Future JSW game idea: Archaeologist But Playable

[Sendy The Endless]

Here's a map of a game that looks pretty good in map format, but is borderline unplayable:

https://maps.speccy.cz/map.php?id=Archaeologist

In the future I'm hoping to use JSWED to create a remake of the game, staying faithful to the layout and graphics, but with some extra locations and of course, tweaked to not be an unplayable mess (anybody who's tried to play it will know what I'm talking about!)

[jetsetdanny]

It's a great idea! I do hope you will indeed complete this project and I will be happy to help 🙂 .

In fact, we discussed this some years ago on the old JSW/MM Yahoo! Group. I published a review of the game on 19th February 2015. I am pasting it below:

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"The Archaeologist" is a game by Paul K. Sneesby (Sneesby Software), published by Spectrum Computing back in 1985. 

The game was mentioned on this forum once before 2015, in message 151 on 23 May 2000, posted by Andrew Broad on behalf of Carl Murray (however, Andrew did not include "The Archaeologist" in section "Other Games of MM/JSW Interest" on his list of MM and JSW games - I can only presume that it was because at the time of the post his list did not have that section yet).

The purpose of the game, as described on the menu screen, is to "enter the volcano Sneffels Jokul and pass through the earth's core to finally reemerge at Mount Etna collecting the various artifacts as you go".

According to the information on World of Spectrum, "The Archaeologist" "appeared on side B of electronic magazine Spectrum Computing 18" and was "originally planned for a commercial release, but the publisher went bust before the game was finished".

It is indeed a shame, as the game has the potential of being a very enjoyable 8-bit platformer, IMHO. It looks and feels very JSW-ish to me during gameplay, in spite of some features alien to JSW. In the lower part of the screen there are 5 meters (counters) marked by colourful pictures of items: a red apple (marking the level of food or health, perhaps?), a magenta petrol can (?) (fuel?), a green... - I'm not sure what it is, perhaps some kind of container or water bottle, or fire extinguisher, or battery???, a cyan pickaxe (?) (tools?) and a yellow revolver or pistol (ammo?). From my playing experience, the levels of substances (energy, vitality, health or whatever it is) shown by the first two meters decrease visibly during gameplay, and when they go down to zero, the protagonist loses a life. I did notice some changes in the next three meters - going up from time to time and going down, too, but never to zero - but I could not relate them to any specific impact on the protagonist (maybe because I did not try hard enough).

A feature similar to JSW128 and JSW64 game engines, but not the original JSW48, is the superjump (called "Supa Jump" on the menu screen). It can be activated by pressing A during the regular jump. It drains the level of the protagonist's health (the red apple) very quickly, so you have to use the feature VERY sparingly. If you are not careful, you can lose your lives so quickly when applying the superjump that you actually think it's a bug which is killing you. But it's not a bug, I think, but a conscious design meant to limit the use of superjump.

From my playing experience I can say that the superjump is indispensable to collect the uppermost item in the room "The Haunted Hall of Abu Hassan" as well as to get out of "Root of Volcano" (after exploring this room and "Stalactites and Stalagmites" below). The problem is that it drains your health so fast that you end up losing lives. Since you also lose lives periodically just from the "wear and tear" due to the passage of time (or using up your energy irrespectively of the super jump, or however you want to describe it), I think that the game would be impossible to complete without an ability to somehow replenish your health / energy / whatever it is (the red apple meter especially).

A map of the game created by Pavero in 2004 is available on WoS and, as Sendy mentioned, on Speccy Screenshot Maps (http://maps.speccy.cz, which is the original upload site, I believe). In my playtest I got more or less halfway through the game, as far as "Lava Flow". Just before it, in "Saknussemm's Camp", you can see beyond doubt that the game is incompletable, because there is no way to collect the items in this room (the first time it happens since the start of the game). In my playtest I reached the score of 50% (the items you collect are not numbered, you see a percentage score instead), which confirms that I was halfway through the game.

I believe that if one did not collect the items along the way, but just tried to get as far into the game as possible, he or she could go much further than I did - because you would not waste any time or energy, which would mean that the periodical death from health / energy loss / passage of time would come relatively later. I did not think it worth trying, as we know the game is incompletable anyway, but it makes me wonder how Pavero created his map - was it by exploring the game while playing it, or just by using some smart software, without even trying to play the game???

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My incomplete RZX recording of the game is attached below, for whatever it's worth.

