Willy Takes a Trip ================== AKA my third JSW game, following "J4" and contributions to "Willy the Hacker" and "J4". It's (hopefully) more coherent than J4 and more challenging than WtH, it makes much more use of patch vectors too. Like both of these games, there isn't a single consistent theme in the game; rather there are several groups of adjacent rooms which share a theme, albeit somewhat loosely. By now the basic JSW engine has been very badly jacked to support Geoff mode. Future games should feature it tidied up a bit, with extra features: diagonal sprites, for example! Important notice (to be read and understood before playing) ----------------------------------------------------------- [asbestos garments ON] The title is inspired by "Granny Takes a Trip", a reference to the name of a shop in Swinging London in the mid-sixties. While the "trip" in this is doubtless a reference to drugs, I want to make it clear that it and similar drug references in the game are intended FOR HUMOUR VALUE ONLY and DO NOT promote, advocate or condone the use of drugs, legal or otherwise. If you are nevertheless liable to take offence at these, I can only suggest that you don't play the game. I don't think that taking drugs is at all clever, and - potential flamers please note - I don't actually "do" any drugs, except for the odd glass of wine or champagne. But I do rather enjoy the black humour which goes with some aspects of drug-taking, and some of this humour found its way into the game. I suspect that this is also true of the original JSW, which - so Matthew Smith claimed in his interview with YS - was written under the influence of certain unspecified but probably illegal substances. Flamage which displays no understanding of the above will be sent to the bit bucket. The rest of you, just enjoy! [asbestos garments OFF] "Enough preaching; get on with the GAME, Geoff!" What's the music? ----------------- The title tune is, of course, "Greensleeves", and I defy anyone to fix the bum low note! The in-game tune is one half (the lower one) of the guitar riff from "And Your Bird Can Sing" by the Beatles. Room descriptions ----------------- "Power Source": Every game should have one! "The Underground Laboratory": The first room which will be encountered in the subterranean section of the game. "The Store Room": Self-explanatory; could it be a refugee from _Technicial Ted_? SPOILER: From some angles the green thingee isn't as deadly as it is from others. "The Mysterious Passage": Mysterious for an unfathomable reason which is in itself full of mystery. "The Secret Cabinet Minister": Originally just a cabinet, but the pun was irresistible. There are many (some might say too many) such puns in this game. "Low Tonee": A particularly awful pun on the name of another room. Nothing to do with laser printers. "The Graveyard of Awful Jokes": All puns lead here, as they have to. "Downhill": Not as empty as it may appear! Linked to "The Store Room" by means both foul and devious. The sprite, by the way, started life as a type of waterfowl; the legs are Willy's. "The Garden of Forbidden Fruits": Mostly limes. SPOILER: There's a surprise at the bottom-left, if you're facing the right way... "The Room of Stippled Blocks": A tribute to rooms we've all known which betray a lack of inspiration for the block designs! Notice the rather lethal patch vector; it's there to ensure that the room isn't *too* easy. "A Quiet Corner to rest in": I thought of having a room with a moving gap in the floor or ceiling, but no room seemed appropriate. Instead, I found a rather better solution, which JSW conoisseurs should appreciate. It can be done; remember, as in _The Hobbit_, that barrels float. "Phew, That Was Lucky": See the Cliff room for explanation of the title. Dig the groovy conveyor while you're figuring it out! "Field": Precisely that. Remnants of the Megatree here, possibly. The start of the "outdoor" zone. "Manic Mushrooms": A legacy of Willy's fungal obsession from "Willy the Hacker", of course. It was originally called "Magic Mushrooms" a title which was later moved elsewhere. "Hi Toni!": This and some of the neighbouring rooms are a tribute of sorts to Toni Baker, a Z80 hacker who wrote several books and contributed to certain Speccy Magazines. One of her contributions was a UDG editor (YS #6, IIRC), to which a reader added a short initialisation routine; the last comment in the source for this routine was the name of this room. I suspect that the object should properly be "AB", but in the absence of further information I can't be sure. "Light Screen Designer": Another Toni Baker room. The source code for a drawing program of hers for the Speccy was serialised over several months