Please suggest a JSW editor.

[Jet Set Willie]

On 12/24/2022 at 1:35 PM, Ligan said:

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.

That´s interesting to hear. Is Jet Set Willy 64 a stand-alone editor or is it implemented in JSWED2?

On 12/24/2022 at 9:37 PM, Spider said:

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!

Thank you in advance. 🙂I will try to make a certain thing by myself first, if it is possible with JSWED without coding in Hex Editor.

[Jet Set Willie]

7 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

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

 

Good to hear. 🙂I may have found a bug. When I modified Guardians movements for the first time, it worked well. When I later tried it (after exiting and starting JSWED again) "Edit" option was missing in Guardian menu, that has happened again later, too. Also, on that second try to modify Guardians movements, I deleted all guardians, but one, and selected a new sprite for the only guardian. But when I closed Guardian Editor, room showed just the Matthew´s original JSW Guardian. After SAVEing and exiting JSWED, I started JSWED again and then guardian had the new sprite.

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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).

Triggered opening of the hole in the wall could certainly have some use. 🙂 Guardian life time is a good feature to have to make special effects, but what I actually might try to do later will need a triggered guardian to appear in certain coordinates related to "normal guardian´s" coordinates and position related to player´s coordinates and then that triggered guardian should move "one-way" just once, disappearing when it reaches the edge of the screen or a tile. This may go far beyond the limits of JSWED, even when using Hex Editor. Also, in certain rooms there should be two triggers, one to remove certain tiles and one for certain guardian (described above). In my example the problem is that triggered guardian can´t be triggered with a switch touched by player, as the triggered "one-way guardian" must appear only when the "normal guardian" is positioned in certain coordinates related to the player´s coordinates. To make the effect better, it would actually need a randomizing too, so the effect won´t be triggered every time, but it works without randomizing, too. Perhaps player could "drop" "invisible switches" to trigger "one-way guardian", but it´s hard to make the game to work properly that way, as player can jump and fall and soon the player will be on wrong Y-coordinate related to normal guardian, before normal guardian gets near enough to touch "invisible switch".

 

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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).

 

Unfortunately I can only modify the Hex Editor´s code in the most simple cases, by reading and learning the codes of the guardians, etc. in their own editors. That´s not much. 🙂With JSWED, I can make a Willy game (time allowing) without any special effects, without special movements and without triggering, but at least I want to know what could be possible, even if I can´t use them.

[Jet Set Willie]

When I edited the Guardian and pressed Ok and after that I clicked the word "Guardian" in the menu, JSWED 2.3.7 crashed. It happened few times in a row.

Also, by adding one guardian to one of my self-made rooms, JSWED adds the same guardian with the same movement and animation to all my own rooms, and Guards list has then eight guardians in my rooms. Even I had cleared all the guardians in the first menu when I started. I have tried to close JSWED and try again many times, but same happens. Does this happen, because I have used COPY and PASTE to copy my existing self-made room to another room to speed up room design? Though, there weren´t guardians in my own rooms when used COPY and PASTE.

 

Edited December 30, 2022 by Jet Set Willie

[Spider]

Try copy paste one room to another (one with guardians to copy from)

Now switch to another room, not the one you just pasted, then switch back to the 'new' room.

Are the guardians present in the list on the screen under the 'room' ? If so try deleting them.

Take a backup first. 🙂

 

[Jet Set Willie]

Thank you, Spider. 🙂I will try those later.

How can I select "Safe restart places" in JSWED? I can´t check it, as it can´t be selected at all (it´s masked with chess board dithering). Manual says it´s for 48K games only, I think I am making 48K game rooms, as JSWED shows an option "Switch to 128K".

🙂Is it possible to determine a certain starting position to a certain room? I don´t mean starting position when starting a new game, but a certain starting position when Willy comes to a room from a certain direction. This would help a lot designing certain kind of rooms, as user-defined-starting-position-in-certain-room can prevent instant-death-loop and will allow interesting room designs. Or is it "done by Hex´ing" once again? In latter case, I will definitely need help! 🙂

Edited January 2, 2023 by Jet Set Willie

[Spider]

I've never used the 'safe restart' places myself sorry. I think the idea is to place MW in a sane postiion in that screen rather than ontop a guardian or similar.

You can't easily set a 'entering position' per room no 😞 A PV would not work and I'd not want to hexedit it in! , if it helps for the changes I make to the 'core' I just use either notepad+ to edit the disassembled code or ZXSpin to make live changes.

[Jet Set Willie]

I can edit couple of rooms again, but the feeling is not the same. It´s not a big thing what gets lost, though. I wanted to know what is possible, without getting too hard and time consuming for anyone.

 

Happy New Year 2023 Everyone! ☺️

Edited January 2, 2023 by Jet Set Willie

[Jet Set Willie]

I managed to edit round the problem, the result was nice. 🙂 But then I added a downwards ramp to one room created next, on the ZX32 emulator all horizontal tiles on the way to the ramp turned to one tile sized downwards ramps, each leading Willy to inside tiles below! 😐And the items aren´t there. Let´s see what I can do.

[Jet Set Willie]

I think the problem was that ramp and conveyor had the same colour as the "walking platform". But sometimes JSWED (or JSW engine?) accepted the same colour and sometimes "walking platforms" behaved like conveyor. Missing items problem was solved by changing the background colour different than Willy´s colour, I just forgot that. In one room the original earth tiles on the screen didn´t change their appearance when I edited the tile. I could put my new earth tiles to screen though, just by pointing and clicking with the mouse. This happened again after closing and restarting the JSWED.

I managed to find a new way to crash JSWED 2.3.7. I tried to add an arrow. I edited it, and after that, when I right-clicked the mouse, JSWED crashed everytime. There was no way to SAVE with right-clicking to saving menu. F2 might have worked, I didn´t try that, but I am not sure about that, as pressing O(ption) crashed JSWED, too. I didn´t try to find out any more more ways to crash it after that.

[Spider]

Yes you figured it out, you can see this ramp/conveyor effect in "The Chapel" , its the only ramp in the game that has that effect.

If you set fire to be the same as earth or air you'll kill Willy upon entry.

Setting other cells the same such as ramp and earth will have odd effects, which could be an advantage in some specially designed rooms. 🙂

 

I'm not sure on the crash, I rarely use arrows. You do need (I think, I stand to be corrected here) if you add any guardians after the arrow, you must remove the arrow and re-add it, it needs to be the last in the list, that being nothing else after it.