Back then we also discussed the playability of the game. Sendy said it was "virtually unplayable" and I opined that it was "pretty frustrating when you lose your lives just because of the passage of time or because you try to use the superjump. And very frustrating once you realise you will not be able to complete the game no matter how hard you try".

Sendy also wrote that she "quite liked the look of the screens and the game map" but "had more fun looking at the map (on Speccy Screenshot Maps) than trying to play the game directly". To which I responded:

"I like the look of the screens, too, and the sprites, and that's why if someone were able to batch-transfer the rooms and sprites to a JSW file (using one of the JSW game engines), I would be willing to try and finish the game and offer it to the community as a completable, regular JSW game, without the extra features (like the loss of health with the passage of time or the energy-consuming superjump) and preserving the original design as much as possible.

Any volunteers to figure out the transfer trick?"

What a nice suprise that now Sendy herself thinks of remaking the game! 👍

thearchaeologist.rzx

[Spider]

13 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

if someone were able to batch-transfer the rooms and sprites to a JSW file

The sprites should not be that difficult if they are stored in a sane uncompressed format (quite likely) the room data could be more trouble. It might be easier to re-recreate them from the map.

[Sendy The Endless]

Yeah, I was gonna eyeball pretty much all of it to be honest, the tile patterns, the sprites, the layouts, and make adjustments to all three, so it won't be a 1:1 reconstruction, but will have a lot of my own "flair" added 🙃

I'll be using JSW64, one of the variants that only has 64 rooms, that's plenty to fill the map out a bit more and expand some of the locations, etc. I do want to keep the style and connectivity of the physical layout fairly faithful. I played this game as a kid and never got more than one screen deep in any direction, so think of this as my way of taking control of childhood trauma 😅

I'm interested in implimenting the superjump, but last time I tried it, I found you could phase through earth blocks and generally bug it out, get jammed in walls, etc, especially when falling and with no fall damage. I remember John Elliott kept fixing it and I kept driving him mad by finding ways to break it again, until he gave up. In the end it's mostly been used by authors in specially designed rooms - so there are workarounds that make it usable. I will probably just alter the game layout so you don't need to superjump at all, and I doubt I'll be adding any of the survival meters - though thinking about it, simulating strength and hunger and stuff like that was pretty advanced for its time!

[Sendy The Endless]

Danny, I watched your RZX - very impressive! Thanks for posting it.

I notice collecting different types of object impacts the meters - water makes the bottle icon go up, food the strength one... Pickaxes make the... pickaxe, wait why do you even need a pickaxe, let alone multiple ones? It's not like you can dig through walls! Aaaand some of the items seem to do nothing, so going after them is a death sentence lol.

I seriously think this is abandonware - publisher went bankrupt, coder thought "Looks like a passable game when you load it up" and it was pushed out the door. Just my hunch but obviously miles of guesswork going on here.

I noticed the explorer guy doesn't seem to die from long falls. I haven't made many maps with this feature but I always liked how in Pyramania you had those little corridors and chutes you could go down, that in JSW would just kill you.

[jetsetdanny]

You are welcome 🙂 .

There are several JSW games designed, in their entirety, with Willy not dying from long falls (with the fall-any-height POKE applied by default). I believe Andrew Broad's "We Pretty" was the first of them, several others followed. So there's no reason why your future "Sendarchaeologist" could not use the same principle 😉 .

[Sendy The Endless]

Some work has been done.

[Spider]

I like.

I started one too actually last year but never got much further other than some code tweaks:

[Jet Set Willie]

May I suggest, if you make this game real using JSWED, that you or somebody else, will arrange the song called "The battle" as a tune for title screen. As you´ll make the game using JSWED64, then you could use it as an ingame tune as well. 🙂 I´m afraiding beeper version won´t have enough notes to have enjoyable (not irritatingly too repetitive) ingame tune, though with 128K Spectrum, you may not need to make the beeper tune. The song is from Rick Wakeman´s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth LP, 🙂 the entire LP is based on that book. 🙂

[Jet Set Willie]

This song is used in one game already, in Commando 86/Duet on Commodore 64. You might want to listen it through the AY in advance before making an arrangement? Please try some SIDplayer what will play SID tunes through the AY, I am not sure, though, if Commando 86/Duet tune worked on AY Sidplayer? But I think it worked. If you want to use Commando 86 arrangement as a "base" for your own arrangement, please remove or soften those drums. They´re great, but in my opinion they won´t suit to Spectrum Willy game. 🙂

Edited February 21, 2023 by Jet Set Willie