in "ZX Computing"; the name of the program provides the title for this room. Whether or not the name was a joke - think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" - I've never found out. "Up and down like a metronome": There was to have been a companion room called "Back and forward like a yo-yo", but it got lost in the cracks of the space-time continuum, whatever that is. "No Place Like Home": The name is Roslyn's suggestion. The objects at the bottom are collectible, but in a non-obvious way which needs a little extra-terrestrial help. "The Arches of Despair, I fear": Some sort of reference to Greek mythology, I think. Watch out for the conveyors! "Nineteen - Not out!": The title comes from a song by "The Commentators" (the comedian Rory Bremner under an alias), which parodied both Paul Hardcastle's then-current hit single "19" and the ineptitude of the England Cricket team. (Nothing changes!) This is, of course, room 19, and the block designs each reflect this. "Iain's Stomach": A legendary bottomless pit. Ask him about the smorgasbord at the Holiday Inn at Hogmanay. "Up a tree": A companion to "Field". SPOILER: There's a hidden exit in this room, but you have to know where to find it... "Dense Undergrowth": A transition between the pastoral rooms below and the more urban rooms above. "Wherever you are...": Where is Toni Baker now, I wonder? She was believed to have been sighted on the cover of an early issue of YS, but apart form that, nothing... "Master Machine Code!!!!": Among Toni Baker's books was the classic text "Mastering Machine Code on your Spectrum". Those of you who cut their hacking teeth on the venerable ZX81 will doubtless remember screens like this! SPOILER: you have to clean this room for sympathy. "The Cloakroom Attendants": I think this is another subconscious reference to _Technician Ted_. "The Three Wise Men": There were to have been seven (or was it six?), as in the Government's economic advisors, but there wasn't room for them all. "Reception / Antechamber": The henious practice of getting two rooms for the price of one is exposed once again. (One of my earlier JSW games had three rooms in one.) "The Windowbox": Well, it had to go somewhere. "Oh no! CLIFF!": A reference to an episode of the comedy series "The Young Ones", in which the four intrepid heroes were IIRC stuck on a runaway bus. The title of the room comes from a comment made by one of them on seeing a sign advertising the film "Summer Holiday"; the bus promptly fell off a cliff and landed on a beach, whereupon a voice said "Phew, that was lucky" - hence the room some distance below. "What's This?": A reference to the unidentifiable sprites, suggestions for whose identities will be gratefully be accepted. "Doubleback Alley": The title of a song by the Rutles, a Beatles spoof band who featured on Eric Idle's "Rutland Weekend Television" and in the very fine spin-off film "All you need is Cash". The song itself is a rather effective pastiche of "Penny Lane", probably one of the greatest singles ever. (I'm showing my age here!) The objects are supposed to be milk-bottles, for reasons which are obvious if you've heard the song. "with sugar": Part of a wider original concept that originally included "Tea!" and two unused rooms "The Cow" and "With milk". This was abandoned when I realised there was no way I could draw a sensible cow with JSW blocks. "The Big White Telephone": Talking to God on this instrument of communication is an activity also referred to as "Driving the Porcelain Bus" and "Going to meet Huey and Ralph". Said activity may be observed at the end of the game. "some sort of castle, I suppose": From an entry in "The Deeper Meaning of Liff", viz: "PARROG: Could be some sort of bird, I suppose". "Don't Rest until Grandma's Sober": A reference to a song lyric in a short sketch in a comedy programme with Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones, whose title I forget. The sketch was a take-off of the Beatles circa 1967 and revolved around the supposed drug references in their songs. Clue: think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" again. "Alice in Acidland": A reference to a laughable film from 1968 which purported to be an anti-drug polemic but soon turned into what they used to call a "nudie", in which the eponymous heroine fell in with a group of "twilight hippies" who turned her on to LSD. "The Steno Pool (or maybe not!)": In a review of the aforementioned film on the Internet, most of the cast are described as looking like they came from the steno pool (= typing pool, but with stenographers). I don't know what that was supposed to mean, but this room probably doesn't look anything like a steno pool. SPOILER: The object