JSW Central

[Spider]

9 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

Less than two hours before the end of the year (local time), I have updated the Chronology section on JSW Central so that it should be entirely up to date now. Please let me know if you notice that something is missing or if you see the need for any other corrections.

Thanks Danny. The only thing I see missing for December 2021 is a mention of your .rzx recordings for Manic Jet Set Willy 🙂

9 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

I am looking forward to what 2022 will bring to the MM/JSW scene! 🙂

I have a few ideas in mind, its a case of actually finding time and concentration for them. Including some 'unconventional' JSW/MM based games, well two at least.

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Andy.

The Chronology on JSW Central only mentions the first time a full recording (RZX or video, if RZX distribution has been denied)) of any given released game was made public, as a new development so to speak (responding to the following logic: on that day, the solution to the game became available to the public thanks to a recording). Up till now it mainly referred to the recordings hosted on the RZX Archive. Henceforth, it will probably just refer to the recordings being "published", as they can be published pretty much anywhere.

Since you were the first person to publicly present a recording of the completion of the final version of "Manic Jet Set Willy", only you get the mention on JSW Central 🙂.

[jetsetdanny]

Six JSW Central pages have been updated to to include embedded videos from the JSW Central YouTube channel, improved RZX recordings of each game and updated information about the game's highest documented score / best documented completion time.

These are:

Manic Miner 2

Manic Miner No. 2

Manic Miner III: Tales from a Parallel Universe

Manic Miner 4

Manic Miner 5: Los peligros del LSD

It's Wet Jelly

I have replayed all of these games and recorded new RZX walkthroughs of them, which improve my previous highest scores/best documented completion time:

"Manic Miner 2" score has been improved from 38,073 pts. to 38,778 pts. after reaching the Swordfish sign, and from 39,513 pts. to 40,223 pts. upon first re-entry into the first cavern (an improvement of 710 pts.). It's become one of the few MM games where it's possible to exceed 40,000 pts. Another game where I have achieved such a score is the original edition of Andrew Broad's Ma jolite, which I've been able to finish with 40,040 pts. I can't remember any other example of over-40,000-points score in new MM games off the top of my head.

In fact, I will still improve my "Manic Miner 2" score by at least several dozen points. I've realised it's possible when I started recording its Italian version "La miniera 2". I am planning to record both the original German version and the later Italian one with a higher score than the one I've achieved so far. This should happen at some point over the next few weeks. I will make the RZX recordings available for download from JSW Central when they're ready. However, I will not be making another JSW Central YouTube video (unless I present "La miniera 2" as a version of a released game one day, once I've run out of new games and start presenting versions of games; that time is far into the future at this point).

"Manic Miner No. 2" score has been improved from 35,048 pts. to 37,290 pts. after reaching the Swordfish sign, and from 36,411 pts. to 38,755 pts. upon first re-entry into the first cavern (an improvement of 2344 pts.). What a poor performance I put in the previous time I recorded it! 😮

"Manic Miner III: Tales from a Parallel Universe" score has been improved from 35,164 pts. to 36,012 pts. after reaching the Swordfish sign, and from 36,417 pts. to 37,270 pts. upon first re-entry into the first cavern (an improvement of 853 pts.).

The score of the Special Edition of "Manic Miner 4" been improved from 33,981 pts. to 36,475 pts. after reaching the Swordfish sign (an improvement of 2494 pts. - the highest of them all!). This is the only score that can be quoted for this game, as the air counter keeps resetting itself after the player has completed the final cavern, causing a constant increase in the score, which makes it impossible to re-enter the first cavern. In fact, "Manic Miner 4" is one of the two reasons why I quote the scores after reaching the Swordfish sign alongside the scores upon first re-entry into the first cavern, the other reason being "Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia", where the same thing happens on the final screen. The Swordfish scores are given for all games in order to be able to compare the completion results of "Manic Miner 4" and "Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia" to other MM games.

"Manic Miner 5: Los peligros del LSD" score has been improved from 35,344 pts. to 35,726 pts. after reaching the Swordfish sign, and from 36,715 pts. to 37,102 pts. upon first re-entry into the first cavern (an improvement of 387 pts.). Since the game was originally released as a Z80 snapshot only, I have created a tape (TAP & TZX) version of it, which is available for download from JSW Central or from this forum.

Finally, the in-game completion time of "It's Wet Jelly", with one life lost (it has to be lost after collecting the items in "Blind jeweller veers into hive" [40], as there is no way to get down safely), has been improved by 6 in-game minutes, from 8:31 am to 8:25 am.

The improved RZX recordings can be downloaded from the JSW Central pages linked above. The links to the videos I made of these walkthroughs on the JSW Central YouTube channel can be found there as well; they are also all available in this post.

