Manic Miner Editor

The Manic Miner Editor Pack v1.1

--------------------------------



Given to the 'Net by BLOOD! (l.d.tonks@bra0202.wins.icl.co.uk)

Basic Manic Miner editor by Rich Swann.





Intro

-----

Bored of the continual stream of Jetset Willy editors, I recalled from

my youth owning a copy of an editor called Manic Designer which let you

change the way your Manic Miner levels looked. I also remembered a

type-in editor for Manic Miner which was printed in YS. I decided that

it would be my Quest to provide the Internet Speccy community with

copies of these little gems to have and to hold, and to show their

grandchildren one day.



Having tracked down a copy of the YS editor, thanks to Henning (who

photocopied the pages and sent them to me), I set about typing it in.

And lo, it is here for you all to try. My fingers are now on fire. The

instructions from YS are here in full, as well as some little notes of

my own. I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you read ALL of this file before

proceeding, or you might feel a bit funny later on. Or something.



Unfortunately, the course of my life never runs smooth and I found that

my single copy of the Manic Designer editor (which I also intended to

include here) was trashed beyond repair. If ANYONE could provide me with

a new copy of Manic Designer, I would be eternally grateful! It's very

old, released about 1984, and as far as I recall was released by a very

small software house and was written by two authors. It was half MC and

half BASIC, had a bad loading screen with lots of flashing red and

yellow squares, and you had to do LOAD "" CODE to load it. Please can

someone help to restore this icon from my childhood....! ;-)



Enough of my ramblings, on with the instructions!







Rich Swann's Level Editor

-------------------------

These instructions are taken directly from YS :



Now this is class! After four years of constant helping out in Dr Hugo's

Clinic, Dicky (or Rich, as I believe he prefers to be called) of sunny

Camberley, has decided that Pitstop could also benefit from his magic

touch. And this is what all Manic Miner fans have been longing for for

years - it enables you to customise each of the 20 screens, and also

lets you change the sprites, so that you can have a completely new set

of baddies. The editor is split into two distinct parts - this is the

screen editor, and the sprite editor will follow next month. However,

the clever thing is, each program is self-supporting, so you can run the

screen editor, and play your new screens, without waiting until next

month for the next bit! I'm just so considerate.



HOW TO DO IT

Type in the delicious BASIC listing and save it to auto-run with SAVE

"filename" LINE 1. When run, the editor asks you to play the Manic Miner

tape. The actual bit it's looking for is the main chunk of code called

"MM2", which is the bit that comes after the "title screen" loader. Once

loaded, you will be asked which level to edit, and then you'll see a

representation of the level, and, hiding down there at the bottom...



The Main Menu.1

This option enters the actual editor itself - study the symbols closely

(a knowledge of the actual level will help here) and decide whether you

want to add floor, wall, poison pansy or whatever.



Press O, and enter the character corresponding to the bit you want to

add, e.g. $ for a conveyor, or a blank space for nothing. You can then

move the cursor around the screen using 5,6,7 and 8, pressing 0 to

insert your chosen feature, be it a poison pansy, a collapsing floor, or

whatever. There are three other features which make up the editor :



Pressing L lets you type in a new name for the level; however, be wary -

as the name is poked into memory rather than assigned to a string,

you'll need to type in enough characters (and spaces if necessary) to

take it up to at least the length of the original name.



Pressing K lets you change the position of the keys (shown as red stars

on the screen). You're asked for new X,Y co-ordinates, but be careful

here, as when I gave a Y value of 8 the program stopped with an error

message. If this happens to you, just type GOTO 15 to try again (what do

you want, perfection?).



Finally, pressing S lets you change Willy's start position (shown by two

cyan arrows) - enter new X,Y co-ordinates as before.



When you've finished editing, press SPACE to get back to the main menu.





The Main Menu.2

This option lets you swap between levels - note that you don't have to

save before you swap.





The Main Menu.3

The File-handling menu. From this you can save your levels, load ones

you made earlier, or print the current level out. There is also a Test

Game option, but bear in mind that you can't get back to the editor

after selecting this, so save your levels first, eh?



To play your levels simply start loading Manic Miner as normal, and when

the horrible flashing loading screen comes up, swap the game tape for

your saved levels, and play that instead. One thing I noticed when

having a brief trial run, was that my repositioned key in Central Cavern

was made invisible. Is this a one-off or does it happen all the time? (I

don't know). And if it is a regular occurence, does anyone know how to

get round it? All suggestions gratefully received. Of course, some

people might see invisible keys as a good challenge; other, more cynical

people might call it dodgy programming. I, obviously, wouldn't dream of

such a thing.







Rich Swann's Sprite Editor

--------------------------

These instructions are taken directly from YS :



Given that z=3+4i, find the argument of 1/z, giving your answer in

degrees to one decimal place... Oh, this one's easy - you just realise

the denominator, er, then find the arctan... er, or something... I know,

let's have a look at the second instalment of the Manic Miner editor

instead! Infinitely preferable, I think. This here is the Sprite Editor,

which follows on directly from last month's instalment, but runs

independently, giving you a perfectly customised version of the ancient

classic. As usual, type it in and save it with SAVE "filename" LINE 1.

Run it, and you can either load in the new levels you created last

month, or you can start from scratch by loading the original tape in,

and do the levels later. The instructions, I'm sure you'll be pleased to

know, are much less complicated than last month's, so here they are in

their entirety...



