JSW64: FLASH MANIC MINER (C) MATTHEW GORDON 2005, BROADSOFT 2008 ======================== [v1.0] For the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128K Caverns by Matthew Gordon http://www.darnkitty.com/manic/ Spectrum conversion by Andrew Broad http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/ -------- The Game -------- JSW64: Flash Manic Miner is a redefinition of the rooms in Matthew Smith's classic Manic Miner, which we acknowledge as being the copyright of Bug-Byte (1983). Flash Manic Miner, by Matthew Gordon, is a highly addictive online version of Manic Miner, featuring a high-score table, and extra caverns beyond the original 20. Andrew Broad decided to convert these extra caverns to the Spectrum: Caverns 21 to 43 of Flash Manic Miner map to Rooms 0 to 22 of the JSW64 conversion, with Room 22's portal looping back to Room 3, because for n >= 44, Cavern n is identical to Cavern n-20. JSW64: Flash Manic Miner features all the new caverns from Flash Manic Miner: [0] Cavern 21: "Central Cavern II" [1] Cavern 22: "The Other Cold Room" [2] Cavern 23: "The Aviary" [3] Cavern 24: "Decaying Uranium Workings" [4] Cavern 25: "Revenge Of The Clones" [5] Cavern 26: "Processing Plant II" [6] Cavern 27: "Phat" [7] Cavern 28: "Willy meets the Kong Beast again" [8] Cavern 29: "Lots and Lots of Amoebatrons" [9] Cavern 30: "The Tser Of Nairodne" [10] Cavern 31: "Attack of the Senohpelet Tnatum" [11] Cavern 32: "Return of the Alien Kong Beast" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that the green HG starts one column further to the left) [12] Cavern 33: "Ore Refinery" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that the yellow HG starts one column further to the left) [13] Cavern 34: "Skylab Looting Bay" [14] Cavern 35: "The Bank" (identical to the Spectrum-original) [15] Cavern 36: "The Thirty-sixth Cavern" (identical to "The Sixteenth Cavern" except for the room-name) [16] Cavern 37: "The Warehouse" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that the Fire-cells have black PAPER) [17] Cavern 38: "Amoebatrons' Revenge" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that the yellow HG starts one column further to the left) [18] Cavern 39: "Solar Power Generator" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that the red HG starts one column further to the left, and there is no solar power) [19] Cavern 40: "The Final Barrier" (identical to the Spectrum-original except that there is no custom picture in rows 0-7, and no swordfish-routine) [20] Cavern 41: "Central Cavern III" (identical to Cavern 21 except for the room-name) [21] Cavern 42: "The Other Other Cold Room" (identical to Cavern 22 except for the room-name) [22] Cavern 43: "Killer Birds" JSW64: Flash Manic Miner is based on John Elliott's Jet Set Willy 64 game-engine (Variant Z, Hacklevel 12) - mainly so that each room can have more than 5 items whilst retaining all the features of Manic Miner, but also because, in Spectrum MM/JSW, you cannot fall onto a conveyor and walk the wrong way along it - a feature simulated using an invisible Ramp-cell in "Central Cavern II" [0] and "Skylab Looting Bay" [13]. Flash Manic Miner allows guardians to pass through 'inkful' cells without killing you. Andrew did write a patch to allow this in Spectrum JSW (a beta-version is available from the Files section of the Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group ), but unfortunately it slows the game down so much that he decided not to apply it to JSW64: Flash Manic Miner, and to use his old friend SPECSAISIE PunchHoles instead: to knock those pixels out of the guardian-sprites that would collide with the pixels of the Fire-cells they pass through in "Lots and Lots of Amoebatrons" [8] and "Attack of the Senohpelet Tnatum" [10]. Flash Manic Miner allows a guardian's (start-)column to be specified in pixels, whereas JSW64 only allows it to be specified in characters. Therefore, the vertical guardians in "Lots and Lots of Amoebatrons" [8] and "Attack of the Senohpelet Tnatum" [10] whose columns are four pixel-columns to the side of the character-boundary have been simulated using: (a) two more copies of the vertical sprite, each shifted four places to the left/right, and with its leftmost/rightmost four pixel-rows blanked out (see #E500-E6FF); (b) two guardians to simulate each such guardian, using the two halves