My immediate plans for further updates of JSW Central are:

- creating a screenshot gallery for "It's Wet Jelly";

- creating a new, complete page for "Manic Jet Set Willy";

- creating a screenshot gallery of "La miniera 2" on the "Manic Miner 2" page, and offering an improved RZX recording of "Manic Miner 2" and my first RZX recording of "La miniera 2" for download.

[jetsetdanny]

And so it has been done. The page of "It's Wet Jelly" now features a full screenshot gallery.

[Spider]

Quite a large update! Thank you.

[Norman Sword]

Well done. I recently posted I have not finished any version. Whilst I have done every room in every version I have written. I have not pushed myself to finish even one version.

Yet on JSW Central. the list of completed games (by Jetsetdanny) must be extensive.
I wonder how many versions? 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Norman Sword

[jetsetdanny]

Thank you so much for this medal, Norman Sword - it's greatly appreciated! 👍

I didn't reply to your question immediately, because, in order to answer it accurately, I had to carry out an inventory of my recordings of completed games. In parallel, I have worked on the "Manic Jet Set Willy" video and its webpage.

All of these things are almost ready now (but nothing is online yet). I should be able to upload everything/comment as appropriate very soon 🙂 .

[jetsetdanny]

On 1/20/2022 at 9:43 AM, Norman Sword said:

Yet on JSW Central. the list of completed games (by Jetsetdanny) must be extensive.
I wonder how many versions?

I am now ready to answer this question accurately, and I would like to do it giving a little bit of background and also a current context which sheds some light on my present activities and future plans. If you're not interested in this, please scroll down - the answer to Norman Sword's question is in bold below.

Back on 1st August 2005, on the Yahoo! Group (which, sadly, does not exist any more), I described the first of my then "current JSW activities and future projects" as:

"1. Playing the existing JSW and MM games to see what other people have done, avoid unintentional copying of their work and to be able to use their clever ideas while giving the authors credit for them."

Generally speaking, I've always (since 2004, when I joined the scene) had this idea of playing all of the existing MM and JSW games to completion. I haven't achieved it yet, but I'm well on the way, so to speak.

Norman Sword, as a top-quality coder, I'm sure you prefer to do things the most efficient way. I'll try to follow suit. It's much easier to count the games I haven't completed than the ones I have 😉 .

The current status is as follows (going by the categories of games listed on JSW Central😞

I. Manic Miner games

The only one I haven't completed yet is "MANIC-manor" by Bob The Polar Bear, his second version of "Manic-4-Noobs" released last year. I have completed "Manic-4-Noobs", so I would say the count in the MM category of games I haven't completed yet is 0.5/21.

II. Jet Set Willy (JSW48)

A. New games

The only one I haven't played to completion is Geoff Eddy's "Willy the Hacker". The reason I haven't completed it is because it's incompletable (as originally released) due to one (or more, I can't remember off the top of my head) critical bug. I do intend to prepare a fixed version, play it to completion, and present it to Geoff for approval. It's high on my list of priorities, should be happening this year, if all goes well.

So the count of games I haven't finished in the JSW48 A category would be 1/50.

B. Advanced modifications of the original Jet Set Willy

It looks like I haven't finished "Jet Set Willy 25-100" yet, unless I playtested it and can't remember right now. So the count here would be 1/5.

C. Artistic modifications of the original Jet Set Willy

I've played all of these games to as close to completion as possible (none of them is toilet-completable). So the count here would be 0/5.

III. Jet Set Willy II

I've played both of them to completion, so 0/2.

IV. Jet Set Willy 128

At this point in time I still haven't completed "Willy Comes Home", "The Time Hole", "Frosya the Cat" (and its two subsequent versions), "Soul Miner", "Jet Set Willy 5: ZX Heroes" and "JSW:FTB". 

So the count is a staggering 6/18.

V. Jet Set Willy 64

I haven't yet played to completion "Ultimate Manic Miner", "Miles Mad Mission", "Clopit!", "Vampire Hunter Willy" and "Willy Meets the Beatles".  That's 5/24.

VI. Other game engines

Without going into the subcategories, I haven't yet played to completion "ZX81 Manic Miner", "Manic Miner Turbo", "Jet Set Willy 16K", "Jet Set Willy in Altered Reality" and "Thoroughly Modern Willy". That's 5/19.

VII. Mini games

I've completed all of them, so the uncompleted count is 0/4.

The total count would be 17.5/148. Not bad, I would say, but of course not satisfactory, either, because I aim to complete them all.

So the answer to Norman Sword's original question regarding the number of games I've completed so far is: 130.5. That's only of the "new games", excluding the files I classify as "Versions" of the original MM and JSW (if included, they would increase the count by a few dozen).

