Idea for a new cell type in Manic Miner

[IRF]

My interpretation of the GUI is (or was) the 'Rooms' page (and 'Start' page etc), where you can view and directly edit the room graphics, rather than the tickbox menu for applying patches to the code.  But that's probably my misinterpretation of the terminology.  :blush:

[IRF]

I've added a check just before the CALL to the headbutt code, to prevent the effect from working in The Final Barrier.  That stops Willy from 'escaping' into the outside world before he should...

[IRF]

I've now added sound effects to the headbutt and crumbly features.  Two very different sound effects, but using a shared piece of code.  The pitch of the noise is derived from the value in C, after it has been used to determine whether to shift pixel-rows upwards or downwards.

 

The next thing I'll do, when I find the time, is implement all this into the 'Manic Mixup' project.

Wraparound MM with Headbutt and Crumbly SFX.TAP

[jetsetdanny]

Great stuff, Ian! Congatulations again! :) The sound effects are really nice and fitting  :D .

 

One thought (I'm not sure whether it would need implementing if you thought it worth it, or would happen automatically): In some MM games there is something like fast crumbling cells. I can't remember right now whether it's in the original 48K game engine or in JSW64 only (If it's JSW64 only, ignore my comment for the time being - until you get to implementing the headbutt effect in that game engine :) ). The thought is that the speed / intensity of the sound / border effect  could be adjusted for the regular and fast crumbling cells, being appropriately faster for the fast ones (like the PV effect in "Rocky Road to Double Inn" in the Special Edition of "Willy's New Mansion", where the higher up you are in the part of the room where the effect happens, the faster it is).

 

Just a thought that came to my mind after watching your impressive SFX :).

[IRF]

In the original MM game engine, crumbling cells turn to Air as soon as the routine, after moving all the pixel-rows downwards, detects that the bottom pixel-row has no infilled pixels. So if any pixel-row other than the lowest one starts off empty, then the crumbly will crumble early. Furthermore, if any pixel-rows higher up in the block retain any infilled pixels, then they will remain as a 'ghost' within the newly created Air cell.

 

The rewrite of the crumbly routine means that all eight pixel-rows are checked simultaneously, so it eliminates the potential for 'ghost' pixels being left behind. However, you can still have fast-crumbling cells, and indeed Earth blocks that can disappear after Willy has headbutted them fewer than eight times, if some of the pixel-rows are blank from the beginning.

 

An INKless Earth block will turn to Air after a single headbutt, and indeed elsewhere I suggested that that could form the basis of a challenge where Willy must NOT butt a particular block, because he needs it still to be present later on (to jump off it in order to reach the portal).

 

The sound effect is executed on each instance of a pixel-row being displaced upwards (headbutt) or downwards (crumbly). So if Willy were to stand on an INKless crumbly, then you would hear a difference in the sound effect - it would be shorter, lasting for only one 'tick' of the Main Loop instead of eight.

 

By the way, there is also a noticeable intensification of the sound effect when Willy walks along a platform of several adjacent crumblies, compared with when he stands on a single crumbly block - because when he is standing on two adjacent crumblies, the sound effect is executed twice in each 'tick'. (Ditto when he headbutts two Earth blocks simultaneously.)

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for your explanations, Ian!