Strangel 2

[Sendy The Endless]

So I've been thinking about a follow-up to my game Strangel.

Has anybody on the forum played it, or seen it in any other way? If so, what did you like or dislike about it? Does the difficulty make it hard to enjoy?

My plan for Strangel 2 is to set out a few aims from the beginning. Firstly, I will be sticking to the bright and surreal colours of the original Strangel game, although due to the increased block count in JSW64 (the engine I'll be using) I want a nice mixture of abstract and representational areas in the game. So there will be structures, buildings, sewers and the like, and the map will make a lot more sense than in the original Strangel; whilst there still being many bizarre room ideas and of course a surreal "drawn on white paper" aesthetic throughout all areas.

Regarding gameplay, I'm setting myself a few design goals and intend to spend all my energy on manifesting them properly:

1) The game will be beatable by me, without cheats, and there will be no frame-perfect jumps and dodges. I will design the challenges to be humanly doable, and the opposite of overwhelming.

2) I will use quirky features as puzzles, but they will be tutorialized as they are introduced.

3) There will be a lot of crumbling floor puzzles.

4) Failing a puzzle or a series of obstacles will, where possible, not result in instant death, but will instead lead to situations where losing a life is avoidable. In other words, I want to give players a feeling that they can get out of a bad situation on many occasions.

5) I will probably turn off fall damage for the player sprite.

6) I'm hoping to have horizontal lifts and possibly moving holes/disappearing platforms, as seen in JSW: Role Reversal.

 

I'll post some screenshots when I have something I'm particularly proud of : )

[jetsetdanny]

I have played and completed "STRANGEL"*. My walkthrough can be download from its page on JSW Central and the video on YouTube made from it is here. 

I will quote below excerpts from my review of the game which was published on 25 September 2008 in the MM/JSW Yahoo! Group. Since my review refers to Andrew Broad's earlier comments, in the following message I will also quote what Andrew published on the Yahoo! Group forum.

"It took me three days of intense playing (using every spare moment of the day, including two weekend days, and a portion of each night) to complete "strangel" for the first time. Then it took me two more days of similar effort to RZX-record it to my satisfaction. I must say the game is so good I just couldn't resist the temptation, I wanted so badly first to confirm that it is really completable and then to see how efficiently I could complete it.

I played after having read the text file included with the game and with some help "from" JSWED in analysing some rooms, but without any other outside help, such as reading messages about "strangel" posted previously in the Group. Towards the end of my first run I got seriously stuck with 11 items to go, four of them in the
cluster "Extra Lucid OUTlet", "ceci n'est pas une chambre" and "trICK STEP", and five in the room "i nformation". At that point I finally consulted the Group messages and found Andrew Broad's summary of his full, six-part playtest of "strangel", which gave me the hints I needed to figure out how to complete the game. (...) I completed my first go at the game with a toilet-time quite similar to (in fact, slightly worse than) Andrew's (3:24 pm versus 3:06 pm) and I got stuck in very similar places (although I had solved the "rope puzzle of room 34" earlier, but then I didn't know how to enter "i nformation" on the right-hand side).

I feel there is little I can say in my review that would not be a repetition of Andrew's comments, so I will just say I generally agree with all he said, and particularly with the generous praise he gives to the game. "strangel" is a fantastic work of JSW art, brightly devised and "flairsomely executed", extremely interesting and innovative from the technical point of view and impressive in the sense of the graphics. Plus it has this weird atmosphere which is a quality in itself. It shows what a great JSW author Sendy is, and while I am at it, let me say (again) that I earnestly hope that she will release more games soon (...). 

If I were to express some criticism of "strangel", I would say that the geography of the game is really frustrating until you get a good grasp of it. Ultimately it is not an obstacle for completing the game efficiently (which I hope my RZX walkthrough proves) since you don't have to pass through too many rooms already cleared of items if you follow the right route, but until one starts to remember the exits and interconnections between the rooms, one gets easily annoyed over the complicated layout (well, this may not really be criticism – who says a game should be easy or that the layout should be easy?).

Also, purely as my individual preference, I am not really fond of the font used. It is not easy to read, which combined with the strangeness of many of the room-names and mixed upper- and lower-case spelling makes it difficult to remember the names, which complicates the problem of geography even further. The "font problem" abates in
JSWED. But using JSWED to crack the mysteries of some games can be very misleading too, which I painfully found out while analysing, with the colour attributes changed to my "standard" ones (black for Air, blue for Earth, green for Water, yellow for Fire, red for Conveyor and Magenta for Ramp) how to exit "Noted" in order to enter "i nformation" on the right-hand side...

The unfair infinite-death scenarios which Andrew pointed out are probably the only "objective" flaws which I can find in the game, but then there are just a few of them, and in the snapshot-saving era of emulated gaming they are not that much of a problem, either.

