Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal release imminent

[IRF]

19 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

No, he hasn't.

I agree it may be worth sending him a PM (or trying to get hold of him in another way), but it's low on my priority list right now. I feel an author should be interested in their game being present on the internet in a bugfree form. "We" (without specifying who did what, of course you came up with the fix) raised alarm about the problem, diagnosed it and offered a solution. All Vidar would need to do it is to confirm he approves of this solution to make it "official". If it's too much to ask of him, I don't feel like chasing him, at least not right now.

I just thought that maybe he hadn't seen your earlier post suggesting that the bug fixed version be released? Edit: if he's only an occasional visitor here.

Edited June 1, 2023 by IRF

[IRF]

@erix1 I'm drawing your attention to the recent discussion here about a proposed bugfix for your game Eugene: Lord of the Bathroom. (To prevent the title screen being skipped if a Kempston joystick isn't plugged in.)

[IRF]

I've just noticed there's a new* cell type in the room 'West Wing' in JSW: Role Reversal. Try walking over the cyan block at the bottom left corner of the room...

EDIT: Well, I'd not seen one of these before. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by IRF

[jetsetdanny]

Thanks for noticing and mentioning this, Ian!

It is a nice little feature if I may say so myself.

From the technical point of view, it's not a cell type, though, but something along the lines of a Patch Vector effect.

I believe I can reveal, as an historical fun fact, that I originally designed it for the bottom part of "West Lookout", to make the room impassable from right to left at the floor level. However, Sendy preferred not to block the passage there, so the 'special block' finally got placed elsewhere 🙂 .

[IRF]

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

Thanks for noticing and mentioning this, Ian!

It is a nice little feature if I may say so myself.

From the technical point of view, it's not a cell type, though, but something along the lines of a Patch Vector effect.

I would say it's a new cell type implemented by a patch (vector), as opposed to being one of the standard cell types available in the regular game engine.

In Jet Set Mini, I implemented several non-standard cell types via the patch vector system - though none of them displayed the behaviour that this one does. Did you or Sendy coin a name for this one? If not, are you open to suggestions? (A Throwback Cell, perhaps?)

It's very quirky!

Edited October 25, 2023 by IRF

[IRF]

1 hour ago, jetsetdanny said:

 

I believe I can reveal, as an historical fun fact, that I originally designed it for the bottom part of "West Lookout", to make the room impassable from right to left at the floor level. However, Sendy preferred not to block the passage there, so the 'special block' finally got placed elsewhere 🙂 .

I think I'm right in saying that putting the feature in 'West Lookout' (towards the bottom-right corner, presumably?) would have meant that some of the items in that room couldn't have been collected without sacrificing a life? (That's assuming the layout of that room hasn't changed since that consideration was being made; it may well have changed since the decision was made to relocate the novel feature to 'West Wing'.)

[jetsetdanny]

I can't remember the details right now. I know my idea was to make the player go around the room to collect an item that was back then placed on the lower left (IIRC). The idea of this special effect was to stop the player from crossing the room from right to left at the floor level, in a very irritating way - by throwing Willy back each time he got near the Water cells which would allow him to jump over the magenta cook.

I also remember there was an issue with going back - ideally, the player would have to go around the room to get the item at the lower left and then go back around the room. But then IIRC he couldn't get down safely in "Quirkafleeg II", because the rope is stopped if you enter from the left. So the special effect was designed to work only one way - Willy wouldn't have been able to jump over the magenta cook when coming from the right (because the effect would throw him back), but he could do it (jump over the cook) when coming from the left. So essentially he would have to go around the room counterclockwise and exit downwards. I don't believe that would have involved losing a life - my ethos when designing rooms (in this case: trying to come up with something that would make Sendy's great design a little more vicious to the player 😉) is always to make the game completable without the necessity of losing any lives.

I may be wrong on some details right now, but it was something along these lines. Anyway, it's history now that a different design was chosen for the released version 🙂 .

[jetsetdanny]

21 hours ago, IRF said:

I would say it's a new cell type implemented by a patch (vector), as opposed to being one of the standard cell types available in the regular game engine.

