For fans of Ultimate Manic Miner...

[IRF]

... I strongly recommend that you play the room 'Eugene Lair' directly upon starting up the game. i.e. by setting Room 61 as the starting room - Willy should be positioned, via the Portal page in JSWED, at the bottom of the room above the 'EN' of the word 'EUGENE'.  (Make sure he starts off buried up to his neck in the two Cyan cells, rather than standing on those cells, or else the room may be uncompletable.)

 

This is how the author intended the room to be played, I believe - over on the Yahoo! group, Igor reported a bug: "I've found a bug, that I can't solve - but it doesn't harm the game. You will meet it in the EUGENE LAIR. > Skylabs turn into Droplets. When you will get to it you'll see it."  It doesn't harm the game in the sense of rendering it uncompletable, but I do believe it takes a certain element away from that room.

 

What is happening is that there are Droplet guardians (i.e. Skylabs that don't move sideways between 'incarnations') that are normally encountered in an earlier room of the game.  The effect of the Droplets patch, which John Elliott describes as 'experimental'*, is to permanently overwrite the horizontal offset that is applied to Skylabs (at #FF61 in the Skylab movement code).  Incidentally, I believe I have come up with a fix for that, which I shall report on later.

 

[*'Experimental' probably for this very reason, as well as the fact that they can sometimes be drawn with an erroneous initial sprite-frame.]

 

Anyway, if you load up the game with Willy placed directly into Eugene Lair, then you will bypass the corruption caused by the Droplets in the earlier room, and so you'll be able to play 'Eugene Lair' with the Skylabs (which look like explosions of lava) in full effect.  It's an awesome challenge - nowhere is safe!!  :o  :excl:  ;)

Edited July 25, 2017 by IRF

[Spider]

I'm slightly confused by this so I'll try it later again, I do recall trying it at the time but did not quite see what was intended. :)

[Spider]

It resulted in an IDS as Miner Willy fell through the floor and appeared at the top of the screen, the falling distance being too great to the first platform although he would of *just* missed the horizontal yellow toilet guardian by the looks of it. :) :unsure:

[IRF]

Here are the POKES (in hexadecimal) that will fix the 'Skylabs Bug' in 'Ultimate Manic Miner':

 

Memory Bank 3:

POKE #FE07, #78

POKE #FE08, #8C

POKE #FE0F, #78

POKE #FE10, #84

POKE #FE17, #78

POKE #FE18, #8C

 

Memory Bank 6:

POKE #F6A7, #78

POKE #F6A8, #86

POKE #F6AF, #78

POKE #F6B0, #86

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Ian! :)

[jetsetdanny]

The release of Igor Makovsky's "Ultimate Manic Miner" was a much-expected event on the MM/JSW scene back in 2005/2006. This was due to Igor's pre-release announcements and teasers. After the release, there were quite a lot of reactions, ranging from awe and high praise to strong criticism, and a fierce debate regarding the use of the so-called "quirky features" (or "bugs", according to the critics) in JSW games ensued.

Igor went out of his way to impress the audience with exploiting all possible features of the JSW64 game engine. He also carried out a strong 'promotion campaign' on the Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group before the game's release. To quote from a message he posted back in September 2005: "It uses JSW 64 engine. Every of 64 rooms presents you some interesting effect of the JSW engine (both old and JSW64) or a quirky feature, not letting you feel boring. Tons of triggers, stoppers and MANY MORE!"

To quote from some other posts in the Yahoo! Group he made later on:

"I want this game to be a really surprise for all the members, so I will keep all the secrets about it now. You won't regret about waiting for so long. 😃 promise..."

"In fact, this game is the result of all my JSW-editing experience since 2000 and I want it to be such a game, that won't make you regret for waiting it for so long."

"I warn you that UMM is strictly restricted for playing to those people, who keep their mental health ok and don't want to see all the scenes, I've included to keep the atmosphere of the panic, horror and appearance of the unknown forces in a mine, where Willy came to work (because of Willy, himself)."

"I wish to create UMM with unusual effects of engine, not changing any code only with my own secrets of designing rooms (...)".

"I now work under the last quarter of rooms making some unbelievable effects so that player would be interested in trying to solve the whole game and not to stop playing."

"...and wait for UMM where all the rooms will bring more surprises and won't make you feel boring!..."