Now, just to highlight some points on the positive side, the invalid ramp technology is very impressive and deserves further study and development. The invalid arrow technology is great, too, and a number of design patterns requiring the player to make difficult jumps deserve to be reused in other games. (...)

The final sequence is fantastic. I was proud of the innovative elements of the final sequence of "JSW: The 2005 Megamix", which I had designed without ever playing "strangel", but I can now see how primitive they are in the visual sense (while their technical value still holds, I believe). I should really try and link the technical
with the visual in the final sequence of "JSW: The 2009 Megamix" – but now I won't be able to avoid drawing on some patterns set
by "strangel", I'm afraid... [2023 comment: "JSW: The 2010 Megamix" features the longest and most challenging toilet run ever designed, during which the player still has to play the game - not just sit back in enjoy, and it's very hard in the Hard Version. Several of the rooms during the toilet run are rooms copied from "STRANGEL", as a tribute to Sendy's game, with added challenges.]

So, to sum up, congratulations, Sendy, on this classic 2001 contribution of yours to the scene, and I look forward to enjoying new fruits of your designing genius 🙂 ."

* When creating its webpage on JSW Central, I had a careful look at the spelling of the game's title and, based on the game file itself and the Readme, I decided the correct spelling was all in capital letters. I have used it consistently ever since.

[jetsetdanny]

Below are Andrew Broad's comments on "STRANGEL". The first part was posted in the Yahoo! Group on 19 December 2005, the others followed some time later. Andrew once gave a general permission to quote him, provided his statements are not taken out of context/manipulated to make him stupid, so I believe it's OK to put these quotes here, in good faith 🙂 .

Andrew's first playtest of strangel, 19.12.2005:

"seeing as the special edition is due any day now, i have decided to embark on my first serious playthrough of sendy's classic (but certainly not /classic/) jsw128 game, strangel.

ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired unofficial mm/jsw sequel other than my own, due to its ultrasurreal, we-prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative use of quirky features (this was the jsw game that introduced invalid ramps ttbomk), and as difficult a challenge as i've seen outside of the 
broadsoft games.

today i started from scratch, and finished with 52 items after three hours' effort in the real world (jsw-time only 8:30am due to heavy use of snapshots and exploring the alternative paths ahead).

the rooms are very cleverly-designed, and the difficulty-gradient is steep from the start, requiring many minutes just to clear a single room of items! the rooms are also exceptionally well-put-together, with hardly any unintended loopholes at all from what i've seen so far.

the geography could prove to be a difficult factor, although the paths i've taken so far seem to return me to the choice-points better than those in another jsw128 game i could mention. but i've still had to leave several loose-ends to be tied up later. and the difficulty is such that it will probably take me four more sittings to complete... even *with* john elliott's room-number patch! 🙂

----------------------
room-specific comments
----------------------

i'm not going to comment on every single room, but i must say that if a room is mundane in strangel, it would be exceptional in almost any other game!

[0] "FEIN dish BRICK yarD": a prime example of clever room-design, with quirky jumps through earth-cells. and i like that you get to hide from the arrow in the water-cells!
_____it's taken me until today to realise that the title means "fiendish"! 🙂

[8] "NOToRI0US C - O - G": not as difficult as i remember after typing strangel into my real spectrum, except for the philip-bee-esque high jump over the bird! the hook-sprite looks good.

[18] "skY laRK!!": the atmosphere is strongly evocative of we pretty's "SKYLIFE A V I A T I O N AVATAR". however, a nasty infinite-death scenario is on the cards if you jump and land on the invisible gap in the platform (the `harmless' fire-cells - harmless my foot!).

[25] "in THE spotLITE": this is the room of which i had the fondest memories from playing strangel on my real spectrum. with the guardian-sprites resembling portholes that open and close, the atmosphere is evocative of the spectrum platform-game _booty_.
_____is the player supposed to be able to take the top-left item by jumping up from below, or should they have to wait until they have the chance to walk on the top row via "It's a nOIse BeinG Noisy" [44]?

[26] "the uNDERpaSs": having to walk along a long, low corridor before an arrow comes is a design-pattern of which i hope to see much more in the future.

[28] "cramped-STYLE": a very effective arrows-challenge reminiscent of party willy's "The Devil's Intestines!" (which i wrote without conscious knowledge of this room).

[34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": if you jump into the right-exit of this room (a natural thing to do because there's an earth-cell in the way), there's a nasty infinite-death scenario in the next room [35].

[35] "rHythm and blues Angus Steakhaus": i don't like it that down is a one-way exit. you have to go down before you can get the bottom-left item, but since it's clear to the seasoned player, on entering "sisSy TOp" [39], that you won't be able to go back up if you persist with this route, the player should have the option of turning back immediately after going down into "sisSy TOp".