In Jet Set Mini, I implemented several non-standard cell types via the patch vector system - though none of them displayed the behaviour that this one does. Did you or Sendy coin a name for this one? If not, are you open to suggestions? (A Throwback Cell, perhaps?)

It's very quirky!

Well, it's an academic discussion, but the issue I have with calling it a new cell type is that it's not really related to any cell as such. The effect throws Willy back when he's at a certain horizontal location (x-coordinate). So it's related to some location in the room, but not to any particular cell as such. It could be happening in mid-air and without any visible reason.

Having said that, there is also a visual part of the effect - which is not necessary for the effect itself, it could be NOPped out, but it was indeed applied in "JSW: RR" - and that's the ">" shape and the different colour of one cell. And it's this visual effect that makes one think it's a different cell type. 

But I would really call it a "paracell" (with the prefix "para-" in the meaning of "similar to, or helping to do a similar job", like in "paramedic" or "paramilitary").

I haven't coined a new name for this one and I'm not aware of Sendy having done so. I like your suggestion, but combining it with my reasoning explained above, I would call it "A Throwback Paracell" 🙂 .

On second thoughts, though, there's one problem with this. It throws you back if you approach from one side, but it also throws you *forward* if you approach from the other side. So "Throwback" doesn't really cover all of its behaviour. Something to meditate on... 🙂 

[IRF]

On 10/26/2023 at 8:00 PM, jetsetdanny said:

I don't believe that would have involved losing a life

Makes sense now - I thought you meant you wanted to put it somewhere else (blocking the safe route to the large cluster of items in the middle of the room, meaning that you would have had to drop down through the items to collect them before dying upon landing as it's too great a drop).

I think Sendy was right that your idea would have had adverse consequences for Quirkafleeg 2 - as it happens, I first discovered that room coming in from the left (from West Lookout), so it presented quite a puzzle - how to cross it when the rope doesn't swing? - until I subsequently discovered the 'eastern approach' to Q2. The mystery of the (initially) non-swinging rope would never have presented itself to me in the scenario you originally had in mind.

Edited October 28, 2023 by IRF

[IRF]

On 10/26/2023 at 8:11 PM, jetsetdanny said:

Well, it's an academic discussion, but the issue I have with calling it a new cell type is that it's not really related to any cell as such. The effect throws Willy back when he's at a certain horizontal location (x-coordinate). So it's related to some location in the room, but not to any particular cell as such. It could be happening in mid-air and without any visible reason.

Having said that, there is also a visual part of the effect - which is not necessary for the effect itself, it could be NOPped out, but it was indeed applied in "JSW: RR" - and that's the ">" shape and the different colour of one cell. And it's this visual effect that makes one think it's a different cell type. 

But I would really call it a "paracell" (with the prefix "para-" in the meaning of "similar to, or helping to do a similar job", like in "paramedic" or "paramilitary").

I haven't coined a new name for this one and I'm not aware of Sendy having done so. I like your suggestion, but combining it with my reasoning explained above, I would call it "A Throwback Paracell" 🙂 .

On second thoughts, though, there's one problem with this. It throws you back if you approach from one side, but it also throws you *forward* if you approach from the other side. So "Throwback" doesn't really cover all of its behaviour. Something to meditate on... 🙂 

Yes it was indeed the > symbol which made me think of it as a new cell type. Perhaps we could call it a 'pseudo-cell'? (The pseudo prefix meaning false.) 

I see what you mean about 'throwback' not covering all possible behaviour. I can imagine some interesting potential applications of it (where overhead blocks mean that jumping over it isn't an option) - for example, its sudden effect could throw the unsuspecting protagonist straight into the path of a guardian, or conversely, timing it well could allow the player to skip past a guardian which on the face of it blocked any progress on that direction.

With those scenarios in mind, a 'Displacement (pseudo-)Cell' might be a better description?

And of course it would be perfectly easy to have one with a < symbol that worked in the opposite direction.