IRF

It looks like there's no time pressure from the yellow horizontal guardian. Once you get past it you can take your time advancing forward to make the next jump, as its rightmost reach doesn't extend that far? 

Intriguing! I will download and explore the game at some point in the near future. 

When I was first reading through the back story, I started wondering if the mission might be for Willy Jnr to rescue a captured Willy Snr... That wasn't the case, but it could be the basis of some future game?

Looks good!

The colour-coded fall height peril is an interesting concept, but I wonder what happens if you fall from a great height in a 'green' room, off the bottom and land in a 'red' room. Or vice versa, if you fall a long way through the bottom of a 'red' room but you land in a 'green' room? 🤔

On 10/26/2023 at 8:11 PM, jetsetdanny said:

Well, it's an academic discussion, but the issue I have with calling it a new cell type is that it's not really related to any cell as such. The effect throws Willy back when he's at a certain horizontal location (x-coordinate). So it's related to some location in the room, but not to any particular cell as such. It could be happening in mid-air and without any visible reason.

Having said that, there is also a visual part of the effect - which is not necessary for the effect itself, it could be NOPped out, but it was indeed applied in "JSW: RR" - and that's the ">" shape and the different colour of one cell. And it's this visual effect that makes one think it's a different cell type. 

But I would really call it a "paracell" (with the prefix "para-" in the meaning of "similar to, or helping to do a similar job", like in "paramedic" or "paramilitary").

I haven't coined a new name for this one and I'm not aware of Sendy having done so. I like your suggestion, but combining it with my reasoning explained above, I would call it "A Throwback Paracell" 🙂 .

On second thoughts, though, there's one problem with this. It throws you back if you approach from one side, but it also throws you *forward* if you approach from the other side. So "Throwback" doesn't really cover all of its behaviour. Something to meditate on... 🙂 

Yes it was indeed the > symbol which made me think of it as a new cell type. Perhaps we could call it a 'pseudo-cell'? (The pseudo prefix meaning false.) 

I see what you mean about 'throwback' not covering all possible behaviour. I can imagine some interesting potential applications of it (where overhead blocks mean that jumping over it isn't an option) - for example, its sudden effect could throw the unsuspecting protagonist straight into the path of a guardian, or conversely, timing it well could allow the player to skip past a guardian which on the face of it blocked any progress on that direction.

With those scenarios in mind, a 'Displacement (pseudo-)Cell' might be a better description?

And of course it would be perfectly easy to have one with a < symbol that worked in the opposite direction.

On 10/26/2023 at 8:00 PM, jetsetdanny said:

I don't believe that would have involved losing a life

Makes sense now - I thought you meant you wanted to put it somewhere else (blocking the safe route to the large cluster of items in the middle of the room, meaning that you would have had to drop down through the items to collect them before dying upon landing as it's too great a drop).

I think Sendy was right that your idea would have had adverse consequences for Quirkafleeg 2 - as it happens, I first discovered that room coming in from the left (from West Lookout), so it presented quite a puzzle - how to cross it when the rope doesn't swing? - until I subsequently discovered the 'eastern approach' to Q2. The mystery of the (initially) non-swinging rope would never have presented itself to me in the scenario you originally had in mind.

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

 

I believe I can reveal, as an historical fun fact, that I originally designed it for the bottom part of "West Lookout", to make the room impassable from right to left at the floor level. However, Sendy preferred not to block the passage there, so the 'special block' finally got placed elsewhere 🙂 .

I think I'm right in saying that putting the feature in 'West Lookout' (towards the bottom-right corner, presumably?) would have meant that some of the items in that room couldn't have been collected without sacrificing a life? (That's assuming the layout of that room hasn't changed since that consideration was being made; it may well have changed since the decision was made to relocate the novel feature to 'West Wing'.)

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

Thanks for noticing and mentioning this, Ian!

It is a nice little feature if I may say so myself.

From the technical point of view, it's not a cell type, though, but something along the lines of a Patch Vector effect.

I would say it's a new cell type implemented by a patch (vector), as opposed to being one of the standard cell types available in the regular game engine.

In Jet Set Mini, I implemented several non-standard cell types via the patch vector system - though none of them displayed the behaviour that this one does. Did you or Sendy coin a name for this one? If not, are you open to suggestions? (A Throwback Cell, perhaps?)

It's very quirky!

I've just noticed there's a new* cell type in the room 'West Wing' in JSW: Role Reversal. Try walking over the cyan block at the bottom left corner of the room...

EDIT: Well, I'd not seen one of these before. 

I just made a new observation about the Manic Miner game engine, whilst playing around in one of the caverns of Manic Person.

When Willy dies by falling from a great height, or by hitting a Fire cell or a guardian, then during the brief flash of the screen as he dies, the portal is not drawn.

However, in contrast, if Willy dies because the air supply runs out, then the portal does get drawn in that brief instant.

This observation proved to be quite useful in solving part of the cavern's puzzle.  However, I won't say which Manic Person cavern it is yet, as I don't want to provide a spoiler so soon after the release of the game.

However, I will add another cryptic comment - there's another part of the puzzle in this cavern which wouldn't work so well in the JSW game engine as it does in a MM game.

I will reveal all in time...

Danny, the above linked blog by Steve Wetherill provides confirmation of something we were discussing a while back, when you were putting together a readme file for one of your/our projects (I can't recall which one off the top of my head).

You were attempting to give due credit for certain guardian sprites that you had adopted from Jet Set Willy 2.  You had said something along the lines of "Sprites in rooms X, Y and Z taken from JSW2 by Derrick Rowson".  I said that should have said "JSW2 by Rowson & Wetherall".  You pointed out that JSW2 for the Spectrum was only itself credited to Derrick Rowson.  I think in the end we settled on something like: "JSW2 by Rowson, which was itself back-ported from a version of JSW on another platform called JSW: The Final Frontier, by Derrick Rowson & Steve Wetherall".