[42] "fay's CANceLLATI0n": this room should be upheld as one of the most amazing and innovative jsw-rooms ever written, from the wonderful pun (who's fay?) to the sheer quirkiness of the platforms: air and ramp have the same colour-attribute, which creates the springy-platforms effect, plus the ramp is `invalid' (it has a direction-byte of 105).
_____invalid ramps are relatively uncharted territory, along with the quirky features associated with ropes and superjump.

[63] "your WAy"
[64] "your WAy"
[65] "your WAy"
my way or the highway! 🙂

[66] ""I wisH i hAd duCK fEeT"": a wonderfully atmospheric room with an innovative design-pattern featuring harmless fire-cells, and it's nice to see the feet from we pretty making an appearance! 🙂
....*
...*|
..*|.
.*|..
*|...
|.... (where * are harmless fire-cells) i'll have to remember this pattern if i ever want to write a nightmare-on-elm-street-inspired room where your feet sink into the 
stairs!
_____there's an infinite-death scenario if you jump right into "fILT RAtE" [43] and walk back in here again - the upside-down willy collides with you.

[78] "a place with no nAME": this room looks like it was drawn by a sixteen-year-old (it reminds me of "The Cave" in party willy JSW-MM_OLD.TAP) - which i suppose is a neat contrast to all the sophisticated rooms in this game! 😉

[90] "barrier 2": double-jumping out of the underside of a ramp is a simple but much-underused jsw-trick.

[104] "X-es mark the sPOTS": "Xs" or even "X's" would be better english, but i just love the design-pattern in the centre of the screen that gives access to the conveyor:
..|..|..
<<|..|..
........
..-..-..
--....--
..-..-..

[105/106] "Trans "mog" riFicatION": some nice earth-cell quirky features here, and the player-sprite certainly appeals to me as a cat-lover. i hope igor makovsky - one of the scene's greatest artists - won't be too offended if i say that i prefer this cat-sprite to frosya. 😉

[114] "Not Like All The Others": an artistic colour-scheme. i spent ages trying to cross the top half from right to left, using my pause-snapshot-timeframe technique, and it took me a long time to conclude that it was impossible (and fortunately not necessary, although it does create an intriguing air of mystique about the forbidden holy 
ground in the top-left of this screen and top-right of "the PUSH" [116] - much like the inner corners of rooms 54-57 of the original jsw were for me as a child, before i discovered the amazing secret of climbing that mysterious ladder in "West Bedroom" 😮 ).

[116] "the PUSH": it's nice to see an invalid arrow, but it's frustrating to have to search for the correct entry-position to jump onto the trail it leaves, and be forced to take a one-way exit each time you miss - thank goodness for instant snapshots!

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

 

Andrew’s second playtest of Strangel:

this message follows on from message 5325, and replies to message 5328.

---------------------
reply to message 5328
---------------------

Alexandra wrote:
>
>> ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired
>> unofficial mm/jsw sequel other than my own, due to its
>> ultrasurreal, we-prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative
>> use of quirky features (this was the jsw game that introduced
>> invalid ramps ttbomk), and as difficult a challenge as i've seen
>> outside of the broadsoft games.
>
> Thank-you! Coming from you that is wonderful to hear, since
> Strangel was a direct response to finishing We Pretty. I even made
> the room above the starting room a cave as a nod to your games. Do
> you mind if I quote you on the above when I publish the game
> (which will be very soon, directly after Manic Person which I'm
> uploading later tonight - fingers crossed!)?

I give my permission to use my above quote. If the documentation will still be in lower case, you may use it as it is. If the documentation will be in sentence-case, please use the following version:
>>>
Ever since its release in 2001, strangel has been my most admired unofficial MM/JSW sequel other than my own, due to its ultrasurreal, We-Prettyish atmosphere, its heavy and innovative use of quirky features (this was the JSW game that introduced invalid ramps TTBOMK, and it took invalid-arrow technology to a new level), and as
difficult a challenge as I've seen outside of the Broadsoft games.
<<<
If using my original quote, please note the addition of ", and it took invalid-arrow technology to a new level".


> I think after a while you can become so accustomed to the
> mechanics of JSW that you can see every possible outcome that the
> user can get from playing a given room or area, and that is what
> enables us to create (and solve) such tightly-controlled
> challenges. It's almost like having the game engine encoded in
> your brain! I think I've got that nailed now so my next frontier
> is of course graphics.

That's a most intriguing way of putting it! I have trained myself to spot all possibilities, to the extent that I am probably as near to 100% infallible as humanly possible when I declare that it is or isn't possible to get from one position in a room to another (I have occasionally been known to say that it isn't possible when it is, but that's called "having a brain-freeze").

Graphics are, of course, a matter of artistic talent. I'm never going to be a Vidar Eriksen or Igor Makovsky in this department, but I certainly have my moments when drawing 16x16-pixel sprites.


