Playing around.

[MtM]

Version beta 3.

 

 

Not changed a great deal, that can be seen. But underneath the exterior is a lot of code change. 

 

This looks pretty much the same as before. Only casual difference would be that on loading it now displays the word "Trainer" on the title screen. Plus a change in the scrolling message about the version and the date.

 

Game changes.

 

While the title screen is displayed , pressing the keyboard letter "T" will change the word "Trainer" to "Normal", another press of "T" will change the word "Normal" to "Expert". And yet another press will change the "Expert" back to the original wording of "trainer".

 

Those three words are describing the game play.   The graphics of each room will not be changed by the differing level of play but other changes will take place.

 

 

1) trainer mode: Here the oxygen level is set to full, and the game depletes the oxygen counter very slowly. The number of sprites in a room is reduced by two. The game can not be completed in this mode.

 

2) Normal mode. Here the oxygen level is set to a level where the room can be completed at a casual pace. The oxygen depletes a lot faster. The number of sprites in a room is reduced by 1

 

3) Expert mode. Here the oxygen level is set to a level where the room can be completed at a brisk pace. The rate of oxygen depletion is very fast, Now all contacts with sprites/baddies/fall etc will result in Willies demise.

 

Each mode has its own high score. The trainer mode will give excessive score due to the remaining oxygen left at the end of each cavern.

 

 

The above is an outline of what is intended.... The rooms themselves have not be fully defined. in terms of graphics/sprites/events/ and the oxygen level

 

 

At present around 25 screens:- that, like every other aspect, is subject to change.

 

 

 

 

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Addendum:-

 

The size of the file is a good indicator of how much ram is set aside for those giant screens in memory. The real screen is 6656 in size. For this game variant we also have a Working screen and a Master screen. Those 3 screens are using 19968 bytes of memory.  So nearly 20k is dedicated at the start for game screens, leaving just 28k from the 48k for the program and all its data. I am at present at the point where I  need more memory to do the things I want. I will probably do a major memory reconfiguration and data compression. (something that will not be seen)

 

 

 

I had a good session playing this last night, and I daresay I will again tonight.

 

I really like it, the graphics just seem eye-popping on a 4k monitor that I have my Next connected to, it

just looks wonderfully colourful.

 

In terms of what you say above, can the game be completed on 'normal'? I assume so, so apologies

if that is a daft question.

 

I note too that the level designs are to be found in some of your other MM based games, the flowerpots

etc. The diagonal moving sprites really break things up too aesthetically as well as gameplay wise - unless

that is from a different version of MM I have played, there are so many, if so then sorry :-)

 

I re-read what I had written above about the screen design in Perils of Willy earlier in the thread, and realise that it is not applicable

here in a way because those screens themselves were designed originally back in the 80s when that game

first came out, so have not been too altered in terms of difficulty compared to the modern mods of JSW

and MM that can be so hard.

 

Personally I think the system you have employed here is excellent and caters for everyone. I am not sure

what the scrolling messages add to the early screens that a static message like a room name wouldn't add?

 

I do like too in later screens where the whole screen apart from the bottom 2 lines are deployed as gaming area,

something different from MM but it looks really good visually and gives more room for design.

 

As for the size of the memory used above, is producing a 128k version a possibility?

 

Hope that this is constructive for you.

[IRF]

These files don't seem to work on the online emulator 'QAOP' which I tend to use.

 

I managed to get them working okay on SPIN though.

[Norman Sword]

I have just run the file on Torinak - no problems. 

If you had read the start of this post and the responses I made. You will have seen that the original file used a port that when scanned can cause a problem with any spectrum version that is not the original.

Implication being Torinak is not specced as an original spectrum.

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Final game version accessible This Link

Edited July 20, 2020 by Norman Sword

[Norman Sword]

I had a good session playing this last night, and I daresay I will again tonight.

 

I really like it, the graphics just seem eye-popping on a 4k monitor that I have my Next connected to, it

just looks wonderfully colourful.

 

In terms of what you say above, can the game be completed on 'normal'? I assume so, so apologies

if that is a daft question.

 

The File(s) are preliminary layouts, and I can do a lot of them. I have not tried all of them. I am concentrating more on what I can do, before I persevere with playing them to finality. So do not be surprised if you find a level impossible or seemingly so. It might well be so.

 

 

I note too that the level designs are to be found in some of your other MM based games, the flowerpots

etc. The diagonal moving sprites really break things up too aesthetically as well as gameplay wise - unless

that is from a different version of MM I have played, there are so many, if so then sorry :-)

 

The diagonal part is not unique. It was done in JSW2, it is done in JSW128VK etc. What is unique is the ability of sprites to cross over the background graphics. Not done with any other version of JSW - (I am Ignoring JSW2 because I know that that can do a whole host of things that JSW can not). Also apart from my version of manic miner, I am not aware of any version that uses a sprite mask on the 48k spectrum
The Flower pots were drawn as Greek urns. The graphics are taken from Manic 40 Miner. For those graphics I designed and wrote an editor. I have now swapped over to windows 10 pro, which will not let those programs run , so unless I go back to my old computer, all room designs and graphics are done by simply typing out the data.

