostart header" instead of "program header"
 
I did see some files you sent a while ago but due to (other issues) I can't process multiple copies of things at the same time 😞 One "full" tape file and I should be able to sort it.

Not a program I use or need. (zx block editor) so curiosity.

click on the block that needs editing - in this case (in this example) double click on the 3rd entry "PROGR" etc

This will bring up the part that says "Edit datablock"


On this example you can see highlighted the basic "autostart line"

Click on the line number and edit to the line wanted ---- I found the output visuals confusing, but just insert the line number you want and then press enter

The inputed data should take the form of the line number and also highlighted will be (on the lower line of the "EDIT datablock") will be the option OK or cancel.

When you press "ok" the line that is the block - in this case block 3 - will be changed to highlight the new start line number.

G - No room for line is specifically for when adding a line via the BASIC interpreter, R - Tape loading error is correct for errors that occur during tape loading (or verification).
C - Nonsense in BASIC suggests that the code is being changed while running; if you're loading a BASIC program in two parts then each part should be saved with LINE xxxx and jump to the next loader in sequence; trying to continue the existing program when it's changed is going to be unreliable at best.

Hi,
I´m back. My game is finished, it mainly needs just playtesting, JetsetDanny has kindly offered himself for that.
But it has one problem, I haven´t been able to solve it. I had to cut the BASIC loader to two parts to make it work. The first part loads and runs OK, but the second part immediately brings an error message C Nonsense in BASIC, 100:1 even there is no error on that line. But typing RUN makes it to continue loading.
I could release it without the BASIC loaders, but I want to keep it as is. Please, could somebody with enough knowledge about ZX BASIC give it a look, while keeping the game as a secret, until I can release it, thank you. 🙂

Sounds great! 😁

If it helps, this is using the original game, not the highscore challenge version; I just put it here since it's highscore-related. Finding the maximum total score (without dying) was an interesting challenge in itself. On top of the "improvements" I shared before (all of which are also in this run) I managed to score 1863 points in The Vat; unfortunately it wasn't feasible to do this and also reach the maximum total score in the same run due to the life count.