>> the geography could prove to be a difficult factor, although the
>> paths i've taken so far seem to return me to the choice-points
>> better than those in another jsw128 game i could mention. but
>> i've still had to leave several loose-ends to be tied up later.
>> and the difficulty is such that it will probably take me four
>> more sittings to complete... even *with* john elliott's room-
>> number patch! 🙂
>
> Should I apply the patch to the SE? I was tempted to but it would
> give the teleport-swicthes away awfully.

Perhaps it is best left to the user to decide whether they want to see the room-numbers or not. You could even have the BASIC loader apply this patch at the option of the user, but perhaps you don't want to make it that easy for them.

Personally, I applied the patch to a snapshot of the game using John Elliott's HEXPAT utility, because, for all but the most linear or familiar JSW games, I like to tick off the rooms I have item-completed on a piece of paper as I play (and mark the rooms I wish to comment on), and I don't like having to scan through the list for every room-title.


> The invalid ramps in "trick step" behave like the stairs in C64
> JSW, so it would be nice to be able to use those again sometime.
> Using it globally over a whole game would be a nice touch.

<painfully looks through room-list to see that "trICK STEP" is [16]>

Neat! I don't think I've seen that effect in any other JSW room. I'll have to remember that the next time I write a JSW game with ramps (Afrikaan will have vertical conveyors instead).

These kind of ramps have a direction of 2 (valid ramps have a direction of 0 for '\' or 1 for '/').

There is a similar but less elegant invalid ramp in Goodnite Luddite's "A SUNBURST NIGHT", which has a direction of 255.

The effects of directions 2-255 (in Offset 218 = DAh) are not yet documented TTBOMK (even values are drawn as '\' and odd values as '/', but the behaviour is still very much uncharted territory).


>> [78] "a place with no nAME": this room looks like it was drawn by
>> a sixteen-year-old (it reminds me of "The Cave" in party willy
>> JSW-MM_OLD.TAP) - which i suppose is a neat contrast to all the
>> sophisticated rooms in this game! 😉
>
> It's always fascinating to hear opinions like this. I can see what
> you mean, but I would have never made the connection by my own
> accord. The ambiguity of 8x8 and 16x16px graphics and the
> atmospheres they produce really is what makes them so 'magical'
> to me.

Ambiguity? Like whether the item in "Watch Tower" is an apple or a bag of gold? Yes, the sprites in the original JSW are certainly open to multiple interpretations! 🙂 I don't see this ambiguity in my own games, but perhaps other people do...


>> [104] "X-es mark the sPOTS": "Xs" or even "X's" would be better
>> english, but i just love the design-pattern in the centre of the
>> screen that gives access to the conveyor:
>> ..|..|..
>> <<|..|..
>> ........
>> ..-..-..
>> --....--
>> ..-..-..
>
> I always like those diagrams you seem to generate out of nowhere
> :). Are you using Specsaisie (I think I spelled that right!)?

SPECSAISIE RoomJSW (or RoomMM) generates these diagrams, although ramps, conveyors, items &c. still have to be inserted by hand.

If it's a small diagram (as in the above example), I just draw it by hand rather than redirecting the output of SPECSAISIE RoomJSW to a text-file so I can copy & paste.

> I tried to get that running one day but I can't remember what I
> needed to run it that I didn't have.

I do care about making the installation-instructions as helpful as possible, so please let me know of any difficulties you have. I'm even thinking of installing Java and SPECSAISIE on a new PC so that I can document the exact steps required.


> It really would benefit from a seperate jumping sprite. I guess
> that would be doable in JSW64 somehow.

That would require a patch to the game-engine, regardless of whether it's JSW48, JSW128 or JSW64.


> I love promised lands and forbidden grounds because they blur the
> distinction between display and gameplay, which is also the reason
> I like little areas which you can explore but are there just for
> atmospheric purposes, like a spare branch on a tree that you can
> walk on or something.

I would always give the player an incentive (e.g. an item) to visit such areas, unless I was trying to lull the player into doing something useless (as recently discussed in Daniel's review of Manic Scribbler and Darth Melkor's reply thereto).

---------------
second playtest
---------------

[24] "NUULL--HAANDSHAAKEE!!": i like the design-pattern for jumping up onto the platform next to the leftmost hg:
||***
.....
.....
.....
---..
***--

[45] "Noted": a unique room visually, with nice use of a fire-cell to provide access to the room below (you can jump through the fire-cell and fall through the adjacent platform).

[47] "Key bored": another unique room-design, and it's interesting how you can pass the two black hgs either by jumping over them both together, or by nestling in between them and hoping that you remember the right hg's right boundary correctly!

[48] "leafy LANE": i remember my real spectrum crashing on me as i struggled with this room in 2001. a rare exploitation of having to use ramp-cells to `duck' under guardians, and it's intriguing how the following pattern of fire-cells can only be passed from right to left:
..//.* (these ramp-cells are purely decorative)
.../..
......
......
*..*..
||||||

[52-57] "nye eve ity": an innovative use of teleporters to apparently change the screen-layout - this is the advantage of having many more than 64 rooms at your disposal. but it would have been nice to reward the player with an item at the end (it's easy to forget about having collected the one under the ilb in "stolen THUNDER!" [40], and to think "what was the point of going through "nye eve ity"?).

