JSW's 35th birthday party at Manchester PLAY Expo

[jetsetdanny]

Richard,

 

Thank you for your detailed description of your thoughts on the Manchester event and the competition. Thank you also for your kinds words about our meeting - it was a great pleasure and honour for me to meet you in person  :).

 

I would like to reply to some of your thoughts below. My replies are in green, to distinguish them from your text visibly.

 

> I've just belatedly noticed this thread, so as one of the people who was there, I thought I'd say a few things from my own perspective, particularly about the competition.
 

Thank you for your thoughts, Richard! :)

 

 

> Danny is correct that my "Join the Jet-Set!" came second in the competition, after "Maria vs Some Bastards".

> As for the competition itself, I had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I was pleased to have one of my games picked at all; that in itself was a real honour, considering the sheer number of JSW games developed, and also considering that mine is one of the very oldest, having been completed back in 1985.

> But on the other hand, the way the competition was presented and run was simply not fair on any level. What was the criterion on which the games were supposed to be judged? How they played? How they looked? How much they stretched the JSW engine in terms of quirky exploits or new routines etc.? Having a competition for which one is "best" is actually pretty meaningless. The only criterion that the audience was permitted to judge, really, was how the games looked

Edited November 3, 2019 by jetsetdanny

[Richard Hallas]

Richard,

 

Thank you for your detailed description of your thoughts on the Manchester event and the competition. Thank you also for your kinds words about our meeting - it was a great pleasure and honour for me to meet you in person  :).

 

I would like to reply to some of your thoughts below. My replies are in green, to distinguish them from your text visibly.

 

Hi Daniel!

 

Thanks for your interesting and thoughtful reply. In fact, we're in complete agreement about most things you say

[jetsetdanny]

Hi Richard!

 

Thanks for your reply, it is great to be exchanging thoughts with you like this ! :)

 

As you say, we're in complete agreement about most things and the rest boils down to simple personal opinions. That's absolutely right.

 

I would like to reply to some of your points. My replies are in green again.

 

 

> One small point (to be pedantic!)

[IRF]

[Parenthesis: "on an emulator", because some of the screenshots may show a moment when the game is paused using the emulator's functionality to pause it - rather than the in-game pause - which couldn't happen when playing on the real hardware. In other words, the "paused instant" visible in the screenshot could not be a "paused instant" on the real hardware, which would move the execution of the program a little further before the in-game pause would kick in. This concerns just minor details, such as arrows movements or something like this - I can't remember exactly right now what could be different, Ian Rushforth could explain it fully - and I have no problem with it, because we are in the emulator age now and almost 100% of what is happening with JSW and MM is happening on emulators].

If you pause the game using the emulator's pause function, then you might chance upon a moment during flow of execution when sprites have only been partially updated - something which Norman Sword refers to as a 'jagged finger' effect, except in this circumstance it would be frozen in time (and therefore very obvious), rather than being an instantaneous (but visible to the keen eye) flicker. Ditto with the updating of the colour-attributes - if you pause at a moment when the pixels have been updated during the current time-frame but not yet the attributes, then you could for example have arrows drawn in an INK colour other than white [assuming the engine isn't hacked for non-white arrows anyway], if the screen in question has Air cells with non-matching INK and PAPER colours [which is usually the case with rooms that have a rope].

 

So I personally think that pausing the game using the in-game pause button is a more sound approach in order to capture a comprehensive screenshot - but you then have the problem (usually) that the screen colour-cycling kicks in before long. So I would say that a combination of pausing in-game, and then hitting the emulator's pause button before the colour-cycling commences, would probably be the best approach for grabbing screenshots.

IIRC, among the JSW games' galleries I have on JSW Central at this time, there are no other cases of rooms which cannot be reached when playing the game "normally", i.e. which can only be reached by using Writetyper.

 

Correction: I added the screenshot gallery of "Willy's Flashback" recently, and there are some rooms within the game file there which can only be reached by using Writetyper. They are unedited rooms from the original JSW. However, the author of the game does not consider them a part of the game, so it's a no brainer, it's obvious that there is no reason to show their screenshots on JSW Central.

The quote above appears contradictory to me - I'm not sure whether you're saying that you do include screenshots of rooms that are only accessible by WRITETYPER, or whether you don't tend to include screenshots of such rooms in JSW Central? EDIT: By which I mean, the 'Correction' does not appear to contradict your original statement, despite being labelled a 'correction'!

 

However, the entry for 'Jet Set Mini' certainly does include a screenshot of the unaccessible (other than by using WRITETYPER) room called 'Cheating?' But in that case, accessing the room does not necessarily cause an Infinite Death Scenario [unless you happen to teleport into the path of a guardian], although it does cause Willy's INK colour to turn yellow - with the consequence that even if you teleport back out of that room and back into the mansion, Willy can no longer collect items - a suitable punishment for trying to cheat!

