Preserve darnkitty.com data?

[darnkitty]

Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to make an EXE file of my Jet Set Willy remake.  It's on my website at http://www.darnkitty.com/jsw/

You need to have JAVA Runtime Environment installed if you want to run it.  If any of you are willing and able to try it out, I'd love to know if it runs for you.  You need to have an active internet connection when running it because it downloads the images, rooms and music from the web.

I haven't actually seen my remake running in many years.  It's very nostalgic.  I still remember where all the secret rooms are.

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by darnkitty

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Matt!

I've downloaded the game, upgraded my Java environment and have been able to run the game successfully 🙂 .

The only thing is that clicking on the screen isn't working. Where you can choose between Spectrum or C64 music/sound effects/no sound at the beginning, clicking on the options doesn't work. Then on the title screen pressing ENTER launches the game, but clicking doesn't. Then, in-game, clicking on the pause, music and reset options doesn't seem to work either. Not a big problem though.

I haven't visited any of the new rooms yet, but - as a general concept - if later on, in the future, someone wanted to recreate them on ZX Spectrum, making a Spectrum version of your version of JSW (like Andrew Broad did with Flash Manic Miner), with all due credit given, of course, how would you feel about it?

[darnkitty]

Thanks for that feedback! That's a weird problem, I'll try and fix it but I'm not as familiar with JAVA as I used to be. If I can't fix it I'll put in keyboard shortcuts.

People are welcome to do what they like with the game 🙂

 

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Matt! 🙂 

Before you try doing anything about the non-working clicks, please try to duplicate the problem on your computer. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious here - it's just that I wouldn't want to make you do any unnecessary work if it should turn out that it was just myself (a weird mouse problem or something).

[darnkitty]

Thanks, yes I can't reproduce it on my machine for some reason!

But I've now made the executable available on my website. If you go here http://www.darnkitty.com/jsw/ you can download a new version of the EXE. I haven't managed to fix the mouse problem but in this new version you can now press the S key to cycle through the sound options once you've started a game.

Edited May 6, 2021 by darnkitty

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks, Matt.

I've downloaded the new version. Strangely enough, it - and also the old version when I try to run it now - says that "This application requires a Java Runtime Environment 1.8". But I downloaded and updated Java yesterday, and after that the old version worked on the same computer yesterday. 

So I'm not sure what happened. I don't feel like reinstalling Java - it would just take a few seconds, but it's more about principles - if I installed it yesterday (and did not uninstall it and nothing happened to the computer in the meantime, it didn't crash, etc.), why should I install again?

Any idea what may be going on?

[jetsetdanny]

OK, I've decided to break my own principles - for the sake of JSW! - and reinstall Java. However, when I tried to do it (from the same file I downloaded and ran yesterday) it tells me "The folder is not empty. Please select an empty folder". It doesn't allow me to proceed (like overwrite the existing files) unless I change the folder.

Of course the folder is not empty, because I installed Java there yesterday! This whole situation is really annoying (Java which has already been installed supposedly needed to run the program, and then Java telling me to change the folder because the one where I installed it yesterday is not empty), so I will not proceed for the time being.

This hasn't got to do with your JSW, Matt, but rather with Java itself, I guess. I'll have to think about it. Does anyone have any suggestions of why it's happening?

[darnkitty]

I wish I knew! Java was always such a behemoth, with these sorts of little annoyances, and I never knew what to do about it.

I don't know why that would be happening, but if you can locate java.exe on your machine (for me, it's in C:\jre1.8.0_291\bin) you should be able to download the JAR version from the darnkitty site, put it in the same folder as java.exe, and then run java -jar DKJSW-1-9.jar from the directory containing java.exe.

I know it's not ideal but these sorts of things are so hard to debug without being able to reproduce, and the fact I haven't worked with Java for such a long time doesn't help.

[jetsetdanny]

All right, I've deleted all the files from the directory where Java wanted to install itself (and was saying it wasn't empty) and re-installed Java.

Everything worked fine and I was able to launch the newer version of the game. What's more, clicking works fine now, both on the title screen, and to start the game, and in-game, e.g. to pause it 🙂 .