[58] "EXTRA terrestRIAL gratIFicAtion": nice use of invalid-arrow pairs to allow willy to jump up for the items. it's a shame we haven't seen many more invalid arrows in the five years since strangel, as strangel really took invalid-arrow technology (which was introduced with one very simple example) to a new level.
_____the use of a blank white conveyor to hide the arrows themselves is an elegant aesthetic touch, and the ghost ramp-cell (which behaves as air) left by the invalid arrows is a cool quirk.
_____the ink-colour of air will be the ink-colour of any ghosts in the room (other examples: ghosts left by the premature-crumbling bug in manic miner, and ghost-conveyors - not supported by jswed, which gives no way of extending conveyors beyond the bottom-right of the screen).

[60] "Tricky lake": if you jump up off the top of the screen, it's infinite death in "the ART of FLYING" [59]. clearly this room should loop back to itself at the top, as it does at the bottom.
_____you also encounter infinite death by /walking/ out of this room via the earth-cell at (12,30).

[72] "< DETATCHED >": is this spelling deliberately solecistic?
_____it's intriguing how you /can/ jump left out of this room, but that you have to step back from the edge of the platform to do so!

[129] "Micro Climb It": some deceptive jumps are needed to cross this room from right to left, and the stationary butler is a nice aesthetic touch (stationary guardians can be horizontal or vertical, but vertical makes the guardian-class more reusable as all guardian-instances will stay in the columns you put them in - (start-)column
being an instance-datum).

phantom giZmos: 099 Tyme 09:43am

i estimate three further playtests.

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
 

Andrew’s third playtest of Strangel:

this message follows on from message 5399.

a tough day for me today, as i hit a part of the game with lots of one-way exits, and spent ages contemplating the collectibility of the bottom-left item in "er tAp Darnce" [49], eventually having to leave the area without either success or a proof of uncollectibility 😮 (could be a job for SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW, although it doesn't recognise teleporters yet... but then i saw the answer in jswed, and extended my playtest to collect it).

phantom giZmos: 143 Tyme 11:35am

----------------------
room-specific comments
----------------------

[1] "Ins ( HADOW )": some nice quirky features, including having to stop on a conveyor to jump straight up, and jumping over a fire-cell to land inside adjacent water-cells, but i spent far too long trying to jump left from /under/ the diagonal guardian.

_____the upper green butler has unidirectional animation - is this intentional?

[5] "venDed F0OD": what a truly quirky invalid ramp! (direction =85). is it the overhead ramp/floor-cell that dumps you through the conveyor? an amazing discovery!

[9] "BAD HAiR daY": you have to jump into this room at the bottom-right, but it's easy to encounter infinite death if you jump fromtoo far to the left.
_____i like the ascent-avoidance challenge at the top-right.

[20] "FUMbling in the DARk": a darth-melkorish room reminiscent of the four extra rooms in pm-jsw, with its near-random cell-placements and many items.
_____it's intriguing what black-paper air does to a game with the "black willy" patch applied.

[29] "betTER shape UP": it's intriguing how the combination of an ilb and a ramp gives you the illusion of being able to fall through 8 cell-rows without dying!
....|.
..|...
|.....
......
......
......
......
...../
..../

[30] "clueLEsS": visually unique.

[34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": it's intriguing how the blind entrance from the conveyor in "in THE spotLITE" [25] makes you think you're still on a left-conveyor and induces you to run into a guardian!

[35] "rHythm and blues Angus Steakhaus": an intriguing room of quirky features once i got past the unfair one-way exit from my first visit. particularly noteworthy is the cunning use of a sticky conveyor, forcing you to make a pixel-perfect jump through the ramp-cell:
||..........||
......--...-.|
|-$.../....$-|
|||========|||
however, there's an infinite-death scenario if you stand on the water-cell at (7,28) and jump right into "clueLEsS" [30].

[39] "sisSy TOp": several interesting quirky design-patterns here, such as:
(a) the jump through the overhead earth-cell needed to get up onto a platform without hitting a fire-cell:
*...
|||.
...-
....
.-.-
(b) the way you can walk through the tall, blinking horizontal guardian (technically two of them);
(c) the two different cell-rows in which you can land by jumping left into the following column of earth-cells:
|
|
.
|
|

[49] "er tAp Darnce": an intriguing take on "The Bathroom" from the original jsw.

