JSW Central

[jetsetdanny]

JSW Central (www.jswcentral.org) is a brand-new website (launched 1 March 2015) dedicated exclusively to games for the ZX Spectrum using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines. Its most important feature is a complete list of gamma-released games (based on the work of Dr. Andrew Broad and sort of picking up from where he left off in May 2009, with some minor changes to the methodology).

 

I hope to develop the website gradually, creating individual pages for each gamma-released game, with screenshots, etc., and adding other resources. I am currently working on a chronology of the development of MM/JSW games.

 

I have just added a link to this forum and, once again, I am thrilled to have found you online! It is great that there are still some people around interested in those timeless classics :-).

 

Please let me know if there are any games that are missing from the list on JSW Central (please see the Contact section for my e-mail address). Also, I will appreciate any other comments and feedback on JSW Central's content.

 

Daniel

[SkoolKid]

Nice site!

 

If you're interested, and in case you weren't aware of them, on your Links page you could add the complete disassemblies of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy:

 

Manic Miner

 

Jet Set Willy

 

[jetsetdanny]

Thank you for your kind words and the links to the disassemblies :) . I will add them to my Links page at the next site update (soon). 

 

In fact, I came across your JSW disassembly a few weeks ago and advertised it here. I wasn't aware of the MM disassembly though.

[SkoolKid]

"Yet another disassembly of JSW" - heh, I wish I'd used that title for the disassembly! :)

 

It is the only complete disassembly of every byte used by the game, though (that I know of, anyway). Same for the MM disassembly, too.

[Spider]

They are an excellent read. :)

[jetsetdanny]

SkoolKid, I did not mean to belittle your disassembly of JSW in any way. I "advertised" it as soon as I came across it, in good faith, and used the "yet another" descriptor (and the "not exactly a novelty" one) mainly in the chronological sense, as I was aware of the existence of four other disassemblies of the JSW game engine which had been around for years. These are:

 

1. J. G. Harston's documents, to which you have a link on your website.

 

2. John Elliott's disassembly, which I think must have been here once and must have been well documented, judging by John's following comment in his MM disassembly: "Compared to my JSW disassembly, this is very thinly commented indeed".

 

3. Disassembly of the JSW game engine on the Jet Set Willy Variations page.

 

4. Disassembly of Geoff Mode, which used to be on Geoff's website and which today can be retrieved from the Wayback Machine (e.g. at http://web.archive.org/web/20041106094606/http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/jsw/geoff_dis.html).

 

Geoff's document contains the link mentioned above to what I believe used to be John Elliott's JSW disassembly before (as I assume) he altered his page to just give tips of how to disassemble JSW instead of a complete disassembly (please, correct me if I am wrong, John, I know you follow this forum).

 

I know that Geoff's is a disassembly of a modified game engine, but it still gives one a lot of information about the original one.

 

I did not compare your disassembly with the ones mentioned above, I just quickly let the folks at the Yahoo! Group know that it existed.

 

I have to say that both your MM disassembly AND your JSW disassembly are VERY nicely done, an excellent read, indeed, and they are very valuable and useful for anyone interested in the subject. I will soon post another message in the Yahoo! Group to do them more justice.

 

Would you consider publishing their hexadecimal versions? That would be very handy if one wanted to use them to modify any addresses e.g. in the hex editor of JSWED.

 

Incidentally, I believe the information you give about the alleged sticky bed bug is incorrect. Willy does not get stuck after jumping onto the bed at all and the game is perfectly toilet-completable. You just have to move him to the right, off the bed, in order to start running, using any "Right" key *other* than P. Willy's behaviour on conveyors during the toilet-run was discussed in detail in this message and the following messages in that topic.

 

Jet Set Willy: The 2010 Megamix is, TTBOMK, the game which makes the most extensive use of this phenomenon, making the toilet run a real nightmare in the Hard version. To quote from my own ad: During the toilet run the player has to be active and use the correct keys both to stop running / remain unmoving on the rope and to move forward (on conveyors), has to avoid moving guardians, use those ropes which are helpful and get away from those which are obstacles, hide behind Water cells to outmanoeuvre arrows and use moving platforms to get over gaps and static guardians. The player also has to make a choice at one point as to the route he/she is going to take ("the most fateful of all choices"); if they choose the wrong way, they will reach the very end of the game, but without being able to complete it (the wrong ending).

[SkoolKid]

jetsetdanny: no offence taken - I really do wish I had called it "Yet another disassembly of JSW", as a nod to all the partial disassemblies already available on the internet!

 

I have considered publishing hexadecimal versions of all the disassemblies on skoolkit.ca, but then laziness kicked in as I realised what an extra maintenance burden that would be. However, anyone else is free to build and publish my disassemblies on their own site, so I encourage that option instead. (Let me know if you need any details on how you or a friend could build a hexadecimal version.)

 

As for the sticky bed bug - you know, I could have sworn I tried all the "right" keys to get off the bed when I was verifying the bug, but obviously not! Thanks for the info. I will add a correction to the next release of the disassembly.

[Spider]

Just realised new posts (rather than just new topics) were being held for queue too, fixed. :) Sorry for the minor inconvenience. It only effected this area anyway "Site Links"

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for your post, SkoolKid, and the permission to build and publish hexadecimal versions of your disassemblies on other people's websites. I won't be able to do it on JSW Central in any near future, because the website itself has just been launched and requires a huge workload yet to attain its "basic" shape as planned. Perhaps one distant day, when it's all done... If that day comes, I will certainly get in touch with you.

 

In the meantime I have posted about your disassemblies again at the Yahoo! Group, as promised.

 

I have also tried to locate John Elliott's old disassembly of the original JSW engine on the Wayback Machine and I was pleased to find it here. No right to be forgotten for it, fortunately  ;) .

[SkoolKid]

Thanks for the shout-out on the Yahoo! group!

 

Just so it's clear to anyone interested in a hexadecimal version of the JSW (or MM) disassembly, the "maintenance burden" I mentioned has nothing to with building it, and everything to do with publishing it and keeping it up to date. Building it is simple, and in fact instructions on how to do so are included in the readme.txt file in the downloadable version at http://skoolkit.ca/?page_id=113. To build the hexadecimal version instead of the default decimal version, you just need to use the '-H' option of skool2html.py:

skool2html.py -H jet_set_willy.ref