MANIC MINER: MATTHEW SMITH 2008 REMIX (C) BROADSOFT 2008 ===================================== For the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Written by Andrew Broad http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/ -------- The Game -------- Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix is a minor variant of Matthew Smith's classic Manic Miner, which I acknowledge as being the copyright of Bug-Byte (1983). It also uses a few graphics from the second edition of Manic Miner (Copyright Software Projects 1983) - as detailed below - and the item-collection sound from Jet Set Willy (Copyright Software Projecs 1984). Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix was inspired by an interview with Matthew Smith in the Load 48 issue of _Retro Gamer_ magazine, published in February 2008, in which he commentated on each of the caverns in Manic Miner - including how he would have done things differently. So I decided to take these comments on board as far as possible within the limitations of the original Manic Miner game-engine, and also make some minor changes of my own while I was at it. I wanted to show off the unused cell-graphics in each cavern by putting some in, bring each room up to the maximum five items, and force you to do things that Matthew Smith clearly intended but didn't enforce, or things you might not otherwise have thought of trying in the original Manic Miner caverns. The rooms in this variant are harder than the original caverns, but not as hard as my own MM/JSW rooms, and certainly not as quirky! I have used the trick of embedding items in Crumbly cells in many places - you have to get rid of the Crumbly before you can collect the item - as it is an excellent way to protect items from being jumped up for from below. I wrote this game in less than a day. I had been intending to do it for months, and finally got around to it on 30th December 2008. I have thoroughly playtested the final version, and I certify that it /is/ possible to complete. You can consider yourself to have passed Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix if you finish the game using infinite lives (POKE 35136,0) on a real Spectrum, or saving and loading snapshots on an emulator. If you cheat by using any other POKEs, or by using the "6031769" teleport-cheat (POKE 33885,7), you should consider yourself disqualified. ;-) ----------- The Caverns ----------- [0] "Central Cavern": Matthew Smith said he intended the jump from the conveyor to the second-highest platform as a "difficult jump... but I put in a safety net." So I have Aired out the lower platform to enforce the difficult jump. :-> [1] "The Cold Room": Matthew Smith said he was "thinking about tweaking a pixel. I'm not sure if it would be better light or dark. I must have tried it both ways back then." I believe he was referring to a pixel in the item-graphic, so I have made my best guess as to which one, and toggled it. I have also added two Crumbly cells to the chimney, knowing that it's okay to embed an item in a Crumbly cell as long as the player /can/ make it crumble. I have moved that item down to a lower row, forcing the player to go down the chimney rather than jumping out at the top and falling down into the portal. In fact, I have placed the item low enough to make the player feel (s)he can jump up for it from the bottom - you cannot collect it that way because it's embedded in a Crumbly cell. I have moved the top-left item to force you to walk on a platform you otherwise wouldn't have to, and added some Fire 2 cells to make the top left a bit more interesting. There are no Fire 1 cells in this room, so I have added some to show the graphic. The double Fire-cells under the top-right item are to stop you jumping up for it from below. [2] "The Menagerie": Matthew Smith admitted it was "a bit lame" to have only two kinds of animal. "There should be at least three before you call it a menagerie!" So I have edited the Fire 1 cell-type (originally a poisonous pansy, as in "Central Cavern" to look like a snake, and put some Fire 1 cells in the room. In the process, I have forced you to jump up the leftmost spider's thread, which is actually three Water 2 cells. [3] "Abandoned Uranium Workings": Once again, there are no Fire 1 cells in this room, so I have added some, and of course I couldn't resist forcing you to interact with the seals - in both directions! :-> This is enforced using a Crumbly cell that you need to save for a difficult jump later. After all, Matthew Smith described it as "a room full of difficult jumps", yet the original does not require any pixel-perfect jumps, so I have removed several Water-cells to make them pixel-perfect. [4] "Eugene's Lair": Matthew Smith said the items are supposed to be stacks of credit-cards. "I had a choice of putting in a line to show they're stacked," he said, so I have attempted to do so - I found it much more difficult than it sounds, especially within the limitations of 8x8 pixels. I also added a couple of Fire 2 cells to make the top-left a bit more interesting, and started you at the bottom-right so that you have to go up to the top-left (to collect an item that has moved) as well as down from there! [5] "Pac-Man": Matthew Smith said the pacmen have legs because they have a diameter of 10 pixels - the maximum width for smooth horizontal guardians. So I thought it would be interesting to see what they look like without legs, and to rename the cavern for the arcade-game that inspired it. I've also changed the pixel-patterns for Fire 1 and Item to those from the Software Projects edition of Manic Miner. The interview mentioned "traversing along platforms with restricted headroom", but it's not really restricted because most of it is Water-cells. Matthew Smith said "I usually tried to get you to go across the screen as many times as possible," but that's not really true of the original. So I've made a few changes in