Manic Miner in 48k with 40 rooms

[jetsetdanny]

First of all, THANK YOU for "Manic 40 Miner", Norman Sword! 😁 It is very enjoyable to play, I've had a lot of fun playing it!

And it's a great technical achievement, too. You said it was supposed to be a proof of concept and I suspect you have proved all that needed to be proven beyond any doubt 🙂 .

My RZX recording of "Manic 40 Miner" V6c6 can now be downloaded from the RZX Archive or watched on YouTube .

I have also created an individual page for the game on JSW Central, with a complete screenshot gallery.

I am copying the text of the description from that page below. Norman Sword, or anyone else, please let me know what should be corrected to make it complete and do justice to this great project!

 

Manic 40 Miner is a game that runs in the original 48K, but thanks to a rewrite of the code features 40 caverns, a built-in editor and various additional features.

The first 20 caverns are rooms from the original Manic Miner, with some modifications that illustrate the extended abilities of the game engine. The following 20 caverns are rooms from LiganTM's 2018 game Manic Miner: Back to the Mine modified to various extent.

The game engine supports numerous features which are not available in the original MM engine. Each cavern can be drawn from 16 cell types. Kongs are movable. A room can have multiple conveyors. Switches are movable. You can have any combination of sprites in any room. You can have Kongs, Skylabs (which can move downwards or upwards) and Solar Light Beam at the same time in any room. You can also have Eugene in any room.

Room 23 "Mercinary-Kongs on Hire Perches" illustrates how vastly the game engine has been expanded in relation to the original MM engine. It features a moving Solar Light Beam, a movable Eugene (whose routine can specify which item Eugene reacts to or whether he reacts only when all collected), multiple movable Kongs with a definable drop and colour (it can also be defined where each Kong removes a wall section from) and a Skylab that moves upwards, with a definable image, animation stages and crash sound.

Manic 40 Miner has a modified title screen with improved title-screen piano graphics. It also features a variable tune speed playing routine and a sound effect when the player collects an item.

The game has a built-in cheat mode, which is enabled by default. The player can jump caverns by pressing the combination of "3" and "1" to move to the previous cavern, or "3" and "2" to move to the next cavern. Pressing "3" resets the current cavern.

The built-in editor can be activated by pressing "3" and "0" together. It allows the player to edit a number of features, including room layouts, cells, sprites, items and the start position of Willy and of the portals. A detailed manual of how to use the editor is included in the ReadMe accompanying the game.

The game was started as a test routine and proof of concept (with version 1 released in February 2020), but ended up being a fully playable and completable (and partly self-editable!) game, with the final version 6c6 released in August 2021.

[Norman Sword]

The original code was written over the period of a  week. The original code was using most of the original routines. And was very limited in its changes to the bulk of game routines. As I needed more and more space for the editor, I edited the original routines to shrink their size.

Changing music tempo.
I had to re read the source code... I added a routine (which I can now just about remember) That set the tempo of the music to the length of the air bar.  Played in the final cavern, but can/could be set to any room.

It is evident the Manic Panic was written shortly after this. The room data follows the same layout and uses most of the graphics. 

The room data in this (Manic 40 Miner) is not greatly compressed, it is stored in nibbles. The data in Manic Panic starts off in the same plain format, but as the game is run, it is expanded out and then re compressed. The plain data is then discarded.  The expansion and compression are as follows

Start of game compression

1) hex nibble expand. 2) run line compress.3) move to buffer 4) repeat "0" compress and move to buffer

To draw each room.

1) repeat "0" expand 2) run line expand 3) nibble translate 4) draw room

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As stated elsewhere the Editor in Manic 40 Miner does allow easy copying of the data from the original Ligan rooms. Just load up the screens (Ligan's), copy the item/object position into the editor, and read of the data positions, and type into my source code... The above would have been a lot easier than editing the data that I had. Perhaps one day I will update the item/data to replicate the original. (just not this year) 

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I saw your rzx recording about 10 mins after you posted it. Some of the caverns, do need more items. Just to make visiting some areas, part of the room play. If Ligans original data is inserted, then that would probably be the case... Next year perhaps. 

