teh_catt Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 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!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Welcome! Not that I'm aware of no. You've not run out of 'air' have you ? :unsure: , when that bar expires = loss of a life :) They are original games I take, I mean not highly modified with different level designs etc ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 Just to be sure, apply one of these depending on what version you're using: Software Projects / Mastertronic releases : POKE 34804 , 1Bug Byte Version : 34798 , 1 Note : Don't apply both ( :D ) or the wrong one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh_catt Posted July 12, 2020 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 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. Spider 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted July 12, 2020 Report Share Posted July 12, 2020 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: 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewbroad Posted July 14, 2020 Report Share Posted July 14, 2020 When I used to play Manic Miner on a real Spectrum, I would sometimes encounter a bug whereby some cells at the top of the screen would randomly change colour (and not because I fell off the bottom of the screen or jumped up off the top, which corrupts Room 7 unless the game engine has been patched to fix this bug). Spider 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spider Posted July 14, 2020 Report Share Posted July 14, 2020 (edited) 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! ^ 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 July 14, 2020 by Spider Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh_catt Posted July 18, 2020 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2020 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? Spider 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teh_catt Posted July 18, 2020 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2020 update - found guide to loading pokes in issue 4 of crash ;) https://archive.org/details/Crash_Magazine_004/page/102/mode/2up Spider 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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