Dasse

I Remember I was impressed by the gfx, but the controls are terrible, no pixel perfect here! :)

I was overjoyed when I found out there was a JSW on the Amiga. Our C64 had expired a few years before, so I hadn't played the game in a long time. There were aspects to it I didn't like - like the fact that it relied on a universal tileset rather than each area having its distinct qualities and monsters having variable colours - but by and large it was fun. And it had the best title music of any JSW game, and yes I am including Rob Hubbard's in that. In-game theme was a little underwhelming, mind
 
One thing that I found weirdly pleasurable with this version is that, with no room entrance to start from, it favoured the more conventional approach that, on enemy collision, you would restart where you died but with momentary invincibility. A perverse mind such as mine could, for example, walk Willy straight through the flying saucer blocking the right-hand exist in Shuttle Bay and fall for an awkwardly long time, long past any actual game map. Actually you could do that trick at both ends of the ship; I seem to recall the left-hand side (wherever I was dropping from) would eventually see me crash down on an endless grey surface with a spurious foot resting on it
 
I am pretty sure I've completed this game using a cracked version, and I THINK it might repeat the old "Oh $#!+ The Central Cavern!" trick, but I've forgotten

Yes! no copies :)
You can see two C64 MM but one of them have the unique Black & White cassette! Don't know why it is B & W even :D
 
/Dasse
 
Hehe, your welcome! :)

Yes! no copies :)
You can see two C64 MM but one of them have the unique Black & White cassette! Don't know why it is B & W even :D
 
/Dasse
 
Hehe, your welcome! :)

I am pleased to report that the release of the Special Edition of "Willy's New Mansion" will happen soon, certainly not later than the twelfth anniversary of the release of the original edition (10th November), quite possibly earlier than that :) . The game file itself is finished, most of the playtesting is over and some finishing touches are now being given to the Readme.
 
Meanwhile, you can have a look at screenshots of all the rooms of the game here.
 
I would like to mention the fact that the game has been enriched significantly since the version that existed when message #2 above was posted. Ian Rushforth (IRF) has provided tremendous input in the form of pointing to unused space, suggesting possibilities for optimising the code in order to squeeze in more things, spotting some issues and suggesting improvements and offering one PV that he created. He also playtested the whole game and RZX-recorded the playtest for me. Andy Ford (Spider), in turn, has made a valuable contribution regarding building the final file, and has taken care of testing the game on real hardware (it works!) and on the Vega (results to be confirmed). Specific credits are given to them and to others in the Readme, but I don't want to miss any opportunity to acknowledge the valuable involvement of these two Gentlemen  :) .

Impressive! Is every single thing there unique, or do you have more than one copy of some of the collector's items?

I've seen the collection photo just now. :) *adds friend request on FB*

I've made a video of my collection :)
 
I have post the link at Facebook (group Central Cavern) but if you don't have facebook here comes the link!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qqRkurMg8A

I've made a video of my collection :)
 
I have post the link at Facebook (group Central Cavern) but if you don't have facebook here comes the link!
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qqRkurMg8A

I thought I would start a new thread for various links of interest to MM/JSW fans, which do not fit into other topics. The ones I am going to paste below do not warrant a separate topic each IMO, and they do not fit into the "Useful links" category. That one is more for technical information, for links to sites which may be useful for people working on the code, designing new games or new game features, etc. The ones below are interesting, but not useful in that sense. I've come across them recently
 
So here we go:
 
Rufus Standish's interesting review of MM, JSW and JSW2   Nitta Mituaki's ranking of difficulty of JSW and similar games   I need to contact Nitta Mituaki to suggest that "JSW: The 2010 Megamix" (Hard Version) should be included in such an analysis as one of the most difficult games ever created. Some other titles (such as "strangel" or "Party Willy 128") should certainly be included, too.   EDIT:  I've just had another look at Nittamuaki's ranking of difficulty of games and I was pleasantly surprised to see that he *did* include information about the most difficult ZX Spectrum games, including "JSW: The 2010 Megamix" and "JSW: The Nightmare Edition" (as work in progress)  :D . It's just the "Party Willy 128" that he might want to add (because of the number of rooms and the individual difficulty of most rooms).

Great work! :D

I always wanted an editor either for the C64 version of JSWII (which for me was Jet Set Willy, as it was the one I grew up with) or for the Amiga version (which was the version I consoled myself with long after our C64 had died inside). To my knowledge neither exists, however

I wonder at what point Software Projects changed their mind and commissioned the Stephen McMaster MM/JSW games for the Amiga? Also this led me to reading about Boing! on the C64, the rejected Chris Lancaster conversion of JSW that was passed onto Bubble Bus Software and reworked to avoid copyright. Seems like Software Projects had a lot of odd stuff happening behind the scenes

I started collecting Colour Genie games about two years ago. I don't have Jet Set Billy in my collection but an image of the cassette is available on line. I've created a page for it on my Everygamegoing site.
 
http://www.everygamegoing.com/landing/items/colour_genie/arcade_games/tapes/Jet_Set_Billy.html
 
There's a Colour Genie emulator for the PC called Genieous which is quite good (Link to this is on the same page above) and you can also view instructions on how to convert games back to WAV by entering 'Colour Genie Conversion' as a search term on the Everygamegoing site.