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Food for thought.... I  should have done a version without the cheat enabled by default. The editor would still be accessable after the cheat is typed in.  The cheat code is%^%£^&%£$%$£% or maybe   £!$!%("^%£%*(&(£  or is it %^&%£"^&*"^"&^ or perhaps %£$%£$$£$££%£% . Such a long time since writing the code to now, I have forgotten.  Those codes are from a note file that is embeded in one file I have remaining.
In any case the cheat code is not needed, unless the editor is deleted from memory.

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I am glad you enjoyed playing.

Next up is Manic 41 Miner, and its sequel Manic 42 Miner. And in the same series the prequel Manic 39 Miner.

This could run for several years.😁
 

 

 

 

 

[jetsetdanny]

I have added a video of the walkthrough on JSW Central YouTube channel.

I have also realised that the game should be credited both to Norman Sword and LiganTM, because of LiganTM's rooms. It is the same situation as with "Jet Set Willy 128k", where John Elliott, who created the game, used rooms from Richard Hallas's "Join the Jet-Set!" for half of the rooms in "Jet Set Willy 128k". So the game is credited to both of them, even though it was John who actually created it, while using Richard's rooms.

The same goes for the projects I worked on. "Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix" is credited to me, Paul Equinox Collins et al., as it incorporated, among its 256 rooms, 48 rooms designed by Paul (they come from his unfinished "JSW '96 Remix") and a number of rooms by other authors (specific credits are given instead of "et al." wherever space permits). "Jet Set Willy: Mind Control" is a game I created using a lot of material from Sendy (Alex Cornhill), hence we are credited as co-authors everywhere (what a shame Sendy is not active on the MM/JSW scene any more!).

Following the same logic, I added credits to LiganTM in the context of "Manic 40 Miner" on JSW Central. I have also included credit to LiganTM on the title screen of the "Manic 40 Miner" video on JSW Central YouTube channel, but in this case I credited the game as "a ZX Spectrum game by Norman Sword with part of the rooms by LiganTM".

[IRF]

I've been away from these parts for a while, but just thought I'd say well done, both to Norman Sword for creating a completable version of this project, and to JetSetDanny for completing the game in your usual efficient manner!

[IRF]

On 8/24/2021 at 2:09 AM, jetsetdanny said:

However, something kills Willy a split second (for lack of better time measurement) after this screenshot was taken, before all of Willy's body has emerged from the portal.

It's kind of as if there was an invisible Fire cell in the space where the middle part of the green wall used to be (this empty space was created, of course, after the left switch made this part of the green wall disappear).

Since the conveyor is a right conveyor, I believe it's not possible to go for the item located to the right of the upper part of the green wall I am discussing from the left, because there is no way to move leftward on the conveyor.

So you need to jump for it from the right, but this is where Willy gets killed by, as it seems, the green wall (with black holes). I think this wall is to blame, because when Willy is inside the portal and I try to walk to the right, without jumping, Willy also gets killed after a step or two. So it looks like the green wall is killing him.

 

I believe that the above (problem Danny reported in 'Pronces Palace'; now fixed) was being caused by the attributes for the solid wall blocks matching the attributes for some of the Fire cells (the spiky bushes, as well as the money bags and the 'urn' to the right of the cyan penguin.

Incidentally, I found collecting the bottom-right item (and escaping afterwards) to be very tricky, due to a combination of the cyan penguin, the money bag, the urn, the spiky bushes, the right-moving conveyor and the crumbly platforms.  Firstly, you have to make sure not to crumble all of the upper of the two crumbly platforms on your way down to collect the item.  And secondly, a well-timed, pixel-perfect jump from the remaining crumbly platform, underneath the penguin, is required to escape from that corner.  A very cunning design for what initially appears to be a relatively simple task! 

