IRF

I devised a similar setup for my long-gestating (currently in abeyance) project: 'Willy's Recurring Nightmare':-
If Willy enters a new 'tune zone', the music note index is reset so that the new tune starts from the first note. (Incidentally, the music note index is set to 0, not to 1 as it is in the original JSW, in which the first note of IIWARM is curtailed when you first start playing a new game.) But if you enter a new room within the same tune zone (or lose a life), then the existing tune carries on seamlessly.
I also added another feature - if you enter a new tune zone, the 'tune on/off' flag is reset so that the new tune starts playing even if the player had opted to turn off the music whilst Willy was in the previous tune zone. I figured that this would increase the exposure of the individual tunes - I appreciate there's a danger that it might annoy a player who wants to play without any music, but then they always have the option of just muting their laptop (if they're playing on an emulator, as most people do these days).

In the case of 'In the Hall of the Mountain King', I believe I did that classical piece of music justice in 'Manic Mixup' - implementing a quite faithful 128-byte loop during gameplay (which doubles in speed of play when the air supply in each cavern reaches the 'red zone' - replicating the way that ITHOTMK gains pace towards the end), and a coda that is played during the 'cavern completion' sequence (when Willy goes into a flashing portal), which matches the finale of Greg's original composition. 😎
I look forward to hearing what you've done with it, and also your extended rendition of 'If I Were A Rich Man'. 😊

I devised a similar setup for my long-gestating (currently in abeyance) project: 'Willy's Recurring Nightmare':-
If Willy enters a new 'tune zone', the music note index is reset so that the new tune starts from the first note. (Incidentally, the music note index is set to 0, not to 1 as it is in the original JSW, in which the first note of IIWARM is curtailed when you first start playing a new game.) But if you enter a new room within the same tune zone (or lose a life), then the existing tune carries on seamlessly.
I also added another feature - if you enter a new tune zone, the 'tune on/off' flag is reset so that the new tune starts playing even if the player had opted to turn off the music whilst Willy was in the previous tune zone. I figured that this would increase the exposure of the individual tunes - I appreciate there's a danger that it might annoy a player who wants to play without any music, but then they always have the option of just muting their laptop (if they're playing on an emulator, as most people do these days).

This cavern is interesting, in that it is both possible and impossible to complete the cavern without losing a life! A kind of Schroedinger's cavern! If you know what I mean?

I hope 2023 will be remembered, besides other things, as the year of an "explosion" of in-game music in ZX Spectrum games using the MM and JSW48 game engines.
I was privileged to work on the "postproduction" of some of the fine games that have been gamma-released (or updated) this year and I composed in-game tunes for most of them. In total, between September 2022 and December 2023, I coded more than 90 in-game tunes that had never been used in any MM or JSW game for the ZX Spectrum before. They are 128-bytes-long, i.e. twice as long as the tunes in the original "MM" and "JSW". 
76 of these brand new in-game tunes (if I have counted correctly) have been made public and can be listened to while playing Carl Paterson's "AmAZiNG WiLLY" v. 4, "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" v. 3 and "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" v. 2, Sendy's "Manic Person" and Pedro Magallares Ocaña's "León Willy". There are also more than a dozen tunes I coded that have not been made public yet but that are ready to be used in future projects (including an individual game project of mine which I hope to continue at some point, hopefully in 2024 if real life circumstances permit).
In addition to these brand-new tunes, I creating extended, 128-byte-long versions of "If I Were a Rich Man" (the in-game tune from the original "JSW") and "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (the in-game tune from the original "MM" and "Jet Set Willy II"), both coded by Matthew Smith, and a couple of extended, 128-long versions of other previously existing tunes. And a 64-byte-long rendition of Chopin's Marche funèbre (preceded by an alarm sound) for rooms designed as multiple-death traps.
I had always wanted to enrich the music in the MM and JSW games, but for many years it seemed to me that coding this music is very difficult. Then I coded my first in-game tune in 2020 while working on the 48K Edition of Fabián Álvarez López (Adban de Corcy)'s "Madam Blavskja's Carnival Macabre" and then suddenly I realised how easy it was. "Easy" thanks to Richard Hallas's document "A Miner Triad. Music in Jet-Set Willy and both versions of Manic Miner" which is instrumental (pun intended) in managing and coding the music. I did have to go through a learning curve (which is evidenced by how some tunes are improved in version 4 of Carl Paterson's "AmAZiNG WiLLY" in relation to their original editions in v. 2), but now I am generally able to code a tune in, say, 15 minutes if the melody is easy and I know it well (and in a couple of hours if the melody is difficult and I have to refer to the musical notation).
Most of the tunes I have coded are melodies that come from various areas of the music I love. This includes (but is not limited to) old American folk music, popular European and U.S. music from the 1930s through the 1960s, various songs from Poland, my home country, and from the Spanish-speaking world. A couple of compositions are entirely my own: either renditions of tunes I believe I once created ("I believe", because I can't be quite sure I didn't hear them, or similar tunes, somewhere), literally decades ago, or coded in recent months specifically as JSW in-game tunes.
In the future, I intend to create a file which will be a sampler of my in-game music compositions: technically a JSW48 game file, but with only one room and a possibility to input the address from which the in-game tune is to be played, thus making it easy to listen to the various tunes. It will also include a detailed description both showing what each tune is and pointing to where it resides in memory (so that the code can be easily copied to be used in other projects). This will have to wait until my individual game project that I mentioned above is released, as I definitely want to include the currently unpublished tunes I have ready for it in this future music sampler.
"AmAZiNG WiLLY", "WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE", "JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" and "León Willy" also feature brand-new title-screen tunes I coded (while Sendy's "Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal", which otherwise has no in-game music, features a 128-byte-long version of "If I Were a Rich Man" as the title-screen tune). 
The final note on the music developments in 2023 is that these recent projects feature new code responsible for initiating the in-game tune from the first note. This activation takes place if a different tune was playing before Willy entered the current room or if the same tune was playing in a different mode (in some of these games the tunes play in various modes, e.g. faster or more slowly, or either in their full 128-byte-long versions or in the shorter 64-byte-long versions). Notably, if the same tune was already playing in the same mode, the code ensures the seamless continuation of that particular tune. This is a valuable enhancement of the musical experience (if I may say so myself).
Should anyone want to use any of the tunes I coded in their projects, I will be more than happy for this to happen. Please get in touch if you want specific info about any of the tunes 🙂 .