Found this one at Atarimania:
 
My friend Carl Whitwell and I produced the Atari ST version of Jet-Set Willy for Software Projects, circa 1989. The guy we were working for was Tommy Barton, who was one of the directors of Software Projects. We finished writing the game, which was as perfect a reproduction of the original ZX Spectrum sound and graphics as you could get. If you saw it, you would think it was the Spectrum.

At the Software Projects offices, we were also given the opportunity to play the Commodore Amiga version of Jet-Set Willy, which was not yet finished at that time. Tommy took us through to a different room with an Amiga in it, and remarked that Shahid Ahmad was working from home but had left a recent copy of it as a demo. It looked like many Amiga games of the time, full of hardware sprites with smooth movement and lots of colour shades. I particularly remember The Forgotten Abbey, as it revealed the flaw in this approach: each of the monks looked exactly the same. In our version, being an exact replica of the original, each monk is a different colour. Other screens in the Amiga version just had coloured blocks instead of proper sprites, since he hadn't finished them yet.

Our Atari ST version was created in two stages. First of all, we disassembled the original Z80 code and reverse engineered it into C. Then, we re-coded some of Matthew Smith's graphics and sound routines for the Atari ST. We worked using a Sinclair Spectrum with the Zeus Disassembler and the original Jet-Set Willy program, and an Atari ST 520FM with the Sozobon C compiler. We had no physical link between the computers - the disassembled code was listed on the Spectrum screen, and entered into the Atari by hand! Each screen's data was dumped as hex, and dictated to a typist who entered it into struct { } statements in the C program.

By the end of the 1980s, Software Projects felt that Jet-Set Willy had had its day, and decided to cancel both the Amiga and the Atari ST projects. (However, the Amiga version of Manic Miner, also by Shahid Ahmad, had been on sale for a few months by this time). Since Software Projects weren't interested, we gave a copy of our ST version away to someone in England who wanted a copy for himself. Apparently, he gave copies to lots of people. That version can be identified in a number of ways. We altered the authorship message to read "Perfect Conversions, Hamburg", for example.

Found this one at Atarimania:
 
My friend Carl Whitwell and I produced the Atari ST version of Jet-Set Willy for Software Projects, circa 1989. The guy we were working for was Tommy Barton, who was one of the directors of Software Projects. We finished writing the game, which was as perfect a reproduction of the original ZX Spectrum sound and graphics as you could get. If you saw it, you would think it was the Spectrum.

At the Software Projects offices, we were also given the opportunity to play the Commodore Amiga version of Jet-Set Willy, which was not yet finished at that time. Tommy took us through to a different room with an Amiga in it, and remarked that Shahid Ahmad was working from home but had left a recent copy of it as a demo. It looked like many Amiga games of the time, full of hardware sprites with smooth movement and lots of colour shades. I particularly remember The Forgotten Abbey, as it revealed the flaw in this approach: each of the monks looked exactly the same. In our version, being an exact replica of the original, each monk is a different colour. Other screens in the Amiga version just had coloured blocks instead of proper sprites, since he hadn't finished them yet.

Our Atari ST version was created in two stages. First of all, we disassembled the original Z80 code and reverse engineered it into C. Then, we re-coded some of Matthew Smith's graphics and sound routines for the Atari ST. We worked using a Sinclair Spectrum with the Zeus Disassembler and the original Jet-Set Willy program, and an Atari ST 520FM with the Sozobon C compiler. We had no physical link between the computers - the disassembled code was listed on the Spectrum screen, and entered into the Atari by hand! Each screen's data was dumped as hex, and dictated to a typist who entered it into struct { } statements in the C program.

By the end of the 1980s, Software Projects felt that Jet-Set Willy had had its day, and decided to cancel both the Amiga and the Atari ST projects. (However, the Amiga version of Manic Miner, also by Shahid Ahmad, had been on sale for a few months by this time). Since Software Projects weren't interested, we gave a copy of our ST version away to someone in England who wanted a copy for himself. Apparently, he gave copies to lots of people. That version can be identified in a number of ways. We altered the authorship message to read "Perfect Conversions, Hamburg", for example.

Howdy!
 
I wonder if somebody know if the Atari ST version was 100% complete with inlay etc but never released?
I know it was canned but still wonder if any real copies was ever made?
 
/Dasse

Sorry for my huge break from the forum but first I had some personal issues and now I am in the middle of a move ! 
Will be more active later on :D

Sorry for my huge break from the forum but first I had some personal issues and now I am in the middle of a move ! 
Will be more active later on :D

Really nice reading! :)
 
not so much news ( as I thought ) but Its always a joy to read everything about MM or JSW!

Great stuff! :D

Hehe.. yeah QL games looked a bit different :)
 
I think I tried this game many years ago in a emulator but couldn't start the bastard! .. maybe something to do with 64 bit processor today and the emulators only work on 32 bit or XP etc etc..  gosh I am talking to much! haha

Looks interesting, although the QL graphics are a bit odd (to be expected) :)
 
No download link though but I guess its floating around somewhere.

Here we have that game! :)
 
seems quite fun!
 
http://www.rwapadventures.com/ql_wiki/index.php?title=QL%20Cavern

No I am afraid I dont have that, I remember I read about that game in Your Computer and they described it was "A Manic Miner game for QL" .. I will try to find it :)