Manic Jet Set Willy.

[IRF]

One final thought: the mechanics of how the solar beam interacts with the guardians can get even more complicated in a modified game where the number of air saps per contact with a cell containing Willy's white INK has been edited. e.g. in the Hard levels of Manic Mixup, the code has been edited to cause five saps per cell of Willy, instead of four saps per cell contact.  It means that at certain times when Willy is jumping or falling through the solar beam, when he is spanning three cell-rows, you can end up with 3x5=15 saps of air in that time-frame (instead of 3x4=12 in the regular MM).  The effect of that, as far as the consideration of when to move slow horizontal guardians is concerned, can be to 'cancel out' the regular decrementation of the air supply.  Tricking the program into thinking that a slow HG moved in the previous time-frame when it didn't (or, conversely, didn't move last time when it actually did).  The net result is that a slow HG sometimes either moves at double speed (i.e. a normal HG's speed: being moving along in two consecutive time-frames), or else it doesn't move at all for two consecutive time-frames (appearing to momentarily stop in its tracks).  This creates a jerky, stop-start feature of the guardian's motion at times when Willy is jumping/falling through the beam!

One could even conceive of a hypothetical scenario where two guardians have paths which cross over, but whose speeds/initial positions have been carefully designed so that they never collide - however, with the above effect taken into account, a slow HG could end up out of its 'usual sync', causing a fatal collision with another guardian!  (That's something to think about for game designers if they are designing a solar cavern with slow guardians and a solar beam which causes an odd number of air saps.)

[jetsetdanny]

It's good to see you back alive and kicking, Ian! (that is, analysing and solving 🙂) Thanks for the detailed analysis and explanation of this quirk 👍.

[IRF]

On 2/22/2022 at 2:33 PM, IRF said:

P.P.S. Adjusting the initial air supply in the solar cavern by one unit also changes the initial position at which the slow horizontal guardian is drawn, as the 'Move the Guardians' routine is executed once before the first time that the guardians are drawn.  So in one case, it has its back to the wall as soon as you enter the cavern (as per its defined starting position in the cavern data - the 'Move the Guardians' routine having decided to skip moving the slow guardian this time round), whereas in the other scenario, it has already moved one animation-frame away from the wall before you first see it.

Danny, it has occurred to me that the above observation could be the key to obtaining an improved score for your recording of your walkthrough of the game in its 'Slow' setting.

Should you wish to do so at some point - and assuming your .RZX recording was left 'open' to further amendments (via the Rollback feature) - it would be a relatively easy task to do:

- Resume recording of your Slow walkthrough;

- Roll back to the last saved point before Willy entered the portal in 'Amoebatron's Revenge';

- [If that point was some way back in the Amoebatron cavern, then save another Rollback just before entering the portal, for convenience later];

- Jump into the portal, and as soon as the Remaining Air countdown starts, save another Rollback point;

- Then whilst the remaining air is still counting down, press down the A [pause] key and keep it pressed down until the next cavern is drawn;

- The Solar Power Generator cavern should then be displayed, frozen in its first time-frame.  Observe the slow (red) horizontal guardian; does it have its back up against the right-hand cavern wall?  Two scenarios here:

Scenario (A): There is a small gap between the frozen-in-time red horizontal guardian and the wall.  In this case you are in the correct 'reality' to complete the cavern without being zapped by the air beam (apart from on the two unavoidable occasions when going there-and-back to collect the item at the top-right), so you can simply:

-- Roll back the recording once, to the point where the previous cavern's remaining air supply is counting down [this is only necessary to avoid a short pause in the recording which would otherwise be noticeable to future viewers of the video];

-- Enter the Solar cavern without pausing the game this time, and complete the final two caverns ('Solar Power Generator' & 'The Final Barrier') as efficiently as possible (something which you are well practised in doing by now!)

Scenario (B): There is no gap between the frozen-in-time red horizontal guardian and the wall.  In this case you are in the 'alternative reality' where the air beam would hit Willy later on as he is proceeding up the conveyor.  So in this case, you should:

-- Roll back the recording twice, to the point just before Willy entered the 'Amoebatron's Revenge' portal;

-- Jump into the portal after an infinitesimally short delay, and repeat the above process (i.e. save a Rollback point during the air countdown, then press A and keep it depressed, observe the starting position of the red HG in Solar, etc - and repeat until you achieve Scenario A above).

**

Since you had already accrued a better score prior to entering the Solar cavern in your Slow recording of the game than was the case at the equivalent point in your Fast recording of the game, doing the above should enable you to achieve an even better total final score than you have achieved to date in any Speed Mode. 😀

Edited February 24, 2022 by IRF

[Spider]

11 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

Thanks for the detailed analysis and explanation of this quirk 👍.

I fully concur with this. 🙂

[IRF]

Further evidence - the three images attached here are all screenshots of the first frame of the solar cavern, from each of Danny's complete walkthrough recordings (Slow, Medium and Fast).  Achieved by watching the recordings back, using the Stop Playback feature in ZXSpin at the point just after Willy had jumped into the 'Amobatron's Revenge' portal, then holding down the A [pause] key until the remaining air had counted down.

The only difference (in terms of gameplay) is that the red tractor (slow HG) has its back to the wall in the 'Slow' image, but has already advanced one frame of animation away from the wall in the 'Medium' and 'Fast' images.  (There is also a cosmetic difference in terms of the INK colours of the items, which are determined by the value of the game's internal clock, but that doesn't affect the gameplay in any way.)

