MANIC MINER: NEIGHBOURS - ALLANA TRUMAN (C) BROADSOFT 2004 ======================================= For the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Written by Andrew Broad http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/ ---------------------- Background Information ---------------------- This game is based on the plots involving my favourite Neighbours character of all time, Allana Truman! Although she was only a guest-character on the Australian soap, she thrilled me with her pretty eyes and an intriguing air of mystique from her electric first appearance in November 2000 (as televised in the UK) to her emotional exit in April 2001, when she embarked on a trip around America with her boyfriend, Lance Wilkinson. Allana and Lance are sci-fi geeks who met at a Star Trek convention. She made him perform seven labours to win her as his girlfriend. He succeeded, after many episodes of the anticipation of seeing Allana again! Then he learned that she lived with her mother, a widow who clung desperately to Allana as her primary source of support. He wanted to take Allana to America, but they first had to solve the problems of getting her mother to let go, and also of raising funds for the trip. In this game, you play Lance Wilkinson. You have to perform seven labours to win Allana, and then solve the rest of the plot so that you and Allana can go to America. -------- The Game -------- Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman (MM:N-AT) is a redefinition of the rooms in Matthew Smith's classic Manic Miner, which I acknowledge as being the copyright of Bug-Byte (1983). I developed the game using my own Manic Miner Screen Editor (also released on the Internet) under the RealSpectrum emulator. In fact I started writing it on my real Spectrum +2, which sadly I had to lay to rest on 13th April 2003 when the motor in the datacorder burned out. Luckily I had only written one room when this happened. MM:N-AT is written for advanced MM players, and the rooms are intended to be fairly difficult, as a challenge to the experts. It presupposes that you can play Manic Miner - the controls are exactly the same, but the gameplay is tougher, requiring both manual dexterity (a need for pixel-perfect and time-frame-perfect accuracy of movement) and lateral thinking. MM:N-AT liberally exploits all the quirky features in the game-engine - you need to know all the tricks if you want to get far! I have thoroughly play-tested the final version, and I certify that it /is/ possible to complete. You can consider yourself to have passed MM:N-AT 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. ;-) There are 12 screenshots from the game in the Photos section of the Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manicminerandjetsetwilly/]. The Allana Truman Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/allanatruman/] has screenshots of all 20 rooms, plus the loading-screen and title-screen. Some of the screenshots contain visual playing-hints. -------------------- Loading Instructions -------------------- To play MM:N-AT, 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.srcf.ucam.org/~pak21/cssfaq/emulator.html]. 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 loading instruction). AT.TAP is the standard version of MM:N-AT. AT-LITE.TAP is an easy version. ---------------- Acknowledgements ---------------- * Matthew Smith, for writing the original Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy (from which the item-collection sound comes - see TECHNICA.TXT), and in particular for deciding on an unencrypted, perspicuous room-format! ;-) * My fellow MM/JSW authors, for general inspiration, and some specific tricks (sometimes unintended on their part, but deliberately exploited by me! ;-) ). * This game was written on Ramsoft's RealSpectrum emulator, using my own Manic Miner Screen Editor. * John Elliott, for writing the Manic Miner patch [http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Jsw/mmdiffs.html] which allows each room to specify (in its border-byte) whether or not it has vertical guardians, Eugene, Kong beast, Skylabs, and solar power. This is the first MM game to use this patch! * John Elliott again for his disassembly of MM [http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/Jsw/jsw.html], which was an invaluable aid to hacking the game-engine (see TECHNICA.TXT). * Adban De Corcy, for permission to use his skeleton sprite from _Willy's Afterlife_ in "Dr. Karl Kennedy's Surgery" [13]. * Richard Hallas's document "A Miner Triad" was an invaluable aid to redefining the music. * The in-game tune is the spooky sci-fi incidental music that Neighbours always used for weird Allana-related scenes! I hacked the MM-game engine to play it at half-speed (see TECHNICA.TXT). * The title-screen tune is, of course, the Neighbours theme-song by Tony Hatch. * Grundy Television for Neighbours, and FremantleMedia Operations for distributing it over the world (Neighbours is a registered trademark of FremantleMedia Operations BV). I'd particularly like to thank the scriptwriters and everyone involved in the Allana Truman plotlines! * Leszek Daniel Chmielewski for BMP2SCR EXP [http://members.inode.at/chmielewski.leszek/bmp2scr.htm], which I used to generate the title-screen/Room 19 picture and the loading screen. * The title-screen/Room 19 picture was generated from a view of Ramsay Street [http://www.ramsay-street.com/gallery/misc.htm]. * The loading screen was generated from an image on www.erinsborough.com which can now be found in the Photos section of the Allana Truman Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/allanatruman/]. * Josephine Clark, for playing Allana. If she wasn't so extremely pretty, I might not have been inspired to write this game! ;-) --------- The Rooms --------- ROOM 0: "30 Ramsay Street". This is a tribute to the first-ever