"How on earth did you get here ?!" is doubly problematic: it can only be reached by using Writetyper and it causes instant death on entry. Even if I decided that I would be adding screenshots of rooms which can only be reached by using Writetyper (which I well might, but I need to give it some more thought), the question arises if I want to show screens where the player cannot "be" even for a second.

I would add that, depending on what causes the instant death, a screenshot captured by pausing the game within such a room may or may not show the full picture. e.g. if Willy collides with a guardian that appears early in the guardian list for the room, and is therefore drawn first, then later guardians in the list would not be displayed. If Willy hits a Fire cell (or if all the Air cells in the room are effectively Fire cells, because the attributes for Air and Fire match), then no guardians will be drawn at all, because the Main Loop reacts to Willy hitting a Fire cell before it gets chance to CALL the Draw the Guardians routine.

Edited November 5, 2019 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

Ian, my replies are in green below.

 

> If you pause the game using the emulator's pause function, then you might chance upon a moment during flow of execution when sprites have only been partially updated - something which Norman Sword refers to as a 'jagged finger' effect, except in this circumstance it would be frozen in time (and therefore very obvious), rather than being an instantaneous (but visible to the keen eye) flicker. Ditto with the updating of the colour-attributes - if you pause at a moment when the pixels have been updated during the current time-frame but not yet the attributes, then you could for example have arrows drawn in an INK colour other than white [assuming the engine isn't hacked for non-white arrows anyway], if the screen in question has Air cells with non-matching INK and PAPER colours [which is usually the case with rooms that have a rope].

 

Thanks for this detailed description, Ian! :)

 

 

> So I personally think that pausing the game using the in-game pause button is a more sound approach in order to capture a comprehensive screenshot - but you then have the problem (usually) that the screen colour-cycling kicks in before long. So I would say that a combination of pausing in-game, and then hitting the emulator's pause button before the colour-cycling commences, would probably be the best approach for grabbing screenshots.

 

Yes, you're right. One could also use the in-game pause button and then take the screenshot immediately, before the screen colour-cycling kicks in (without using the emulator's pause button).

 

However, in my further practice I will probably just carry on using the method I have used so far. Taking screenshots is a tedious enough exercise anyway, so I won't complicate it any further, especially that, as I mentioned, I am not worried about taking a screenshot that would show something you can see on an emulator only, not on the real hardware - because we are in the emulator age now.

 

Having said that, whenever I take a screenshot and see that it's not right - because the guardians are not drawn properly or the colour of the arrows is other than white (in an unmodified game) - I retake the screenshot. So there...

 

 

> The quote above appears contradictory to me - I'm not sure whether you're saying that you do include screenshots of rooms that are only accessible by WRITETYPER, or whether you don't tend to include screenshots of such rooms in JSW Central? EDIT: By which I mean, the 'Correction' does not appear to contradict your original statement, despite being labelled a 'correction'!

 

What I meant was: I initially wrote that I had not yet come across the necessity to decide whether or not to include screenshots of rooms accessible only via WRITETYPER. Than I realised that I had come across such a case, i.e. in Willy's Flashback. That was the correction.

 

 

> However, the entry for 'Jet Set Mini' certainly does include a screenshot of the unaccessible (other than by using WRITETYPER) room called 'Cheating?' But in that case, accessing the room does not necessarily cause an Infinite Death Scenario [unless you happen to teleport into the path of a guardian], although it does cause Willy's INK colour to turn yellow - with the consequence that even if you teleport back out of that room and back into the mansion, Willy can no longer collect items - a suitable punishment for trying to cheat!

 

I forgot about that. Yes, you're absolutely right. In fact, the screenshot of "Cheating?" is accompanied by the description "One room, otherwise inaccessible, can be reached by using the Writetyper cheat."

 

 

> I would add that, depending on what causes the instant death, a screenshot captured by pausing the game within such a room may or may not show the full picture. e.g. if Willy collides with a guardian that appears early in the guardian list for the room, and is therefore drawn first, then later guardians in the list would not be displayed. If Willy hits a Fire cell (or if all the Air cells in the room are effectively Fire cells, because the attributes for Air and Fire match), then no guardians will be drawn at all, because the Main Loop reacts to Willy hitting a Fire cell before it gets chance to CALL the Draw the Guardians routine.

 

Yes, absolutely.

 

Having given it some thought and taking the existing precedent (the room "Cheating?" in Mini) into account, I would like to include a screenshot of the room "How on earth did you get here ?!" from "Join The Jet-Set!" on JSW Central, taken after I have teleported into that room in-game using WRITETYPER. The screenshot would be as good (or as poor) as it is possible to make it, i.e. it would most probably not show any guardians (because they are not drawn before Willy gets killed, I believe).