"I just advice you to put something fast'n'heavy like Apocalyptica in your hi-fi system when playing my game. =)))"

The expectation in the Yahoo! Group was high. Before the release, there were comments like: "Anyway from what you say about UMM it should be an almost euphoric experience to play when it finally arrives" (comment by the DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!); "(...) UMM looks like it will be incredible" (comment by Carl Murray) and "This new screeshot from UMM confirms that your future game will be really a very great game! it's very beautiful" (comment by Herve Ast).

The game was released on 20 February 2006. There were a lot of very positive reactions from the Yahoo! Group members:

"And what a game it is. The intro blew me away. It's... it's... so beautiful... You totally took us to a new level. You are _the_ master. *bows down*." - Jet Visy

"I love the atmosphere and the overall graphical style, it's very vivid and leaves a lasting impression in the imagination (...) Wonderful stuff :)" - Sendy

"Your new game is fantastic. The quality of the graph of the rooms is incredible. It's an enormous work to arrive at this result. It's a strange atmosphere, unknown and it will take much time before explored whole." - Herve Ast

"Igor I think UMM is unbelievible, I've spent most of yesterday playing it, and I'm not very far yet. The gameplay itself doesn't seem ridiculously hard but it's working the secrets out so far that seems to be the way of progressing. All in all it blew me away (...) All in all, all I can say is well done you've far outdone yourself this time (...) It was well worth the wait!!! Cheers you've made my week." - the DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!

"WOW! I am soo amazed! 😄 its just so great (...)" - Dasse

"I had a quick, casual go of UMM today, and it was enough to see that the game deserves full marks for novelty, amazing graphics, and a unique atmosphere. It seems to be an excellent showcase of what can be achieved withJSW64 with the extra cell-classes, cell-types, and guardian-types (...) It's also nice to see some quirky features. (...)" - Andrew Broad

"Wow! Wow! Er, wow! What else can I say? It's smegging incredible! I thought ZX Heroes pushed the JSW engine as far as it could go, but this... It's like comparing Half Life to Quake 2! The ideas, the graphics, the animation... Without meaning to sound like one of those pompous "intellectuals" on late night BBC 2, you've elevated JSW design to a new level, to a new art form. Wow!" - Carl Murray

"I have had my first look at "Ultimate Manic Miner", and I have to say that "ultimate" it really is! I haven't played it very seriously yet, just wandered around a bit (...), but I can already express my very high praise to Igor for this groundbreaking product. It does set new standards, indeed, and it is a very powerful show, for me at
least, of the possibilities offered by the JSW64 game engine (...). Igor, your game is truly wonderful in the sense of the atmosphere, graphics and new ideas. When playing it, I had the feeling I was not playing a JSW game at all, so different it was from the "traditional" games." - Daniel (myself)

There was also some criticism. Andrew Broad pointed to two aspects of the game:

"One downside of UMM (and, I guess, of JSW64) is the uncertainty. Because there are so many cell-classes, it's hard to know what to expect in terms of cell-behaviour, whether something is a guardian or not, whether it is stand-onable or not.
The other downside of UMM is the lack of items, most of which seem to be hidden inside portals, or to be extra-life items (not necessary to fulfill the ending-condition if the sole aim is to escape?). So I guess I'll miss the joy of being able to tick off rooms as I clear them of items."

After completing the game recently, I have to say that the lack of collecting items is the biggest downside of the game for me. Collecting items is a BIG part of MM and JSW, and being deprived of this particular pleasure is not something one can enjoy.

Andrew Broad summed up the feelings in the Yahoo! Group when he wrote, on the World of Spectrum forums, "the general consensus in the MM/JSW community is that Ultimate Manic Miner is brilliant".

