MANIC MINER: THE HOBBIT (C) 2000 BROADSOFT ======================= For the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Written by Andrew Broad Email: broada@cs.man.ac.uk Website: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold. The Game -------- To celebrate the first year of the third millennium (or the last year of the second millennium, for those who prefer to count from one rather than zero), I release my long-awaited games Manic Miner: The Hobbit and Jet Set Willy: Lord of the Rings! Manic Miner: The Hobbit is a redefinition of the screens in Matthew Smith's classic Manic Miner, which I acknowledge as being the copyright of Bug-Byte (1983). It is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's equally classic novel The Hobbit; I acknowledge the plot as being the copyright of George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 1951, 1975, 1979 and 1981. My idea was that The Hobbit would map quite nicely to Manic Miner as the former has 19 chapters and the latter has 20 rooms, so there is a room for each chapter in the book (in the same order), plus a bonus room to bring it up to 20. In MM:Hobbit, Miner Willy plays Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who is persuaded by Gandalf the wizard to go on an adventure with a group of dwarves to win back the treasure stolen from them by Smaug the dragon. MM:Hobbit is intended to appeal both to Spectrum fans and Tolkien fans. I therefore set out to make it only moderately difficult, but once again my notorious talent for writing difficult Manic Miner rooms has surfaced, and this game contains some of the best I have ever written! :-> So I decided to release an easy version of the game (HOB-LITE.TAP) alongside the definitive 'hard' version (HOBBIT.TAP). Good MM players should play the hard version first, and Hobbit fans should play the easy version first! ;-) To complete the game, you have to collect the flashing items in each room, which makes the portal start flashing so that you can go through it to the next room. If you complete the final room, you've won (and thus earned the moral right to play JSW:LOTR), but it takes you back to the start room in case you want to continue and increase your score. I have thoroughly play-tested both the hard version and the easy version, and I declare that it is possible to complete every room. I developed MM:Hobbit on a Spectrum +2, using my own Manic Miner Screen Editor (which is available for downloading from my website [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/]). I wrote MM:Hobbit between January and May 1998, reading a chapter a week and writing the corresponding room. I finished the rooms in May 1998. I returned to MM:Hobbit in October/November 1999 to edit the title screen, plug in the in-game music and make a few minor changes to the rooms. It was always my goal to release MM:Hobbit and JSW:LOTR together in January 2000. Many thanks to Richard Hallas for rescuing this game from tape and converting it to emulator format for me! ROOMS.TXT contains a blow-by-blow description of each room in MM:Hobbit. Loading Instructions -------------------- To play MM:Hobbit, you need a Spectrum emulator that is capable of loading TAP files (I hope I'm right in thinking that the emulators you all use are capable of loading TAP files, as I 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.kendalls.demon.co.uk/cssfaq/emulator.html]. 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 loading command to the emulated Spectrum (i.e. select Tape Loader or type LOAD "" (in 48K mode, press J for LOAD and SYMBOL-SHIFT+P for ")). You also have to open the TAP file in the emulator (either before or after issuing the loading instruction). I speak only from experience with MacSpectacle, but I expect the procedure is similar for other emulators. HOBBIT.TAP is the hard version of MM:Hobbit, and HOB-LITE.TAP is the easy version. The Music --------- I would like to thank Richard Hallas for his music document, A Miner Triad (hosted on my website at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/music.html), which was a useful aid to redefining the in-game music of Manic Miner. The in-game tune is different, depending if it is the hard version (HOBBIT.TAP) or the easy version (HOB-LITE.TAP). Both tunes come from a triptych of Norwegian folk songs which I played in an orchestra when I was a teenager, but unfortunately I can't for the life of me remember what it was or who composed it, despite a sincere search for it on the Internet. All I remember is that the piece I didn't use was called Saeterjentens Sonntag (Sheepgirl's Sunday), and the piece I use for the hard version is called Den Bakvende Visa (The Awkward Song). My Norwegian spelling is probably slightly erroneous there. I had to adapt Den Bakvende Visa from 3:4 to 4:4 time (the in-game tune has to be exactly 64 notes of equal duration) by converting the two quavers at the end of each bar to crotchets. Internet -------- I currently have a website at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ (though it may disappear in the future if I lose access to the Internet). Some relevant pages within this website are: * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/ Top-level index of my Spectrum pages. * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/ My Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy pages, including a list of Spectrum MM/JSW games (which I try to maintain as complete and up-to-date as possible - please inform me of any I have missed), my Manic Miner Room Format (an excellent source of the technical information behind MM:Hobbit, though I do say so myself! ;-) ), Richard Hallas's music document, a list of some of the quirky features in MM/JSW which I use in my games, and links to other MM/JSW websites. * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/ My download page. Currently contains my other games (Manic Miner 4, Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia and Jet Set Willy: We Pretty), and my Manic Miner Screen Editor. Also has previews of forthcoming software (mostly MM/JSW games), including projected release dates (which may change over time according to my progress). * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/tolkien.zip The original source of MM:Hobbit and JSW:LOTR! I recommend 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 day. I announce my releases on comp.sys.sinclair (though it's better to check my web pages periodically for MM/JSW news). The newsgroup is archived at http://www.deja.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! I recently set up a Yahoo! club for Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. Its URL is:- http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/manicminerandjetsetwilly It includes a message board for discussing MM/JSW, picture galleries which members can upload to, a Java chat room, a links page and a calendar. Anyone can visit the club and look around its public areas, but for full privileges you have to join the club as a member. This prerequires signing up for a Yahoo! account, which you can do, free of charge, over the web. The club will become what we, the MM/JSW community, collectively make it. The club needs members, so please join! Copyright Notice ---------------- Manic Miner: The Hobbit is, of course, my copyright, but I don't mind you putting it on your own website or redistributing it otherwise, provided that no money is charged, and that you acknowledge that it is the copyright of Broadsoft (2000). This document should be included with all copies of the game. Modifications are discouraged but not forbidden, and you should state specifically what you have modified. I don't mind you reusing some of the rooms, graphics etc. in your own games, or converting the game to another computer (e.g. for MM PC). However, the accompanying documentation must state that the reused material is the copyright of Broadsoft - failure to do so may be construed as plagiarism. I would like the documentation to be quite specific about this, e.g. "Graphic X in Room Y was taken from Manic Miner: The Hobbit", or whatever. Please let me know if you do rerelease Manic Miner: The Hobbit or reuse bits of it - it's not that I'd be likely to object, I'd just be very interested to know what follows from my releasing it! Version History --------------- 5th January 2000: Initial release of Manic Miner: The Hobbit on the Internet, together with Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings.