Lemon/EAB Super League 2020 -R4- Jump 'N Roll & Wizzy's Quest

[john4p]

Nice, thank you Dan and malko.

And congratz malko!

[linesmachine]

Great work Malko!

It's really interesting because I can imagine that if you had taken this concept to, say, Psygnosis, and they had commercialised it; added a growing book of spells, better graphics and animations (Benefactor style) and larger level areas, you might have had a big game on your hands. You'd have to change that name though..

I can't help but feel it plays like a conversion of a spectrum or C64 game rather than a PD effort for the Amiga.

[malko]

Thank you all

There are not many really complicated level (once you have figured out the solution of course ), so with a little training, this game is more than doable for everybody.

[linesmachine]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

Yes, more like Troddlers, if you played that one?

I hadn't remembered this game, might be worth a vote in the future.

[malko]

A slightly better score as I have avoided some more gems. I think it's the max I can do (for a low score).

Wizzy's Quest : 45'545 = (49 x 1'000) - 4'455 + 1'000



Time is running, so have to give a go to the second game before the round ends

[lifeschool]

Yes you mastered another game, which is always a good feeling.

I like your high score table, but please dont edit your saved scores, as this is altering the game, and breaks the first rule under cheating:

- Don't tamper with your score or screenshot by altering the numbers.

[Harry]

Wizzy's Quest: 23000 - 1159 = 21841

[arcanist]

10,709

I feel like I run around in a panic more often than the level design intends me to.

[malko]

@lifeschool : I was disapointed that the game is not asking for highscore if you finish the game, but only if you loose all your lives (small bug to be corrected for next release if Mr Appenzeller sees this thread) .

Yes, second screenshot is a hack of the Highscores file & merge or the highscore display with my last level screenshot (to have the " score " and " last game score " display) as the game always display 000000 everywhere when you load it.

[malko]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

[...] <S> speeds up the game, for some reason that I don't understand it runs at different speeds depending on the amount of memory in the system being used. [...]

This end of week, while installing the game on HD I have noticed that with my A2000 config (WinUAE), the game was much much faster than with the quick launch A500 config.

Today I have made some checks and came to the following :
- it's not the amount of memory in the system that makes the game to behave differently (animation speed speaking). Indeed, whatever amount of chip & slow ram you have (512k+512k being the minimum for this game to load), the game will run at the same speed.

But as soon as you replace the slow ram with fast ram (f.e. 512k), the game goes in "turbo" mode (even faster as if you press the "s" key when you have 512k slow ram ). This "turbo" mode makes it really difficult to play the game and there is no ingame possibility to slow it down .
So, under emulation, to enjoy "Wizzy's Quest", I recommend this game to be set up without fast ram .

Also, while playing the "fixed" ADF I get kicked out of the game at various levels (return to shell without warning). Changing the RAM settings to 512k chip +1024k slow, solved the issue.

[lifeschool]

Thanks for your tests malko. When we play these games, we break them down to dust after 3 weeks, and discover more secrets than even the author (Wolfchild) knows.

I notice John is also using the new 'fix' and hasnt reported any errors. The disk image itself is fine, so only the emulation setup needs to be checked by the player to fix this issue.

On my setup I have A1200 settings but cpu turned down to 7mhz. Also 2mb chip and 8mb fast ram. If you add fast ram to an A1200 it normally goes into 32bit mode, which is much faster, but if the CPU is set to 7mhz, 50fps, its the same speed as an A500. With my normal 030 config, the game runs at super turbo speeds -and seems unplayable.

EAB are now 2 points behind Lemon on Wizzy.

[john4p]

I've had no crashes during gameplay but when I leave it idle at the title screen for too long it sometimes crashes.

I use cycle-exact A500 emulation, but set to 60fps for this game.

[malko]

It happened 4 times around level 25.
Now with "512k chip and 1024k slow" issue is gone and game doesn't exit anymore.
Also no more "guru" if you load the intro and want to start the game.

[malko]

I gave a go or two to "Jump'n run"... hum... I am far from good
For sure this is not the kind of game I will beat during the week

[john4p]

Yeah Jump 'n Roll is a hard game. But quite short.

[capehorn]

5,693 and not 85,693, which is what I thought I had scored at first looking at the screenshot.

[malko]

For information only :

Now that Wizzy's Quest is installed on an HD (small 4MB file), I had another go to record my play (longplay mkv file). Unfortunately, I get kicked out off the game around level 27... Grrrrr : 512k chip + 1024 slow doesn't help from HD then...

So I reloaded WinUAE and played again*... but with save states (to avoid to restart from scratch in case of another kick). I played slowly (quite often the game was in pause - other things to do - so it took me the whole day of yesterday to play the game).

This time, the game returned to the main menu at level 30 (when the mage pass the door to level 31).
I have loaded the save state and played again level 30. Again, the game returned to the main menu (even if I play from HD, I think it works only because all the game seems to be in RAM and there is no disk access - realised that I should have tested from floppy at that moment )

I have then loaded the level 29 state and played 29 & 30. Now the game passed to level 31 and was able to play level 31 ().

No more bug after that. But something strange happened at the end of the game...

For the 1st time, the game asked a name for high-score at the end of level 50 !
But the name was already pre-filled with the number "6" (17 times). Fortunately, it was possible to edit edit/modify it.

On the main menu, I then selected the option "ADIOS AMIGOS" to quit the game (to have the high-score saved as stated in the manual).
Here WinUAE, crashed... but this is not an issue as it is normal when you use save state from HD.

Wizzy's Quest is a very nice puzzler, sad it has such issues.

* I also took the opportunity of this test-play () to GIF record my solution (each level separately). When something is boring to do, I add to it something different to help . So expect them to be posted in a near future (need to post-process the files first).

[Harry]

Just a comment: Whizzy's Quest reminds me of Spherical a lot.

[malko]

I'm not going to shout victory too soon but it looks like that with "1024 chip and 1024 slow" there's no more untimely exit from the program when played from HD.
Yesterday evening reached level 44 without issue (but lost my last life there - did two stupid "sleeping" mistakes on level 42 )

[lifeschool]

Malko - Wizzy is definately on the buggy side, and for a few hours I couldnt get the game to start or get off the menu, and then start the first screen without quitting on me. The problem with HDDs is they take up chip memory to operate, so you have to use FastMemFirst, or more than 0.5mb stock memory to run them. As the game is so buggy, I'd say it is meant to be played from ADF only, and so we should play using the provided disk image.

A savestate will save everything in memory, so if the game currently in memory crashes on the same level, it will always do this, as it is locking into the save state. If the game intermittently fails, this is usually to do with chipset timings, so make sure both cycle exacts are on and the display runs at 50fps when recording.

I know you already beat the game several times now, but using savestates is training, and you could post a higher score this week from having learned from this training. So are you ok saying your current score is your final one? I dont think posting all the solutions would encourage people to play, most people would like to find out their own way.