of the sprite from (a). In a completely faithful conversion, the bottom-right Eugene in "Revenge Of The Clones" [4] would also be four pixels to the left, but because it would collide with the bottom-right Fire-cell, and doesn't affect the gameplay, Andrew decided it would be neater to keep it character-aligned than to rip off its left arm. Flash Manic Miner also allows a horizontal guardian's horizontal start-position and boundaries to be specified in pixels, whereas Spectrum MM/JSW only allows them to be specified in characters. Andrew has not attempted to write a patch for this; he has merely made a decision for each horizontal guardian, including in its path all character-columns that the corresponding guardian in Flash Manic Miner steps into. Flash Manic Miner also allows vertical guardians to go up off the top of the screen: for example, the second-rightmost amoebatron in "Lots and Lots of Amoebatrons" [8]. Andrew has set its top boundary to the top of the screen for now, but should he ever release a special edition, he may attempt to write a patch to allow it to go up off the top. Flash Manic Miner allows white guardians to pass through items without killing you (as in Spectrum MM) or collecting them (as in JSW64). So Andrew had to recolour the white Skylab in Cavern 34: he decided on green, as that fits in best with the lighter colours of the other Skylabs. In Flash Manic Miner, the falling Kong Beast is red instead of yellow. Andrew has applied POKE 39176,2 (#9908: 02) to implement this change. Because "Killer Birds" [22] loops back to "Decaying Uranium Workings" [3], Room 22's portal patch-vector needs to call the code that marks all the items in the game as uncollected. This could be done by setting the patch-vector to #986F, but instead it has been set to #9856 so that it makes the swordfish-sound first: 3:#D8F9: 56 98 Andrew has thoroughly playtested v1.0, and certifies that it /is/ possible to complete. You can consider yourself to have passed JSW64: Flash Manic Miner if you complete Rooms 0 to 22 ("Killer Birds" is the last room edited) using infinite lives (POKE 35899,0) on a real Spectrum, or saving and loading snapshots on an emulator. If you cheat by using any other POKEs, or by using WRITETYPER, you should consider yourself disqualified. ;-) Your completion-time is the time you enter the portal of "Killer Birds" [22], after which the game loops back to "Decaying Uranium Workings" [3]. -------------------- Loading-Instructions -------------------- To play JSW64: Flash Manic Miner, you need a Spectrum-emulator that is capable of loading TAP-files (we hope we're right in thinking that the emulators you all use are capable of loading TAP-files, as we don't want to complicate matters by also releasing snapshot-files). To find an emulator for your particular computer, see the Emulators section of the comp.sys.sinclair FAQ [http://www.shadowmagic.org.uk/cssfaq/emulators/emulators.htm]. A TAP-file is an encoding of the files on a Spectrum-tape (as opposed to a snapshot-file, which is an encoding of the complete state of a Spectrum at the moment it was created). To load from a TAP-file, you have to issue a load-command to the emulated Spectrum: make sure your emulator is in 128K mode, then select Tape Loader. You also have to open the TAP-file in the emulator (either before or after issuing the load-command). Users of certain emulators (e.g. Spectaculator) may find that the loader crashes when you press any key after being prompted to do so. This is because it tries to load another file from the tape at this point (one which overwrites the video-RAM, and cannot therefore be loaded before the copyright-screen appears). In this case, you need to tell your emulator to stop the tape at the position indicated below: 1. Program: Flash MM 2. Bytes: hiload.jz7 3. Bytes: rooms.jz1 4. Bytes: rooms.jz3 5. Bytes: title.jz7 6. Bytes: rtime.jz2 7. Bytes: main.tun 8. Bytes: cheat.tun 9. Bytes: tune.bin *** STOP THE TAPE HERE *** 10. Bytes: title.tun ---------------- Acknowledgements ---------------- * Matthew Smith, for writing the original Jet Set Willy, and in particular for deciding on an unencrypted, perspicuous room-format! ;-) * Matthew Gordon, for the extra caverns in Flash Manic Miner. * John Elliott, for the JSW64 family of game-engines. * Andrew Broad wrote JSW64: Flash Manic Miner using John