[File] Manic Miner - Highscore Challenge

[MtM]

Duck - that is very much in keeping with the level of obsession about all things JSW & MM

related on these forums, excellent work! You also have more free time than I do! But top effort!

[DigitalDuck]

6 minutes ago, IRF said:

Plus the precise workings of the bug may be somewhat predictable. In one cavern during your experiment, an errant extra life auto-collected an item (presumably because the INK in the host character space was rendered in white. But in other circumstances, a non-white INK attribute might get printed over an item, making it uncollectable!?

It seems that it's still collectable when another attribute is printed over an item - this happens in Abandoned Uranium Workings. It also seems that the bug is consistent in what it puts on-screen. My main concern is that it isn't possible the first eight (at minimum) times you complete the cavern, and these are clearly different caverns to those intended due to modified terrain.

[IRF]

Even curiouser - if the item in AUW is collectable (ie. by Willy when he passes through it, not auto-collected as soon as Willy enters, like the glass in JSW's The Swimming Pool), that suggests the glitch is just a visual effect, not affecting the gameplay. (An item embedded in a genuine non-Air block is either uncollectable, or auto-collected if the block happens to have white INK. EDIT: or collectable if it's within a crumbly block but only once that block has been completely crumbled away by Willy standing on it.) Yet in terms of Willy's ability to stand on the errant blocks, it's seemingly more than just a visual artefact and it does affect the gameplay!

**

A couple of additional thoughts that I had:

(1) These rogue blocks created by the spare lives overspilling are analogous with some Invalid Arrow effects in Jet Set Willy. (Is there a separate topic discussing Invalid Arrows somewhere here on JSWMM?);

(2) You said that the errant blocks manifested themselves as fire cells in Skylab Landing Bay, making that cavern impassable. But did you try teleporting beyond there (using 6031769), to see what might happen beyond that? If the bonus lives continue to accrue, then new gameplay possibilities might open up (even quicker routes/shortcuts), as the extra blocks continue to build rightwards... Although if they stretch across the whole screen, they might make it impossible to descend a cavern from top to bottom? (Unless of course they manifest as crumbly blocks!?) They might also block progress if they appear as solid wall/earth blocks...or may spice things up if they turn out as (non-animated) conveyor cells! (The exact behaviour depends on the assigned attributes for each block type in each cavern, and whether or not there is a match - floor/water tiles being the default if there's no match.) The errant blocks shouldn't collide with any guardians (since such collisions are pixel-based), but they might conceivably trigger rapid air loss in the Solar cavern when the solar beam passes through them? Finally, what happens when the blocks created by the bonus lives go past the right-hand side of the cavern? Do they start to fill the next character row down, or do they then start to corrupt the pixel buffer? (Now that COULD cause a guardian collision!)

**

Sorry, that turned out to be a lot more than "a couple of additional thoughts"!!! 🤣

Edited February 25 by IRF

[IRF]

3 minutes ago, IRF said:

An item embedded in a genuine non-Air block is either uncollectable, or auto-collected if the block happens to have white INK. EDIT: or collectable if it's within a crumbly block but only once that block has been completely crumbled away.

That comment has just inspired me to wonder - has there ever been a MM game with a Kong cavern where an item is embedded within the collapsing wall, and therefore only collectable after the first switch has been tripped? 🤔

[jetsetdanny]

16 minutes ago, IRF said:

That comment has just inspired me to wonder - has there ever been a MM game with a Kong cavern where an item is embedded within the collapsing wall, and therefore only collectable after the first switch has been tripped? 🤔

I don't recall anything like this.

However, functionally this wouldn't be different from what usually happens - if the wall that collapses after the first switch is tripped blocks access to a part of the room where some items are, these items are only collectable after the first switch has been tripped (because prior to that they are unreachable).

[IRF]

Just now, jetsetdanny said:

I don't recall anything like this.

However, functionally this wouldn't be different from what usually happens - if the wall that collapses after the first switch is tripped blocks access to a part of the room where some items are, these items are only collectable after the first switch has been tripped (because prior to that they are unreachable).

