IRF

Your scores achieved using this method have so far matched the highest reported scores in this thread: http://jswmm.co.uk/topic/421-file-manic-miner-highscore-challenge It will be interesting to see what score your automated method manages to acquire when you reach the Solar Power Generator, where Willy's interactions with the solar beam provide for perhaps a less predictable outcome in scoring terms...

No need to imagine - Crem has seemingly proven that 1724 is the highest possible score for the Central Cavern, via his automated generation of MM walkthroughs as reported in this thread: http://jswmm.co.uk/topic/580-automated-generation-of-manic-miner-speedrunwalkthrough/

That isn't my recollection of your previous attitude, Danny. As I recall, after I had figured out the JSW128 cheat code (about 2 or 3 years ago), I offered to let you know what it was. But you asked me not to reveal it to you as you wanted to work it out for yourself. Then a year ago, you got so close (at least in respect of the 'superuser' code), that although you then invited me to fill in the details, I felt honour-bound not to deprive you of the satisfaction of working the rest out for yourself! And I still maintain that, if you had spent the two minutes it would have taken you to correct the unfortunate typo in your first attempt that I pointed out to you last year (see third post in this thread), then with a bit of lateral thinking you should have been able to solve the puzzle in a much more intellectually satisfactory manner - and consuming less of your 'precious Willy time' 😁 in the process - than the 'brute force' trial-and-error method that you eventually employed! No matter, it's done now.

Spot on! Where Danny went wrong is that he arranged the data table into two columns, on the basis that that is how the data are arranged in the original JSW. But of course the reason that the data in original JSW is arranged in two columns, is because the WRITETYPER code draws on two half-rows of keys. Whereas in the JSW128 game engine, the fact that 'S' is one of the keys required indicates that three half-rows of keys are used, and therefore you need to arrange the data into three columns. The only question then is in which order the three half-rows are interrogated. The fact that the first three databytes are 1f 1f 1d, and once you knew that 's' is the first key in the sequence, tells you that A-G is interrogated after the first two half-rows (which follow the same order as in original JSW: Q-T and then Y-P). It was unfortunate that Danny made an error in transposing the data into his table - by adding an extra '1f' byte that doesn't exist, the dataset of 27 bytes became 28 and therefore fell into two columns. Once the errant byte is removed from the table, it should be obvious that the data doesn't fit into two columns. Hence my earlier comment that Danny should think about the: "implications... for the structure of the data".

EDIT: Danny, if when you read this post you have a 'lightbulb moment' and decide that you want to fully solve the 'superuser' puzzle for yourself, then please refrain from reading the following two posts before you have done so. Actually, I'll have a go at rearranging Danny's table of data myself to see what happens, just for fun. Using the same assumptions and methodology that Danny used first time round, but deleting the erroneous byte, this is what you get: 1f 1f no keys pressed 1d 1f w 17 1f r 1f 1e p 1f 1b i 1f 1f no keys pressed 17 1f r 1f 1f no keys pressed 17 1f r 1f 1f no keys pressed 1f 1d 1b w and i pressed simultaneously! 1f 1f no keys pressed 17 1f r 1f This byte has fallen off the end of the table! Clearly, something's gone wrong...

That's a big assumption in bold above. (Depending on your browser, you might need to expand out the quote to see the bit I've highlighted in bold.) To assist further, I've struck out the erroneous databyte from the second table above with a strikethrough font (and I've also highlighted it in italics). Now Danny, if you were to rearrange your table of data above with the correct number of databytes (to correspond with what is to found in the code at #C480 to #C49A, would there be something about the table of data that might make you question your assumption in bold?

Actually, it's only just occurred to me that drawing the maze must have been a far from trivial exercise, even putting aside the random nature of it every time it is drawn!

I clearly failed to carry out a final inspection which would have revealed that fact.

If the Under the Drive 'Dalek' sets off leftwards from near the right-hand side, might it be possible to clear both the guardian and the Fire cell in a single jump sometimes?

A combination of the music being off in RB's video (and on in your recording), with the fact that RB played some of the game with fewer remaining lives, could add up to explain the difference?

I've got so used to playing with the Conservatory Roof bug fixed (so that you don't have to lose a life to collect any of the items) that I'd forgotten about that feature of the original game!

