Alternative "First Landing" thoughts

[Spider]

Well kind of...

 

I was looking earlier, and although the 'official fix' of moving said object to The Hall without a shape is OK it seems the more I think about it, a "quick fix" , as ideally a shape would of been in order too.

 

Thoughts then turned to simply moving it to the left and up a bit, so its sat at the top of the ramp, this way Willy cannot avoid an 'auto collect' moment no matter which side of Top Landing he falls from into First Landing. This way there's no need to give it a shape either as it won't be 'seen' normally.

 

I did try this quickly with success although manual pokes to 'DIY' it instead afterwards out of curiosity did not quite work for some reason, but I've not looked into that in any detail.

 

It would not be that different "in player mode" to the auto collect item in Swimming Pool even though that as we know is caused by the cell colours rather than its position. The collection is transparent (no pun intended!) to the player.

 

Just seems a little bit easier as this way its not possible to miss it, as can happen if Willy happens to be jumping over the guardian or arrow etc in The Hall and with bad luck he could in theory miss the object completely...

 

:unsure:

Edited September 14, 2017 by IRF

[Metalmickey]

The question is, was there even an item intended to be here at all? After all although it is for the most part just a passage on the count of the lack of 'furniture', like other itemless and sparsely furnished rooms such as The Back Door. My thoughts are perhaps his style of coding would perhaps leave certain rooms as go-betweens and as a rule not have items in them 

[Spider]

I do remember trying this object location (its in effect "AT 3,26") in different rooms to see the effects.

 

One quick test of this is to set that attribute block to a different colour to check how it would look (for placement and accesbility reasons) in each room. To do this its POKE 22650 , x but you won't see it during an emulator pause in most cases as the screen will not be updated. There are two ways around this:

 

1. Pause the game with the game's pause option. Use Writetyper if needed to stop it cycling. While the pause is in progress you can apply that poke to see the block highlighted

 

2. Apply it directly as a single .bin file, although this is slightly more work.

 

x = does not matter that much really. 250 or 175 are reasonable choices here to easily 'see' them.

 

From memory (I've not been through them all) there are only about 3 rooms where the object would be both easily accessible *and* not look too far out of place ie either not floating or if it was in an airbourne position it would not look too far out of place.

 

I guess its debatable if the room ID or the position ID is wrong though :unsure:

[IRF]

I seem to recall ages ago Stuart (Zub) suggesting that the item might have been meant for another room, but eight rows lower - since the item definition byte which holds the room number also tells you which half of the room it is located in. i.e. a single POKE would still put it back in its place.

 

I can't recall whether anyone ever investigated that possibility though?

Edited September 14, 2017 by IRF

[IRF]

Further to the above, I've had a quick look at all the rooms in JSWED.  There are seven possible locations which would see the item resting on a platform after applyin a single POKE to the address #A4C7 - see the attached screenshots.

 

In three of these, I used the square cursor to highlight the location, because (just as in First Landing) the rooms don't have a defined item graphic (although in the case of West of Kitchen, there is an unused graphic next door in The Kitchen).  In those three cases, a visible item couldn't be achieved using a single POKE, because you'd also have to give the item a shape to allow it to be seen by the player.  So we can probably rule those three rooms out as being 'As Matthew intended'!

 

I'd say the most plausible locations are Tree Root - where the 'slope' of the item means that it sits nicely on the ramp - or Swimming Pool - where the additional item provides some symmetry with the existing one, although it appears to be 'floating' on the water so it would probably look better a couple of columns to the right*.

 

 

(*But to do that you would have to adjust the other definition byte #A5C7, which defeats the purpose of the exercise - if we're going to edit both item definition bytes, then we might as well put the item anywhere in the mansion!)

Edited September 14, 2017 by IRF

[Spider]

 

 

I can't recall whether anyone ever investigated that possibility though?

Off hand no I do not think anyone did, this may be due to the possible lack of understanding on how the items are actually stored, its not immediately obvious how it works (to me at least!) until you look closely at it...