True! It occurred to me just after I posed the question that, whilst perhaps slightly novel, it wouldn't present any additional difficulty to the cavern, because the player would (for a 'standard' Kong-style cavern) have to pass through there anyway.

However, musing on it a bit further, I think I have thought of a possible cunning use for it... I feel another quirky one-cavern puzzle might be in the works...

[DigitalDuck]

10 hours ago, IRF said:

Even curiouser - if the item in AUW is collectable (ie. by Willy when he passes through it, not auto-collected as soon as Willy enters, like the glass in JSW's The Swimming Pool), that suggests the glitch is just a visual effect, not affecting the gameplay. (An item embedded in a genuine non-Air block is either uncollectable, or auto-collected if the block happens to have white INK. EDIT: or collectable if it's within a crumbly block but only once that block has been completely crumbled away by Willy standing on it.) Yet in terms of Willy's ability to stand on the errant blocks, it's seemingly more than just a visual artefact and it does affect the gameplay!

Not shown in the video because I just wanted to get something out there quickly, but what's actually drawn on the screen depends on the sprite shown for Willy's lives; as I have the music turned off, it's not cycling. The state I have the sprites paused in is the only state in which items are auto-collected. In all cases at least one of the two blocks drawn is a floor block. I suspect the black cells are actually air tiles, hence the item being collectable; these same black tiles are nasties in Skylab Landing Bay.

 

10 hours ago, IRF said:

(2) You said that the errant blocks manifested themselves as fire cells in Skylab Landing Bay, making that cavern impassable. But did you try teleporting beyond there (using 6031769), to see what might happen beyond that? If the bonus lives continue to accrue, then new gameplay possibilities might open up (even quicker routes/shortcuts), as the extra blocks continue to build rightwards... Although if they stretch across the whole screen, they might make it impossible to descend a cavern from top to bottom? (Unless of course they manifest as crumbly blocks!?) They might also block progress if they appear as solid wall/earth blocks...or may spice things up if they turn out as (non-animated) conveyor cells! (The exact behaviour depends on the assigned attributes for each block type in each cavern, and whether or not there is a match - floor/water tiles being the default if there's no match.) The errant blocks shouldn't collide with any guardians (since such collisions are pixel-based), but they might conceivably trigger rapid air loss in the Solar cavern when the solar beam passes through them? Finally, what happens when the blocks created by the bonus lives go past the right-hand side of the cavern? Do they start to fill the next character row down, or do they then start to corrupt the pixel buffer? (Now that COULD cause a guardian collision!)

I actually discovered this a while ago with lives POKEs, this was just my first time seeing if it can occur during normal gameplay. You can experiment yourself with POKE 33879,n. After 48 lives, they start being drawn over the level name and air counter instead.

There's a limit to how many lives you can have before each level becomes incompletable (although you can always lose lives until they become completable again). I've split them into three groups:

 

Early blockers:

Central Cavern - at 39 lives, you cannot jump over the robot without landing on the extended platform, which blocks your fall to below. Interestingly, it becomes possible again at exactly 46 lives only, as this allows you to walk to the right and drop down that way (similar to what the GBA/PC version allows you to do), but at 47 lives that way becomes impassable too.

Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast - at 40 lives, there is no way of getting through the opening after pressing the switch to collect the last banana.

Endorian Forest - at 40 lives, the middle trunk and extended platform seal you in the starting section.

Return of the Alien Kong Beast - 40 lives, same as Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast.

Skylab Landing Bay - at 34 lives, the nasties block a mandatory path.

The Final Barrier - at 46 lives, there is no way of getting out of the top-right area after collecting the keys there.

 

Standard blockers:

At 47 lives, the "platform" extends covering the entire play area (minus the last two cells, but one of those is always a wall, and Willy can't fit through a gap of one cell). For The Cold Room, The Menagerie, Eugene's Lair, Processing Plant, and The Warehouse, 47 lives is the point at which they can no longer be completed as the entire screen is blocked and cannot be traversed from top to bottom.

