BBC Manic Miner disassembly

[Richard Hallas]

16 hours ago, Spider said:

Absolutely zero harm @Richard Hallas , I'd rather hear something twice than not at all as someone thought it had been already said etc. 🙂

As above, with his permission we now host a copy of this excellent work, with a screenshot selection I made to go along with it and split read_me / tech_info details.

Thanks.

And as for hosting it in this way – excellent. 🙂 What better place for a copy to live?!

Yes, it's a really great improvement, isn't it? Finally, it feels as though the BBC has a decent version of Manic Miner to do the platform justice, rather than the rather clunky reduced-fun effort it was before. It was always quite an interesting version because of the differences in the final two screens, but now it's a good and playable game too. Indeed, it'd be nice if TonyLobster would apply his skills to the BBC versions of the JSW games, as they're very much in the same class as Manic Miner…

[Spider]

Yes would be interesting to see.

The JSW 'engine' on that platform does not seem to suffer from the original flickering effect that upset MM and they do play quite well (imo) as standard, however there's usually room for adjustment and improvement.

There's a few quirks copied over too , for instance Swimming Pool item is auto collected (at least in JSW1 , can't remember if it happens in full JSW2) for the only reason the ZX one is.

[Richard Hallas]

OK, hoping that this hasn't already been covered in some other post that I've missed…

Further to all the recent stuff about TonyLobster's amazing work on the BBC version of Manic Miner…

A chap calling himself 0xC0DE has adapted TonyLobster's work to produce a brand-new version of Manic Miner for the Acorn Electron!

This is actually an amazing achievement, as the Electron wasn't all that powerful a machine, and it was a lot slower than the BBC too. Its memory constraints show up in the fact that this new Manic Miner port uses the minimum amount of screen space it can get away with, and just occupies the bottom half of the available space, in effect. Some screen elements have had to be redistributed because of this (in particular, the Air bar and the score/lives/status line are now at the very top).

Nevertheless, this is a really good conversion – just like the new BBC one, really – and could have been a very successful Electron release if issued back in the 1980s. And it's the first time Manic Miner's made it to the Electron, which is quite something. It only took 38 years…

Find it here, in both tape and disk versions:

Manic Miner for Acorn Electron (2021 release)

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for the info, Richard! I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere - thanks for sharing it 🙂 .

[Spider]

Thanks @Richard Hallas , I was 'aware' of this and seen some progress but had not had chance to follow it.

Here is an old "in development" screenshot of it. Please note as I say this is not how the finished product looks! 'Dev' screenshot posted for reference purposes (and for the curious) Please see my next post for a screenshot of the Central Cavern how it is now.

 

I'll contact the author later today or this week to see if we are able to host it here too, possibly I can do similar to how I did TobyLobster's variant, in that I'll put the files into a zip, put documentation into a text file, take some screenshots etc and write up a description etc ie "the legwork" 🙂

 

[Richard Hallas]

2 hours ago, Spider said:

Thanks @Richard Hallas , I was 'aware' of this and seen some progress but had not had chance to follow it.

Here is an old "in development" screenshot of it: [snip]

I'll contact the author later today or this week to see if we are able to host it here too, possibly I can do similar to how I did TobyLobsters variant, in that I'll put the files into a zip, put documentation into a text file, take some screenshots etc and write up a description etc ie "the legwork" 🙂

 

Yes, it'd be great to have it here too, in a similarly nicely presented format.

That in-development screenshot's interesting, but I hope it doesn't put anyone off! The final release looks *much* better, and doesn't have the half-screen of visible garbage. Admittedly having the score line and Air bar above the playing field feels a little eccentric, but it makes this version unique! And it retains the nice new colour-switch from the BBC version, which gives the Air/Score area a different palette from the rest of the display and makes the whole thing look better and more colourful.

One final point worth noting is that the cheat mode from the BBC version survives intact. (Well, it's more a practice mode than a cheat mode, because when you've got it turned on you can access and play any screen directly, but if you complete it, you restart the same screen rather than progressing to the next one.)