2023 has been an exceptional year for the MM and JSW games for the ZX Spectrum 🙂. It saw the release of several brand-new games:
"WiLLY iN ThE MiRRoRVeRSE" v. 2 was released by Carl Paterson on 10th February (this being the first public release of the game). The release of updated v. 3 followed on 8th December.
"Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal" was released by Sendy (Alex Cornhill) on 11th March.
"Manic Person" was released by Sendy (Alex Cornhill) on 7th October.
"León Willy" was released by Pedro Magallares Ocaña on 10th November.
"JeT SeT JnR aNd ThE CuRsE oF ThE PhArAoH" v. 2 was released by Carl Paterson on 22nd  December (this being the first public release of the game).
 
Furthermore, "Manic Miner 40th Anniversary Tribute" ("MM40th") was released by Bob The Polar Bear on 24th August. It could be debated whether it should be considered an entirely new game or a continuation of his project whose earlier 'incarnations' are "Manic-4-Noobs" ("M4N") and "MANIC-minor" ("M-m").
 
2023 also witnessed  some releases of new versions of games originally released in previous years:
"Manic Jet Set Willy" v. 3.00 was released by Norman Sword on 1st January and v. 3.01 followed on 7th January.
"AmAZiNG WiLLY" v. 3 was released by Carl Paterson on 22nd January and v. 4 followed on 2nd December.
 
Furthermore, a minigame called "Jet Set Willy: Key Code Edition", based on the original "JSW", was released by Andy Ford on 24th/25th March.
 
Finally, bug-fixed versions of "Manic Miner 128" (one based on the Software Projects edition of "Manic Miner" – originally created by Mihai Novitchi, the other one based on the Bug-Byte edition of "Manic Miner" – originally created by Bob Fossil) were released by Bob Fossil on 5th/6th May.
 
I should also note that Sendy's "Strangel 2" is in its beta stage and, as a playtester, I can say it's an incredible game (using the JSW64 V game engine), which brings JSW gaming to a whole new level. The game has not been released yet, but it was effectively created in 2023. I do hope it will be released in 2024 (with some additional enhancements that I will be happy to contribute to as much as possible).
 
I also believe that Jet Set Willie's first JSW game is also in its beta stage, also created this year which is just about to end, but I'm not sure how much info I can disclose about it - perhaps Willie will comment on it if he so wishes.
 
All of these developments show that the MM/JSW-editing scene is still very much alive 😁. I just wish there was more feedback from the players - typically, except for some initial reactions after the game's release there is hardly any info if anyone has actually completed the game. There have been some exceptions, but, generally speaking, what I would call "solid feedback" has been scarce, which is a pity, because, as noted in some of the older Readmes, "the biggest gratification and encouragement for anyone designing free games is to know that someone else has played them!"
 
Happy 2024 to Everyone! 😊

That's as close as MM gets to quantum physics, I guess! 🤣

This cavern is interesting, in that it is both possible and impossible to complete the cavern without losing a life! A kind of Schroedinger's cavern! If you know what I mean?

