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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...

After investigating, it isn't either of those factors. In fact, Willy's frame of animation upon entry to a cavern turns out to be based on his last animation frame in the previous cavern (which is I suppose what happens in JSW). So whilst he is given new coordinates for the next cavern at a cellular level, his precise position within his starting 2x2 block of cells can vary. See the attached image - if you get into that position and jump straight upwards into the Warehouse portal, then upon entry to Amoeba's Revenge Willy is three paces further forwards than he would be in the original Manic Miner (where he enters AR with his back to the wall). This could have implications for how you could select an initial animation frame in ALL of the caverns, to optimise your performance. So the gameplay (and maximum possible score) could potentially be quite different throughout all the caverns of JSW64:MM compared with MM!

This topic has been created to accommodate a discussion about the differences between the original "Manic Miner" and "JSW64: Manic Miner", John Elliott's automatic conversion of "MM" to the JSW64 game format. The starting point for this discussion was Daniel's post about new additions to his JSW Central YouTube channel, which provoked Ian's response and several more posts, which have now been moved to this topic. Daniel's original post: This game to Videos of both variants of "JSW64: Manic Miner" have now been added to the JSW Central YouTube channel. Here they are: JSW64: Manic Miner Variant W JSW64: Manic Miner Variant Z I re-recorded RZX walkthroughs of both variants in order to improve on my previous recordings, made in October 2006 (currently still hosted on the RZX Archive). I was able to bring the completion time down from 7:38 am to 7:35 am in-game time. Interestingly, this is approximately the completion time of "MM" expressed "on a JSW time scale". "Approximately", because "JSW64: Manic Miner" plays *almost exactly* like the original "MM", but not 100% (the most notable difference being the ability to jump over the horizontal guardian at the floor level in "Amoebatrons' Revenge" the first time it comes Willy's way after entering the room - this does spare some time in comparison with playing the original "MM"). Ian's first response: Does that guardian have a different initial frame of animation compared with initial Manic Miner? Or perhaps this is another example of where the value of the internal clock upon entering the cavern (if it happens to hold an odd or even number) can change the gameplay? And if you had entered the cavern a single 'tick' later, one of the slow-moving horizontal guardians would have moved one tick sooner or later, and thus Willy wouldn't have been able to pass along the floor of the cavern as early as you did?

I should probably devise a second cavern for this, in which Willy needs to climb up a cavern via crumbly blocks and then use the same (partially-crumbled) crumbly blocks to safely get back down as quickly as possible. i.e. Expand the training tool, to demonstrate the technique which DigitalDuck recently used to beat Crem's algorithm in The Endorian Forest.

I can confirm that, as per the above, the crabs do indeed behave differently in Manic Jet Set Willy's version of The Beach, compared with the ones in the same room from the original JSW game.

So the premise of the (as yet unreleased) project I was referring to above, is that the initial air supply in each cavern is reduced to such an extent that you HAVE to do the fastest possible run through the cavern, or else you will run out of air! If you do make it through each cavern, you will have precisely zero increments of air remaining (and so you will score no points other than those gained by collecting the items). However, I didn't want to change ANY other aspect of the gameplay (graphics/guardian behaviour etc should all remain the same as before). When I was working on this project a couple of years back, I noticed that editing the initial air supply for caverns which contain slow horizontal guardians sometimes changed the gameplay. Particularly in the Solar Power Generator, because of the complex interaction between the solar beam, the various guardians, and Willy. (In fact, @jetsetdannydiscovered this when playtesting an early version of @Norman Sword's game 'Manic Jet Set Willy' - the solar beam seemed to behave differently sometimes, compared with other times, when Danny entered the solar cavern - however, this transpired not to be the fault of the solar beam, but a result of the slow horizontal guardian's initial placement). The changes in cavern behaviour arise from the fact that slow horizontal guardians only move when there is an even number of air increments left in the cavern. So if reducing the air from the amount which Matthew Smith assigned back in 1983, to the bare minimum required for a super-efficient run through the cavern, involves reducing the initial air supply by an odd number of increments, then the slow horizontal guardians change their initial status (i.e. moving in the first time-frame, versus remaining still in the first time-frame). In order to resolve this, I devised a Cavern Setup Patch system which edits a certain address in the 'Move the horizontal guardians' routine, so that for those caverns where it is necessary, the routine ensures that slow horizontal guardians only move when there is an odd number of air increments left in the cavern. (The patch also sets the routine back to normal for all the other caverns where the change is not necessary - so as not to adversely affect some of the other caverns which contain a slow HG but where I happen to have adjusted the air supply down by an even number of increments.) DigitalDuck's discovery of a quicker route through The Endorian Forest - quicker by a single increment of air - and the fact that there is a slow HG in that cavern, means that it has to be added to the list of caverns where the 'Move the horizontal guardians' routine needs to be tweaked - or else the behaviour of the slow HG (and potentially the precise 'fastest possible' route through the cavern - timings of jumps etc) would be altered. So in that sense, DD's discovery has necessitated a change to the game engine of my project!

