Idea for a new cell type in Manic Miner

[IRF]

When Willy jumps up and hits his head on an Earth block, he is immediately ejected back down, but it doesn't seem to do him any harm.  I guess he has quite a hard head - especially with his hard hat on.

 

This got me thinking about an idea for a new MM cell type - when Willy bounces off a 'Soft Earth' cell from below, a variation on the Crumbly cell routine could be executed, removing pixel-rows from the bottom up, but without the upper pixel-rows moving down into their place - then once all eight pixel-rows have been 'mined away', the cell is replaced with an Air cell.

 

Fits in with the mining theme?

[Spider]

That's quite an interesting idea. It does remind me of one platform game but its name escapes me, its similar to how in some games (again, names escape me!) you can stand on a crumbly platform without issue but jumping up and down a few times and it dissolves.

 

I see what you're saying though a reverse effect crumbly by hitting it from below it dissolves. :)

 

I'm slightly drawn towards FNS thinking about this as that game has 'ice' cells where the player once on them slides along although that's very similar to conveyors minus any jump ability, and 'slime' cells which are just like earth but the walking speed is approximately half that of normal so care must be taken if a nasty/guardian is travelling along the same path as they are not effected.

[Norman Sword]

Do you need a new cell type?

 

Most of the lower, and the bottom row is impossible to head butt. If head butting from the room below they would reset anyway, after each room change.

 

The lazy option is to just enable in certain rooms the ability to head butt a wall tile from underneath. Would have been handy in the forgotten abbey, when the wall tile was accidentally left unchanged and made the room impossible.

 

If the only tile that can be head butted is a wall tile, and only from below, should be easy enough to design rooms to allow for that fact. 

A vertical wall that is inaccessible from below, still acts as a vertical wall, and is impossible to penetrate by head butting.

 

 

Very easy to do,,,, I have a version running now.

Edited February 7, 2018 by Norman Sword

[IRF]

It was just a random idea that popped into my head whilst studying your optimised Crumbly code!

 

It would be handy in Forgotten Abbey, I hadn't thought of that. The player would have to do it before venturing up to collect the item, if they were to avoid the need to sacrifice a life to escape.

 

EDIT: Obviously we're talking in the context of the wall behaviour having been made symmetrical.

Edited February 7, 2018 by IRF

[Norman Sword]

Test this to see if you like the concept. Yes it my mega edited, must delete, what a mess piece of code.

 

120 room, bullets,and now headbutting

 

 

I have stopped the ability to head butt out of the top of the room. So the top row of wall tiles can not be headbutted away.

 

Removed the downward movement butt-ability.... That's the second file.

 

Added a blocking ability. This stops a wall being removed if over another type of tile. That's version 3
The Top Landing is the only room that I have edited to show this. (feature is in every room, but they are not edited)

IRF HEAD BUTT.tap

IRF 2 HEAD BUTT.tap

IRF 3 head butt.tap

Edited February 8, 2018 by Norman Sword

[IRF]

Thanks Norman!  It's a cool effect!

 

I notice that wall tiles can be headbutted away by Willy jumping sideways against them as well.  (EDIT: Sometimes, depending on what height Willy is in the jump when his head hits the wall tile.)

 

You could have a challenge whereby Willy has to quickly remove an overhead wall tile in order to be able to jump over an oncoming horizontal guardian that would otherwise block his progress.

 

EDIT: Kind of like this - see mockup screenshot attached.

 

If Willy keeps walking left then he can't reach the end of the overhead wall in time to jump over the horizontal guardian, but he has time to clear a couple of overhead wall cells beforehand, so that he can do a vertical jump and clear the guardian.

 

Note that the starting position of the horizontal guardian has been moved further left, to allow Willy enough times to chip away at a pair of overhead wall cells eight times and create a hole, before it reaches him.

 

(Note also that in this instance, the adjustment to the guardian's starting position may have consequences for the toilet run, but it illustrates the idea.)

Edited February 7, 2018 by IRF

[Norman Sword]

I notice that wall tiles can be headbutted away by Willy jumping sideways against them as well.  (EDIT: Sometimes, depending on what height Willy is in the jump when his head hits the wall tile.)

 

 

 

The wall tile disappearing is the result yet again of the ramp/stair code. So I used part of that code to stop downward detection and deletion of the tiles. The updated file is with the first file. E.g. Two posts ago.

[IRF]

Collecting the top-left item in Top Landing in your third file is a nice little puzzle. :-)

 

Presumably the 'headbutt' code works in a similar way to the crumbly code, except that it's executed whenever #8EBC is CALLed, and it goes through the pixel-rows 'in reverse'?

****

I forgot to mention for my screenshot (two posts above this) that obviously there is an easy way past the obstacle presented by the tunnel with the oncoming Swiss Army Knife - simply by exiting The Bathroom at the top-left! But as I said, I just created the mockup to illustrate an idea.

Edited February 8, 2018 by IRF

[Norman Sword]

 

 

Presumably the 'headbutt' code works in a similar way to the crumbly code, except that it's executed whenever #8EBC is CALLed, and it goes through the pixel-rows 'in reverse'?

****

 

 

 

Yes it is #8ebc. The code is crumbly floor in reverse. The majority of my code is concerned with checking that the wall tile can be deleted. I have now added a room specific flag. One of the unused border bits (bit 4) in my case. So rooms have head butting as an option via the border flag.(For now) This means only the one room left. And since that is in the original 60 rooms, it should be edited back to the original layout, and have the head butt option removed.

 

Tested out the full 128 room version. I have it up and running and can now wander around 128 rooms in a 48k Spectrum 

 

Don't expect any major changes, from other versions... I am testing other things, and I have never tested this to see how far you can get.

128 room.tap

Edited February 10, 2018 by Norman Sword

[IRF]

 

Yes it is #8ebc. The code is crumbly floor in reverse. The majority of my code is concerned with checking that the wall tile can be deleted.

 

You presumably also need to change the way that #8EBC is CALLed slightly (compared with the existing code), so that if Willy is underneath two wall tiles, both can be bashed away simultaneously.  (If it was simply tagged onto the existing subroutine at #8EBC, then the check for the wall tile above Willy's left-hand side would cause a RETURN from the 'Move Willy' routine before it's had chance to 'reverse crumble' the wall tile above Willy's right-hand side.)

 

Nice idea to activate the effect via a spare border bit.  :)  Does that now mean that all the border bits have been put to good use in your file, or do some remain unused?