 

 

 

 

I re-read what I had written above about the screen design in Perils of Willy earlier in the thread, and realise that it is not applicable

here in a way because those screens themselves were designed originally back in the 80s when that game

first came out, so have not been too altered in terms of difficulty compared to the modern mods of JSW

and MM that can be so hard.

Personally I think the system you have employed here is excellent and caters for everyone. I am not sure

what the scrolling messages add to the early screens that a static message like a room name wouldn't add?

 

If you read the mega long scrolling message and start playing the 1st,2nd ,3rd cavern. You will see that they are a continuation of the story. On the first cavern the scrolling message is around  two and a half screens in width, difficult to place anything of that size and nature on the screen without it becoming over bearing. The larger screens take up all bar the bottom line. That is 23 screen lines, no room to place a room name.  The messages do not use any other memory that is not contained in the room file. e.g. the sprites that are not used in that room are replaced with scrolling text.

 

 

I do like too in later screens where the whole screen apart from the bottom 2 lines are deployed as gaming area,

 

The playing area is the full screen bar one line on the bottom and one column on the extreme right. The area updated on each game loop is the full screen.

 

 

 

something different from MM but it looks really good visually and gives more room for design.

As for the size of the memory used above, is producing a 128k version a possibility?

 

I do not even look at 128 spectrum versions of any game from that era. The 128k spectrum did not exist when Manic Miner/Jsw/jsw2 where written. I write only on hardware that was available at the time these games were written. Any program I write COULD have been written and release when the originals were released. The reason I ignore other hardware is because these programs are written solely for my enjoyment. With the main constraint being that they must run on the original spectrum.  When writing a game in 48k the limitations of the hardware the processor and memory, dictate what can be done. 
 

 

Hope that this is constructive for you.

 

 

;===============================

 

My text is in Blue in response to text in Red.

 

 

I do appreciate you taking the trouble to comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Final game version accessible This Link

 

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Norman Sword

[MtM]

Thanks for the response, really appreciated.

 

I am working my way through the game level by level when I get chance, think I am on level 13 at the moment, just with making

snapshots etc on the Next. I did note that last night there was no way to get the music back on in game, unless I am imagining

it?

 

The masking graphics I like a lot, especially the Willy sprite, it looks so much better and clearer in terms of gameplay.

 

Yes, I meant 'Greek urns' too, instead of flowerpots. For that matter I have Manic 40 too, I must see where I am up to with

that as well. I applaud your efforts, sir - long may they continue! You are making a real contribution to a seminal and now

legendary game series; it has changed people's lives, which may sound a little grandiose but there is evidence to support it.

[Spider]

Attached are my playtests from beta3 for each 'mode' from 00 to the start of 06 aka "Menagerie" :)

 

Trainer_00_to_06.rzx Normal_00_to_06.rzx Expert_00_to_06.rzx

[Norman Sword]

Plodding along, writing various versions. Each new version with an inclusive compression routine for the data. The data is already compressed into nibbles and the various room sizes are creating problems. The problems stem from the amount of code needed to compress and then expand a room that does not have a fixed size. 

 

The normal course for me, would be to write a program that compresses the data and then outputs a file that I can assemble in my assembler. This means the program only stores the compressed data, making it very difficult to change by anyone but me.

 

I have decided in this version to leave the data stored as nibbles. Then after loading the program will compress the nibbles data and then discard it. This does in theory make the data editable using a simple hex editor. The compression of the data is handled by the program, so the compressed data does not need to be edited. This does mean that only the raw file is editable, but that is still better than editing the compressed data.

I know that the data compression on JSW2 was handled by a few lines of basic code. That is code written in CPC Basic. Each room was designed and then sent from the CPC across to the Tandy as a file containing data statements. If the file needed changing the room would need to be redrawn and sent again to the Tandy or the compressed data would need to be edited. In some rooms the redesign, only needed an odd byte changing. Perhaps after finding a platform needed extending or shortening. So it was quicker to edit the compressed data. That is why some rooms are not optimised as well as they could be. 

The above is the reason I am trying to keep the data in a simple format. So that simple edits can be performed without resorting to editing compressed data. The rooms are drawn by me in hex. I want to keep that simplicity.


On the other hand I could forget about doing any of the above and just carry on with the very limited memory available.

 

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Final game version accessible This Link

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Norman Sword

[MtM]

Keep on plodding Norman!

 

Apologies for my ignorance, have you ever used the JSWII engine for any of your games, or just the MM engine?

 

In fact thinking about it I cannot think of too many modded versions of JSWII. I know that the original author Derrick

Rowson has released an updated version in 2016, but am struggling to remember playing any modded versions

of it - am I wrong? No, actually, just checked on https://jswcentral.org/list.html#ListofJSWIIgames

there do not appear to be any JSWII mods, thought that was the case.

 

What is your overall goal for Manic Panic?

Edited May 28, 2020 by MtM

[jetsetdanny]

The only released mod of JSWII - if you can call it that - is John Elliott's "Jet Set Willy 2: Super Pre-School Edition". The room "Shouldn't this be the Attic?" [039] was the first completely edited new room in a game using the JSW2 game engine since the original JSWII. 

[Spider]

To expand a fraction on Danny's post, I did at one point have a modded JSW2 game a couple of years ago but it never really got finished. More recently a slightly different JSW2 game was started but I've not had chance to make any progress with it, its more a longer term 'as and when' project.