Furthermore, I have updated the first post in the Manic Miner High Score Challenge thread, to take account of DigitalDuck's achievement in beating the algorithm!: Spider has fallen off the bottom of the league table (sorry Andy!) crem's algorithm no longer occupies the top slot for every single cavern!

Meanwhile, here are the appropriate keypresses - I think! - for DigitalDuck's more efficient walkthrough (quicker by one timeframe than Crem's algorithm managed) of The Endorian Forest: R R R R R R R R R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R R R R R R R R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q R R Q Q Q . Q . Q R R R Q . . . . . . . . . QM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q Q . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q . . . . . . . R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . R Q QM . . . . . . . . . . . . R R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . Q QM . . . . . . . . . . . . R R R R R RM . . . . . . . . . . . . QM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q QM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R R R R R R R R R R R . Q . . . . . . . . QM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q Q Q R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R . . . Q . . . . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q Q Q QM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Q Perhaps @Norman Sword might like to update the data in his 'Manic Miner with automatic play', to take account of this recent discovery? (And hopefully validate that I have correctly edited the datastream!)

In relation to the above comment, the phenomenon discussed in the following post (in a discussion about an early version of Manic Jet Set Willy) is also relevant: You might be wondering - how can the discovery of an improved maximum score for a cavern have implications for the game engine of a project, not just the game data? I will discuss more later...

I think the observation might have consequences for how quickly Willy can complete the cavern in Manic Jet Set Willy, compared with original Manic Miner. By only having to take one step forward (not two) off the upper platform (onto the upper crumblies) before dropping and then jumping leftwards to collect the final (lower-right) item, you can collect that item one air-increment sooner and then head to the portal - gaining one extra point for this cavern. There may be other caverns where the ability to step one increment closer to a Fire cell embedded in the platform you are standing on before jumping over it could gain you more points. However, I can't think of another scenario in the original MM caverns where there is a Fire cell underfoot in this way and a time saving may be gained; most Fire cells are at knee-height or are overhead. Maybe The Vat or The Warehouse might play out differently? EDIT: In the JSW room The Beach, it might be possible to get closer to the crabs before jumping over them without being nipped.

Note to self: I will have to check whether this Endorian Forest discovery has any implications for a certain project of mine... EDIT: I mean for the game engine, as well as for the data.

I've just rewatched Crem's walkthrough of The Vat. When Willy first starts walking behind the pink kangaroo, he is so close to it that I suspect he might have collided with it when trying to jump up to the next platform as it turned around at the end of its trajectory. The early jump whilst walking along probably prevented that, by setting him back a step relative to the kangaroo (for the reason I mentioned earlier - the last step of a sideways jump doesn't actually move him sideways). However, he could have achieved the same thing by simply stopping walking for one time-frame (which, as you say, would have been slightly quicker in real-world time).

If Willy is walking sideways and does a jump (landing on the same level), then the last frame of animation of that jump he drops down vertically, so his sideways momentum is slowed down ie it costs time both in terms of air supply (one increment) AND slower execution of the program during the jump. I can't think of a scenario where jumping might be 'optional' in the way that you suggest in MM? (In JSW, you can allow an arrow to pass through you rather than jump over it if there happens to be some non-solid platform that Willy can hide inside/behind when the arrow passes through him.) You're right about the first Kong, of course - I was thinking about the second one and completely forgot about the first!

