[File] Jet Set Mini

[IRF]

3 - The implications for the most efficient route through the layout

 

As I recall Danny, your preferred route through a standard Jet Set Willy 'mansion layout' (which this game has, broadly speaking, albeit laterally inverted) leads you to complete The Nightmare Room last of all, before making your way to the Master Bedroom for the Toilet Dash.

 

Now, in Jet Set Mini, there is a double-height 'periscope' guardian in 'First Landing', which you can jump over from a high vantage point on the First Landing ramp in order to enter The Nightmare Room. But you can't jump back over the periscope if you exit from The Nightmare Room into First Landing. So that is - apparently - a one-way route, which appears to force you to go from The Nightmare Room via a circuitous route through The Banyan Tree, down the Back Stairway and through the Kitchen screens and the Main Stairway.

 

 

 

However, the secret exit from The Nightmare Room allows you to proceed directly up into the Master Bedroom, and is therefore a nice shortcut! (Saving you from having to make multiple traverses of the Kitchens, etc.) It should cut several minutes off your final completion time! :)

Edited July 18, 2019 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

Ian, thanks a lot for these detailed explanations!  :thumbsup:  You have designed these features in a very cunning way, in my opinion, and it's good to know how they were implemented exactly :).

 

Recording a smooth RZX walkthrough of "Mini" will be my next JSW task, after I have recovered from the recent hardships at work, which have fortunately just ended...

[IRF]

I forgot to add: the hidden message disappears when you exit from The Nghtmare Room of course, because the status bar's pixels are all wiped clear by the Room Setup routine upon entry to another room. But walk back into the Nightmare Room and the message will re-appear [unless you paused the game in the intervening period], because the status bar's attributes are NOT cleared by the Room Setup routine!

[IRF]

The Readme file for 'Jet Set Mini' contains the following excerpt:

a new bug was unintentionally introduced during the development of the game (relating to an erroneous re-entry point into the program's main loop). This was discovered during playtesting, when it was found to be the root cause of a spectacular new 'quirky manoeuvre'. Since this accidental glitch turned out to be so impressive (if you discover it whilst bouncing around the mansion, we hope you'll agree!), and because it is harmless enough (in fact, it can actually be helpful to Willy in certain circumstances), it was decided to leave this bug in situ!

The attached .RZX recording illustrates the bug referred to above.  The guardian on the right of 'Pool Party' appears to display some very strange behaviour - it doesn't always kill Willy (though it sometimes does), but instead appears to bounce him like a basketball!

Once the recording has finished playing back, you can take over control of the game and have a play with this quirky feature yourself.  (The Infinite Lives POKE is enabled, so you can bounce around for as long as you like.)

Quirky Guardian Interaction in Swimming Pool of Jet Set Mini.rzx

[jetsetdanny]

This is a very cool feature 🙂 

[IRF]

Another excerpt from the 'Jet Set Mini' Readme provides a couple of POKES, either of which allows you to play around with another novel, quirky feature of the game - namely the invalid rope in the room 'Overgrown MegaTree / Front Door' - happy swinging!:

Quote

There is also an 'invalid rope' (whereby the x-coordinate of the top segment of the rope lies outside the usual range of 0-31) present somewhere in the layout. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is a new and innovative feature for a published JSW game. (N.B. To allow Willy to examine this feature more closely, you could try using POKE 59471, 15 or POKE 41372, 27 [leave the room in question and re-enter, if entering a POKE dynamically] - but surely that would be 'Cheating?'...)

Edited April 5, 2021 by IRF

[IRF]

Can anyone spot the initials J, S and W in this screenshot from the Back Door of Willy's downsized mansion?

[IRF]

I've just been watching Danny's JSW Central Youtube recording of Jet Set Mini.  Well done on completing the game by 8am in-game time, Danny! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuorIPdVyYQ

There are so many little special and novel features in the game (implemented via Geoff's Patch Vector system) that I'd forgotten all about!  Such as the dripping tap in the Bathroom; the 'oscillating arrow' in the Hall; the first ever appearance of an 'invalid rope' in the Overgrown MegaTree; the 'ropes that aren't ropes' in the West Wall; a crumbly ramp on the Beach; animated Fire cells in the Conservatory Roof (those little gremlins - as per my profile picture - which get angry when Willy steals their beers!); the intermittent drilling noise in the Tool Shed; the way that the sun appears to come in and out on the Beach (as the whole room's BRIGHTness settings are toggled on and off now and again).

Unfortunately, Maria's occasional appearance in 'At the Beach' - as a nautical figurehead attached to the prow of Willy's yacht, overhanging the edge of the beach - doesn't occur in Danny's recording.  (It's a pseudo-random event when you walk into the room as to whether or not she appears; it doesn't affect the gameplay though.)  See attached screenshot below.  Mind you, it's not the only appearance (beyond her usual setting in the Master Bedroom) that Maria makes during the course of the game...

Something else which doesn't get showcased in Danny's recording is the changing room name for the Attic room (it alternates between 'A 'Bug' in the Attic' and 'Problematic Attic' each time you enter the room).  However, Danny's video displays one of those names, whilst the screenshot of the room in the entry for Jet Set Mini at jswcentral.org shows the alternative name.  Which is nice (although, whilst serendipitous, I doubt that this was an intentional decision on Danny's part!)

Also on the subject of the Attic room in Jet Set Mini, there's something very odd about that conveyor (behaviour which is not shown in Danny's walkthrough as it isn't essential to use the conveyor to complete the game).  It's worth having a play around on that 'Problemattic' conveyor (jumping onto various parts of it, from various heights; trying to land and walk along it versus doing a 'landing jump') - I'm not entirely sure any more how I implemented it, although I seem to recall it has similar characteristics with the spider web in the East Bedroom that slows down Willy's progress when he tries to walk through it...
EDIT: It might assist with investigating the Attic conveyor if I point out that the X-O-R keypress combo works in this room, to apply a XOR command to reverse the direction of flow of the conveyor.

Edited November 3, 2021 by IRF

[Ligan]

2 hours ago, IRF said:

Can anyone spot the initials J, S and W in this screenshot from the Back Door of Willy's downsized mansion?

Here.

[IRF]

7 hours ago, Ligan said:

Here.

Two out of three. Status bar doesn't count. There's an 's' somewhere within the playing area.