[51] "M T rOoMs": an intriguing array of quirky features in the middle of this room:
......|.......
*---|.........
-----------..|
|||>>>>>>>>>..
........-.....
........|*...-
.....*..|-...|
.../|||||||||.
but there's a pretty serious flaw in the geography, as you cannot take both the bottom-left item in this room and the rightmost item in "trICK STEP" [16] (two rooms to the left) before you are forced to take the one-way exit down from this room (it takes seven room-exits to get back here if you know the shortest route, which starts
with the nightmarish descent of "walK tHe paTH OF THE PRECiOUS 1s" [71]).

[59] "the ART of FLYING": an inventive use of invalid-arrow pairs to make the player fall through moving gaps from a great height (there's a similar feature in the brilliant spectrum platform-game _bruce lee_, which is basically jsw + ladders + kicking and punching, with more intelligent guardians, but without the intricate set challenges and quirky features of jsw).

[68] "fuLLy Clothed": jumping through the ilbs at the bottom-left are nasty one-way exits if you haven't collected the items in the correct order. i had to roll back to a not-so-recent snapshot on disk to rectify the mistake i made on my first visit.

[79] "the BAL cony": this room reminds me of the spectrum-game _freddy hardest_ (part 2), with its split-level screen-layout and the monkeys(?) that look like they're brachiating along overhead rails.

[86] "so yOu ThiNk You're Clev": a really cruel trick to make the player think they should be able to collect the bottom-left item in "er tAp Darnce" [49] this way - i spent ages agonising over it before i gave up and left the area.

[108] "Strange BIRD": a delightfully `manic miner' atmosphere.

[111] "water is BlUE": a prime example of using an item to lure a player to his/her death - it looks as though you should be able to escape after jumping up onto the main wall, but you have to sacrifice a life if you do it this way.

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
 

Andrew’s fourth playtest of Strangel:

this message follows on from message 5414.

----------------------
room-specific comments
----------------------

[13] "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT": cool room-title 🙂

[14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre": another cool room-title (which references a painting by rené magritte, "ceci n'est pas une pipe"), this is an intriguingly quirky room of invalid ramp-cells with a direction-byte of 59.

[20] "FUMbling in the DARk": the air-cell at (0,9) is just crying out for an item to fulfill the WIN-pattern (wall-item-nasty). i suggest moving the item at (1,10) to (0,9).

[21] "fast ACTING MELTUS!": good use of an invalid arrow to wipe out a platform after a certain time has elapsed, making the player have to reregister his/her start-position strategically.
_____but the infinite-death scenario if you jump left at the bottom-left is gratuitously nasty (there's no /direct/ option of walking out at this level).

[38] "gunzan money": the combination of a ramp and fire-cells creates a simple yet unique (afaik) challenge, as it would not be possible to get past these fire-cells without the ramp:
|-..../.
-..../..
..../...
.../....
../.....
./......
/*$$*$$*
========

[40] "stolen THUNDER!": a beautiful example of how you can pass through fire-cells in column 0 or 31 as you enter a room from the left or right respectively. because you have to jump rather than walk in, you don't experience repeated loss of lives until you move (please excuse the ambiguity of that sentence).

[41] "hiGH PAsS Filter": it's all too easy to fall to infinite death in the room below, which could be prevented by fire-cells in the top row.

[44] "It's a nOIse BeinG Noisy": falling through the leftmost hole in row 14 is an infinite-death scenario; falling through the middle or rightmost hole is a one-way exit (and it's a very long way back to this room).

[58] "EXTRA terrestRIAL gratIFicAtion": it makes no sense to be able to go down to "fuLLy Clothed" [68] by jumping through the ilb.

[62] "STICKY end ?": it's nice to see some more invalid arrows, but it's quite a long way back to this room if you fall off the bottom without collecting both items.

[83] "HEY! HEY! CAN YOU RELATE?!": infinite death if you walk off the bottom-middle platform to the left.

[84/85]: "iTemerAnts by tHE po0l": a really cool room-idea (was it inspired by "itemerant" in Philip Bee's _JSW (again)_ in any way?), flairsomely executed, especially with the use of a teleporter to animate the fake items (colour-cycling guardians).

[86] "frostie plaice": this reminds me of my afrikaan room-idea "FROSTI" (named for the björk track), which will also have white-paper background, but will feature a rope from which you have to jump for items.
_____the forbidden holy ground is most intriguing as it gives the illusion of moving holes in the platforms, when in fact you have to jump up for the item from below (through an overhead earth-cell).

[107] "turnabout": a major choice-point in the game. if you go right, it takes fifteen room-exits (through done-and-dusted rooms) to return here. if you go up, it takes many many more.

phantom giZmos: 241 Tyme 1:56pm

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

 

Andrew’s fifth playtest:

this message follows on from message 5429.

