manic986

Well done. I had a quick go at it. I'd agree with making Willy brighter so that he is easier to see. Keep at it and you'll get there eventually. When I made Manic Miner I had to learn the Scratch way of doing things that I had no clue about when I started and I rewrote several parts over and over as I learned more. I'd still like to rewrite mine yet again now with everything I learned so far. I find the drag and drop code a bit on the hard side though so have avoided that last rewrite thus far. Anyway, my point is, don't be afraid to take it apart and use everything you've learned thus far. You will learn even more and just keep improving your coding technique with each iteration. Good luck!

Ah yes. I have done that before... I always move my mouse away these days just in case. I quite like that escape route level though. Thanks for playing!

Thanks @SymbolShift. Happy to hear that you enjoyed it. Did you play it through?

@MtM - Thanks. No problem honestly. Btw. the game starts in infinite lives mode and just counts deaths. You can also press "d" on the title screen to switch the badly named "death mode" off and instead have 5 spare lives to complete all 20 levels. This should be pretty doable for folks on here I would imagine and shouldn't take that long. It's about 8 minutes or so if you don't lose any lives and know your way through the levels.

Btw, I should add that the last few levels should be fun and look more like a Manic Miner game. Also, my 8 year old just found an issue on the iPad where Miner Willy keeps walking right. It is basically caused by the mouse controls where the mouse, touch pad or touch screen is pressed on screen but it never gets unclicked as the pointer/focus is moved off screen before it was released. That is those silly mouse controls that are mostly sticky tape. Perhaps that was the same issue you found also. I can see it happening easily on some laptops. Could also be something else though I guess.

Hi @MtM - no problem whatsoever. Thanks for giving it a go. I've played it through several times now in testing and haven't come across that particular issue yet. Will keep my eyes out for it. It is probably not level related. Totally understand about it not being in the spirit of the original. Mostly it's an experiment to see what will happen and if people will revisit the original where they may have given up before. I personally have friends who can't get past the yellow windup robot on the first level for some reason that I can't understand 🙂 I'm also hoping to draw some scratch kids into thinking that they can use my engine to make their own MM levels to see where that might go.

Hi all. I seem to have gone down some kind of Manic Miner rabbit hole... I had high hopes for doing other things this winter holidays but for some reason playing around with ideas for how a dumb version of Manic Miner of Manic Miner might look, I ended up with Manic Miner 101. It is not really aimed at "you lot" (used affectionately) in that it's rather simple. Still, why not give it a go and let me know what you think. The start is basic knowledge and skills so the levels are rather bare to give focus to a single task in hand. Gradually, they build up and are a bit more fun and better decorated. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1116173685

It was fun to make that version. I have 20 all new levels that I put together over the last few days of new year idleness. It's geared more at introducing the game slowly although I added some harder levels towards the end. It is called, Manic Miner 101. I've a little tidying up todo and then I'll share it. It deviates from standard miner slightly with conveyors in both directions including switches to change direction, but kind of harmless. I'll post here when I share it. The levels are a bit plain looking but I am hoping that it will help people focus on game play. I tried it out on my wife last night and she gave up after a few levels but my 8 year old finished it.

I finally pressed "Share" on this on "Manic Miner 2" - Schultze - reprogrammed in Scratch. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1113445840 Note: Scratch seems to be having problems with the "cloud Variables" so the global scores don't get saved at the moment. Hopefully they will fix it soon. @jetsetdanny - I tried to do every level the same way that you completed them in your YouTube video. It's funny as I was doing them quite differently on some caverns myself and some of your lines are definitely on the hard side to pull off. There is just 1 level where I was not able to repeat what you did; "Hilfe! Der Kong aus dem Wald". Jumping back up from the top right to the bottom left key doesn't work distance wise for me. Willy seems to walk on air probably due to wrap around issues on the real engine. Other than that, I could mostly repeat things (with enough lives - haha). While this game is a little on the ugly side of things, its quite fun too. Anyway thanks for the great resources and Schultze if you are out there, thanks for making the original!

Here is what I have so far. Almost there... Might be able to finish it next weekend. All the screens are done. Just got to tidy things up a bit and make the title screen etc.

What do folks think of Cavern 16 with title "Die Roboter kommen" in Manic Miner 2? That's the one with the hidden keys and the hidden portal with 2 fake portals. It also has fake keys. I think the fake keys and hidden keys are kind of fun but the hidden portal is a little much as you have to be prepared to die to find it where it is placed. I decided to keep it hidden until all the keys are collected and then let it flash but heavily ghosted so you may or may not notice it initially. I know that is not exactly a spectrum feature but I think the hidden portal concept is interesting but cruel where it is placed at least on that level.