light of these two comments... There are no Crumbly cells in the original, so I've added some, cleverly designed to make you pay on the second crossing for mistakes on the first crossing. I have moved the bottom-right item down, forcing you to jump over the bottom-right pacman. There's an innocent-looking block (ILB) to be jumped through - it isn't necessary, because I didn't think it appropriate to make this game overly quirky, but it could save either time or a tight jump over that pacman! [6] "The Vat": I have embedded all the items in Crumbly cells, which may surprise a player who tries to jump for the bottom-left item from below. I have moved one item to the left half for a quirky challenge: you have to get rid of the Crumbly cell first, then jump down onto the Earth-cells so that you can jump up for the item from below. I've added a few Fire 1 cells, because there are none in the original, and to increase the challenge of the left half. [7] "Donkey Kong": Matthew Smith said, "I should have put hammers in and it would have been a complete tribute to Donkey Kong." So I have redrawn the item-graphic as a hammer, and changed the title accordingly. Matthew Smith said flicking the second switch was optional on purpose rather than an oversight. "You don't have to kill the monkey, man!" So I have added a fifth item to force you to at least to go up there, as you have to liberate it from a Crumbly cell before you can jump for it. I have also added some Water-cells that force you to squeeze past the cyan barrel on your way down. I have added some more Crumbly cells, primarily to make them visible, and an extra Fire 1 cell to make it trickier to escape after collecting the bottom-right item. [8] "Wacky Amoebatrons": This is supposed to be a test of what shapes you can clear, and Matthew Smith originally wanted to make the tall, thin sticks to go up and down so that you had to jump over them at the correct time. Of course this can't really be done properly in Manic Miner, because all horizontal guardians in a room have to use the same sprite. It could be implemented in Jet Set Willy using two guardians, but I was unwilling to upgrade this game to JSW64 just for that, so instead I have moved the horizontal guardians up one cell-row, chopping off the wheels and having the sticks vary in height instead. The article says: 'It's also the first level to undergo a change when Manic Miner was re-released through Software Projects. "Yeah, the amoebatrons were originally the Bug-Byte logo, so I changed them when I left. Didn't need any legal advice on that one!" In fact there are no changes between the Bug-Byte and Software Projects editions of "Wacky Amoebatrons", but ironically, the jellyfish in "Amoebatrons' Revenge" [17] were changed in the Software Projects edition to a sprite that resembles the Bug-Byte logo much more closely than the vertical sprites in "Wacky Amoebatrons"! So for this remix, I decided to change the vertical sprites in "Wacky Amoebatrons" to those in the Software Projects edition of "Amoebatrons' Revenge". I have also added some instances of unused cell-types - Crumbly, Fire 1 and Fire 2 - removed some Water-cells to enforce the difficult jumps, and added four more items. I admit being cruel with my placement of Crumbly cells here - the top-left crumbling platform requires you to jump onto it, and walk right before you jump left, so as to avoid the Fire 2 cell by the portal! [9] "The Ewoks of Endor": I have renamed this cavern to make the Star Wars influence a bit more explicit (Manic Miner being released in 1983 - the same year as Return Of The Jedi). I have also added some Fire 1 cells and a conveyor, both of which were absent from the original. I have moved one of the items, forcing you to jump over the red Ewok - and that item is Crumbly-protected. I have started you at the bottom-middle, forcing you to go up as well as down the left half, and giving you a choice of which half to do first. [10] "Attack of the Mutant Telephones": I have tweaked this cavern to make you cross it clockwise rather than anticlockwise, by making the jump over the magenta telephone one-way, and allowing you to jump up to the portal after collecting the top-left item. [11] "Return of the Alien Kong Beast": I have extended the middle-left wall to protect the top item from premature collection, and removed four Water-cells from the bottom-left to enforce the clever jump from the platform in row 9 to the Water-cell at (6,10). I have moved the item from the Kong-shaft to somewhere more meaningful. [12] "Ore Refinery": I have blocked the left ladder and added a couple on the right, so that you have to ascend the cavern platform by platform rather than simply climbing the left ladder and jumping onto the top platform. I have filled the gaps in the platforms with Crumbly cells to protect the items from being jumped up for from below, and added some Fire-cells (the Fire 1 pixel-pattern is corrupted by the Cell-Graphics Bug). [13] "Skylab Landing Bay": I have replaced the Water-cells in the non-Skylab columns with Crumbly cells, so that it's clearer which they are but you cannot wait in them. I have moved the rightmost item to force you to jump onto the rightmost platform, and added an extra item inside the portal - just to show you that you can do that. The black cell near the bottom-left is a Fire-cell: to ensure that you jump onto the leftmost platform but do not fall off it! [14] "The Bank": I have to say that this is the most underdeveloped room in the original Manic Miner: it doesn't force you to go up the left-hand side to the portal, it doesn't force you to do the difficult jumps needed to jump up for the top-right item, and it doesn't force you to jump over the cheque. All these flaws can be fixed simply by removing the trellis, as I have in this version. I have embedded the leftmost item in a Crumbly cell, to prevent you simply jumping up for it from below. There