Oh, and on a technical level, there is something else which I just noticed in this cavern - the switches work differently than in original MM.  Rather than the left-hand one opening the wall and the right-hand one flipping Kong, here it is the first switch to be flipped (whichever one you choose to touch first) which opens the wall, whilst the second switch causes Kong to tumble. 🙂

Edited September 13, 2021 by IRF

[IRF]

23 minutes ago, IRF said:

Incidentally, I found collecting the bottom-right item (and escaping afterwards) to be very tricky, due to a combination of the cyan penguin, the money bag, the urn, the spiky bushes, the right-moving conveyor and the crumbly platforms.  Firstly, you have to make sure not to crumble all of the upper of the two crumbly platforms on your way down to collect the item.  And secondly, a well-timed, pixel-perfect jump from the remaining crumbly platform, underneath the penguin, is required to escape from that corner.  A very cunning design for what initially appears to be a relatively simple task! 

Ah, I just watched Danny's Youtube walkthrough, and it seems that I made things much more difficult for myself than I needed to!  Danny's jump at 20:17 in his video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtg3BnujmEE), launching himself off the conveyor to get past the Fire cells which are situated on the conveyor, meant that the entire upper crumbly platform was available to him for his escape after collecting the bottom-right item.

The way I did it (after multiple attempts using roll-back) was to jump over the pair of conveyor Fire cells from off the solid (magenta) floor platform above the conveyor (and just to the left of the pair of Fire cells) - a jump which itself needed to be well-timed to avoid hitting the cyan penguin - landing on the upper crumbly platform but making sure not to land on the right-hand crumbly cell of that two-block platform, then dropping down (through the lower crumbly platform) to get the item.  Then jumping vertically up onto the conveyor, from there Willy can't go left as the conveyor stops him [can't jump leftwards onto the conveyor to counter that, as Willy would hit the moneybag Fire cell], then jump rightwards onto the one remaining crumbly cell (beneath the 'urn' Fire cell), and then (with a very short time limit due to the crumbly nature of the platform upon which he stands) try to jump leftwards over the pair of conveyor Fire cells but under the penguin (which is both fast-moving and has a very limited horizontal range).  Very tricky indeed!

To see what I'm on about, please see the attached snapshot file, taken (with the game paused) just after Willy has made the fateful jump off the magenta platform above the conveyor.  If you load up the snapshot file and press any movement key to resume the game, your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to try and collect the bottom-right item (the one underneath the conveyor) and then make your way safely back up onto the magenta platform which Willy had just jumped off at the moment when I saved the snapshot.  Extremely tricky, but I did manage to do it after many attempts!

P.S. If Norman ever wanted to create a super-hard version of this game/this cavern, then the tricky jump described above (as opposed to the easier method which Danny executed in his Youtube video) could be enforced by placing another Fire cell on the conveyor, just to the left of the existing pair of Fire cells on the conveyor.

 

Pronce's Palace snapshot.z80

Edited September 13, 2021 by IRF

[IRF]

Having compared and contrasted the screenshots for Ligan's 'Back to the Mine' and 'Manic 40 Miner', I noticed that one of Ligan's caverns ('The Collapsed Plains' - the equivalent of the 'ostrich' cavern in original MM) was replaced entirely in 'Manic 40 Miner', by the new cavern 'Mercinary-Kongs on Hire Perches '.  Danny, perhaps you might want to amend the entry in jswcentral to reflect this point?

Incidentally, that cavern name is a partial play on words, based on the phrase 'hire purchase' - which perhaps isn't a familiar phrase to those for whom English isn't their first language? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hire_purchase

I think the pun would have worked better if the cavern name was 'Mercinary-Kongs on Higher Perches', to reflect the height of the perches upon which the Kongs are sat?  (But I guess that runs up against the 32 character limit for a cavern name (unless you omit the hyphen?)