Currently I am remaking Manic Miner 2 (schultze version) in Scratch using the engine I created before. Not that I think that is the best game or anything but (it does reuse a lot of the graphics which is a big pain point so helps me) and it does abuse the MM engine quite a lot with jumping through screens every which way, jumping through walls to get keys, infinite falls, paper only blocks etc, etc. I've got the first 13 levels working so far. Questioning my sanity along the way but its also quite fun to try to figure out how to recreate some of the behaviour. So @jetsetdanny, if you are wondering why that walkthrough video on youtube is getting all the views recently, that would be me I guess. haha.

Well, one thing is for sure. This version of Jet Set Willy is brilliant. The music is great and some of the artwork is amazing. Very cool.

Awesome! Looking forward to trying this out. My 8 year found Jet Set Willy for the first time yesterday and he was playing it on the laptop while I was working. He was playing a Javascript emulator version that he found. I was highly amused.

Excellent. Thanks for the reply @Jet Set Willie, especially regarding hiding as it cleared up a lot of confusion I had. It took a while to click. I'll be back to this. Currently, I'm playing Manic Miner 2 when I have the time and that game has opened me up to the joys of a harder game as it has infinite lives turned on by default. Actually, I think I will start another thread on that game and not derail this thread. But thanks for the tips...

I'm definitely not complaining about the game being hard. It is the creator's vision. For this game, I see where you are coming from with that rewind feature. I got to the airport with all my lives but so far have not been able to get the right timing for the ride up that escalator.

I finally got an emulator... I downloaded this. Congrats on your game. I admire anyone who can pull this off. Now, a bit of feedback. It took me ages and multiple deaths to pass the white guy on the first screen. If I just try to go left, there is no way past as he is just on top of me. I have to hide somehow on the right but mostly my legs stick out and I get killed anyway. I managed to avoid him somehow twice and then I was able to go across the screen to the left finally, but got killed on the immediate conveyor. I think I got into 4 rooms but then gave up. Sorry! Just a bit hard for little old me. I was playing with fuse on the Mac. I must look to see if there is any walk throughs on youtube yet to see if I am missing something on the screens.

Thank you! When I was home during the summer in Ireland, I was showing this to my cousin and my sister caught wind of it. I don't remember this at all, but all 3 sisters were apparently huge fans of the game also. It was fun to let them play it and see the memories come back. It is fun to find others that bonded with the game in similar ways.

@CPL - all the way to the Warehouse! That's very cool. I'm happy you liked the Eugene's Lair speedrun. It was one of the things that I really wanted to pull off when I first saw it - and initially it didn't work as I had the conveyor logic wrong. Also the Wacky Amoebatrons where you can dash underneath all of them without dying. I remember when I discovered that as a kid. Indeed, the collisions with the guardians are slightly off compared to the original. As you said, it's slight more forgiving. The other side of that is unfortunately less forgiving or at least I couldn't find that perfect point. I think that is because of the width of a cell being 15 pixels instead of 16 to fit the scratch screen. I do like the extra forgiveness though especially in later levels. Let me know if you ever finish it...

Thanks all. I'll take "pretty faithful" as the ultimate compliment from such a knowledgable bunch! I know there are a few issues but scratch makes it pretty hard to be perfect. Did anyone like the in-game music or is it a bit too mad?

Thanks @DigitalDuck. I'm happy to be done. I'd rather play the game. I'll have to try and play it all the way through now. I keep dying in silly places (as usual).

Hi all. I finally clicked "share" just now on my Manic Miner rewrite in Scratch. Would love to know what you guys think of it. The only thing that bugs me is the fps inconsistency. I've no clue how this thing will run on "other" hardware other than mine. Hopefully it is playable. It plays around 15 fps for me which is where the speed feels right. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1080412888 Try it out and let me know what you think. Have fun.

I had sometime again today so I got a few things done and a few things started. I am working on the Blue Danube at the moment. I've pulled in some sheet music and have done my best to translate the chords appropriately from the sheet music rather than the game. I was just now about to start to figure out how to get the keys to light up on the piano when I noticed for the first time ever that the layout of the piano is whacky. Now, I think I have to try and rectify that as that will not do at all... Maybe tomorrow.

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.

No worries. Will try the Linux version when I get time.