Point 1: makes me wonder if the current optimised routes (because of the way they were created) didn't consider the possibility of pressing turn-around-and-jump-again during a jump, and whether there are any further efficiencies to be found elsewhere as a result? EDIT: Although I've just noticed that Willy does precisely such a manoeuvre halfway through the AI walkthrough of Wacky Amoebatrons, for example. With the immediate benefit of allowing Willy to get up onto the next level of WA slightly quicker. The Endorian Forest example may be unique because the turn/jump move is 'time-neutral' when considering the rate of progression through the cavern on a 'localised' basis; the one time-frame efficiency is only realised later on, when Willy comes to drop down again, and it transpires that the remnant of the crumbly platform lends itself to a slightly quicker descent. Point 2: I seem to recall that the objectives of fastest completion and highest score are nearly always in perfect alignment in Manic Miner; the only exceptions being the flicking of the switches to dislodge Kong Beast (for extra points, at the cost of one more time frame), and the Solar cavern (due to the need to minimise contact with the beam to reduce air sapping and thus increase the end-of-cavern score). So I don't foresee any difficulty in updating the data stream for The Endorian Forest.

Couple of things: (1) The program does react to keyperesses in certain circumstances even when the Airborne Indicator is set - namely when Willy lands after a jump up onto a platform higher than the one he jumped from. This allows him to land, turn and jump again in a single time frame. Indeed, that is the very manoeuvre which allowed you to gain an extra point. (2) There is already a datafile for the previous best performance available earlier on in this thread (Crem provided one for each cavern). So I think the easiest thing to do would be for me to scrutinise the few frames where the new route differs, and manually edit the data accordingly.

I was thinking along the lines of the format in the first post of page 6 of this thread, where a full stop indicates no movement keys being pressed for one time frame, with other movement keys being indicated by letters. Norman Sword wrote a program which automated the optimised sequences of keypresses (or lack of keypresses when appropriate), to create a version of Manic Miner which plays itself to a maximum final score (or, as it turns out, at least one point shy of the maximum possible score). You can also select BB or SP version to watch the automated optimised routes in action.

I wonder if someone updated the keypress datastream for The Endorian Forest (I could have a go myself although I'm about to fly off to Nice), whether @NormanSword might consider updating his game file which consisted of automated optimised routes through the caverns, to take account of this new discovery?

Although now that I think about it, I've already done an in-depth analysis of how to descend through a field of crumblies (a technique which is needed most notably in The Vat and The Warehouse in order to maximise the score). It even formed the basis of one of my mini-puzzles that you referred to earlier (funny how all these threads are coming together, isn't it?) The Endorian Forest is, as far as I can tell, the only MM cavern where Willy has to use a crumbly platform to ascend the cavern and then use the same crumbly platform to descend back down again*. That's the scenario in which the efficiency which DigitalDuck discovered was to be found. So perhaps it is a one-off? (*I'm not including cases where Willy descends down through an empty gap where a crumbly platform used to be; in this case the fall would be fatal if Willy dropped through it without partially crumbled platforms to stagger his fall.) *** Anyway, it's nice to know that humans (or even ducks!?) can still outwit computers in this Age of AI...

I've only analysed The Endorian Forest today. I guess other rooms where Willy has to progress downwards by waiting for crumblies to disappear might yield further results? I did wonder why, in both DD and Crem's AI recordings, Willy walked out an extra step (than seemed the bare minimum) onto the crumbly platforms on the way down near the end of Endorian Forest. But then I remembered how you have to step back a bit from a fire cell before trying to jump over it. So there's no further efficiency to be found there, due to the spiky leaf fire cell near the bottom just to the right of the trunk. (In fact, attempting a quick testing out of that manoeuvre (based on a snapshot in QAOPs that I pulled up for convenience, which happened to be from Norman Sword's Manic Jet Set Willy) is what led me to discover the slight difference between the MJSW and MM game engines, as I reported elsewhere.)