----------------------
room-specific comments
----------------------

[34] "not Everyone's Cup Of T": that seemingly unreachable rope giving access to "NUCLEAR c@s GeT new HOME" [36] (which i thought was purely aesthetic because i didn't have my lateral-thinking cap on) is one wicked trick! i had to go in deep, using SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW, to find a way into [36] - this is the only way to
collect all the items in [36] itself, "MicroVILLi" [37] and "i nformation" [46], which i thought for a long time was impossible! 🙂

[37] "MicroVILLi": the most spectacular use of invalid-arrow pairs in the game, to create narrow, fast-moving platforms which in turn inspired the technical design of goodnite luddite's "APOCRYPHALLY APOSTOLIC APOSTASY!" and "STATIONS OF THE KNIFE".

[45] "Noted": who would have thought diagonal guardians would have opened up such a new field of quirky features? (erroneous colour-attributes in rows 0 & 1, which behave as water, thus nullifying some earth- and fire-cells).
_____i can't tell you how long i spent trying to find a way from the top middle to the top right before i discovered the secret of [34]!

[46] "i nformation": another room which drove me mad for a long time until i discovered the secret of [34], as i could only collect one item and kamikaze another.
_____in fact this room is a prime example of items which are easy to kamikaze, but much more challenging and satisfying to collect without sacrificing a life.
_____the room requires a couple of very tight jumps under vertical guardians, and i find it most intriguing that exiting this room to the left - which looks like one of those unintentional loopholes i see so often in others' games - is the only way out of the [36,37,44,45,46] cluster.

phantom giZmos: 250 Tyme 2:08pm

----------
SPECSAISIE
----------

RoomReachJSW is an inverse lookup-function that tells you the direct connections to a given JSW room - the exits TO that room, not FROM it.

RoomReachJSW is written for 48K JSW games: currently it iterates over 64 rooms only, and does not recognise John Elliott's teleport-patch either.

But RoomReachJSW can be applied to JSW128 games by calling it for each of the four banks of 64 rooms separately (after using SPECSAISIE Split 3 6 to extract them as individual TAP files). The target room-number (the input to the function) is the same in every bank, but the source room-numbers (printed by the function) have to
be offset by 0, 64, 128 or 192.

I do intend to write a proper version of RoomReachJSW that handles JSW128 and JSW64, but first I have to implement SPECSAISIE's model of 128K memory, and methods for loading 128K SNA files and JSW128/JSW64 TAP files into SPECSAISIE, not to mention a bank:offset notation that can be used anywhere that an address is expected.

Today I wrote SPECSAISIE TeleportJSW, which lists the teleporters in a JSW48 or JSW128 game that uses John Elliott's teleport-patch. Some of that code will eventually help RoomReachJSW to recognise teleporters.

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

 

Andrew’s sixth, final playtest:

(this follows on from message 5431)

i finally completed strangel with a toilet-time of 3:06pm! 🙂

the toilet-run really is an extraordinary effort - far more than i can imagine putting into an end-sequence.

why did it take me so long to complete my playtest? the sticking-point had been the following items:
[2] "Extra Lucid OUTlet": (12,8)
[14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre": (9,28)
[16] "trICK STEP": (6,25); (13,24)

i can't believe it took me so long to realise that "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] was crossable from left to right. 😮

most of this long time was spent trying to reach the bottom-right of "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] from the room itself - i even found a quirky jump through the conveyor (across the room-boundary from "trICK STEP"), but it's not helpful.

i even used SPECSAISIE RoomReachJSW to analyse all possible connections leading to the above 4 items, and i think it is instructive to post this analysis:

---------------------
reachability-analysis
---------------------

[2] "Extra Lucid OUTlet" is reachable by going:
- right from "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] (would solve my problem)
- up from "Ins ( HADOW )" [1] (useful if i could get to top-left of
[1])
- down from "cAvernOUS-MUSings" [6] (useful if i could get to bottom-left of [6] and fall under the ramp)
- left from "skY laRK!!" [18] (not helpful)

[1] "Ins ( HADOW )" is reachable by going:
<snip useless connections>

[6] "cAvernOUS-MUSings" is reachable by going:
<snip useless connections>

[17] "laying down <THE LAw>" is reachable by going:
- up from "trICK STEP" [16] (would solve my problem)
- left from "Extra Lucid OUTlet" [2] (not helpful)
- right from "clueLEsS" [30] (not helpful)
- right from "iTemerAnts by tHE po0l" [84/85] (the eventual solution)

[16] "trICK STEP" is reachable by going:
- right from "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] (would solve my problem)
- down from "laying down <THE LAw>" [17] (would solve my problem)
- left from "the BAL cony" [79] (would solve my problem if i could come down at (0,0) on willy's leftmost frame)

[79] "the BAL cony" is reachable by going:
<snip useless connections>

[14] "ceci n'est pas une chambre" is reachable by going:
- up from "LEAST significant BIT" [11] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-right of [11])
- left from "trICK STEP" [16] (would solve my problem)
- right from "suSpensIoN BREAKDOWN" [10] (not helpful)