is collected by jumping through a solid block in the room below; Andrew Broad suggested this. "The Penthouse Suite": There's a game in here somewhere. Hmm... "The Balcony": Hmm... this theme could indeed be quite promising - a JSW game set in a house? "The Leith Police": At the time of writing, I work in Leith, but I couldn't tell you how that relates to this room. "Willy's Drinking Licence": This comes from an idea of Andrew Broad's that people should be allowed at most one of a licence to drink and a licence to drive. Gnash your teeth at the deviously simple but devilishly cunning patch vector. "Tea!": Another, rather obscure, Rutles reference, and an excuse for further terrible puns (this is room 42). A rather frustrating room too. "Womflechompies": I don't know where the title came from! "The Hideaway": Not much happening here - SPOILER: hang on, what's that at the bottom-right corner? "The Custard's Last Stand": Pun-o-rama! The jumping-off point for several different directions (well, three actually). "Holy Floor!": Is this the only Batman reference in a JSW game? Or is it yet another bad pun? The jury's still out. "Twilight Hippies": See Alice. Harder than I'd intended it, thanks to a bug in the block-drawing code. "Health-food faggot": The opening line to King Crimson's "The Great Deceiver". Not the first King Crimson-inspired JSW room, either. The blocks are supposed to be wafers of something, and create a rather effective optical illusion, if I may say so. "Not normally baffling": Although it can be sometimes. "Crack City": A David Bowie reference this time, ultimately inspired by Andrew Broad. "The Promised Land (arctic)": Yes, the main part of the room *is* reachable, but you have to gain sympathy first. "The Promised Land (tropical)": A companion to the above. Strictly speaking, neither room is a proper Promised Land, but the titles have stuck nevertheless. and I can't think of better ones. "but no sympathy": A sort of free-association with the room below, via "rich tea and sympathy", whatever that is. A very difficult room indeed; one of my hardest ever. "Eeee, I think I can fly!": An obnoxious green duck puppet called Orville, who had Keith Harris's hand up its behind, had a hit single with this title in 1986 (IIRC). Orville's titular squeaks were later sampled on a dance record which celebrated Ecstasy. The irony of this was too good to waste. "Bike Ride to the Moon": The title comes from a song by the Dukes of Stratosphear, from their album "25 O'Clock", and was suggested to me by Alasdair of J4 fame. A very lunar room too, if I say so myself. "Oh no! SPACE INVADERS!!!": "Willy the Hacker" had a Pac-Man room, so here's another room celebrating one of the original computer games. Enjoy the use to which the patch vector is put in this room! Those who remember the original Space Invaders may, rightly, insist that colour is provided solely by coloured strips across the room; but for lack of memory, this would have been implemented in a patch vector. "Psychic Bread and Butter": A line from the fine song "Soul Food", by the sadly now defunct band Cud. "Magic Mushrooms": Here it is, the most garish patch vector of them all! "Weeds": The upper levels are reachable in non-obvious ways. The title introduces the zone which pertains to a certain recreational herb. "Don't Inhale, Billy": This is, of course, a reference to Bill Clinton's solitary drug-related experience. The title was also used as a sample filename in an example of a Linux command in a book. "Good Skunk": Credit goes to Andrew Broad for suggesting that the liquid blocks be made into stairs, a la "Out on a Limb". The patch vector didn't turn out quite how I'd wanted it - Willy wasn't supposed to turn white when he fell - but the effect makes some sense all the same. "Gettin' Really High": Who knows where lies the only way out? Can you stay straight for long enough to find it? "...": AKA "My Drugs Hell by Miner Willy". Screaming paranoia and unpleasant flashbacks. What happens if you overdo it. Credits and others ------------------ I am indebted to Andrew Broad for his comments and suggestions during the gestation and creation of this game, and have no hesitation in heartily recommending his JSW games to JSW conoisseurs all and sundry. Alasdair Swanson gets a mention for suggesting certain room titles and patch vectors. This game is in the public domain: share and enjoy! If you want to copy any parts of it, feel free - but give me a mention. Emails with comments, suggestions and bugfixes to: geoff@morven.compulink.co.uk "Bugfixes"? There shouldn't be any bugs - it should be possible to comlpete the game without losing any lives - but I can't be sure. Any which are found will be credited.