[File] MM2020 Special Edition

[MtM]

Thank you. :thumbsup:

 

Yes its really a score submission for a "start to end" play of the game.

 

I did think about your use of snapshots compared to rzx's rollbacks and in regards to how the game progresses its about the same I suspect. With snapshots if you make a bad mistake, have an accident or perhaps do not like the way you played a cavern you simply reload the last one you took and start from there again. Its similar with rollback with rzx's in that if the same erm 'concern' arises you just step back to the last point at which you saved your progress.

 

I've updated the scoring. You can see it on both the main download page and the first page of this topic here. :)

 

Thanks for putting my score in, very kind. I feel I have arrived at last ;-)

 

I've never actually used rollbacks, so I do not know much about them. I know they are often used in making rzxs.

 

I do use an emulator on the PC called EmuZWin, been out of development now since 2006, but it still works well

under w10. The main reason I use it is because it has a feature that I had never seen in any other emulator at the time,

fast forward and rewind. By pressing alt and left or right cursor, you could go back in playing time 2 secs or forward 2 secs

if you had rewound. This was very useful for playing games, and meant you did not need to be making lots of snapshots.

It is the same principle I think as rollbacks, but maybe called something different. I still use it from time to time anyway, but

even so, the hardest games of all, something like Technician Ted, even they remain virtually impossible using this

system, you just need to be very good at playing them and know exactly what to do in order to be successful first

and foremost.

 

I found parts of JSW2 the same, one or two screens (the original, not the plus version) that were so difficult in terms

of jump precision, you would scrub all your lives off without any issue. I take my gaming hat off to those people good enough

to play it through without using any sort of assistance. In truth though, as I have said elsewhere, there are some MM & JSW

mods that I find as difficult, right from the start, which I cannot but help feel puts casual gamers off somewhat, they can't even get past

or off the first screen so they give up. Even as old school gamers as I imagine most of us are, we perhaps do not on the whole possess

the patience to stick to beating a first screen any more like maybe we did 35 years ago when we had spent our pocket money

on a game that had to last - or at least I often don't, especially then to be confronted with a second even harder screen :-0

 

I suppose to put it into terms that are intrinsic to this forum, the difficulty level of the Central Cavern is a good place to start

and build from. Imagine if MM started with the Solar Power Generator? Or JSW with the Banyan Tree?

 

On the whole I think the difficulty level in this mod was very good, especially the infinite air!

 

Apologies, no idea how I have started rambling on here ... thanks again for the highscore!

Edited June 9, 2020 by MtM

[Spider]

Just bumping this (sorry) 🙂 As there are still some open slots in the " top - x players scores " if anyone is interested 😉

 

[Spider]

On 6/2/2020 at 3:41 PM, MtM said:

Thanks for that. At the moment there is no need for more air in Solar Power, as I say, when it reaches 0 you don't die anyway, it just continues.

I will see if it does the same on other screens tonight. I am guessing it is a bug though?

Missed this somehow must of skimread it sorry.

Its not a bug 😉 It is intentional to allow the game to continue once the air supply has been exhausted. Please see description on download page or first post in this topic, the third italic paragraph:

 

Quote

If the air supply should for some reason actually run out during play the game will continue without loss of a life

 

🙂🙂

 

[MtM]

Yes all makes sense now thanks Spider 🙂

 

[IRF]

Considering that this project is dedicated to key workers during the pandemic - including doctors working with patients on ventilators - having an unlimited air supply is a nice touch. Gives them time off from worrying about such a thing. 🙂

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by IRF

[Spider]

Shame there's no "care" reaction to give for the above post. 🙂 Very true.

The caverns do have a small air-grace period anyway.

From a slightly tech point of view, you'll note that unlike the "regular pokes" that give infinite air tend to redraw the last block over and over again, this does not 😉 Shame I lost my notes on how I did that, it was just a couple of small changes though but that part of 'what to do' was not really well covered in the disassembly iirc, it took me a bit of figuring out to get it to work as I wanted.

[jetsetdanny]

I have now created a web page on JSW Central for this variant. It is here 🙂.

The game's name does not appear anywhere in the game (unless hidden in the loader or something) and Andy hasn't been entirely consistent with the spelling - on the main download page it is called "MM2020 Special Edition" and then "Manic Miner 2020 - Special Edition". I opted to list it as "Manic Miner 2020 Special Edition", as the spelling with the hyphen (copied by Spectrum Computing, RZX Archive and Speccy Screenshot Maps) creates a wrong impression IMHO - it looks like it's a Special Edition of a game called "Manic Miner 2020", which is not the case. If there had to be a hyphen, it would be more appropriate before the year: "Manic Miner - 2020 Special Edition". However, since I didn't feel authorised to move the hyphen, taking into consideration that Andy also presented one abbreviated spelling without it, I opted for a full name spelling without a hyphen, which I hope is also correct.

This sentence: "Pressing Break during play will save the highscore" is misleading, IMO. Pressing 'Break' does result in the highscore being saved, but the first thing it does is it resets the game. So the highscore is saved (if the current score exceed the previous highscore), but the player cannot continue their play, they've just lost the current game so to speak. There seems to be no reason to do this - if you press Break, your game will be over and you won't be able to improve your current score. If you continue playing, you still have a chance to improve your current score and then, once you've lost all your lives, the highscore will be saved anyway after the Game Over screen. So using 'Break' doesn't seem to make much sense.

My personal highscore upon re-entering the first cavern is 41,842 points (the RZX recording is here). It qualifies for the highscore table 🙂.

[Spider]

Thanks @jetsetdannyfor the page on the JSW Central site, appreciated. 🙂

I've updated the score chart here for this to reflect your result, you're in 1st place. This still leaves us two empty slots for 4th and 5th places. 😄

Also, I agree with the comment about 'Break' too, so I've changed the wording a fraction:

" Pressing Break during play to abort the same will unlike the default Manic Miner update the highscore "

Finally I removed some unintentional line-breaks that crept into the descriptor to make it slightly more readable.

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Andy! 👍