IRF

Aah yes, I see it now. I was trying the ENTER+1 keypress during the scrolly message, rather than the credit screen (which appears after one 'demo mode' cycle through the caverns ).

Norman has already answered this point, but I would just add that the 'alternative movement regime' is similar to what you get in JSW2. And I believe that it was implemented by changing a couple of values in the 'Left-Right Movement lookup table' [which is at #8421 in JSW; #8408 in MM]. I couldn't figure out what the Easter Egg is??

I believe that placing files into a Zip folder is one way of uploading files that the interface will otherwise refuse to upload.

The ability to slow the game down would be useful for the room 'The Garden' in JSW2 [original version], the crossing of which requires a succession of well-timed, pixel-perfect jumps. :o

I actually find it difficult to progress by a single frame of animation (a useful manoeuvre in some tight* spots) because the game engine is so fast, and therefore so sensitive. For that reason, it is very useful that you provided the ability to slow the game down (using the K or L key, the other key speeding the game back up again - I forget which is which). (* No pun intended on the former use of the Bear Brand Factory that was discussed earlier!)

I live up just past the Cobden Vaults which is marked on the top of the map.

What lamp post pic?

I knew that I was living in the same region as 'where it all began' i.e. the Merseyside area. However, I recently discovered that I am located even more closer geographically to 'Willy HQ' than I thought. It transpires that Software Projects were based at the old Bear Brands site in Woolton Village, which is less than half a mile away from my house (and is now the home of my local branch of Tesco's!)

How easy would it be to fix the 'uncollectable item' in 'West of Kitchen'? I'm guessing that relocating the item into a background cell would be easier than trying to remove the block in which it is apparently embedded?

Norman, is the theoretical maximum number of items 255 or 256, with your game engine rewrite? (I know there are about a dozen fewer than that in reality.)

I note that Norman has now uploaded a revised version of this project, with the 'Superjump' cheat disabled (except in rooms where it is supposed to be present, as indicated by the 'arrow' icon), and the 'sun' icon removed from the status bar. (Technically, the sun is still drawn on the status bar - all four small icons in that 2x2 character square [heart/sun/ammo/arrow] are permanently drawn there - but its colour attribute has been changed to black INK on black PAPER, rendering it invisible. This leaves open the possibility that the sun icon may be resurrected if in future Norman remembers what it was supposed to signify!) The West of Kitchen item is still uncollectable. :mellow:

However, despite that West of Kitchen remaining stubbornly uncollected, I have just managed to complete the game! The item count starts at 243; I got it down to 000 (the last three items that I collected were in the room 'A Cut Above' which is the 'alternate reality' version of 'The Nightmare Room', and where the precise logic followed by the movement of the guardians still eludes me!) and then went to the Master Bedroom and Maria had disappeared. So there must actually be 244 items in the game, but you only need to collect 243 (unless the one in West of Kitchen [near the top of the ladder that leads up to Banyan Tree] is a 'false item'?) My in-game completion time was 13:07:01 (I can be that precise because the clock stops ticking at the point when Willy starts to worship the White Porcelain God...) The meaning of the yellow sun icon on the status bar in some rooms still eludes me though? Anyway, congratulations Norman - the new rooms and new features in this 'alternate reality' JSW mansion were a delight to explore!

The item in West of Kitchen would appear to be uncollectable, as it sits over a Water cell.

The four symbols that I mentioned only occupy a single character, then on top of that there are some 2x2 icons that appear (or not) depending on the room: - Willy firing a gun (white): means that he can shoot guardians by pressing 'G' (number of bullets left is written below the icon in red); - Foot (yellow): means that water cells collapse when Willy jumps on them; - Collapsing ceiling (green): means that Willy can headbutt wall tiles from beneath. Then there is the rabbit/snail pair of icons (in cyan), which indicate the speed of the game engine (changeable by pressing 'K' for faster or 'L' for slower. 'H' to activate Superjump seems to work everywhere, except when Willy is near the top of the room that he is in. EDIT: That's 'H' being pressed in conjunction with one of the regular Jump keys, not 'H' on its own except in a room with the magenta 'arrow' symbol on the status bar.

