WHAT WILLY DID NEXT (2010)

1.  This is my first attempt at a Jet Set Willy game,if you overlook the one I did back in the Eighties when
the first room editors began to appear. That one was only a re-arrangement of room blocks and exits anyway as the editor
couldn't move items or sprite paths. Strangely enough you could actually tell it was based on JSW!
I came across World of Spectrum, Spectaculator and JSWED and got interested again.
   I chose the JSW 64V variant because I thought it would give an interesting mix of extra features.

2.  This game is in the classic style and doesn't have any particular theme because it just started out as an experiment to 
see if I could do it. I discovered Quirky Features part way through building this (yes, I really am that new to it) so I've 
scattered a few around. Some are well signposted by the room names and some aren't. Also some things are not what they seem.
There are several portals, not all of them obvious.

3.  Most of the sprites are original but although it's amazing what can be drawn convincingly in a 16x16 square there is a
limit to how different you can make the same sort of animal look and still be recognisable. Also some sprites can't really be 
improved on so I need to mention some credits.

4.  CREDITS:  A couple of Matthew Smith's sprites, such as the barrel, are still present. He should always get first mention.

I like Drunken Master's sprites and thanks are due to him for the use of 2 animated plants in "The Garden Room" which I couldn't
have drawn as well as he can and his skylab stalactites which were exactly right for the Bat Caves. You can't improve perfection!

Matthew Smith's ubiquitous bird has seen several modifications in other games and this one is no exception. Here it becomes a bat 
(smaller wings and big ears) and I have to thank Stuart Hill for the parrot which I borrowed from Dodecahedron. Perfect.

I enjoy Herve Ast's games a lot and I hope he won't mind me being inspired by his underwater scenes in Transatlantic Cruise. I had
some fun doing the Aquarium rooms in this game even though they're not as good as Herve's. Willy in a diving suit was actually 
drawn from scratch but then I discovered he was uncannilly similar to Herve's frogman. Oh well!

The style of this game owes a lot to the work of Daniel Gromann (Jet Set Danny) and Sendy (Alex Cornhill). Thankyou to both of them.
If they (or you) happen to notice any similarity between some of my puzzles and theirs I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Thanks to John Elliott for making this possible and also Dr.Andrew Broad for some machine coding advice. You might spot an experimental 
conveyor which randomly changes direction. In this form it's not a problem though. 

If anyone I've missed spots something too similar to theirs then I apologise and invite them to shout at me via the email address below.

5.  ROOM NAMES: My sense of humour is reflected in some of the room names. Sorry about that. (Not really).
The room called "Pump and Circumstance reborn" is so called because after animating a big water pump for this room I thought it was
really funny. Later I spotted it in Sendy's excellent Where's Woody but by then I wasn't prepared to abandon it so I added "Reborn". 
Don't you just hate it when that happens?
Another of the names might puzzle anyone not from the North of England. "Willy? Willy Eckaslike". It's local speak which translates as
"Will he? No, he certainly won't". Couldn't resist that, could I?
Some of the names reflect my musical tastes. Notably Neil Young if you spot those. I didn't overdo it though :-)
"You can't park here" was one of the digitised bits of speech that were used in an early JSW type game instead of (or as well as) 
background music. I can't remember the name of the game but it amused me a lot at the time and I haven't found it in the World of 
Spectrum library. Anyone know what it was?

6.  Having managed to run out of JSW time before finishing a long 128k game (due to forgetting to pause it once too often) and getting 
abruptly booted back to the start, I decided the clock was pointless in this game anyway. I've hacked it so that it carries on 
incrementing beyond 1.00am invisibly. So no worries!

7.  DIFFICULTY:  I believe that most players would be disappointed if a new game wasn't a realistic challenge, especially as most if not 
all will be using infinite lives and frequent snapshots as a matter of course.  I hope most people will find the difficulty level of
this acceptable. If you don't then tell me about it. I'll try to improve in the future. And I don't like eye straining colour clashes so 
you won't find any of those!
  I'm including a map which should only be needed as a last resort because it doesn't have illogical exits (well only slightly due to
extra rooms being shoe-horned in) and I have reason to be confident that an RZX walkthrough will be quickly available!

8.  THE STORY: Err, well it's about someone who has to walk about a lot picking up several glowing things and then run faster than his
legs can actually move to meet an old friend. Good eh?  

9.  ENJOY!  Hopefully.

Email:  rogernorth@btinternet.com