Manic Miner for the Colour Maximite

[ceptimus]

I've ported the original Bug-Byte Spectrum version of Manic Miner to the Colour Maximite.

 

The Maximite only runs BASIC (its own version called MMBASIC) - there's no way to call machine code routines from Maximite Basic.  But it does run it very fast, so I was able to get the speed to match the original Spectrum; actually it could run a lot faster.

 

Most obvious differences are:

• The Maximite game screen (mode 4) is only 240 pixels wide (by 216 pixels high) so I had to trim 8 pixels from both vertical edges of the Spectrum screen to make it fit.  Luckily, all the caverns have 8-pixel impenetrable walls up both sides, so the game play is unaltered - you can't see those walls but the edges of the screen act as walls.
• The Maximite only has 8 colours compared to the Spectrum's 15.  Doesn't make much difference to the gameplay except to make the distinction between crumbling floors and normal floors less obvious in some caverns.

I've made a video of me playing the first few caverns.  I'm not very good at playing!. https://youtu.be/LcbuvVZmD_g

 

You can download the game (and because it's in BASIC, also the source!) from http://ceptimus.co.uk/MMINER.zip

[Spider]

Excellent work! :) :)

[jetsetdanny]

Great stuff, Geoff! :) Congratulations on porting Manic Miner to the Colour Maximite and thanks for sharing the news here!  :thumbsup:

[Spider]

Have you received much feedback in general from elsewhere ? :) :)

 

Just curious. I've not (sorry) had chance to look into this in detail yet, free time is something I am extremely poor on at this moment in time however it is on my weekend list. Honest!

[ceptimus]

No, I get the impression that hardly anyone has played it. :(  If you do try it, download the latest one from the link above as I've fixed a couple of minor bugs.

 

I was going to attempt a JSW conversion too - my plan was to do a gentle horizontal screen scroll one pixel at a time to accommodate the 256-pixel wide screen on the Maximite's 240-pixel width display.  The scroll would occur gradually depending on Willy's horizontal screen position: so when Willy was in the left quarter of the screen 16 pixels would be cropped from the right edge; when he's at the centre, 8 pixels pixels would be cropped from both edges and so on.

 

I've put that project on the back burner for now though.  I think most of Maximite/Minimite community are not really interested in games.  As far as I know, the main place they hang out is on The Back Shed forum in the Microcontrollers and PC projects section.

Edited September 22, 2019 by ceptimus

[Spider]

I was going to post today as I could not find ( ! ) an emulator I could use for this :unsure: . I had the same problem looking for an Atom one too, although there were a few floating about none of them appeared to want to be nice.

 

The JSW idea does have a lot of merit. The Amiga version (I've not seen the ST one that I can recall) does do this too, although to such a degree it is almost impossible to get out of the way of guardians as you don't 'see' them before they are nearly on you! As long as there's sufficient 'free space area' (think Skooldaze perhaps) then it would work very well indeed.

 

:)