Outside of the Yahoo! Group, i.e. outside of the circle of people particularly interested in and fond of "MM" and "JSW", reactions to the game were mixed. Some were very positive (e.g. "Thanx for this gem !  One of the best JSW clones ever created" - Tom-Cat), but there was also much criticism regarding various aspects of the game:

"It's too messy (...) Seriously, the programmer's tried to impress soo much with screen design (awful choice of colours in some places - yellow and white???), and cluttered it up soo much, that it kinda ruins the game for me. (...)_ It's too messy, and on a couple of screens, I'm clueless on what's going on. I tire of this game far too easily." - The Starglider

"It's like a prog-rock version of Manic Miner. There's an astonishing amount of detail and a lot of time and talent has gone into it and yet... there's not really any game left." - Zagreb

"(...)  the game appears very, very poorly designed." - Dunny

"hm i dont really like it tbh." - mel the bell

"I agree with Dunny on this, don't like it very much." - Daren

Much of the criticism was related to the use of the "quirky features" (or "bugs", as the critics would have it) of the game engine:

"Relying on engine quirks really makes it a game for a select club of people only. It makes the gameplay counter-intuitive, if not downright illogical. It's a bit like saying "jump into the cabbage to deactivate the power station"." - JMK

"That is a *very* bad idea in game design in general. To rely on quirks (or to be absolutely fair, BUGS) which the player may or may not know of is grossly unfair to a player than may be new to the whole JSW phenomenon. You won't get many new JSW/MM gamers liking this at all, especially when they find out that you've *punished* them for getting past the intro." - Dunny

"It would appear that unless you have knowledge of every single bug (sorry, "quirk") in MM you won't stand a chance of getting anywhere anyway. I'm still stuck on screen 4 and I give up. Finding the random holes in the scenery by sacrificing 200 lives each time is not my idea of a fun afternoon." - Malc74

"Great graphics and use of the engine, but it's possibly the least enjoyable game I've played in years. Manic Miner and JSW were fun because you could see what you were supposed to do generally, even if it sometimes took a lot of skill to do it. But a game where you can't even see what you are supposed to do to get off a screen, and instead have to pause the emulator, read this forum, a page about JSW "quirks" etc - that's just a waste of everyone's time." - Neil^P

More criticism (partly by the same people) was also expressed on the comp.sys.sinclair forum (there were also some positive or balanced reviews there):

"It just looks like the guy's gone all-out trying to get a MM/JSW style game to do stuff that it wasn't intended to do, and made a right mess of it in the process. You can certainly *play* it. But as there's very little that can actually kill you, it's no real fun." - Dunny

"Graphically, it's been superceded by many other games in your own archive. I can appreciate that you're a fan of MM/JSW (as am I - there's been some fantastic work done with the engine), but you can take fanboy-ism too far. Not every new release is "fantastic". This is just abysmal. The guy has really tried to break through the barriers thrown up by the engine and just not succeeded at all in anything other than an insult to the original games." - Dunny (replying to Andrew Broad's message)

"I can't say that I found this game enjoyable at all. It was annoying, it had attribute clash all over the place, the screens had no clear objectives. I would have to give this a 4/10. Only saving grace was the excellent music, but that doesn't make a game great. And I have played many other versions of JSW, that were far better implemented than this effort." - Daz

"Ultimate Manic Miner" was the last major JSW project ever released by Igor Makovsky. Afterwards, Igor released two more JSW64 games, but they were smaller projects, one having 21 edited rooms, the other 6, incidentally, both inspired by his girlfriends (different ones in each case, AFAICT 😉) at the time. I have always thought that the lack of uniformly positive reception of "UMM" must have been a disappointment for Igor and must have affected his enthusiasm for the creation of new JSW games. That's just my personal theory. I hope he will make a comeback someday, though, like other authors have done...

[Sendy The Endless]

It still feels a bit off to me how down some people were on this FREE, FAN-MADE MOD of Jet Set Willy. Like, fan maps are NOT stand-alone products. They sound like reviews for a paid product by a new game design studio. Like they were expecting a commercial product with tutorial levels and a balanced difficulty curve. However, the honesty of these negative reviews DID reveal a bit of cognitive dissonance in the MM/JSW modding scene - on the forums there's much fanfare about Quirky Features. It's easy to assume any fan of the original game will have discovered the "logic" behind these edge cases. Not the case apparently! The solution IMO, is if you're going to use QFs in a game, you should tutorialize them first, use them in puzzles without too many enemies to dodge (because performing a lot of QFs involves pixel-perfect positioning), and don't spam them without intent. There were parts of UMM where it felt more like "look at all these QFs I can make you do!" rather than "Look at this puzzle using QFs and solve it".

This is partially why I removed all QFs from my game JSW: Role Reversal. I also deleted a ton of enemies, and it's STILL a very difficult game! It's easy to forget the most complicated moving part in any game design - the player! Never overlook them if you want more than 5 or 6 people to enjoy your designs!

