[File] Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal

[Sendy The Endless]

View File

Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal

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Jet Set Willy: Role Reversal, a reimagining of the original game, with all new levels and features, the first Erix1-mode JSW game by another author other than Erix-1 ever released! By Sendy (Alex Cornhill) with assistance from Vidar Eriksen (Erix1) and Daniel Gromann (jetsetdanny).

Over 60 rooms of challenge and mystery!

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• Submitter
  Sendy The Endless
• Submitted
  03/11/2023
• Category
  Jet Set Willy [Remakes]

 

[jetsetdanny]

As a person who is already well acquainted with the game, I would like to encourage everyone to check it out, and not just have a brief look at it, but really play it, preferably to completion! It can be completed without losing a single life (not easy if you don't save/reload snapshots or use Rollback! 😉). It's an amazing result of Sendy's brilliant design using Erix1's enhancements to the JSW48 game engine, pleasing visually and full of interesting challenges in terms of gameplay. 

It's also a game with a history. A beta file was uploaded to the old (today nonexistent) MM/JSW Yahoo! Group back in 2004, but then the gamma release, which at times seemed imminent, didn't happen. It's been a long wait for those who remember the Yahoo! Group days, but it's been worth it - and what a comeback by Sendy it is!

So don't miss it, play it to the end, and then watch out for Sendy's other maturing projects! 🙂

[Sendy The Endless]

It's a little bit disheartening that one website's review of my game is simply that it's about a woman having to clean up after a man, and that's pretty much the only aspect of the game mentioned... I should have perhaps made this clearer in the readme (hindsight being 20:20 and all), but this was supposed to be more a critique of how house staff of old were often forced to navigate cramped, hazardous stairwells and passageways, which fits the theme of a frustrating platformer. It was also bourne of a simple thought: Maria IS the housemaid, shouldn't, from a purely capitalist realism point of view, she be the one being worked to death? That and the fact that Erix1's Maria sprite was so fun to play as and I was wanting to do a "mansion remake" of JSW at the time I started it, the theme just sort of fell into place.

That said, if anyone else feels the game is in some way overly patriarchal, or is giving off those kind of vibes, please let me know and I'll make it clearer in the story of the readme. Those aren't the vibes I want to be associated with 😬

 

[MtM]

It doesn't give off those vibes. It's a great game which is of benefit to all JSW & MM fans around the world, thank you very much for it!

[jetsetdanny]

I'll second what MtM has said 😁.

[Sendy The Endless]

Thanks for the feedback... That's ok then, I just wanted to be sure.

Going forwards, my plans for the Special Edition of JSW: RR are

1) Some extra platforms to make some of the one-way room transitions less abrupt. Eg: The Balcony has no way back up it should you want to exit back to the left, The Newsagent needs an extra couple of platform tiles to stop you falling on the conveyor belt as soon as you enter, etc

2) A day and night version, either seperate files, or as a choice as the game loads. I will need the Hackulator for this as I intend to change the outside colours to dark and sunset colours. The night version will also function as an easy mode. I will limit this set of changes strictly to deleting enemies. For example, at night, the Busy Road screen will have less traffic. The most annoying guardian in each room will be removed.

3) The Local Ruins screen - I want to completely redesign this room as it became somewhat of the ugly duckling of the bunch once I lost the Hackulator, and I had no real way of redesigning it.

4) Perhaps use Erix1's loading screen.

This won't be for a little while, and is presuming that the changes that Daniel made to the file will still jibe with the Hackulator.

Believe it or not, the official release that came out was ALREADY difficulty-balanced. I removed a lot of guardians, for example, The Fridge level used to have 7 or 8 guardians, including a pair of vertical guardians in each of the vertical shaftways where now there is only one. Going forwards I want to create easier games so that more people can enjoy them!

 

[Spider]

17 hours ago, MtM said:

It doesn't give off those vibes. It's a great game which is of benefit to all JSW & MM fans around the world, thank you very much for it!

 

12 hours ago, jetsetdanny said:

I'll second what MtM has said 😁.

I concur with the above posts.

[jetsetdanny]

6 hours ago, Sendy The Endless said:

This won't be for a little while, and is presuming that the changes that Daniel made to the file will still jibe with the Hackulator.

Without understanding exactly how Erix1's code modifications work, I don't think the changes I've made to the file should interfere with what can be modified using Hackulator, possibly with the exception of some changes falling within one 'class of changes': those that concern special, PV-like effects in some rooms. There was (at least) one special effect from "Maria vs Some Bastards" that was not used in "JSW: RR" (the opening of the Temple of Frogs and the related message that was printed on the screen). I wiped out that code completely and replaced it with other code, useful for "JSW: RR". I also 'built up' on some other similar code, e.g. adding the printing of guardian sprites in addition to a message being printed. Again, I'm not sure how Hackulator handles these particular special effects, but if it does, it'll certainly be confused and not do its job any more in these few particular cases.

Also, in some other cases, I compacted Erix1's code related to these special effects a little bit. So there can be problems related to two issues: the code being moved up and down (if Hackulator looks for a particular address to modify a particular special effect in a given room, it may not find it where it expects) and the code being optimised. For example there was an LD A,00 instruction somewhere (3E 00). I changed it to an XOR A (AF) instruction, which produces exactly the same result, but takes only one byte (instead of two), because I needed every single byte I could get in that particular area of the code (to add some more code). However, if Hackulator should be wired to be able to insert different values there (by modifying the operand of the LD A instruction, so for example doing 3E 01 instead of 3E 00 to change the value of the address in question to 01 rather than 00), it won't work any more and, in fact, by introducing *any* changes, will actually completely mess up the code.

I don't think there should be any problems with modifying the building blocks (cells) of each room. TTBOMK, I did not interfere with that at all.

[EDITED: Another potential sources of problems was added.]

 

[geoff]

It's bright, colourful, and a lot of fun!

 

As to the criticism sendy mentions, I'm sure you could contrive several equally fatuous criticisms of the original, where Willy betrays his working-class origins and joins the ruling class/the ide rich, or whatever.