JODI's "Jet Set Willy Variations"

[jetsetdanny]

I am pleased to announce that a thorough analysis of JODI’s Jet Set Willy Variations has been added to JSW Central. Please read on for the links.

I felt it was something that was long overdue. The only info about these mods I had came from Andrew Broad's old list of MM/JSW games, where it says, "JODI (Joan Heemskirk and Dirk Paesmans) entered six weird variations of the original JSW in an art-exhibition called Seeing Double: Emulation in Theory and Practice (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, 19th March - 16th May 2004). See also their website, which has a different set of SNA files from those hosted here!"

So back in October or November 2019 I started serious research on this subject. It turned out to be a huge, daunting task, for reasons I will describe below. I continued to work on it on and off, increasingly feeling that I had to complete this task and update JSW Central before I could proceed with any other substantial updates.

My work on this project involved searching the web for information about JODI and their artistic work, searching the web for other versions of JSW Variations than the ones mentioned by Andrew (I found some 20 different game files in total, with time stamps ranging from 2003 to 2016), comparing them (down to code comparison in SPECSAISIE) to see how they differ, and playing them to completion or as near completion as possible. When I determined that some files were not completable, even though it looked like they should be (it was just an error or two that prevented them from being completable, not a conscious design), I came up with their bugfixed versions. Then it was recording RZX walkthroughs, taking screenshots of every room (over 800 in total), creating individual web pages for them on JSW Central, updating the main list of games with a new category, etc. All in all, a lot of work, but I am glad I have finally been able to make it public 🙂.

The main page on JSW Central devoted to JODI's JSW Variations is here. It presents some quotes from various online sources that I think explain well what it's all about, an overview of the game files I have found and links to their individual pages.

There are five JSW Variations by JODI which I classified in a new subsection I added to "II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48)" - the list of Games using Matthew Smith's original Jet Set Willy game engine for the 48K Spectrum and its modifications. The new subsection is called "C. Artistic modifications of the original Jet Set Willy" and currently includes the following game files by JODI:

COPYCARD

This variation is based on the copy-protection card: a red, blue, green and magenta grid that shipped with every copy of the original game. The pattern provided access codes that were necessary to launch the game (the colours are mapped into numbers that can be entered on the keyboard).

STORY

This variation lets the protagonist wander around the text, spelled in all capital letters and without punctuation marks, of the first part of the instructions from the original JSW: ""Miner Willy, intrepid explorer and nouveau-riche socialite, has been reaping the benefits of his fortunate discovery in Surbiton. He has a yacht, a cliff-top mansion, (...)".

SURBITON

In this particular variation the protagonist, a BRIGHT white square, moves across screens which are either one colour (BRIGHT green or BRIGHT blue) or two colours (divided in half horizontally or vertically, BRIGHT blue and green). No other colours are present in the game, apart from some entirely black Fire cells. There are no guardians in the game.

SPRITES

This variation lets the protagonist wander around blown-up sprites of guardians from the original JSW. The whole game is in black and white; there are no other colours.

KEYWORDS

This variation offers maze-like screens across which the protagonist moves as an evolving black square (at times just becoming a black dot or a couple of joint dots). There are no guardians in the game. 

I decided to place these games in a separate subsection because of their characteristics. None of them is either toilet-, Maria- or bed-completable by design. STORY and (a bugfixed version of) KEYWORDS are item-completable. So is SPRITES, but it only has one item. In the case of COPYCARD (a true horror to move around!) and SURBITON only part of the items can be collected; some are unreachable (that's my conclusion, at least - please correct me if I'm wrong!). Moreover, in the latter game file all items are amassed in one room. All in all, a strong characteristic of these games is that they are evidently not meant to be played with the aim of completing them. I believe they should be enjoyed as works of art, pieces of artistic expression which you can admire while roaming around the screens, but not really complete by triggering a toilet run or anything like that.

Still, I did look at them as if they were "normal" games and did my best to determine the degree of their completability.

I also added three of JODI's JSW Variations to the list of "Versions and minor mods of the original Jet Set Willy", as, in my opinion, they belong there according to their characteristics. They are fully playable (and toilet-completable after ironing out some bugs), they preserve the layout of the original JSW (with some very minor changes) and their editing involved mainly changes to cell patterns and colours.

These three variations are:

jsw011

 It shows all of the elements of the game as squares of colour attributes.

jsw012

It shows all of the elements of the game as squares in black and white.

jsw013

It shows all of the cells in the game as letters symbolising their type (A for Air, E for Earth, W for Water, etc.).

You can refer to the individual games' pages linked above to read more detailed info about them, have a look at the screenshots and download both JODI's original files and my bugfixes of some of them. You can also download a ZIP file with my RZX recordings of the various versions of these games from RZX Archive.

Some websites mention that 10 or approximately 10 JSW Variations have been created by JODI. I have been able to find 8 (that's without counting the different versions of each variation, e.g. I've found three different versions of jsw011, four different versions of STORY, etc. - they are all analysed in detail). Please let me know if you know of/have any other versions than the ones discussed on JSW Central. Please also let me know if you find any errors or discrepancies in my descriptions of them or have any other comments regarding info about JODI's JSW Variations on JSW Central. 🙂

[IRF]

Well done Danny on your hard work creating this major update to JSWCentral!

I have a couple of queries:

- In your post above, you mentioned six JSW variations by JODI, but then you listed either five variations (if you were referring to the game files which merit inclusion in the new subsection C of the list of JSW games), or eight variations (if you were including the three 'minor mods' in the total).  So your reference to six variations should have said either five, ,or eight?

