IRF

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no way in JSWED's GUI to edit the location of the 'entry point' of the solar beam in 'Solar Power Generator', for a file based on the Manic Miner game engine? You can change the start of the beam, but you have to manually adjust the appropriate addresses in the hex editor (namely #8D74-5). In contrast, in a room with a solar beam in a JSW64 game, there is an option to move the beam's starting point within the GUI.

Please find attached my recordings for the 'Before' and 'After' files. **SPOILER ALERT!** Note that I've made several deliberate mistakes (sometimes fatally), in order to demonstrate what is and what isn't possible within the two variants of the game engine. Enjoy! P.S. My collection method for the bottom-left item of The Attic in the 'Before' file is different to Danny's (note aslao that my method would work if the layout was laterally inverted, whereas Danny's wouldn't). Before Rewrite Ian's Solution.rzx After Rewrite Ian's Solution.rzx

Thanks Danny, and well done on finding most of the solutions. However, there is a much quirkier method of sneaking past Esmerelda. EDIT: I've made a slight rewording in the Spoiler box, for clarity. (Technically, you can walk into Emergency Generator and then just walk straight back out again in both files!) I'll make and upload my own recordings for both Before and After files later.

Preventing Maria from disappearing would make the game uncompletable (in terms of the stated 'mission statement' of cleaning up the house and then going to bed). But making the toilet run conditional on not having used WRITETYPER would be a useful (and easily implemented) way of highlighting if someone has cheated. :thumbsup:

In the original MM game engine, crumbling cells turn to Air as soon as the routine, after moving all the pixel-rows downwards, detects that the bottom pixel-row has no infilled pixels. So if any pixel-row other than the lowest one starts off empty, then the crumbly will crumble early. Furthermore, if any pixel-rows higher up in the block retain any infilled pixels, then they will remain as a 'ghost' within the newly created Air cell. The rewrite of the crumbly routine means that all eight pixel-rows are checked simultaneously, so it eliminates the potential for 'ghost' pixels being left behind. However, you can still have fast-crumbling cells, and indeed Earth blocks that can disappear after Willy has headbutted them fewer than eight times, if some of the pixel-rows are blank from the beginning. An INKless Earth block will turn to Air after a single headbutt, and indeed elsewhere I suggested that that could form the basis of a challenge where Willy must NOT butt a particular block, because he needs it still to be present later on (to jump off it in order to reach the portal). The sound effect is executed on each instance of a pixel-row being displaced upwards (headbutt) or downwards (crumbly). So if Willy were to stand on an INKless crumbly, then you would hear a difference in the sound effect - it would be shorter, lasting for only one 'tick' of the Main Loop instead of eight. By the way, there is also a noticeable intensification of the sound effect when Willy walks along a platform of several adjacent crumblies, compared with when he stands on a single crumbly block - because when he is standing on two adjacent crumblies, the sound effect is executed twice in each 'tick'. (Ditto when he headbutts two Earth blocks simultaneously.)

I've now added sound effects to the headbutt and crumbly features. Two very different sound effects, but using a shared piece of code. The pitch of the noise is derived from the value in C, after it has been used to determine whether to shift pixel-rows upwards or downwards. The next thing I'll do, when I find the time, is implement all this into the 'Manic Mixup' project. Wraparound MM with Headbutt and Crumbly SFX.TAP

Well done on the updates to JSW Central, Danny! It is a valuable resource for Willyholics!

I've added a check just before the CALL to the headbutt code, to prevent the effect from working in The Final Barrier. That stops Willy from 'escaping' into the outside world before he should...

The png scans of the original comic strip (which I hadn't ever seen before) have convinced me that the pattern/arrangement of Fire cells at the bottom of the 'Gaping Pit' are the specific element which inspired the eventual name!

My interpretation of the GUI is (or was) the 'Rooms' page (and 'Start' page etc), where you can view and directly edit the room graphics, rather than the tickbox menu for applying patches to the code. But that's probably my misinterpretation of the terminology. :blush:

I recall reading an article which was published before Jet Set Willy was first released, which featured an interview with Matthew Smith along with some preview screenshots of various rooms, one of which was the 'Gaping Pit'. i.e. that was Matthew original name for the room which eventually became known as '...Quirkafleeg'. Incidentally, my guess is that the Fire cells at the bottom of the room are meant to resemble people lying down with their legs in the air, which ties in with the explanation for this room's final, peculiar name: http://skoolkid.github.io/jetsetwilly/reference/facts.html#weMustPerformAQuirkafleeg

It isn't perhaps something for the GUI to implement, as it isn't actually a separate cell type. With the changes that I made to the MM game engine in place, any Earth block can be butted away*. Rather, I envisage it would be something that might be implemented by ticking a box on the 'Game' Menu page in JSWED (like the 'Specials by room' patch), in order to implement the necessary changes to the game engine. (* However, Norman Sword's implementation of the feature, in the JSW game engine, is switched on on a room-by-room basis, using a flag in the border byte.)