I also found that if I re-watched the Slow recording until just before Willy jumped into the Amoeba's Revenge portal, then used Stop Playback, I could time the jump into the portal myself (and then hit pause whilst the air was counting down) so that the red HG was one step away from the wall in the opening time-frame of the solar cavern.

This is further evidence that Danny's suboptimal score in his Slow recording was just unlucky (baked into the scheme of things from the moment that the solar cavern was set up, but there's a 50:50 chance that it could have worked out differently), and that there isn't anything inherent about the execution of the game in its Slow mode which caused the 'quick flash' of the solar beam through Willy when he tried to navigate up the conveyor.

It also confirms that it would be a fruitful exercise for Danny to try and improve his final score (should he wish to do so) in Slow mode, by following the steps I set out in my previous post in this topic. 🙂

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for these instructions, Ian, I appreciate them! 👍

I do have my recording saved so that I can roll it back easily, so I will have a go at it at some point to see if I can follow your tips and improve the final score.

I am taking a short half-break from MM/JSW activities (just for a few days, to focus on some other things briefly), so I will try it once I'm "fully back in" 🙂 .

 

[IRF]

One other thing I noticed when I was playing around yesterday is that if you lose a life in the solar cavern, then there's a 50:50 chance that the slow HG starts off in the right place after Willy 'respawns'. So I wonder if using the 'cheat' teleport feature* could enable you to achieve the right set-up for the cavern? It wouldn't look as smooth in the final video though.  (*Assuming that feature is available in this game for the MM caverns?  EDIT: I've just checked through Norman Sword's posts earlier in this thread, and it seems that there is no access to the MM caverns via a cheat teleport.)

A related thought: you could improve your final score* by collecting the first two items, and if the solar beam zaps Willy whilst he is above the conveyor, then you could sacrifice that life and try again until the right circumstances come about. (*Unless there is some kind of 'Remaining Lives' bonus in this game, like there was in 'Manic Panic'?)

Of course, that tactic could have been employed to even better scoring effect in the Kong caverns (by sacrificing a few lives after toppling Kong from his perch), but I presume it would breach one of jetsetdanny's principles when making a walkthrough recording (i.e. the game - where possible - should be completed without losing any lives)?

Edited March 1, 2022 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

No, no breach of the rules if it's not absolutely necessary 🙂 . 

You couldn't really compare the game's score when completing the game with one life lost to the scores of the same game completed playing at a different speed if no lives were lost. You would have to lose a life in the other recordings as well to make the comparison meaningful.

As mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the game played at the slowest speed being completed with fewer points than when it's played at higher speeds. Nevertheless, I will try to apply the strategy you described in the near future (perhaps this weekend, more likely next week/weekend) to see if I can improve my earlier score 🙂 .

 

[IRF]

The Remaining Lives bonus in Manic Panic effectively prevented the use of 'kamikaze' as a tactic to boost the final score at the end of the game - it isn't worth sacrificing a life in order to collect a cavern's items twice, as the loss of the bonus points for that life more than outweighed it. (I've not seen any reference to a similar feature being present in this game though.)

Conversely, in one of our MM projects (I can't remember which one - Manic Mixup maybe?), I set things up very differently: rather than having a set initial number of lives for the game, and once they're gone it's Game Over (but extra lives can be gained at certain score thresholds); the game I'm referring to assigned a specific number of lives at the start of each cavern, with the number of lives tailored to the difficulty level of the cavern (e.g. for the easiest caverns you were only granted a small number of lives, etc). Now that I think about that system, it actually provides a positive incentive to kamikaze lives in order to boost your final score! e.g. There's no point in leaving the Central Cavern with any lives to spare, since your number of lives in the Cold Room isn't restricted by the fact that you lost lives in the Central Cavern, so you may as well collect all the items/kill Willy before reaching the portal/repeat until you're down to your last life.

Sorry, I've rambled way off topic there! 😲

[jetsetdanny]

Thank you for your suggestion of how to solve the 'stray solar beam' problem, Ian.

It was right on the spot! 👍 There was no gap between the frozen-in-time red horizontal guardian and the wall in my original recording, so I had to go through the steps you described. This helped and I found myself (or rather, my Willy, so to speak 😉) in the correct 'reality' to complete the cavern without being zapped by the stray solar beam. 

As a result, I completed the cavern with 80,000 pts more than in the original recording (exactly the amount that had been lost to the stray beam) and the whole game with 80,100 pts more than in the original recording (thanks to a 100-points improvement at the end of "The Final Barrier").

The improved recording can be downloaded from here. I have also updated the game's page on JSW Central accordingly.

As a point of interest, after touching the solar beam for the first time, I lost 560,100 pts in my original recording, and 550,000 points in this one. So I actually did better this time around. However, after touching the solar beam for the second time, my loss this time was 720,000 pts, while the first time around it was only 710,000 pts.

The net result was the same in both walkthroughs then (not counting the additional 100 points I 'gained' when touching the ray for the first time, which actually kind of offset the 'loss' I suffered at the end of "Amoebatrons' Revenge", when I waited for the ' infinitesimally short delay' before jumping into the portal).

This means that I could probably still improve the final result if I managed to lose 'only' 710,000 pts instead of 720,000 pts the second time I touched the solar beam. I tried it 30 times or more and couldn't get it done, though. I'm not sure why, or rather, how I managed to do it the first time around.

Having said that, I consider this 'project' closed, i.e. I will not be striving to improve the final score any more. I will not be updating the JSW Central YouTube channel video either, as my current policy is not to update those videos even if a higher score / better completion time is achieved.

Thanks again for your solution, Ian - I gave you due credit in the Readme file which accompanies the improved recording 🙂 .