[11] "LEAST significant BIT" is reachable by going:
- left from "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT" [13] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-left of [13])
- down from "ceci n'est pas une chambre" [14] (not helpful)
- right from "the gRoPing spacE" [19] (not helpful)

[13] "aRroW/beLlBar rEcycling plANT" is reachable by going:
- right from "LEAST significant BIT" [11/12] (would solve my problem if i could reach top-right of [11/12])
- left from "Fl0oR flAW" [7] (not helpful)

[12] "LEAST significant BIT" is reachable by:
- teleport from "LEAST significant BIT" at (9,24) (not helpful)

-------------------
new quirky feature!
-------------------

i wanted to see if it would actually be possible to enter the main body of "trICK STEP" [16] by falling down into the top-left of "the BAL cony" [79], which has a fire-cell at (0,0) - would willy be able to dodge it by coming down on his leftmost sprite-frame and walking left immediately?

the answer is yes - if only there were a room from which willy could go down from the leftmost cell-column, facing left with his leftmost sprite-frame.

there is no such room, so i edited unused room 130 ("the pipe room") as follows:

________________________________ ||||||||*|-----|.....|*|||||||||
________________________________ .......|*|||||||.....||---------
________________________________ .......|*...*..|.....|||||||||||
________________________________ ||||||||*...*..|................
________________________________ *...*...*...|--|................
________________________________ ||--|..........|-------|........
________________________________ |......................*........
________________________________ |......................*........
________________________________ ||--|...............|--|........
________________________________ ........*........|..............
________________________________ ........|-----|..............|||
________________________________ ........*.....*..............|||
note the earth-cell in this row> ...|----|.....|--------||||.....
to force willy to land on his___ ..............*........||||.....
leftmost frame!_________________ ..............*........|||||||||
________________________________ ..|--|--|-----|........|||||||||
________________________________ __________the pipe room_________

|||||||.........-|||||........-| *|-|.*|**.*-.|.*--*|-..-|*--*-**
...............-||...........-|| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
..............-||...........-||| |.....|..|......|....|.........|
||||.........-||...........-||.| ......|..|..........|||........|
...||.......-||...........-||..| ......|..|.....................|
....||.....-||...........-||...| |...............................
..........-||...........-......| ................|..--|||........
.........-||.......*...-....|||| .......||.......|||||||||......|
||.....||||.......-|||||.......| |||||||||--...--||||||||||||||||
.................-...-.||*.....| |..............................|
................-...-..-||.....| |..............................|
||.............-...-..-.-||....| |..............................|
|||...........-...-..-.--.||.... ...............-...............|
||||.........-...-..-.--...||... ................................
|||||.*.....-...-..-.--...*|||.. ....*...*.........*....*..*.....
|||||||||||-|||||||||||||||||||| |------------------------------|
___________trICK STEP___________ __________the BAL cony__________

it's a vertical variant of the quirky feature whereby you can walk past a column of fire-cells in the leftmost or rightmost cell-column of a room.

--
dr. andrew broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/

[Sendy The Endless]

Thanks for digging that stuff from Andrew Broad up, Daniel! Some of this feedback will be invaluable should I decide to go ahead with a Strangel SE (Special Edition). The thought of Andrew having played the game on a real Speccy brings me joy. I'm thinking of getting my own retro gaming setup so I can play homebrew speccy games on a crappy TV, just like god intended : )))

Regarding the difficulty and audiences, I see Strangel, at least in its current form, is way too impenetrable for most players. I'd hazard a guess that no more than 5 people in the world have probably ever beaten it, but those few that did enjoyed the challenge.

Strangel 2 is going to be much, MUCH easier, so much so I might even name and story it to be its own canon. Not sure yet as I only have one room designed for it at the moment.

[Spider]

I think that's the record for the largest post 😯 36052 characters in 580 lines.

You know it should of been 32768 or 33792 characters length 😉

[MtM]

That is a vast post!

 

Does Andrew Broad still read these forums, he does not seem to have been around for a long time?

 

I downloaded Strangel from Danny's site Sendy, those colours are very strong, not the easiest colour scheme on the eye. However, different.

I am sure a new game would be great. Please make it easy to explore for people like me!

[Sendy The Endless]

Here's a start I've made to Strangel II. Just feeling out the general tone of what I want to go for...

[Sendy The Endless]

5 hours ago, MtM said:

I downloaded Strangel from Danny's site Sendy, those colours are very strong, not the easiest colour scheme on the eye. However, different.

The bright colours are pretty much THE defining feature of the Strangel series. Perhaps you need some 🕶️ sunglasses : )

[Spider]

@Sendy The EndlessI like what i see so far 🙂

 

4 hours ago, MtM said:

Does Andrew Broad still read these forums, he does not seem to have been around for a long time?

I'm not sure but I hope even if he has no "interest" (not really a suitable word sorry) he would occasionally browse here and read.

[Sendy The Endless]

Another room. Trying to go for a mix of spacious and cramped/sprawling rooms.