A few observations: - Ropes only pick Willy up when he has white INK, which he normally does, but not immediately after he has lost a life and his next life is temporarily 'shielded' (indicated by his sprite colour-cycling); - Using the Superjump facility, Willy can jump into wall tiles (presumably because he ascends and descends twice the distance in each time frame, so the new check for a wall tile below his sprite, intended to prevent him jumping into one during a normal jump, does not take effect); - I notice that some rooms have a heart symbol on the status bar, indicating an extra life is granted when he collects an item in that room; or an 'extra ammo' symbol which works in a similar way for his ammunition. However, in The Swimming Pool, there are two extra symbols - a yellow sun and a magenta arrow (or compass point?) - and I'm not sure what the significance of those are? EDIT: I've since noticed that the magenta arrow symbol (but not the sun) appears in The Bow. And all four (arrow/sun/heart/ammo) appear in On a Branch Over the Drive. FURTHER EDIT: In rooms with the upwards pointing (magenta) arrow, the 'H' key alone causes Willy to do a Superjump. (N.B. In all other rooms, pressing 'H' along with one of the regular jump keys allows him to perform a Superjump - this is a bit of a 'cheat' [unintentional?] as it allows him to dodge many of the obstacles throughout the whole game!) That just leaves the mystery regarding the sun symbol.

Norman, am I right in thinking that you have resolved the sudden downwards jerking when Willy's head enters a wall tile on the descent part of a jump*, presumably by only executing the code at #8EBC during the ascent part of a jump? * e.g. when jumping in the gap between overhead and underfoot wall blocks in The Wine Cellar.

I like the 'sinking floor' effect in Top Landing when Willy jumps on the floor tiles. :)

Superjump!

For the record, in my code which optimises the horizontal guardian movement routine (by using shared code for both left and right movement), there is a further optimisation to be had by replacing: LD A, (IX+$06) / LD A, (IX+$07) LD B, A with: LD B, (IX+$06) / LD B, (IX+$07) EDIT: Now implemented at source.

A play on the name of the musical "Thoroughly Modern Millie", of course. :)

I seem to recall an advert for the game which contained the phrase "But beware the Attic..." (part of the attempt to pass the bug off as a 'deliberate mistake').

Makes Maria rather less formidable?

I would hazard a guess that the way that was achieved was by modifying the rope-drawing code, so that collisions are detected in the same way as the arrow-drawing code. i.e. a pixel-collision has to take place when a segment of rope is drawn AND the attribute of the cell within which that rope segment is being drawn also has to have a white INK setting?

Danny, did you notice that Ligan uploaded a corrected version of the file to post #13 in this thread?

Having thought about the above, I'm not sure if it's feasible to come up with an arrangement that's more byte-efficient than the current one. Firstly, the direction of travel for horizontal guardians would have to be determined from Bit 2 of Byte 04. But there's no easy way of checking when the value in Byte 4 has spilled over past Bits 0-2, other than by checking for the individual values 08 or -01 (#FF). The Carry Flag wouldn't respond in these circumstances. Maybe if all the values for animation frame were doubled (and the 'Draw the horizontal guardians' routine was amended accordingly, with an additional RRCA inserted at #8DD0), then the Half-Carry Flag could be used. But I don't think there are any Z80 instructions (conditional jumps etc) which are determined by the status of the H Flag. You would need to fundamentally change the function of Byte 04 for horizontal guardians - edit all the horizontal guardian data, so that Bits 5-7 holds the animation frame (with Bits 0-4 unused, although perhaps they could be recycled for other purposes?), rewrite the 'Move the horizontal guardians' routine in accordance with my previous post, and then NOP out the three RRCA's in the 'Draw the horizontal guardians' routine at #8DCE-#8DD0. Probably not worth the hassle. To contradict myself again, I managed to get my suggested approach to work in Manic Miner. :) I used three RRCA's at the start of the 'Move the horizontal guardians' routine to rotate the animation frame (loaded up to A) into Bits 5-7, and then three RLCA's at the end of the same routine to rotate the updated frame value back into Bits 0-2, before loading back into guardian Byte 04. (No need to change 'Draw the horizontal guardians'.) Even with all those additional rotate commands, there are still at least ten spare bytes left over because of the merging of the left-right movement commands!