****

A couple of other points which occurred to me during playtesting:

- The VAT was more difficult in Ligan's original variant, due to the opposite direction of the conveyor meaning that Willy could get stuck if his head hit the overhead solid blocks (thus stalling his 'upstream' progression, leaving the only way out to commit kamikaze against the top-left Fire cell);

- The placement of the item near the portal in Ligan's version of 'The Art Gallery' (which would have been 'The Bank' in old money!) - or rather, the absence of that item in Norman Sword's version - means that the route through this cavern is quite different.  (In the latter, you don't have to ascend the 'trellis' - although Danny did take the trellis route in his walkthrough of Manic 40 Miner.)

Edited September 14, 2021 by IRF

[Norman Sword]

Scope of editing the switches.

In the original format the switches are fixed in position. To move the switch requires not an edit to the room graphics alone, but also an edit to the data for control of the switch. e.g. The game code itself needs editing. 

This restriction forces all switches for KONG style room to be placed in a fixed order and in a fixed position. Duplicating a room with KONG being a protagonist in the room. Also duplicates the position of KONG- the switches, the platform KONG falls off and the drop KONG does after the 2nd switch is flipped. Plus also the action of the erasure of the central wall and the sprite that passes through the wall. 

The above is a lot of fixed data and actions. I suppose its possible to write a routine to modify some of the above data to change its action. With a new routine for each and every set of data change. Not a very flexible method of allowing change.

The switches.

When I added a room editor I permitted the room data and therefore the switches to be edited. This change in itself necessitates re writing the whole of the room setup routine and a redesign of the KONG routine.

Moving the switches with an editor means I need to track where the switches are, and unlike having routines that modify the code. I use the position generated by the room when drawn. These positions are stored and the routine for switch activation scans the list of stored switches. I did at one stage expand the switch routine to also expand the scope of what the switches did. For example having 3 switches and needing two switches flipped to activate wall erasure and the third to force KONG dropping. Surprisingly I scrapped the routine, simply because I could not be bothered having to explain the changes in logic that would follow. (That text would have been part of the editor's instructions. I would have needed the full explanation, yet most of the changes could not be edited (so from an editors point of view pointless))

The NEW sprite data
The sprite data for KONG now stores its platform position (x,y) its distance of fall, its definition its colour and also the x,y position of the wall erasure. So I can edit most aspects of KONG in the source sprite listing. This means I can greatly change what the KONG routine does, without having to change any of the games code. So it has (for me) become a simple matter to place switches anywhere and have various sprites act on the switches. Seen in Manic Panic in the Final room.

Alas the data for Manic 40 Miner uses the basic movement data of the original sprites in most of the rooms/caverns ( twice * 20 caverns) . So since the ability to change the parameters of KONG and the other sprites is NOT included in the editor, the extra features are rarely seen. 

The only extended version of KONG seen is Mercinary-Kongs on Hire Perches Cavern 23. 
 

[jetsetdanny]

It's good to see you back, Ian! 😊 There is an entire separate thread on the forum devoted to your temporary absence! 😄

I've modified the wording on JSW Central somewhat. "Mercinary-Kongs on Hire Perches" is not 100% new - it uses the graphics from the corresponding room in LiganTM's game, while the rest of its design (the layout, the switches, etc.) is totally new. I don't want to go into too much detail discussing it right there (it gets more mention below), so I just called it "a new room" for the sake of simplicity.

[Norman Sword]

Correction on the scope of editing done in Ligan's caverns.
Ligans edit of the original Manic Miner
1) the sprites are not moved or recoloured or changed. The only exception is Eugene Which is a new definition.  2) the graphics for platforms/walls are 99% the original graphics. 3) some rooms/caverns change the graphic definition of the keys/items. 4) the start position in a few rooms/caverns is changed. 5) The graphic colours are not changed 6) The border colour is not changed.  There might be exceptions to the above but the exceptions are trivial.

Mercinary Kongs thus uses the graphics as provided by Matthew in the corresponding room. There are no Ligan graphics to use or in use.
 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Norman Sword
picture added; Changed numbering to be consecutive