Challenge accepted: Manic Miner Turbo

[namco]

The other Friday I was streaming the ZX Spectrum Next and doing my usual (when I get the Spectrum out for streaming) completion run on Manic Miner - I can do it, I'm just not consistent. A viewer suggested upping the mhz "for fun" and I found that running Manic Miner at 7mhz is still playable but does provide a challenge.

So for those wanting a new challenge on Manic Miner, try on 7mhz - for those without access to a Next (other than via emulation or MiSTer), there's also Spectaculator which does allow a Z80 cpu speed increase.

Here's the Twitch highlight of that section in the stream

[ParadigmShifter]

My first ever assembly game was this lol (48K Speccy 3.5MHz). I had to cap it at 25fps because it runs at 50fps most of the time otherwise and was way too fast to be playable. It does drop frames on some levels even at 25fps though

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... iner_Turbo

It's unfinished of course but give it a try.

Some of the code makes me cringe of course

I have the source code but it is missing some included data (the bitmap for the top of the last screen)

[AndyC]

I'm not really surprised, the Amstrad version (which is based roughly on the engine used for JSW2) is a fair bit faster and probably runs equivalent to a 7Mhz version. It's actually a bit more playable sped up somewhat, tbh.

[ParadigmShifter]

Matthew's code was terribly inefficient and wasted a ton of memory (512 bytes per room definition at least!). EDIT: I did rip it off line for line for the player movement though (mapping his globals to mine of course) since that was tricky to get 100% perfect.

Obviously he was young and the game was brilliant though.

My version was fast because I only redraw character cells which change each frame, Manic Miner copies 2/3rds of the screen from a backbuffer each frame (and maybe multiple times?).

I still use a backbuffer in that and the way you mark cells as dirty got annoying when I was drunk (most of the time when I was writing it and learning Z80 ASM)

EDIT: Original thread on WoS from 2010, includes praise from the legendary Frobush (Joffa Smith, RIP) which I was very proud about at the time

https://worldofspectrum.org/forums/disc ... -remake/p1

My development machine decided to catch fire and explode a while after that so I was offline for a while and it took me years to find the source again.

EDIT2: I see from the stream it was about as fast as mine was before I decided I'd best cap it at 25fps

Amoebatron levels were dropping to 16fps as was Solar Power Generator IIRC which I could have fixed if my PC had not gone tits up. Looks like Telephones and Warehouse also dropped to 16fps

EDIT3: Code was cringe and dropped frames mainly because I was using index registers to draw every sprite, and I was stupidly drawing 1 column at a time (so drawing top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right) instead of 2 columns at a time which was very daft

[Jbizzel]

I got to sky labs before I tapped out. All the levels after that are mental anyway.

[ParadigmShifter]

Skylabs, telephones, warehouse and solar power generator are the only really hard ones I think although warehouse/telephones are easy if you take the correct route,

[Jbizzel]

I've often wondered if the game could run faster, and now we know. The speed adds a new dimension to an already superb game

[uglifruit]

Can I 100% recommend Manic Miner Pesto (hidden away as an included bonus extra with The Perils Of Miner Willy download).

It's the original Manic Miner but you can have it running at up about twice as fast (changeable in game). It's amazing.

https://highriser.itch.io/the-perils-of-willy

[PeteProdge]

In that Twitch highlight, is it the Spectrum Next that's stretching the game screen, or is the game capture aspect ratio badly set up in OBS (or whatever)? I can't play or even watch footage that's squashed!

[namco]

In that Twitch highlight, is it the Spectrum Next that's stretching the game screen, or is the game capture aspect ratio badly set up in OBS (or whatever)? I can't play or even watch footage that's squashed!

That's probably my fault with a badly set up ratio.