Manic Miner for the BBC Micro

[Spider]

21 hours ago, Spider said:

This is excellent, there's no other word for it.

I was thinking would it be possible to perhaps host it here too in our download section (with some screenshots and a description) 🙂 We do have a few BBC variants of Manic Miner already here, standard and a couple of 'prepatched' cheat ones.

 

18 hours ago, TobyLobster said:

That would be fine - go for it!

Thank you @TobyLobster 🙂

I've submitted it here, set with you as 'submitter' so you are able to edit it if the need arises.

I've done the following:

Attributed it to yourself and D.Coathupe as 'third party' and 'original' authors respectively.

 

Rather than just place the .ssd into the download , decided to make it a bit nicer for the end user by:

Put the basic info into a 'read_me' text file

Put the tech notes into a 'tech_notes' text file

Taken screenshots of the title screen, all caverns and two of the game over screen

Placed the above (aside from screenshots) into a zip and uploaded.

You can find the download page here > https://jswmm.co.uk/files/file/145-manic-miner-2021/

Its support topic (auto generated) is here > https://jswmm.co.uk/topic/596-file-manic-miner-2021/ 

They both link to each other anyway, if by any chance you do edit it, please edit the download not the topic/thread as it will lose changes, editing the download updates the topic automatically.

🙂

 

 

[TobyLobster]

Looks good to me 🙂

[Spider]

On 4/17/2021 at 9:54 PM, TobyLobster said:

Thanks. There's no YouTube video yet. I'm hoping someone makes one for me so I don't have to 🙂 Both JSW and JSW II are available for the BBC Micro and are pretty good versions already.

Toby

I did think about this, however (aside from not having a YT account) the only two emulators I have , one does not offer any audio or video recording and the other always puts them out of sync sadly. See my 'entertainer' post here for what I mean.

There is one full video of the original version all the way through (an excellent player)

I could do it but I'd have to apply cheats I think as there's no 'rollback' facility built into anything Acorn related I'm aware of.

[Heracleum]

Not sure if it's just me or the web emulator (I played it via Toby's link) but in Eugene's Lair:
at the very bottom-left corner I can't face left to jump or I'll hit the plant (even in the safest way to avoid a step forward, facing left having the wall at my shoulders, jumping up and jump left). The only way I've found is: face right against the wall, jump up and as soon as he lands jump left. And it's curious since afaik on ZX MM would have usually jump up.. instead he managed to successfully jump left over the plant starting from a jump up, face right. 

It's weird since in the long playthrough of the BBC Micro original MM I've watched on YouTube they did the safe jump as expected.

[Spider]

Its not just you. You need to 'move' when the jump is in progress.

Its vaguely similar to how the move vs jump is different in JSW1 vs JSW2 in the Spectrum version. The AMS versions of both variants of these behave in the same way (JSW2 style) and its easy to 'fall off a platform' in JSW2 compared to JSW1, this is relevant as I think its a similar thing.

The collision detection though in the new game presented here is lots better all-in-all than the original imo in that its not over-sensitive. (C64 version iirc if you enter the 8x8x grid of a fire cell you lose a life even if there's no pixel contact!)

It does seem a bit tight however I could not see a sane suggestion to fix, if you move the bush fire cell to the left you'll have issues getting to the floor and to the right would make it difficult too. It may have to be considered a quirk.

I'm attaching two short videos, approx 30secs and another of just over a 1 minute of me doing this both with failure and success. Both video's are around 1mb in size.

Please note that the screen colours are very corrupted unfortunately due to attempting to use load/save state files during video recording as well as the fact the emulator puts the sound out of sync, combine that with my erm hamfisted attempt at conversion of an .avi to an mp4 too. However there is just about enough to see.

There is one unexpected bonus with the gaming timing however! 🙂 I've not looked if ite Eugene's start position or something else but that seems most likely, on the ZX version at least its not possible iirc to once you've got top rightmost item to immediately go to the conveyor as you'll catch Eugene, with this version if you move immediately you can just about do it. You can do it on other platforms if you don't bother with the item afaik as you then have an extra seconds clearance time.

 

 

Eugene_Testing.zip

May have issues playing the second one, it seems OK in VLC but not in WMP

 

[Spider]

Attached is a short video of me playing this afresh. I did not play very well sorry! However it does demonstrate some of the caverns at least.

Unfortunately, the sound dropped out of sync when I converted it from raw .avi to a more saner sized mp4.

Spoiler

The actual download page can be found here and the (auto-generated by the file submission) discussion topic can be found here

I did enjoy my short play with this again though. 🙂