Another side-effect of the above bug fix is that shuffling the code between #876F and #879F 'downwards' seems to confuse JSWED such that its GUI doesn't display the likes of vertical guardians or the solar beam (although they appear okay in the game itself). That might be resolvable by leaving those CALLS in with, NOPping out the CALL to draw the items from #876C and inserting it after the CALL to draw the portal at #879F by other means.

I've removed the previous 'Wraparound MM' test file from my earlier post, and re-uploaded it here, after making a couple of small tweaks to the Central Cavern: - Firstly, I had messed up with the positioning of the leftmost Fire block in the top cell-row of the cavern, which was intended to stop a shortcut (going straight from the bottom of the cavern by dropping through a hole to emerge at the top). Moving the Fire block one cell to the left has eradicated that shortcut. - Also, I have relocated one of the items, so that it now sits within the same cell as an Earth block. Now Willy has to 'mine away' the Earth block - by headbutting it eight times! - in order to collect the item This is very in keeping with the 'mining' theme of the game, is another novel aspect of gameplay, and is the sort of thing I had in mind when I first devised this feature (although calling it a "new cell type" in the topic header is probably a bit misleading, as Norman has pointed out - it's more of a new application of an existing cell type). Note also that I have changed the PAPER colour of the relocated item (something which is possible in the MM game engine, though not in JSW), in order to blend it into the wall better (whilst the other items, located in Air cells, retain their original PAPER setting). Please delete the previous version of the 'Wraparound MM' test file, if you've already downloaded it, and replace it with the one attached here. ****** A few more comments on the 'headbutt' feature: - Norman Sword gets joint credit for the implementation of the 'headbutt' idea. It works like the crumbly code in reverse, with pixel-rows disappearing from the bottom upwards. Using Norman's earlier notes as a basis, I have implemented it using shared code for both crumbling and headbutt effects, feeding in a variable beforehand using the C register (translated into either an INC H or a DEC H in order to progress through the pixel-rows). - For both the headbutt feature and the crumbly blocks, blank pixel-rows at the midway point through the blocks do not cause the block to 'disappear early' (i.e. attribute change to that of Air before all infilled pixels have been cleared), so there are no 'ghosts' left behind as can happen in the original MM game engine. (Thanks again to Norman for his rewrite of the crumbly code, which fixes the 'ghost crumbly' bug via a cunning use of a looped OR operation.) - Placing an item on top of an Earth block, as implemented in the updated version of the test file, is rather similar (in an opposite kind of way!) to a trick which is commonly used in Andrew Broad's games - namely, placing an item over a crumbly block, so that Willy can't collect the item by jumping up from beneath, but has to stand on top of the block in order to crumble it away to Air, before the item can be collected. Only this time, Willy has to jump up from below to bash away the block first. - I haven't tried this yet, but I suspect that if Willy jumps through an Earth block at head-height at the correct angle (i.e. an 'Innocent-Looking Block' as they're known in the trade), then one pixel-row could be removed each time he passed through the block in that way. So you could have a quirky situation where Willy has to jump through such a block up to eight times, in order to clear it completely! (e.g. to collect an item that is embedded in it?) - Other quirky possibilities could arise if the colour attribute of a cavern's Earth blocks is matched to that of another cavern element(s). ****** Note to self: try to implement a sound effect for both headbutting and crumbling blocks (a slightly different sound for each). Wraparound MM.TAP

A Manic Miner bug-fix: In the Main Loop, if the CALL to draw the items at #876C is shuffled down to after the CALL to draw the portal at #879F, then this fixes the 'persistent item' in the Sixteenth Cavern: http://skoolkid.github.io/manicminer/reference/facts.html#thePersistentItem (The destination of the JUMP from the Skylab routine at #8E7E, back to the Main Loop, also needs to be tweaked to point at #879C.) This change also means that you can have items located in the path of vertical guardians, without the guardians colliding with the items and killing Willy! However, it will have the following side-effects: - White vertical guardians can collect items (as well as white horizontal guardians, which can occur in the original MM game engine); - The solar beam can collect items; - You can't place a 'hidden' item within/behind a portal - it is drawn in front of (i.e. after) the portal, whereas Willy is drawn behind (i.e. before) the portal, making the item uncollectable* (and the cavern therefore impassable!) (*Unless the portal has white INK, I guess, but that would mean that the portal would 'auto-collect' the item upon entry to the cavern, and so that item would never get drawn anyway.)