 

However, I am wondering if that is possible at all? What would be the WRITETYPER code to access room 63, which "How on earth did you get here ?!" is???

Edited November 11, 2019 by jetsetdanny

[IRF]

However, I am wondering if that is possible at all? What would be the WRITETYPER code to access room 63, which "How on earth did you get here ?!" is???

 

It should be accessible by pressing all the keys from 1-6 along with the 9 key (111111 in binary = 63 in decimal).  It's only when you go beyond that that you would need to pick up an additional number key.

 

However, depending on what emulator you are using, not all number key combinations are always possible...

 

Another possibility would be to POKE the value of the room number (33824/#8420) to a value of 63/#3F.  But then you might (or might not?) enter an IDS before the screen layout is refreshed!  [in the same way that POKING the room number in order to try and access The Bathroom can initially cause the toilet to appear in the room you are attempting to teleport from - guardians can even crash into the toilet in such circumstance, killing Willy! - but then the room is refreshed after losing a life, taking you 'properly' to The Bathroom.]

 

...Anyway, the room name "How on earth did you get here ?!" is very appropriate, it seems!

 

 

I forgot about that. Yes, you're absolutely right. In fact, the screenshot of "Cheating?" is accompanied by the description "One room, otherwise inaccessible, can be reached by using the Writetyper cheat."

 

There's also a room called 'Cheating?' in Jet Set 40-40, although you haven't yet created a suite of screenshots for that game in any case.

Edited November 11, 2019 by IRF

[IRF]

Yes, you're right. One could also use the in-game pause button and then take the screenshot immediately, before the screen colour-cycling kicks in (without using the emulator's pause button).

 

 

 

However, in my further practice I will probably just carry on using the method I have used so far. Taking screenshots is a tedious enough exercise anyway, so I won't complicate it any further, especially that, as I mentioned, I am not worried about taking a screenshot that would show something you can see on an emulator only, not on the real hardware - because we are in the emulator age now.

 

 

 

Having said that, whenever I take a screenshot and see that it's not right - because the guardians are not drawn properly or the colour of the arrows is other than white (in an unmodified game) - I retake the screenshot. So there...

 

Actually, there's probably no need to pause the game at all is there really? Just hit the 'Print Screen' button whilst the game is running on your emulator, then paste into MS Paint (or whatever), crop the image and save it as a JPEG/PNG/whatever.

 

That's what I tend to do (and, like you, take another one if there's an obvious glitch).

Edited November 13, 2019 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

It should be accessible by pressing all the keys from 1-6 along with the 9 key (111111 in binary = 63 in decimal).  It's only when you go beyond that that you would need to pick up an additional number key.

 

However, depending on what emulator you are using, not all number key combinations are always possible...

 

Thanks, Ian.

 

I don't think pressing all of these keys at the same time works on the emulators I'm using (ZX Spin and Spectaculator). If someone is sure otherwise, please let me know.

 

It's an interesting example of how emulation may actually be deficient in comparison with the original hardware (you can access a room by Writetyper on the Spectrum, but not on emulator)...

Edited November 13, 2019 by jetsetdanny

[jetsetdanny]

Actually, there's probably no need to pause the game at all is there really? Just hit the 'Print Screen' button whilst the game is running on your emulator, then paste into MS Paint (or whatever), crop the image and save it as a JPEG/PNG/whatever.

 

That's what I tend to do (and, like you, take another one if there's an obvious glitch).

 

Yes, you're right.

 

I pause the game using the emulator pause function for two reasons:

 

1. It gives me a certain degree of control over what snapshot I am going to take. If I don't like the particular moment of the game, I can upause it and pause it again after half a second (or later). If I just took a screenshot at that moment and didn't quite like it, the "moment" would be gone before I were able to have a good look at the screenshot and decide I want to take another one.

 

This is important taking into account that I often take screenshots while replaying an RZX recording. I try to take screenshots showing all of the "basic" features of the room, such as items and arrows. If I took a screenshot, didn't like it, and by the time I knew I didn't like it Willy would have collected an item in the recording, I would have to start the recording from the beginning to take a screenshot of this particular room (as you can't rewind an RZX recording backwards). It's always a waste of time, and if we are talking about one of the big games, forwarding it from the beginning to the middle can take a few minutes, even using the maximum emulation speed possible.

 

2. When the game is paused, I can see a glitch *before* taking the screenshot. I can then unpause the game and pause it again and see if everything looks good this time before taking the screenshot.

[Spider]

Occasionally with graphic glitches due to the emulator timing it can be sometimes better (but not always) to take an .scr of it instead the 'convert' that to a different image format. Easy way for the latter is to restart the emulator and drag the scr into it, then save as .bmp usually, finally converting said bmp to a better format (png/jpeg) , I only mention bmp as that appears to be the sane choice for Spin at least, shame it can't save directly out as a .png.