Please suggest a JSW editor.

[Jet Set Willie]

I´d like to try to make a JSW room on a Spectrum. 😊Probably I will stick to Spectrum emulator instead, at least saveing and loading will go properly. I will admit that I don´t have enough time for this, really. 😑 But I have figured out, that it´s better to ask suggestions and try to make something when I might have little time. Otherwise I may never start this. 😞 I´d like to make many rooms, but thinking what is possible, I am aiming to make even just one playable JSW room. 🙂It´s better than nothing.

Should I try JSWed or is there some Windows JSW editor? Considering my lack of time, editor should be easy to use.

Is there character designer in any of the editors? I can stick to existing JSW characters, though.

 

Thank you in advance for suggestions and helpful hints and warnings.

[Spider]

JSWED does work in Windows just fine. Yes you can redesign the sprites but its a bit painful to do but it does work.

The other 'editors' tend to be written in ZXBasic and are a bit crude or difficult to use.

Professionals tend to write and use their own editors/builders per game as far as I'm aware. I know I would anyway, probably.

[jetsetdanny]

My personal opinion:

JSWED is currently (and has been for a long time) an absolutely unbeatable tool for creating MM and JSW games. It's easy to use, reliable and versatile. You can edit most aspects of each game using its Graphical User Interface (GUI). You can copy and paste stuff in various ways (whole rooms, sprites, etc.). You don't have to know *anything* about coding to create a complete, interesting MM or JSW game. JSWED allows you to edit games using several types of game engines, including the original 48K game engine and some of its variants (like the Softricks one), MM games, Henry's Hoard games, Jet Set Willy 128 games (using an extended 128K JSW game engine developed by John Elliott, who is also the author of JSWED), Jet Set Willy 64 games (using any of the family of several extended 128K game engines developed by John Elliott) and also games using the original "Jet Set Willy II" game engine. This list is impressive in itself and I may have missed some other variant it can edit.

I would go as far in my praise of JSWED as to disagree with Andy (Spider)'s last statement ("Professionals tend to write and use their own editors/builders per game as far as I'm aware") in the sense that you can be a professional in designing MM or JSW games *without* building your own editor - just by using JSWED. This is for the following reason: when you look at the list of gamma-released MM and JSW games on JSW Central, a significant number of them (and certainly most of the game created in the last 20 years) were created using JSWED, as the basic tool or as the only tool. There are some *fantastic* games that were created by authors not using anything else than JSWED. They may not have a custom BASIC loader or a loading screen, they may not have some elements modified that other games have modified (those where you have to "go outside" of JSWED's GUI to do it), but they are brand-new, beautiful games which combine the elegance and excellence of the JSW game engine (original or extended) with the amazing creativity of their authors. I will not point to any specific examples (as I try to be objective and I love all JSW games, although I do have my personal favorites), but they are easy to find. And please note I'm *not* referring to my own projects, I have other authors' games in mind.

In other words, I believe that JSWED is entirely sufficient for creating great JSW games. Yes, the final product can be tweaked by applying changes to the code you cannot apply in JSWED's GUI, but it may still be great even if no such changes are applied and no technical novelties are introduced (and they can also be introduced within JSWED, using its Hex Editor). And creating a single room may be a very good start to creating a great game...

On top of all this, JSWED is entirely free. And, as Andy mentioned, it works just fine on Windows.

And the last point: please see this thread for my thoughts regarding v. 2.2.9 and 2.3.7.

A hint and a warning: I believe it's good practice to save every single file you edit in JSWED under a different file name, so that you keep all the versions you create. This is particularly important when changing the code arbitrarily in the Hex Editor (to be able to check against a previous version or many previous versions in case something goes wrong, but you only discover the problem later on), perhaps not so much if you only work using the GUI. I've been saving (and still keep) all of the files I've ever created. I don't need them now, they are just a historical curiosity, but this practice helped me a number of times to solve problems I came up against. And I've never accidentally overwritten any of my work.

I look forward to whatever you will create in JSWED, Jet Set Willie! 🙂 

[Spider]

Yes I agree. Perhaps my use of the word professional was misunderstood. Its very possible and has been done to create many a good game with that editor alone.

I think I meant someone who would start with a "blank sheet" as such, and have to write the core etc.

[Jet Set Willie]

Thank you for your answers, Spider and JetSetDanny! Especially for Danny´s very detailed answer! 🙂I am ill at the moment, so I can´t concentrate much for answering, but wanted to write Thank You for you both! 🙂 I do appreciate your answers a lot! If I could be a coder, I´d probably do it Spider´s way, ie write my own editor to suit my needs. As I am not, I am happy to have such good thing like JSWED. I haven´t looked much about Spectrum scene in last years, so I became aware that there´s editor called JSWED just before I joined here, but I knew nothing about it, so I thought it´s better to ask first, as I didn´t know if there´s possibly more than one editor available and to learn about their good and bad things.

