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Manic Miner Random Death Bug?


teh_catt

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SOS!!! Hey is anyone aware of a bug in Manic Miner that causes you to randomly die? I've been playing MM through with my son and we've noticed that every so often you randomly die mid-jump without touching anything. this seems to happen on both Bug-Byte and Software projects versions. Playing on a rubber key 48k speccy using a kempston joystick but happens playing on keys as well. Wondering if its the machine at fault as can find no reference to this bug anywhere, but havent had problems in any other games. Driving us insane!!!

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Did see your FB post on this in 'Wonderful World' but unless its a bizarre ram fault effecting the airbourne status flag and setting it to 255 / #FF , I'm not sure what to initially suggest. :) We do have a few real 'experts' who may be able to shed further light on this however.

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Thanks for the replies and advice. Its def not air though - seems to hit at any time during the level. Its gotta be something wrong with the speccy itself i think. Its  standard 48k rubber key but other than a new keyboard membrane I dont think anything much else has been done to it. No issues with JSW as well but will try some other games as do get occasional crashes in Jetpac. I been playing MM since the day so hard to see how it could be some bug no one has come across before. Just wanted to check there was nothing known or obvious but sounds like not. 

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Welcome. :)

 

If you're able and want to (if you've not done this before be mega careful of the very delicate keyboard 'tails') it may be worth checking any socketed IC's are firmly seated but I suspect its not that somehow but its relatively easy to check.

 

You could perhaps run the diagnostic tests in this to see if anything crops up:

 

https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/software/utilities/test-program-sinclair-research-ltd/

 

Easy to use:

 

tp.gif

 

In particular test 6 (ULA) and test 7 (Memory) are the area's of likely interest.

 

There are a few more similar programs available offering more but that one will hopefully grab anything major.

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The only time I've seen that happen I think is when by accident or design someone sets the lives decrement to be an increment instead ( :D ) , once its made a mess of the lower screen area it starts to mess the top of the screen too. Only problem is with all the extra animation at that stage the game is virtually at a standstill. EDIT... Its not too slow, I was wrong.

 

See pic as I may of explained the above badly!

 

inc_hl.gif

 

^ That erm 'effect' anyway. Pic from the SP version but the effect is the same in the BB one.

 

Not 100% on the screen exit Dr Broad ? I did not think that was easily possible without some minor cheating involved, the easy way I think to cause that is to remove the check for earth cells allowing M.W to walk through walls! That's really helpful sometimes with JSW as you can then climb them (seem to be treated as water cells in effect) but not quite so helpful in a 'fixed room' scenario such as MM. There's a .pok file to do that posted in the pokes section I think.

Edited by Spider
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Yeah think I'm going to have to get hold of another spectrum and try on that. In the mean time we really want to finish the game so might have to restort to playing with inifinte lives and keeping count manually!! Only problem is I have no recollection of how to use Pokes from tape loading. Can anyone point me to a guide for how to enter pokes from tape loader?

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