[Sendy The Endless]

Another thing UMM brought to light was the idea of conveyance within a game world, and how that can change when working in a new engine (JSW128 vs JSW64 with it's extra blocks in the room layout). In several parts of UMM it's difficult to know which blocks and even sprites will kill you. There are some classic stalactite nasty blocks which are actually safe to move through, some NPCs that you can stand on, some you can walk through, and some you can do neither.

The extra blocks aspect of JSW64 mean more creativity, but also remove the process of elimination that takes place in a typical JSW128/48 room, where a fire cell that doesn't look deadly can be deduced simply by it being the only type of cell you haven't touched yet, and hence you know to avoid it. There are several ways to approach this idea of conveyance, but I think the best way is simply to make sure harmful cells LOOK harmful - either spiky, or flashing, or otherwise malformed. The same goes for things in the background, be they sprites or window dressing in the form of blocks... Developing a singular readable style for how you colour- and shape-code is essential when these extra affordances are... afforded to the designer.

This brings me 'round to my final point about JSW64 designing - it can be challenging to make sure each block type has it's own unique attributes, whilst also creating a pleasing colour scheme across the whole room. There are a few ways around this - such as inverting the bit-pattern and attributes (reverse pixels, then swap paper and ink colours) - which let you use the same colour pair for two different block types. There's also a patch that Andrew Broad used in his James Bond game - the flash-cancelling patch. This is something I'm considering looking into as a future way of cell-class-colour management in my games going forwards.

Then there's the final option for JSW64 colour correction: The MONO patch : ) I'm not sure I could bring myself to use it, but with the right game, I'm sure it'd be very atmospheric, and would allow many blocks to be placed side-by-side to make up more complex visuals without having to worry about color coherency...

Finally, I dare suggest some of the negative reactions to UMM could be down to the author over-hyping his own project, using too many superlatives, even in the title (is this the ULTIMATE Manic Miner experience?). Perhaps that got people's goat a bit?

Either way I hope Igor makes a comeback. I think Jet Cat Frosya and ZX Heroes are among some of the best looking and playing JSW mods out there, and; certainly, given what's going on in Russia at the moment, I hope he's doing alright and is simply enjoying a hiatus on creating JSW mods!

Igor, if you're reading this, let us know you're OK! We miss you!

Edited March 30, 2023 by Sendy The Endless

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for all your thoughts, Sendy! I generally agree with everything you wrote. I think it all comes down to the author's intent. If he/she wants to reach a wider audience, quirky features should definitely be either avoided or somehow explained. I tried to do the latter with "Willy's Hoard" - the official release ZIP contains, among other files, a PNG file called "Willy's Hoard: The Quirky Spoiler", which graphically explains every single quirky move you need to make in the game. A higher quality file of "The Quirky Spoiler" can be downloaded from here.

Now, if someone chooses to design an ultra-difficult, quirky-features-based game that only 5 or 6 people in the world will enjoy (if that many, actually!), I wouldn't criticise this choice in any way. I would just say this author should be perfectly aware of and fine with the fact that the remaining 7 billion people (or a million JSW fans, or however many there are 😉) will not enjoy this game, period. A possible solution would be to design such a game (for the sheer pleasure of designing it!) and then produce an easy version for the general game-playing populace. This is something I did with the rooms I designed for "Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" - I am referring here mainly to the rooms which belong to The Land of the Great Hardship part of the map, plus some others. I had no 'brakes' whatsoever in making them as difficult as hell, but then I called the final product a 'Hard' version and modified it to produce an Easy version of the game, which should be accessible (or at least much more accessible than the Hard version) to most players. However, I still consider the Hard version - as mentioned in the Readme - as 'primus inter pares', first among equals 🙂 .

 

[jetsetdanny]

On 3/30/2023 at 2:50 PM, Sendy The Endless said:

Either way I hope Igor makes a comeback. (...)  Igor, if you're reading this, let us know you're OK! We miss you!

Good news: a few hours ago Igor has subscribed to the JSW Central YouTube channel! Apparently he also has a YouTube channel of his own and it's right here.

I hope Igor will join this forum soon. If not, I will post something on his channel (to which I have subscribed) to draw his attention 😉 .