At yesterday evening I managed to download JSWED, but I wasn´t in too healthy condition to try it a much, just to make a quick try to modify existing Jet Set Willy screen a bit to see how JSWED works and see at least something of what is possible to do with it. I have already noticed there´s a lot what can be done with it! 🙂

 

 

✝️ Merry Christmas to you both, and everybody else here at JSWMM!! 🎄
 

 

 

 

[Jet Set Willie]

This might go too far, as these are Willy games anyway, but is there a downloadable editor, what allows this kind of things?

IF certain_condition = TRUE THEN make certain_tile(s) appear/disappear/change_colour/flash/change_to_another_tile_type

IF certain_condition = TRUE THEN make new_guardian appear : SET guardian_life_time = nn_seconds : SET guardian_movement = mm (normal horiz/vert, only once go normal horiz/vert then stay still or disappear, only one-way horiz/vert, only once go one-way horiz/vert then stay still or disappear, stay still, flash)

IF certain_condition = TRUE THEN make certain_guardian(s) disappear/stay_still/flash_and_stay_still/flash_and_stay_still_nn_seconds_then_disappear

Bad thing is if these options are over used, they can turn Willy game to "ordinary any other platform game". Good thing is if these options are used wisely and rarely, very interesting effects can be made to certain rooms. Strange actions in certain rooms aren´t exactly a new thing in Willy games, though, as Jet Set Willy has out-of-ordinary room already, Rescue Esmeralda. In Manic Miner Eugene goes mad when you collect the last object. Solar Power Generator is not ordinary room either.

Appearing and disappearing tiles, or tiles changing to other type of tiles can cause interesting situations to rooms, like making possible to pass to certain direction or collect all objects, by adding new tiles for jumping upwards or block Willy´s path with a wall or floor or change floors to fire tiles. Many things could be done with these options. But perhaps not suitable for 48K memory limits?

Does JSWED coder or any other editor coder read this forum regularly to see my question?

[Ligan]

Jet Set Willy 64 games can do some of these things. There are guardians called "Triggers" that you can use to change other guardians, I think.

[Spider]

Some of the changes you request are hardcoded in such as Eugene and Kong, with a simple conditional "are we on cavern x ? If so call this routine to do xyz" but as Ligan has said JSWED does allow some of these, I can't recall trying it myself as it was not too hard to tweak the code to do it, but the editor will do what you want I suspect and if not , I'm sure we can help, or try to!

[jetsetdanny]

On 12/23/2022 at 9:45 AM, Jet Set Willie said:

Does JSWED coder or any other editor coder read this forum regularly to see my question?

John Elliott might be lurking around. He did in the past.

Ligan's reply is absolutely correct in that you can apply the so-called triggers in games using JSW64 game engines, and they could probably do pretty much what you are asking for. Well, within limits - while I've never designed anything using triggers, I believe there is a selection of events you can relate them to (in other words: you can only pick the triggers and the effect they cause from a closed list of events). You can certainly do something like "When this particular item is collected, open a hole in the wall at [coordinates]". However, I'm not sure you can do something like "then SET guardian_life_time = nn_seconds". JSW64 game engines use 128K (not a problem I guess, just to reiterate that fact).

In other kinds of games, you could introduce special effects by what has come to be known as 'patch vectors' (PVs). There is a thread about them here. In their case, JSWED will not not allow you to apply them using any special functions in its GUI, you would have to code whatever special effect you want manually. You can introduce the new code using JSWED's Hex Editor, of course.

The changes could also be introduced 'manually' by tweaking the game code in a different way than introducing PVs, like in the examples Andy (Spider) mentioned. Again, no editor I know of will do it for you; JSWED can only help by allowing you to use its Hex Editor to modify the code (but you will have to know what and how to modify).

[Jet Set Willie]

On 12/22/2022 at 7:20 AM, jetsetdanny said:

Yes, the final product can be tweaked by applying changes to the code you cannot apply in JSWED's GUI, but it may still be great even if no such changes are applied and no technical novelties are introduced (and they can also be introduced within JSWED, using its Hex Editor).

 

Could you please tell me some examples what kinds of "technical novelties" could be introduced using JSWED´s Hex editor?

 

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I look forward to whatever you will create in JSWED, Jet Set Willie! 🙂 

Thank you. 🙂I have started to "play" with JSWED, to learn things. I have at least a new title screen ready, it needs some final touches, though.