The count is approximate, of course, as some games have more than one version (the 0.5 itself arises because I've completed one of two versions of a certain game). In case of "Ma jolie", for example, it's just one entry in the list, but I've played it 6 times. No, I've recorded 6 walkthroughs of it (of the Original Edition, Special Edition and Special Edition 2009, each of the hard version "Ma jolie" and the easy version "Ma jolite"), but I've probably played each version at least twice before I recorded it to my satisfaction. So just one entry on the list, but 12 playthroughs. There would be more examples like that.

Then there are the files which I classify as Versions of the original Manic Miner and Versions of the original Jet Set Willy rather than new games. I haven't counted these exactly, although I can say that my ZIP on the RZX Archive with recordings of JSW variants includes recordings of 19 variants, and a similar ZIP with recordings of MM variants documents the completion of 15 games, so that's 34 in total, plus there should be a few recordings hosted on the RZX Archive as separate entries (I would have to check to be sure how many there are). Generally speaking, I believe I've completed a large majority of them, with the exception of versions that I didn't feel would need a complete playthrough (like the several fast versions of MM and JSW - I assume they're not different in gameplay from the originals apart from being faster). I've documented most of these efforts with RZX recordings. In some cases I've had a particular satisfaction from playing these versions - for example, in 2018 I discovered that J. G. Harston's version of JSW, hosted on his website since 2007, was incompletable due to a critical bug (apparently nobody tried to play it to completion before me, or if they did, they didn't bother to let J. G. know about the problem). As a result of my bug alert, J. G. released a fixed version and everyone can complete this variant now.

My playing MM and JSW games, which I started (in the emulation era) back in 2004, took on a new meaning in July 2006, when I submitted my first RZX recording to the RZX Archive. Since then, I've striven to, first of all, make nice recordings of all previously-released MM and JSW games and, secondly, to keep recording newly-released games as they appear. And submit them all to RZX Archive, of course (until Daren's recent passing). You'll find most of them here and here.

The main reason why I did not play several of the JSW128 and JSW64 games when I played the other ones years ago is that someone else had submitted their recordings to the RZX Archive before. So my motivation to play them was lower than it would have been if I had felt a "calling" to enrich the RZX Archive with their recordings.

At some point after launching JSW Central in 2015, I started recording RZX walkthroughs of games which were already hosted on the RZX Archive in order to show more efficient solutions to them (pointwise in MM or timewise in JSW) than the ones that were hosted on the RZX Archive. I am still in this process, so to speak.

The latest twist to this story happened when I launched the JSW Central YouTube Channel at the end of 2020. Adding a video to the channel seems more "definitive" than uploading an RZX recording, because YouTube does not allow you to update a video - you would have to delete it and upload a new one (with a new link). Ultimately, I aim to present the solutions to all new MM and JSW games on this channel (plus the solutions to at least part of the MM and JSW versions). And I want them to be very good recordings (not necessarily perfect, as perfect is the enemy of good - but up to my standards). This means that: 

- I have to complete and record all games, because the videos I make are made of my walkthroughs only, not by anyone else;

- I have to re-record some of the games I recorded previously, because it turns out that my standards have risen since. At least a part of the recordings I made back in 2006 or 2007 seem sloppy at present. This was particularly visible with the early MM games (probably because you see the result after each cavern, and the difference in performance keeps accumulating along the whole walkthrough), which is the reason why I re-recorded them for the recent YouTube videos.

Currently the order in which I play/re-play games is dictated pretty much by what I want to add to the JSW Central YouTube channel. I am adding recordings in a seemingly random order. It's because I want to diversify the videos to make the development of the channel more interesting to viewers. So I add some MM games, then some from the "Other game engines" category, then some JSW48 ones, and so on. I try to alternate between short and long games, new and old ones, difficult and easy ones, etc., also taking into consideration their authors - not to present games by one author all at once (with the exception of my projects, the majority of which were presented first 😉 ).

So that's where I am right now and how I am likely to proceed if all goes well. For the development of the JSW Central YouTube channel, from time to time I will have to complete and record one of the games I haven't completed so far. This I will do when the time comes for it. At other times, I will be publishing videos of RZX recordings I made in the past (if I'm satisfied with their quality, or if I couldn't push myself to re-record them, which may be the case with the most difficult games), or videos of my re-recordings of games (in which case I won't be completing games I haven't completed before, but replaying ones I've completed earlier).

Please subscribe to the JSW Central YouTube channel if you like it, in order to support these efforts 🙂 (I would like to reach 100 subscriptions to be able to change the channel's address to a custom one).

[JianYang]

10 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

"MANIC-manor" by Bob The Polar Bear

Do you have a link for this? I can't find this anywhere.

 

[MtM]

>So the count is a staggering 6/18.

 

Unacceptable! 🤣

 

The rest is pretty good though Danny. You are the King! 🤴