Whilst you were right to insist on accuracy in terms of how the Spectrum version of JSW2 was credited at the time of its release (and I'm sure the 'source material' - original cassette sleeve notes for JSW2 - would have given Steve Wetherall a mention), my substantive point was that if your objective in the readme was to give direct credit to whoever designed the sprites (as opposed to, say, the new room layouts or game engine changes in JSW2), then solely mentioning Derrick Rowson might not have given that due credit.

Now, based on Steve Wetherill's blog that I linked to the other day, it transpires that he was indeed responsible for at least some of those sprites that you borrowed for the game that the readme was associated with:

Some of the sprites I created for Jet Set Willy CPC-464

The original blog post which you've commented on there is quite interesting:

https://blog.stevewetherill.com/2022/01/software-projects.html?m=1

Edit: It's a blog by Steve Wetherill, co-author of JSW2 with Derrick Rowson. (Well, it's not that simple - the blog entry explains the precise history).

This one has some interesting nuggets as well:

https://blog.stevewetherill.com/2022/01/q-with-retrogamer-magazine-on-manic.html?m=1

P. S. The references to Woolton village (where Software Projects were based, and where I live) has got me wondering if the elephant in Dr Jones... was based on the local Elephant pub?

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

AI can do marvels these days. Have a look at this 😮. 

Yes, I saw that the other day. Fascinating stuff.

Hmmm... It seems vaguely familiar but I'm not sure what it is. 

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

There's still time to guess/carry out a complete analysis using AI tools

I hadn't thought of that - putting the tunes through Shazam or similar, to see if it recognises them.

I didn't recognise any other tunes myself when I explored the caverns.

It's worth pointing out that the 6031769 cheat code works in this game, if anyone wants to go cavern surfing to check out the various tunes (there's a unique tune for each cavern) to try and figure out what they are.

It's very familiar that tune, sounds like it should start slow and progressively speed up as the air supply diminishes... (an idea for another project perhaps?)

9 minutes ago, jetsetdanny said:

Yes 🙂 .

Have you reached the last cavern yet and seen what I meant by "Due to the nature of the project I've mentioned, this is not a problem there..."  ?

Yes.

I did slightly resent the implication in the final message that I might have cheated in order to see it. (Even though I did! 🤣) 

Danny, I presume the project which gave rise to your request for coding advice here was Sendy's 'Manic Person'? 

Great game! I was going to lament the lack of a Solar Beam cavern, but then I noticed that one turns up in the Hard variant of the game. 

I like all the different tunes as well - is there a list of what they are? (I particularly like the one in the 'Skylab' cavern - sounds very Eastern European!)

It seems to be sorted now, cheers. 😊

7 hours ago, IRF said:

I've updated the high score table again in the topic (for The Endorian Forest entry).  This time, I've also edited the download descriptor to match, so hopefully the update will remain in place!

Aarrgghh!! This time the table in the topic has reverted back to the old version, even though my update to the download section is still in place!

Maybe everything will be okay after the next automatic update? (How often does that happen?)

I've updated the high score table again in the topic (for The Endorian Forest entry).  This time, I've also edited the download descriptor to match, so hopefully the update will remain in place!

I presume you're talking about going over the roof to drop down into Emergency Gen? (Since the Dr Jones elephant can't be crossed from left to right.) 

You're right, the changes 'of' been removed!

10 hours ago, IRF said:

even though the game engine/data automatically turns Willy around to face the right way

It turns out I was wrong about that. Willy's facing direction upon entry to a new cavern, as well as his frame of animation, remains as it was when he entered the portal in the previous cavern. (I must have not noticed before, because if you 'hit the ground running' in a cavern, Willy can be turned around to face the direction you are making him walk before he is first drawn in the cavern.)

This discrepancy could potentially incur a further time penalty, if Willy enters a cavern facing the wrong way for an optimal performance, because it takes one time frame (one unit of air) to turn him around.

Or conversely, it could be of benefit in some of the caverns, where Willy started off 'in the naughty corner' - facing a brick wall, the wrong way to make progress - in Matthew's original MM data. In this game, you can make sure that in those caverns, he starts off facing the 'right' way to set off on his mission.  Indeed, in the case of Skylab Landing Bay, you don't even need to consciously try to achieve this - Willy will always have been facing leftwards as he entered the preceding portal (because of the layout of Ore Refinery), thus guaranteeing that he will always be facing left as he enters the Skylab cavern.

****

I've also just noticed that the 'Willy can move leftwards into a wall block at head height' bug from the JSW game engine is present in JSW64:MM. So that might have other implications for the game play, which means that my earlier statement: "you cannot actually play a faithfully replicated game of Manic Miner in JSW64:MM" is even more definitely the case!

EDIT: in fact, both of JetSetDanny's YouTube runs through The Vat were two time frames quicker thanks to that bug. (Meaning that he scored two more 'points' each time than he should have - notwithstanding that success in this variant of the game isn't actually measured in 'points'!) When jumping over the yellow kangaroo at the end of The Vat, at the point where Willy was descending but still one character row above the ground, his head entered the corner wall block near the portal, allowing him to advance forwards one step (compared with, say, the exact same jump in DigitalDuck's YouTube walkthrough of original MM), and then Willy's entering a wall in Danny's version also meant that he was ejected straight down to ground level - descending by a whole character row in a single time frame - compared with the normal MM behaviour (as per DD's video) where Willy should at that point be two increments of vertical descent away from landing at the end of the jump.