IRF

Well done Ligan! I take it you got there in the nick of time, with no bonus points awarded for surplus air? (i.e. a score of 100 for picking up the single item in the cavern.) @RuffledBricks You might find this useful as a training tool for your speedrunning of some of the Manic Miner caverns?

The new favicon is great! It would be even better if it animated, to pace left and right along the tab! 🤩

By that, do you mean that you haven't had time to attempt it yet, or you haven't succeeded in reaching the portal in time?

If anyone manages to reach the portal and get awarded bonus point(s) for surplus air, then I'll eat Willy's hat! 😁

Only the first cavern is of interest here (i.e. only the Central Cavern has had any layout changes; there are no code changes). The air supply is extremely restricted, imposing a super-tight time limit on the cavern. Only by navigating through the crumbly field in a highly efficient manner can Willy safely exit via the portal before the air runs out! (N.B. There are crumbly blocks behind the portal, so Willy won't be able to drop straight into the portal from above without crumbling the hidden blocks away first.) Crumbly Field Trainer.TAP

I think it's safe to use such special characters now though - it's only a historic problem from before the site was moved over, as evidenced by the fact that I managed to post the special characters in my post earlier tonight. 👍

I think you hit the nail on the head when you referred to non-standard characters, Andy. 🙂 Because "Roddenwald" is actually spelt with an umlaut over the 'e', as in: "Roddënwald". There are still a few posts that remain truncated after "Rodd", namely these ones: https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/ (That's the first post in the topic, so the title of the topic is also affected.) https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/?do=findComment&comment=11740 https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/?do=findComment&comment=11742 https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/?do=findComment&comment=11802 So it's very likely that the 'special e' (which comes just after the 'dd') was what caused the problem there. There are also a couple of posts where Danny seems to refer to Fabian (the author of the game) as 'Fabi'. Now, Danny isn't usually that informal, so I wonder whether the second 'a' in Fabian has an accent over it - i.e. Fabián? - and so those posts are also getting truncated because they involve another non-standard character? One of the posts potentially affected is this one, which ends with: "One can see that a lot of work has already gone into this project, and the results are impressive. I hope that you will continue it, Fabi" https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/?do=findComment&comment=11773 However, I think that's one of the ones that you've already checked/fixed. Furthermore, Danny's final remark (in quotes above) seems to be made 'in conclusion', so I suspect the only thing still missing now from that post is the final two letters of Fabian's name. On the other hand, this post of Danny's is very short and ends with "Fabi", so there might be some missing stuff from here: https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/532-jet-set-jason-in-rodd/?do=findComment&comment=11822 In conclusion, I think we've got to the bottom of the problem - which is a great relief! - and it probably isn't as widespread as we initially feared - which is even more of a relief!!

Looking at the posts that are still truncated (after Andy managed to rescue some of the more substantial ones), a lot of them seem to involve the word "Roddelwald" getting truncated to "Rodd" - something which also afflicts the very title of the topic! - with all text after the "Rodd" being absent. But I can't think of anything regarding a double-d that would cause the problem to arise?!?

Thank you very much, Andy! That is indeed a lot of useful content!

A word of warning: when adjusting the initial air supply in a cavern, you would be wise to increase or decrease the value by a multiple of 8 (equivalent to two units of air). Increasing or decreasing the initial air supply by 4 can upset the balance in caverns with a Slow horizontal guardian (which are only moved during every alternate frame), causing the guardians to fall 'out of sync' with each other. This effect can be seen, for example, in the Solar Power Generator - where it actually causes the distribution of the solar beam over time to be different.

That's two impossible triangles, impossibly stacked one on top of the other...

Hold that thought - I have a little project in mind...

Danny, your personal 'theoretical high score' (i.e. if all your best performances to date were replicated in a single game of Manic Miner) would now be 39,518 points!

Well done, Danny! I suppose we should restore whoever previously held the third place to the leaderboard for The Warehouse (and remove your current 2nd place, since you appear jointly in the 1st place slot) - that's if there's a record of who previously held the 3rd place slot (and assuming it wasn't you!)

Long overdue - I've added a hyperlink to jswcentral.org to the first post in the pinned 'Useful Links' thread.

The Trivia section of Skoolkid's JSW disassembly provides a detailed explanation of the mechanism that causes the 'Rope Teleport Bug' (something which was first observed taking place in the game 'Jet Set Willy: Mind Control', as reported back in the day on Dr Andrew Broad's MM/JSW Yahoo! Group): https://skoolkid.github.io/jetsetwilly/reference/facts.html#theEncroachingRope

Hopefully you will be able to glean enough information out of my recent posts here, for you to be able at some point to match the maximum score of 1951 in the BB version of The Warehouse...