- You've provided a link to the new main page of JSWCentral dedicated to the JONI project, but I can't see a way that one can navigate to access that page from anywhere within the website, without being given the Hyperlink as you have included here above?  Should there be a link from the 'Authors about their games' page of the site? (Although I realise that it doesn't quite belong in there, as the generic article about the JODI project wasn't written by the authors themselves.) 

[jetsetdanny]

Ian, thanks for your kind words and your comments.

Here are the answers to your queries:

1.

I only mentioned number six in the quotation from Andrew's list of games. He mentioned six variations of JSW participating in an art competition in New York back in 2004. 

In fact, if you have a look at JODI's website, they are hosting six variations there right now (jsw011, jsw012, jsw013, COPYCARD, SPRITES and STORY). Perhaps they always work with six of them at any given time.

What I did was to search for all the versions that ever appeared online that I was able to find. I ended up with 8 distinctive variations, but most of them also had various versions, with timestamps on the files ranging from 2003 to 2016. 

I did not want to go into such detail in my introductory message, but since you've asked (kind of), below is the list of all JODI files you can currently download from JSW Central. The list includes my bugfixes (so you can see at a glance which ones I deemed necessary to fix) and also the previous names under which some of the variations first appeared.

COPYCARD (2003 version, aka L1).sna
COPYCARD (2004 version).sna
COPYCARD (2010 version).sna
COPYCARD (2010 version).tap
COPYCARD (2010 version).wav
jsw011 (2003 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw011 (2003 edition, original).sna
jsw011 (2004 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw011 (2004 edition, original).sna
jsw011 (2010 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw011 (2010 edition, original).sna
jsw011 (2016 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw011 (2016 edition, original).sna
jsw011 (2016 edition, original).tap
jsw011 (2016 edition, original).wav
jsw012 (2003 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw012 (2003 edition, original).sna
jsw012 (2004 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw012 (2004 edition, original).sna
jsw012 (2016 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw012 (2016 edition, original).sna
jsw012 (2016 edition, original).tap
jsw012 (2016 edition, original).wav
jsw013 (2003 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw013 (2003 edition, original).sna
jsw013 (2010 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw013 (2010 edition, original).sna
jsw013 (2016 edition, bugfixed).sna
jsw013 (2016 edition, original).sna
jsw013 (2016 edition, original).tap
jsw013 (2016 edition, original).wav
KEYWORDS (bugfix).sna
KEYWORDS (original).sna
SPRITES (2004 version, aka GRAPHICS).sna
SPRITES (2016 version).sna
SPRITES (2016 version).tap
SPRITES (2016 version).wav
STORY (2010 version).sna
STORY (2016 version).sna
STORY (2016 version).tap
STORY (2016 version).wav
STORY (April 2003 version).sna
STORY (March 2003 version).sna
SURBITON.sna

To make this simpler, I have found the following variations:

COPYCARD - 3 versions (2003, 2004 and 2010)

jsw011 - 4 versions (2003, 2004, 2010 and 2016)

However, since the only difference between the 2010 and 2016 SNA files is at the address #CAA0, which defines the attributes of Air in room 10 - unnamed as they all are - corresponding to "The Front Door" in the original JSW (Air is BRIGHT cyan in the 2010 file and BRIGHT blue in the 2016 file), in my analysis I discuss these two versions together as the 2010/2016 version.

jsw012 - 3 versions (2003, 2004 and 2016)

jsw013 - 3 versions (2003, 2010 and 2016)

KEYWORDS - 1 version (2004)

SPRITES - 2 versions (2004 and 2016)

STORY - 4 versions (March 2003, April 2003, 2010 and 2016)

SURBITON - 1 version (2003)

So, some 21 different versions altogether between the 8 distinctive variations.

2.

There are 8 links on JSW Central to its "main" page devoted to JODI. They are placed on top of each individual game page, which starts by saying that "... is one of JODI's artistic Jet Set Willy Variations."

I did consider adding JODI to the "Authors about their games page", but came to the same conclusion you did, that it didn't quite belong there. I am not quite happy with it not being linked from there, but I don't think it should be, and I don't plan to create a new category like "About some authors" in the foreseeable future. I think that with the links on top of the individual games pages it should be easy enough to reach "JODI's main page" on JSW Central for those who wish to find more info about them.

[IRF]

On 2/16/2021 at 11:08 PM, jetsetdanny said:

There are six JSW Variations by JODI which I classified in a new subsection I added to "II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48)" - the list of Games using Matthew Smith's original Jet Set Willy game engine for the 48K Sp

The above reference to six from your original post is what I was querying.

Edited February 18, 2021 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

Oh, sorry! That's my mistake. It should have said "five". I'll edit the original post in a second. Since I did not *mean* to say six, I did not realize this error was there and did not know you were referring to it, so I thought you were referring to my quote from Andrew's list of MM/JSW games.

Thanks for bringing this error to my attention! 👍

[Spider]

Top work and research Danny! 🙂 🙂

[IRF]

Danny, I presume the references to COPYRIGHT and COPYCARD in your last substantive post are interchangeable? 😉

[jetsetdanny]

No, there shouldn't be any COPYRIGHT, it should read COPYCARD everywhere. 

My mistake again (corrected now in the post above).

Thanks for spotting the error and bringing it to my attention, Ian - please keep'em coming! 🤪

[jetsetdanny]

5 hours ago, Spider said:

Top work and research Danny! 🙂 🙂

Thanks, Andy! 🙂

[MtM]

C'est incroyable, JSDanny! Well done. What a piece of work, commendable. Nothing escapes the people on

this forum when it comes to JSW & MM information.