IRF

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: Several of the new rooms contained sprites that I previously created for the demo that I’d originally sent to SP. I modified Willy, adding the space helmet, for the new Starship Enterprise “space” levels we added. 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?

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

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

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?)

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. 😊

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!

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.

Actually, Danny nearly achieved the above feat in The Vat in both of his recordings. With a more efficient route down through the field of crumblies, Willy could have skipped the penultimate, standing jump at the bottom right corner of the cavern - instead doing a leftwards jump to clear the yellow kangaroo almost* as soon as Willy reached the floor underneath the vat (*after a few steps to the left to avoid hitting his head on an overhead Fire cell) - it's very tight, but possible. EDIT: In actual fact, now that I think about it, because of the tricky location of the portal in the Processing Plant (which forces Willy to enter it in animation frame R3 - the PP portal being otherwise impossible to reach), it's simply impossible to enter The Vat with the same animation frame to match The Vat's initial cavern dataset from Matthew's original game (i.e. with Willy starting The Vat in animation frame R0). There are other similar examples as well. The Vat's own portal can only be entered by walking into it from the right, meaning that, even though the game engine/data automatically turns Willy around to face the right way, he will never commence the first Kong Beast cavern in the correct frame of animation (R0) (unless you teleport him into there). In other caverns, you would need to enact a convoluted sequence of moves at the end of one cavern to get Willy positioned correctly at the start of the next. e.g. Jumping over the FLASHing portal and then turning around to walk back into it (the first Kong cavern, The Endorian Forest). Or in the case of The Final Barrier, if you want to carry on playing post-Swordfish, the conveyor action means that the usual route forces Willy to jump up into the portal in animation frame R3, so after reappearing in the Central Cavern he'll be three steps ahead of normal. You can avoid that by walking under the portal for a second time, jumping off the conveyor onto the crumbly platform (if you retained some of it previously) and then jumping back onto the conveyor, walking up stream and then jumping up leftwards into the portal. However, that mean navigating past the blinking eye guardian twice more, so you may waste quite a bit of time/air supply in the process. The implication of all of the above is that you cannot actually play a faithfully replicated game of Manic Miner in JSW64:MM!

Playing around, entering caverns with Willy advanced as far as possible within his initial startup 2x2 block of cells, I've discovered that in both The Vat and The Endorian Forest you can achieve an early jump over the first guardian you encounter, allowing for a significant improved performance. (In the case of The Vat, it is possible to drop down to the bottom and jump leftwards over the yellow kangaroo whilst it is moving rightwards near the bottom right corner, without having to follow it to the portal and wait for it to turn around before jumping over it.) That's my most significant discoveries so far, but there may be more caverns where quicker completion times can be achieved in JSW64:MM via judicious selection of final animation frames at the end of the preceding cavern. They may even accumulate to such an extent that is noticeable in terms of minutes on the on-screen clock!

In fact, now that I think about it, you wouldn't even get that far... Without appropriate cavern startup data, after completing the Central Cavern Willy would end up in an Infinite Death Scenario! Because entering the Cold Room at the same coordinates as the Central Cavern portal would cause an instant collision with the penguin (which starts out hiding behind the Cold Room portal that shares the same position in the bottom right corner)!

You're right in terms of Willy's initial frame of animation - in fact, that's the very observation I just made, which explains how you got away with your trick! But of course there must be cavern startup data in the wider sense - not just initial facing direction, but coordinates at a cellular (ie character space) level - otherwise, after jumping into a portal at the top right corner of The Warehouse, Willy would respawn in Amoebatrons' Revenge at the top right corner! Although the cavern setup routine is seemingly bypassed if you use the teleport feature (the code for which is TYPEWRITER, I believe, as per the Software Projects version of MM) in order to switch caverns - using that, you can go straight to any part of a cavern you like. Imagine what a good score you could achieve if you headed straight to the top level of the Amoebatron caverns! (Though you would have to manage the risk of spawning in the path of a guardian!)

Note that Willy's facing direction is switched around between the end of Wacky Amoebatrons and the start of Endorian Forest. So in that respect, John Elliott's cavern startup data from JSW64:MM reflects the original cavern data from Matthew Smith's MM.

Compare and contrast The Endorian Forest in the two videos that Danny linked to in his last post above. Willy starts off two steps ahead in one compared with the other (because he entered the Wacky Amoebatron portal in different positions). That factor alone may have enabled an improved performance/score in one incarnation of the Forest (though I haven't checked that yet).

In fact, having just watched the relevant part of both Danny's walk through, Willy entered Amoebatron's Revenge just two animation frames forward compared with the MM start position for that cavern. But that's enough to achieve an early jump over the first horizontal guardian. It looks quite tight, so I suspect (though I haven't checked) that starting off one animation frame ahead of normal wouldn't quite be enough to clear it safely. On the other hand, starting off three steps ahead opens up the possibility that you could have achieved an even better score for that cavern? (Depending on whether or not you have to hang around later on in the cavern for guardians to get out of the way, which might undo the time advantage.) And that's just one cavern...