You're right, you can't see the real portal when you lose a life there.

Thanks, Ian!
I usually give it at least half a year now since the release of a new game before publishing any visual materials related to it apart from the few initial screenshots which are also used to advertise the launch. In fact, it will be longer in many cases, because I may be into other things before thinking of adding screenshots to the (relatively) new releases.
In any case, as mentioned before, I do intend to ultimately provide complete screenshot galleries for each game, so this will also include all of the projects you've been involved in so far*. Of the ones you've specifically mentioned, "Jet Set Mini" already has a full screenshot gallery, while "Manic Mixup" is still waiting for one.
* I look forward to your future projects! 😉 

On that note, I recall that I was a bit precious about 'spoilers' immediately after the release of some of the games I was involved in a few years back. But I'd be happy for JSW Central to include screenshots of all the rooms in Jet Set Mini, Manic Mixup, etc, at a time of your convenience. (If they're not already there.) 

On that note, I recall that I was a bit precious about 'spoilers' immediately after the release of some of the games I was involved in a few years back. But I'd be happy for JSW Central to include screenshots of all the rooms in Jet Set Mini, Manic Mixup, etc, at a time of your convenience. (If they're not already there.) 

I don't believe the portal in that cavern reveals itself during the 'lose a life' screen flash effect, although there is another visual effect during gameplay which helps you to locate the portal (which is at different position in the easy and hard variants!) - and having done that, Willy ends up in a position where there is no way out other than by sacrificing a life. 

Thanks for your detailed and very interesting analysis, Ian! 👍
The fact that the location of the portal can be seen when Willy loses a life is also very helpful in
  
It's great to know that JSW Central can be useful! 😁Providing screenshots of every single room of every single new game (and of every single room of every single minor version of MM and JSW provided it is worth it, i.e. 'different enough' from the original) is one of my eventual goals for the website. They way I do it (taking every screenshot from a game actually being played or from its RZX recording being played after the game had been played and recorded) is a very time-consuming and, to be honest, a very arduous process. So it will take time before that goal is accomplished, but I definitely want to get there some day.
My current priority for JSW Central is, apart from adding new released games and versions, enriching the games' individual pages with embedded walkthroughs from the JSW Central YouTube channel. This, of course, presupposes creating these videos in the first place, which also means playing and recording them (or re-recording, if I'm not satisfied with the quality of a recording I once made).
I am planning to focus on creating the videos first, but once this stage is finished, I will devote more time to adding screenshot galleries wherever they're missing. Obviously, the videos will be very helpful in this process as a lot of the screenshots will be taken from the RZX recordings used to create the videos - there's a nice synergy between both processes 🙂 .

I've just noticed that cryptic comment of mine from a couple of months ago, and I'm trying to remember what I was referring to!
I think it was something to do with the way that items are drawn in the moment of Willy losing a life. From memory, I think there's a slight difference in the sequence of when an item is drawn in the main loop? Or maybe it's to do with the fact that each item is assigned its own PAPER setting in MM, as well as its own INK setting (which cycles through a palette of colours) - whereas in JSW, the INK colour cycles through the palette but that is then superimposed on the PAPER colour of the air cells for the host room.
Anyway, the net effect was that I was able to solve more easily the puzzle in the cavern in question, in Manic Person, because... 
I think if the JSW game engine was operating, the
would have remained
 

Further to my previous post, I've refreshed my memory of the cavern layout (thanks to the screenshot on JSW Central, an ever-useful resource!), and it was the following aspect of the game engine that helped me to solve the cavern:
Because... 
 

It looks like you have to exploit a game engine bug/quirky feature in order to be able to collect the uppermost item in that starting room.

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!)

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 looks like you have to exploit a game engine bug/quirky feature in order to be able to collect the uppermost item in that starting room.

Thanks for playing the game 🙂 .
To be honest:
1. The jump indeed needs to be pixel perfect in that you can only jump from one position (if you jump from one step farther or one step closer to the edge, you will die). This is how Willy has to be positioned to jump successfully:

2. As Ian pointed out, there is no time pressure, because once you're beyond the yellow guardian's reach, it won't harm you. So you can slowly position yourself for the jump.
3. After adopting the right position, if you want to make 100% sure you won't 'misjump' (by taking a step forward before jumping), you can jump vertically first and then, before Willy lands, press and hold the JUMP and RIGHT keys together, and you will be guaranteed to jump correctly.
In view of the above, it's not a difficult place, really. Wait till you get to the trap doors in the "Overgrown Subterranean Chamber"... 😉

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? 

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? 

It certainly could! 👍

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?