I also created some screenshots at the time of my Warehouse investigations, but I don't think I've posted them before now. Here are those screenshots, with some further analysis (if you can stay awake long enough to read it!) The screenshots are named after the final scores accrued in each attempt - in the order that I have uploaded them here, namely: 'Warehouse 1948', 'Warehouse 1949' and 'Warehouse 1951 - Best Final Score'. All routes are identical, apart from the sequence of movements in the central crumbly field to the right of the yellow guardian. The significant differences in keypresses took place just after Willy jumped rightwards whilst he was underneath the yellow guardian (collecting the item above the conveyor in mid-jump). In all cases, upon landing after that jump, Willy ended up above the 'ar' of "Warehouse" in the cavern name, in his right-facing animation-frame 3 (N.B. the Right movement button was depressed upon landing so that the left-right movement flag stayed set; otherwise he would have settled in right-facing frame 2). - For the score of 1948, upon landing after that jump, Willy walked rightwards by 8 frames until he was in his right-facing animation-frame 3 above the 'eh' of "Warehouse" - just about to cross the cell boundary that would take him above the 'ho' of "Warehouse" - then waited until he dropped down through two rows of crumblies (this took 19 frames in total - 5 to clear remaining pixel-rows in the first row of crumblies, then 3 frames for Willy to drop through to the next cell-row down - he 'hovers' in thin air for a single frame before starting to descend by half a cell-row per frame - then another 8 frames for the 8 pixel-rows of the next pair of crumblies, then 3 more frames for Willy to drop down another cell-row), and then upon landing he immediately jumped rightwards. 27 frames elapsed between landing after the jump in bold and taking the next jump. - For the score of 1949, upon landing after the jump referred to in bold, Willy came to a halt in right-facing animation-frame 3 (N.B. I had to get the timing of letting go of the Right button exactly spot on, so that he carried on moving at the end of the jump but he did NOT proceed across the boundary into the next cell-column), then he stayed still in the pair of cell-columns above the 'ar' of "Warehouse", waiting for 10 more frames (7 to crumble the remaining pixel-rows and 3 for Willy to drop down a cell-row) until he dropped down through one row of crumblies, then walked right by 4 frames (taking him above 're') and waited there for 8 frames (5 to crumble the remaining pixel-rows and 3 to drop down by a cell-row) to drop down through another row of crumblies, then he walked rightwards by another 4 frames before jumping rightwards. (In those last four frames before the jump, the first frame was spent crossing the cell boundary from above 're' to above 'eh', with the remaining three frames spent above 'eh' - that's why the crumbly above 'e' has one more pixel-row crumbled away than the crumbly above 'h'.) 26 frames elapsed between landing after the jump in bold and taking the next jump. - For the score of 1951, upon landing after the jump referred to above in bold, Willy walked forward by 4 frames (so he was in his right-facing animation-frame 3, above the 're' of "Warehouse"), waited 8 frames to drop down through a row of crumblies, then walked forward by 4 frames (into right-facing animation-frame 3, above 'ho'), waited for another 8 frames to drop down through another row of crumblies, and then upon landing he immediately jumped rightwards. 24 frames elapsed between landing after the jump in bold and taking the next jump. [After that latter jump, which took Willy underneath the white guardian, the route is once again identical in all three cases.] P.S. One more point to make: In all three screenshots, eight crumbly blocks have been trampled to some degree within that central crumbly field (and in all three cases, four of those blocks have completely crumbled to air), but in the most efficient route (which led to the final score of 1951 points), Willy had minimal contact with three of those eight crumbly blocks (i.e. three crumblies have only lost a single pixel-row). That is the key to obtaining the fastest route across/down through a field of crumbly blocks - ensure that each time you drop down by a cell-row, Willy is in position to immediately start walking forwards into the next cell-column, so that the amount of time spent idly waiting to drop down to the next row is minimised.

I reported my success with the 'alternative' route through the Warehouse in this post (which you 'liked' at the time!): Then in the post which follows immediately after that, I discussed how the algorithm had taught me the most efficient way to proceed diagonally down through a crumbly field - although having looked again at that post, I can see that I didn't actually explicitly state that during the course of my investigations, I managed to match the algorithm's best Warehouse score via that route (though I did do so!) http://jswmm.co.uk/topic/580-automated-generation-of-manic-miner-speedrunwalkthrough/?do=findComment&comment=13141

19 of the 20 caverns, actually - as I reported earlier in this thread, I managed to match crem's algorithm's performance in both the BB version of 'The Warehouse' (via two different routes!), and the SP version of that cavern. Although I didn't create any recordings of myself doing so (I did it in the QAOP online emulator, which allows a single rollback), and I haven't (yet) updated the 'Highscore Challenge' table to reflect my achievement in this regard. I haven't managed to beat either the algorithm's or your score in 'Solar Power Generator' though.

It sounds like an interesting project! Sorry I don't know anything about C though, so I couldn't tell you whether it's feasible or not...

The new screenshots look great, Norman! However, I can't seem to be able to open up the file, either in SPIN or in Torinak... EDIT: I just renamed the file, adding '.tap' at the end of the filename, and now it works! 🙂

Ah yes, the final caverns in those games have a quantity of air assigned to them which is not divisible by 4, so when the air supply is decremented by 4 by the game engine, it never reaches zero. Which means there is effectively no time limit in the final cavern, and furthermore the maximum possible score attainable after completing 20 caverns is infinity points!!

Thanks, but I don't think I did enhance the overall score - the algorithm did all the work. I then studied what it had done, to better understand how I (and other players) might potentially secure a score which matches what the algorithm managed to achieve! There is a link to this thread in the JSWCentral entry for 'creme de la creme', and anyone following it will be able to see my contribution to the discussion - that's good enough for me! 🙂