I've just attached it - try again. :)

I'm pleased to be able to announce that I've managed to rewrite the 'Move Willy' and 'Draw Willy' routines in the Manic Miner game engine, in order to allow Willy's sprite and attributes to wrap around the screen, both vertically and horizontally. Whilst I was at it, I added the 'headbutt' facility for clearing wall tiles/Earth cells. In the attached test tile, only the Central Cavern has had its layout affected to showcase these changes to the game engine. But I would suggest that the changes could be exploited more widely in the 'Manic Mixup' project (currently being worked on in the Contributor Lounge). EDIT: The test file is now attached to a later post in this thread.

Try walking up the 'West Wing' ramp into 'West Wing Roof' with POKE 63154,209 in place.

Update: you would need to preserve A (e.g. by bookending the new code with two EX AF, AF' commands), so that after the loop has ended, A still holds a cumulative tally of all the infilled pixels in the cell.

Mickey, I don't know if you ever managed to implement a fix for the above, but I've just managed it - please see the attached file, collect the single item in the Master Bedroom and see what happens! I think it looks more 'realistic' - I wonder if this is indeed "as manufacturer intended"? ;) (In the attached, I've also prevented the anomalous behaviour of the 'P' key during the toilet run, and I've also fixed the 'Jagged Finger' display problem, because it was even more prominent when Willy was changing animation-frames whilst running at double speed.) Proper Toilet Run.z80

Some interesting philosophical points there, Danny! Although it could be argued that, if the Up exit from Rescue Esmeralda to Ballroom East is a valid route, then so is using WRITETYPER to access any room! Perhaps that is even more valid, as Matthew obviously intentionally implemented WRITETYPER, whereas the Esmaralda/Ballroom shortcut may have been an unintentional mistake. In fact, this discussion has led me to consider that shortcut further, and as a result I may have come up with a rationale for it..? Rescue Esmeralda is Room #0E in hex (that's 14 in decimal), and Ballroom East is Room #14 in hex (20 in decimal) - perhaps the Up exit from Esmeralda was supposed to be set to itself*, and Matthew got his hexadecimal and decimal systems mixed up on this occasion? (*Maybe the room even had a rope in it at one point of development, so the setting was supposed to prevent Willy climbing up to the top?) In relation to the Watch Tower, I believe the Up exit to the Off Licence was probably a simple case of the default value being #00, and of course the Off Licence is Room 0.

Another way of phrasing what I was trying to say in my previous post: I think* that this project may be rather akin to Andrew Broad's 'Advanced MM/JSW Trainer' tool. e.g. If you were in the 'Innocent-Looking Block' room, and managed to collect an item via another method (which Andrew hadn't anticipated) that didn't involve jumping through an Innocent-Looking Block, then the purpose of playing that room (namely to learn about ILB's) would remain unfulfilled. (* Admittedly without having actually used Andrew's AMJT tool - not for lack of trying to install it!) Anyway, at some point I'll probably provide walkthrough recordings of my own, with commentary to point out any features that you may have missed.

The primary aim of this project was to exhibit the different behaviours of the two variants of the game engine, hence my suggestion to seek out different solutions to each pair of items. However, in relation to your comment about efficiency, I would suggest that the alternative solutions would indeed provide a more speedy walkthrough.

Thank you for the recordings Danny, I've watched them now - good stuff! However, you didn't quite comply with the mission that I set - to use different collection methods for each of the 16 pairs of items. If you would care to do so, please try and find alternative solutions in the 'Before' game for: - The lowest three items in 'On top of the House'; - The rightmost item in 'Emergency Generator'; and - The item which is located above the first 'e' of 'Generator' (it lies at the left of an Earth platform which is three blocks in length). Other points of interest (all relating to the 'Before' file): - You managed to collect the bottom-left item in The Attic in a rather different way to the one that I had in mind (and which I hadn't thought of); - I wonder did you attempt (unsuccessfully) to collect the uppermost item in 'Dr Jones...' by jumping onto the elephant's back? It exhibits an interesting difference in Willy's behaviour between the two files; - The upper part of 'The Attic' in the 'Before' file is 'Forbidden Holy Ground' (whereas it is accessible in the 'After' file).

Well done Danny! I'm heading out now, but I'll watch your recordings later. If you haven't already, it's interesting and instructive to try and collect each item using the 'wrong' method for each game file, to see how the differences in the 'Willy mechanics' manifest themselves.