are two hidden items in the room-definition, as the fourth item has a colour-attribute of 255, which terminates the sequence. So I have undeleted these items. [15] "Flag Bugs": '"I'd run out of names. Or maybe I was thinking in hexadecimal and thought it didn't need one," says Matt. And what are those enemies? "Flag bugs! In the code. If flag bug equals..."' I have put Water-cells in the portal to stop you simply dropping down to collect the item, although it does remove the need for a jump over the portal to collect the top-left item. I think it is more important to force the player to jump over the yellow flag-bug, which is obviously the route that Matthew Smith intended. I have added Fire 2 cells in the top row, just to show them. The Water 2 cells that I put in the portal actually look like switches, so it doesn't make much sense to make them visible. There is a hidden item in the room-definition, as the fifth item has a colour-attribute of 255, which terminates the sequence. So I have undeleted this item. [16] "The Data Warehouse": As a computer-scientist, I've always wanted to write a variant of The Warehouse with this title! I have started you at the bottom-left, forcing you to cross the bottom of the screen and work your way towards the top left. The portal is also at the bottom-left, forcing you to cross the bottom in both directions. I had to change the bottom row of Crumbly cells to Water to stop you dropping down to the bottom, which makes it easier in some ways. I have embedded the items in Crumbly cells, which makes the second-leftmost trickier to collect, and the top-right impossible if I didn't remove the Fire-cell above it. I have changed the vertical sprite from the lawn-mower thresher of the Bug-Byte edition to the impossible triangle of the Software Projects edition (i.e. the Software Projects logo), as mentioned in the article. [17] "War of the Worlds": Paul Drury suggested that the vertical sprites resembled the invaders from War Of The Worlds. Matthew Smith's response: "I thought they were jellyfish but yeah, maybe they have evolved into a higher life form." Because of this, I decided against replacing the vertical sprites with those of the Software Projects edition of "Amoebatrons' Revenge", which already appear in this game's variant of "Wacky Amoebatrons" [8]. I have replaced the conveyor-animated Water-cells with an actual conveyor, just as I did in the Manic Miner 4 variant of this cavern. I have altered the horizontal guardians and their sprites, tightened up the difficult jumps, and populated the cavern with some Crumbly, Fire 1 and Fire 2 cells, just as I did in "Wacky Amoebatrons". [18] "Solar Power Generator": I have added some Crumbly, Fire 1 and Fire 2 cells, and two more items. There isn't enough air to complete this cavern with solar power, so I have skipped over the code that saps your air-supply: #8D88: JR #8DA5 #8D88: 18 1B 00 00 00 00 00 00 #8D90: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [19] "The Final Barrier": I have changed Water-cells to Crumbly cells, and added some Fire 2 cells. -------------------- Loading-Instructions -------------------- To play Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix, 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.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 (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 load-command). ---------------- Acknowledgements ---------------- * Matthew Smith, for writing the original Manic Miner, and in particular for deciding on an unencrypted, perspicuous room-format! ;-) * Retro Gamer magazine and Paul Drury for interviewing Matthew Smith, and Matthew Smith for giving the interview! * This game was written using John Elliott's JSWED (v2.3.2), and playtested using Ramsoft's RealSpectrum v0.97.23. * The patch to make Manic Miner make the Jet Set Willy item-sound originated in Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman (Andrew Broad, Broadsoft, 2004), based on code from Jet Set Willy (Matthew Smith, Software Projects, 1984). * My fellow MM/JSW authors, for general inspiration. -------- Internet -------- I currently have a website at http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/. Some relevant pages within this website are: * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ Top-level index of my Spectrum pages. * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/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), various other MM/JSW documents, and links to other MM/JSW websites. * http://geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/download/ My download page. Currently contains my other games, my Manic Miner Screen Editor, my Jet Set Willy Construction Kit and my Java toolkit SPECSAISIE. Also has previews of forthcoming software (mostly MM/JSW games). I 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. I encourage all members of the MM/JSW community to join this Group. 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 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 I do on a weekly basis). ---------------- Copyright-Notice ---------------- Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix 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 (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. I don't mind you reusing some of the rooms 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 Broadsoft - failure to do so may be construed as plagiarism. I would like the documentation to be quite specific about this, e.g. "Room X was taken from Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix", or whatever. Please let me know if you do rerelease Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix 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! ---------------- Revision-History ---------------- 31st December 2008: Initial release of Manic Miner: Matthew Smith 2008 Remix on the Internet - as a bonus-game to JSW64: Flash Manic Miner.