[Spider]

Thanks. Yes I did wonder about that but I'll emphasise the 'development' nature of the pic in the post itself. I've just edited my post above to reflect this a bit more. 🙂

I think once (hopefully) the game is here with its screenshots etc it will be OK. I saw the posts on stardot a few days ago then the link to Twitter where I found the vid/screenshot. 🙂

To slightly compensate here's the real first cavern. Its a very good result for the erm 'crimped' nature of the Electron. The speed is excellent too given this machines constraints over the regular 'B

I did take that with ElecrEm as I don't appear to have Elkulator to hand at the moment! Only issue with the former emulator aside from no built in screenshot capability unless its a hidden keypress is I cannot work out what del/copy are mapped to, not that it matters I'll get Elkulator later or tomorrow.

The cavern cheat option is a very sane and sensible idea, you can now 'train' yourself for each cavern as many times as you like. Its sometimes a simple idea like this (ie: do not increment cavern ID upon completion if cheat was used to select this cavern) is a brilliant idea. 🙂

Small < 3mb video of some gameplay by the author 0xC0DE, runtime 1m42s. I do hope its OK to have this small video here for reference purposes. Will remove upon request. May wish to lower volume level a little bit first:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Richard Hallas]

18 hours ago, Spider said:

To slightly compensate here's the real first cavern. Its a very good result for the erm 'crimped' nature of the Electron. The speed is excellent too given this machines constraints over the regular 'B

I did take that with ElecrEm as I don't appear to have Elkulator to hand at the moment! Only issue with the former emulator aside from no built in screenshot capability unless its a hidden keypress is I cannot work out what del/copy are mapped to, not that it matters I'll get Elkulator later or tomorrow.

The cavern cheat option is a very sane and sensible idea, you can now 'train' yourself for each cavern as many times as you like. Its sometimes a simple idea like this (ie: do not increment cavern ID upon completion if cheat was used to select this cavern) is a brilliant idea. 🙂

Yes, it's an impressive achievement. In terms of the screenshots, it may be worth deleting all that black space at the top of the screen, since it's just wasted space. I'd be interested to know how this looks on a real Electron; i.e. whether the graphics really do appear at the bottom of the screen, or whether the timings of the 'custom mode' cause the image to be vertically centred (which would obviously be preferable).

Concerning the cheat… yes, I agree, it's a good solution. I only wish I knew how to turn it off again once enabled, short of just reloading the game!

I also had a bit of trouble discovering the Delete/Copy key mappings when using my favoured Electron Emulator on the Mac, but I discovered that Delete is mapped to both Backspace and Delete, and Copy is mapped to the `/~ key, immediately to the left of Z on a Mac keyboard. Obviously, your mileage may vary…

Speaking of emulators, the one I now use for emulating an Electron is a little-known and quite new multi-emulator that supports an increasing number of systems (including Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC, ZX80/81, Spectrum, VIC 20, Apple II, Mac, ColecoVision etc…). It's called Clock Signal, and it seems to handle the Electron very well. (It doesn't need the 'fudged' version of Manic Miner that was specifically created for Elkulator, anyway; it runs the 'proper' version perfectly.) Give it a try; it's an impressive piece of work and appears to aim at being able to handle 'everything' eventually.

Clock Signal may be found here: Clock Signal on Github

EDIT: Forgot to say… Clock Signal appears to be for Mac and Linux, not for Windows… though who knows; I haven't looked into that, as I'm not a Windows user. Anyway, it makes a really nice change to have a good emulator for Mac that isn't available for Windows, rather than the other way round, which is the norm!

Edited April 29, 2021 by Richard Hallas

[Spider]

Thanks Richard. 🙂 I'll attempt a proper reply later bit time limited as I write this now.

I strongly suspect on a real Electron it would look very similar as iirc the top area is needed for the trickery, as it runs really fast for that screen mode, given the Elk's constraints being (iirc) half BBC speed in some cases.

I have nothing negative to say about it really, if I had to be picky I would say a single line space at the bottom of the screen would look neat but it may not be possible or practical.

I note there's the emulator and real machine versions but not sure yet what the difference is unless its a timing issue perhaps.

Downloaded that emulator for a closer look over the weekend.

[Richard Hallas]

7 hours ago, Spider said:

I note there's the emulator and real machine versions but not sure yet what the difference is unless its a timing issue perhaps.

I get the strong impression that the Elkulator version is there just to work with Elkulator, which evidently doesn't get the timing quite right. I think the non-Elkulator version is intended for real machines and other emulators that do get the timing right. Certainly, with Clock Signal, the 'real machine' version works perfectly, whereas the Elkulator version has some slight colour bleed in the high score numbers on the title screen. (Haven't noticed any other problems with it yet, but I haven't spent a lot of time with it.)