 

No blockers:

These come in two forms: in Abandoned Uranium Workings, Wacky Amoebatrons, The Bank, The Sixteenth Cavern, Amoebatron's Revenge, and Solar Power Generator, you start in the bottom half of the screen and exit at the top. As a result, platforms stretching across the screen don't inhibit progress at all. You do normally need to revisit the bottom half of the screen in Solar Power Generator, but the platform extends to make that unnecessary long before it's made impossible.

The second form is in The Vat, Attack of the Mutant Telephones, and Ore Refinery. While all three of these levels require going from top to bottom to top (or bottom to top to bottom in the case of Ore Refinery), they also have platforms very near to the top of the screen, requiring wall tiles to prevent you from jumping outside of the screen boundaries. These wall tiles are replaced with floor tiles, allowing you to jump through the screen vertically and access the other half of the screen.

All of these levels can be completed regardless of the number of lives you have.

 

Whether it should be allowed or not is already contentious enough with what I've already shown - I think we can safely say that if cheats are required then it definitely shouldn't count, so anything with extensive corruption is out. I believe this also means that the maximum attainable life count in the game is 38 (Skylabs limiting to 34 plus four extra lives attainable in one loop).

[IRF]

3 minutes ago, DigitalDuck said:

Not shown in the video because I just wanted to get something out there quickly, but what's actually drawn on the screen depends on the sprite shown for Willy's lives; as I have the music turned off, it's not cycling. The state I have the sprites paused in is the only state in which items are auto-collected. In all cases at least one of the two blocks drawn is a floor block. I suspect the black cells are actually air tiles, hence the item being collectable; these same black tiles are nasties in Skylab Landing Bay.

So you could envisage a scenario where progress relies on turning the music back on to make a block change from a lethal Fire cell to a 'standonable' floor block! The on/off status of the in-game music being an inherent part of the gameplay would be another novelty!

[DigitalDuck]

5 minutes ago, IRF said:

So you could envisage a scenario where progress relies on turning the music back on to make a block change from a lethal Fire cell to a 'standonable' floor block! The on/off status of the in-game music being an inherent part of the gameplay would be another novelty!

Absolutely - unfortunately this scenario doesn't seem to exist in the vanilla game, but with the right sprites and colours you could have a situation where it cycles between floor, wall, air, and nasty (or the four elements, water, earth, air, and fire), and require the Willy life sprite to be in a certain state to make the level passable (perhaps even requiring floor at some points, air at others, and wall at yet others, so you have to "edit" the level as you play).

Edited February 26 by DigitalDuck

[IRF]

19 minutes ago, DigitalDuck said:

Central Cavern - at 39 lives, you cannot jump over the robot without landing on the extended platform, which blocks your fall to below. Interestingly, it becomes possible again at exactly 46 lives only, as this allows you to walk to the right and drop down that way (similar to what the GBA/PC version allows you to do), but at 47 lives that way becomes impassable too.

That puzzled me at first - why not completable with 40 to 46 lives? - but I see what you mean now. Willy can't progress upstream all the way along the conveyor, because he has to drop down onto it from above due to the short wall/Fire cell* combo that sit on the conveyor. But at 47 lives, the conveyor itself is corrupted along its whole length into being comprised of floor cells.

(Incidentally, if that Fire cell wasn't there, you could make it back to the right-hand end of the conveyor with a well-timed jump whilst walking upstream along the conveyor, but you have to make the jump pixel-perfect in order to pass through the corner of, and thus into, the first wall block.)

 

19 minutes ago, DigitalDuck said:

The second form is in The Vat, Attack of the Mutant Telephones, and Ore Refinery. While all three of these levels require going from top to bottom to top (or bottom to top to bottom in the case of Ore Refinery), they also have platforms very near to the top of the screen, requiring wall tiles to prevent you from jumping outside of the screen boundaries. These wall tiles are replaced with floor tiles, allowing you to jump through the screen vertically and access the other half of the screen.

Of course, doing that in itself causes corruption of some of the caverns, when the game engine tries to draw the playable Willy sprite extending beyond the bottom of the screen!

**

Top-notch research, DigitalDuck!