Elliott's JSWED (v2.2.9 and v.2.3.2), and playtested the game using Ramsoft's RealSpectrum v0.97.23. * The game uses Andrew Broad's patch to disable the room-exits in JSW64 (introduced in JSW64 Manic Miner: James Bond v1.0, Broadsoft, 2007), allowing you to jump up off the top of the screen in Cavern 31. Comparing snapshots before and after doing so does not reveal any inappropriate memory-locations being overwritten, as they are in Manic Miner, so Andrew has not bothered to adapt to JSW64 his patch to fix that bug (introduced in Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman, Broadsoft, 2004). * Our fellow MM/JSW authors, for general inspiration. * Carl Woffenden, for the JavaScript version of Manic Miner upon which Flash Manic Miner is based. -------- Internet -------- Matthew Gordon's Flash Manic Miner can be played online at: http://www.darnkitty.com/manic/ Andrew Broad currently has a website at http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/. Some relevant pages within this website are: * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ Top-level index of his Spectrum pages. * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/ Andrew's Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy pages, including a list of Spectrum MM/JSW games (which he tries to maintain as complete and up-to-date as possible - please inform him of any he has missed), various other MM/JSW documents, and links to other MM/JSW websites. * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/download/ Andrew's download page. Currently contains his other games, his Manic Miner Screen Editor, his Jet Set Willy Construction Kit and his Java toolkit SPECSAISIE. Also has previews of forthcoming software (mostly MM/JSW games). Andrew Broad founded a Yahoo! Group for Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. Its URL is:- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manicminerandjetsetwilly/ It includes a message-board for discussing MM/JSW (with options for receiving and sending messages by email), Files and Photos (i.e. screenshots) sections which members can upload to, Links and Calendar. Anyone can visit the Group and look around its public areas, but for full privileges you have to join the Group as a member. This prerequires signing up for a Yahoo! account, which you can do, free of charge, over the Web. Andrew encourages all members of the MM/JSW community to join this Group. Andrew recommends the comp.sys.sinclair USENET newsgroup as a place for discussing MM/JSW and other Spectrum-related topics. It's worth at least browsing through the headers each week. The newsgroup is archived at http://groups.google.com/ for those who don't have access to a news-server - in fact, it's worth surfing there even if you do, as not all news-servers receive all newsgroup-postings! The World Of Spectrum fora [http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/] are worth browsing through on a regular basis, particularly the Games forum (this is something Andrew does on a weekly basis). ---------------- Copyright-Notice ---------------- JSW64: Flash Manic Miner is, of course, our copyright (caverns by Matthew Gordon, Spectrum conversion by Andrew Broad), but we don't mind you putting the JSW64 game on your own website or redistributing it otherwise, provided that no money is charged, and that you acknowledge that it is the copyright of Matthew Gordon (2005) and Broadsoft (2008). This document must be included with all copies of the game. Modifications are discouraged but not forbidden, and you should state specifically what you have modified. We don't mind you reusing some of the rooms &c. in your own games, or converting the game to another computer (e.g. for JSW-PC). However, the accompanying documentation must state that the reused material is the copyright of Matthew Gordon and Broadsoft - failure to do so may be construed as plagiarism. We would like the documentation to be quite specific about this, e.g. "Room Y was taken from JSW64: Flash Manic Miner", or whatever. Please let us know if you do rerelease JSW64: Flash Manic Miner or reuse bits of it - it's not that we'd be likely to object, we'd just be very interested to know what follows from our releasing it! ---------------- Revision-History ---------------- 31st December 2008: Initial gamma-release of JSW64: Flash Manic Miner (v1.0).