You get seven spare lives in JSW, so you could implement a 'deathwarp' in all seven of those rooms (leaving no dancing Willies on the status bar to slow down the game towards the end). Though I guess you want to keep one spare in case of 'accidents'! Jumping up from near the top of the ramp in First Landing into Top Landing is a good way to expire several lives in quick succession (with the advancing Swiss Army Knife), though you have to be careful with the positioning so that you can escape with a vertical jump once you're down to your last life (if you're too close to the Swiss Army Knife when you pop up into Top Landing then you're in an inescapable Infinite Death Scenario!)

Speedrunning seems to be a fundamentally different cultural way to play JSW, involving a different mindset, compared with what I'm accustomed to! But getting into the spirit, would it not be an interesting tactic to deliberately sacrifice all of Willy's lives (bar his last one) at the very start of the game? So that the game doesn't have to process drawing any remaining lives on the status bar from that point onwards. (Of course, you'd need to be sure not to get killed again after that point!) Thinking about Manic Miner, different aspects may be in play. Do you still go by the Real World timings, given that the final score is a more precise reflection of how quickly you completed all the caverns (based on air supply which saps in more discrete doses, compared with the minutes occasionally ticking over in JSW)? Actually, I've just thought of something else - do you deliberately NOT collect the bonus points for making King fall off his perch when you're speedrunning MM? Not just because it could be considered an unnecessary diversion if reaching the Final Barrier as quickly as possible is your only concern, but also because collecting the bonus points for dislodging Kong actually brings forward the point where you win a bonus life - which has the inadvertent consequence of slowing down the game sooner (due to the program having to draw an extra life earlier)?

I doubt that your Youtube videos are running at different speeds, so it must have been the case that your emulators (or Danny's emulator versus RB's real Spectrum?) were running at slightly different speeds. Which suggests that the best way to speed up 'real world' completion times is to run the emulator faster. 🤪 But more seriously, the most consistent way of judging the completion times is to go by the time on the status bar clock display. (I would add - you could pause the game just before Willy reaches the toilet, and PEEK at the value of the internal 'game tick' counter at #85CB, if you ever had a 'photo finish' situation e.g. two people claim a completion time of 7:56am and you want to establish who had in fact got there first.)

Musing out loud: I wonder whether the random start position of ropes might mean that if Willy drops into a room from above (e.g. from the Orangery to the Swimming Pool), from what would 'traditionally' be a safe position, Willy might instead drop a fatal distance without being caught by the rope? (But only perhaps once, as the random new position of the rope should mean that his next life gets safely caught.)

DEC HL?

I wonder if the problem (now fixed) arose because you numbered The Off Licence as Room 1 rather than Room 0?

Something like the Human Centipede from the movies? That's some 'Attic Bug'! 😜

I've just realised the purpose behind the INC instruction - it's so that B isn't assigned a value of zero going into the start of the DJNZ loop (otherwise the loop would be executed 256 times, slowing the process down).

Nice one Norman! Offset #8E in JSW is in the middle of the room name, but there are plenty of other unused offset bytes (such as #DF). I notice that in this sequence: INC B LD B,A The INC B appears to be redundant as B is immediately overwritten by A... should it be an INC A?

Ah, I get what you mean now, Norman Sword. It's more efficient with the Guardian Classes to use several instances of a single Guardian Class in The Attic, and adjust each of them vertically when building the room before Willy enters (to create the sinuous shape of the Centipede/Bug/whatever), rather than using difference Guardian Classes for each segment.

Question: shouldn't that be the other way round for the Attic Centipede? i.e. the horizontal position of each segment is fixed, whilst the vertical position varies?

(For the unfamiliar, IDS = Infinite Death Scenario.) RB's idea wouldn't necessarily set up an IDS if Willy entered a room at a point where a guardian started its path, because after losing a life and the room being refreshed, the random start position of that guardian would most likely be somewhere else (whilst Willy's start position in the room would remain the same). One possible scenario you might get in, say, Forgotten Abbey, could be two monks in sync directly above/below each other, and remaining that way (assuming their horizontal trajectories are of the same width), making it impossible to jump over the lower one without Willy's head hitting the upper one's legs! But if you walked out of the room and back again, they would reset to different start positions so the problem would be resolved.

Danny, I presume the references to COPYRIGHT and COPYCARD in your last substantive post are interchangeable? 😉

The above reference to six from your original post is what I was querying.