1/Z : Move memory pointer up/down by 8 bytes. This is equivalent to a

"coarse tuning" control, and you can use it to scan through the memory

looking for sprites.



Q/A : The "Fine Tune" control - this moves the memory pointer up or down

by just one byte, for if you come across an incomplete sprite.



X : Switches between viewing sprites as 8x8 or 16x16 types. There are

some of each, and generally speaking, the 8x8 sprites tend to come

before the 16x16 sprites every level.



E : Edit the sprite at current location. Use the cursors (5,6,7,8) to

move around the grid, 0 to set a pixel, and 9 to reset it. Space stops

the editing and writes the sprite into memory, but BE WARNED - editing

data that isn't an actual sprite may well corrupt the game, so make sure

you recognise the sprite first!



L/S : Load/Save your creations, the same as last month's.



2 : Lets you select an address at which to look for sprites.





And it's as simple as that! Have fun, and I'll expect to see Manic Miner

2 in the shops before Christmas! (Somehow, I think not. Ed)







Blood's Notes

-------------

These instructions are taken directly from Blood's Head :



The editors are provided as two .SNA snapshots. To get the most out of

the editor, however, your emulator must support .TAP files (or something

similar) to allow you to save data from one of the editors and load it

into the other. It's perfectly possible to redesign screens only with a

non-TAP editor, though.



I have loaded the standard Manic Miner data into both of the editors.

The Level Editor is set up to use this data straight away, but the

sprite editor is set up to load your own data (as you'll probably want

to load in your own saved levels), although the original data IS there!

Should you wish to load your own data, you'll have to break into the

program and GOTO 1. This should allow you to load your own .TAP file of

the MM2 data.



I have no idea whether the editor will work with the Software Projects

version of Manic Miner! I have only tried it with the Bug Byte release,

so don't come whinging that it doesn't work if you try to load in a

different version!



Take no heed of the warnings in the instructions above about not placing

objects with a Y-Axis of 8. This was a bug in the editor, but I've used

my immense brain to fix it in this updated release! 8 is now a number

once more!



Care must be taken with placing keys. Follow these rules, and you won't

go wrong :

1) If a key has a Y-Axis of 7 or less, don't move it to a Y-Axis of 8

or more.

2) If a key has a Y-Axis of 8 or more, don't move it to a Y-Axis of 7

or less.

If you do this, the key will move okay, but you'll find it will be

INVISIBLE! Challenging? Maybe. Silly? Definitely! Similar problems will

affect Willy himself if you try to move his start position. Always

experiment with Willy's start position to make sure you can put him

there BEFORE you design the rest of the level!



Funny things may happen if you put objects or ground in the path of an

oncoming monster! Generally, it's best to avoid doing this, although

some rooms WILL allow you to put keys (but NEVER ground!) in the path of

the beasts. You should experiment - don't design a whole level without

testing, surmising it'll work!



You may have problems with conveyor belts. In particular, newly created

conveyor belts will NOT animate, although they will work! This seems to

be a problem with the way MM was written - you will notice that if you

move the original conveyor belts and put normal ground there instead,

the normal ground will be animated! The best way to learn about this is

to experiment! Soft ground placed where a conveyor belt used to be will

not work properly, and if you erase a conveyor belt, Willy will look

strange if he passes over a place where it used to be.



You CAN'T alter where the nasties go. This is a limitation of Manic

Miner, not the editor! Also, you can't change what the switches do in

the Kong Beast levels, create a light beam in any room other than Solar

Power Generator, or change the behaviour of Eugene. You can change how

things look, but not how they act. Manic Miner uses a basic game engine

with 'Specials' for each room to make them slightly different - these

special features are ONLY viable in the rooms they were intended to go

with. Generally, if you've only seen a particular effect in one room,

you can only do it in that room!



The screen names are not automatically centred! You'll have to do it

yourself!



DON'T TEST THE SCREENS WITHOUT SAVING FIRST! You'll end up kicking

yourself, I know you will.....



POKE 35136,0 should give you infy lives.



POKE 34795,195 : POKE 34796,241 : POKE 34797,135: POKE 36233,195:

POKE 36234,149 : POKE 36235,141 will give you infinite air.



To skip levels, you'll need to start the game and then type 6031769. You

can then hold down 6 and press combinations of the numbers 1 to 5 to

start on a particular level.



Send me your creations! I'd love to play any redesigned Manic

Miners....!







Epilogue

--------

Errm....that's it really. Thanks to :



Henning - for finding the editor and sending me the photocopies.

Rich Swann - for writing the editor!

Matt Smith - for writing the game!

Barry Plewa - for including this and my game in Emulate!

Craig Broadbent - for publishing the editor in YS.

Your Sinclair - for being a top, top, top mag.

Richard Hallas - for continued support and encouragment.





Any questions, write to me at the address below. Anyone interested in

seeing what can be done with the editor should have a look at my little

effort, Manic Miner - Tales from a Parallel Universe. And if you think

it's crap, see if you can do better! And remember, whatever you do with

the editor, it's bound to be 2 million times better than the AWFUL Manic

Miner 2 hacked-up version which is currently doing the rounds on the

Internet! ;-)





Best wishes, Spec-chums!



Blood.



*============[ l.d.tonks@bra0202.wins.icl.co.uk ]=============*

| The Infamous BLOOD! |

| The Speccy's not dead - it was just resting! |

| Who needs 500Mb of rendered intro when Jetpac fits in 16k?! |

*===========[ http://spodbox.linux.org.uk/~blood/ ]===========*





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