 

 

Thanks for taking the trouble with the investigation. :) I do recall I posted something (but not as detailed) last year.

 

The item location looks sensible in West Bedroom and West Wing too.

 

I do see what you mean about the Swimming Pool symmetry (although as you say its not quite) so I think that one can be ruled out as there is already one item there anyway. Not saying it should not have two though. :D

 

Tree root does look very good moreso with the item shape actually being at the correct angle to sit on the slope anyway. The only downside of this is it means there are now three items in this room***

 

Out on a limb and Banyan Tree, to me at least they do not look right with the additional object.

 

The location in West Kitchen is interesting although my mind tells me its too low down allowing the player to collect it on their travels without climbing the platforms ?

 

 

I do agree if practical a single byte change would be better as you correctly put if we have to change more then it could go anywhere instead. :D

 

 

*** This leads to a new thought, as you know room 47 aka " ] " , this is connected to Tree Root or vice-versa. This does make me wonder **if** your 'slope fixed' item is correct and one of the others, possibly the top right one is not in the right place in this screen as its nearly obvious that 47 was meant to be adjoined here... hmm.

[IRF]

That's true about West of Kitchen.  Higher up would be better.

 

The problem with West Wing and West Bedroom is that there's no item shape defined, so even though it would be within reach, it would still be invisible.

[Spider]

That's true about West of Kitchen.  Higher up would be better.

 

The problem with West Wing and West Bedroom is that there's no item shape defined, so even though it would be within reach, it would still be invisible.

1. Yes, but its not a bad placement by any means just seems a bit too easy to grab. Having said that he'd have to climb the platforms anyway for the lower Tree object at some point...

 

2. That's a point. Kind of brings onto the subject of rooms with items defined but unused (items rather than fire cells) :unsure: , but their designs are in the room code itself as you know so there is little doubt any item graphic is in the "wrong room" as such...

 

I do agree there should not be a need to copy/move the item design graphic over, similar to how I copied the one from 'Above the West Bedroom' or 'West Wing Roof' to 'The Hall' simply as it was a couple of bytes (IIRC the West Wing Roof is less bytes) and both graphics looked suitable there, but not ideal in either case.

 

The 'fix' for this should be a single byte change. I toyed with moving it and keeping it in the First Landing but putting it at the almost top of the ramp so it was auto collected upon entry, regardless of which side of the floor Willy fell through in Top Landing, but this seemed semi cheating and it appeared to need two bytes to do it as well.

[IRF]

The 'fix' for this should be a single byte change. I toyed with moving it and keeping it in the First Landing but putting it at the almost top of the ramp so it was auto collected upon entry, regardless of which side of the floor Willy fell through in Top Landing, but this seemed semi cheating and it appeared to need two bytes to do it as well.

 

That should be doable in a single byte change - you could in theory place it anywhere in the top half of First Landing, just by changing the value of #A5C7 (let's say to #35).  As you say, if it's near the top of the ramp, then Willy will have to pass through it on the way down.  So in a sense it wouldn't matter that it's invisible (although it's not ideal).

 

EDIT: Try POKE 42439, 53.  That's definitely an improvement on the 'official' POKE which moves it to The Hall, because as you pointed out, the player could be jumping to avoid the Flying Pig/arrow and miss the item, at least in theory.  (Although it's extremely unlikely that they'd miss it twice - both on the way out to The Front Door, and then on the way back again! :lol: )

Edited September 14, 2017 by IRF

[Spider]

:) When I tried it a while back, left invisible just in the path at the top of the ramp IIRC one block down from the top was ideal, I did not give it a shape. But I used JSWED to move it then compared the item code area's, and two bytes had changed which I thought odd, but I did not look into if one of the changes would of happened anyway due to JSWED...

 

I can't find the item :unsure: with that poke. Its not in one of the few places I thought it might be, lower down in same screen or in the top of Ballroom. :D