Allana-episode of Neighbours, when she visited Lance Wilkinson at 30 Ramsay Street - the house he and Toadfish Rebecchi were renting from Lou Carpenter. The item-graphic is my attempt to draw the golden brooch Allana was wearing. The left half of the room is the kitchen. You have to retrieve one item from the cupboards (you have to get rid of the crumbling floor before you can collect it), then jump over Allana on the kitchen-table (tip: jump onto the conveyor from below). To get back, you have to jump from the very edge of the protruding cupboard, in order to land inside the wall. The right half of the room is the lounge. In order to get the middle item, and also to jump over Allana to get to the front door (the portal), you have to jump at wall-blocks so as to land exactly between on top of them and on the side of them, which takes you slap through them - an action which will henceforth be referred to as `jumping through an ILB' (Innocent-Looking Block). When my real Spectrum died, it took this one room with it to its grave. But I have remade it very faithfully, and even improved upon the original! :-) It's quite a tough opening room, but it's very addictive and may well keep you coming back for more punishment! ;-) ROOM 1: "A Reel Challenge". Lance's first labour was to retrieve the final episode of Kosmosis (an apparently fictitious sci-fi series from the 1960s) on old-fashioned tiller-tape, and convert it to video for Allana. He got the name of a collector from his local library, went to see this collector (the green man at the top of the screen) and persuaded him to lend him the tape. Lance said it was "a reel challenge"! The vertical-guardian (VG) sprites are ripped from Paul Rhodes's JetSet Editor, and the portal is supposed to be a rotating door. To make it a bit more interesting, you have to collect not just one but five tiller-tapes. When you stand on the bottom of the screen in columns 28 & 29, I expected this to make the crumbling-floor blocks in row 0 crumble (my original idea was to free an item up there so that you could collect it later), but instead it makes the corresponding pixels of the conveyor in row 8 crumble! This is an interesting quirky feature, so I left it in for purely aesthetic value. Tips: * To access the upper floor of the library you have to stop on the conveyor and jump straight up between the static nasties. * To access the top row of stars, get to the leftmost star aligned with the library-roof. Then walk right into the path of the magenta VG, and turn left so that you're standing halfway onto the star. Then jump left onto the crumbling-floor block, and as soon as you land on it, hold right and jump straight up. * Jumping down onto the lowest star is possible from either of the two stars aligned with the library-roof, but both require waiting until three of the VGs are in the correct phase relative to each other (snapshotting is highly recommended here!). From the right star, this happens when the air is under the space between "Reel" and "Challenge". From the left star, this happens when the air is under "C" but it's a tighter jump. It's much more difficult than I meant to make it, but I'm too proud of the challenge I've created to water it down now! ;-) * There's a screenshot of this room in the Photos section of the Allana Truman Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/allanatruman/], showing the position you need to be in to make the difficult jump. ROOM 2: "The Waterfall Nursing Home". Lance's second labour was to get his photo taken with Jimmy Le Van, who played Captain O'Ryan in Kosmosis, and is now living in the Waterfall Nursing Home. Lance was refused admittance as he is not a relative of Jimmy Le Van, so he snuck in, and after a dash around the interior pursued by a rather incompetent security-guard, he found Jimmy outside and talked him into the photo. This room recreates Lance's adventure in the nursing-home. You have to collect the cameras whilst avoiding the security-guards and the old folk, and dealing appropriately with the various ILBs and sticky conveyors. Tips: * To get the camera at reception, jump onto the desk to get rid of the crumbling floor, then jump into the desk from one step further back. * If you get past the red VG at the earliest possible opportunity and make a tight jump over the black HG (just late enough to avoid crashing into the magenta VG), it will make the timing easier later on. * After jumping through the ILB at the top left, you have to jump back onto the upper conveyor from a crumbling-floor block. This requires good manual dexterity and timing. ROOM 3: "A Cosmic Encyclopaedia". The third labour was to make an (extremely low-budget) sci-fi film. Lance's first attempt was based on a rift in the space-time continuum, where Toadfish and Joel Samuels arrive on an alien planet to investigate a plinth (actually a step-ladder covered in tin foil) that was put there by a super-intelligent species as a cosmic encyclopaedia. This film is represented by the left half of this screen. However, that idea was scrapped in favour of a "low-fi" film called Erinsborough Wives, in which robotic housewives (played by Felicity Scully aka Holly Valance) sold themselves as slaves to men so that they could kill them. In this room, the wives are played by Kari Krisníková with long hair and a chip implanted in her neck (she only faces left, but that was the price to pay for making this a Kong-Beast room - the Kong-Beast sprites are based on the spacesuit from Derrick Rowson's Jet Set Willy II: The Final Frontier). I am very pleased with this room, as it turned out much better than I expected, and the green colour-scheme makes it very atmospheric. I would like to have called it "A Cosmic Encyclopaedia / Erinsborough Wives", but of course it wouldn't fit into 32 characters so I went for the cooler title. The portal-graphic was `discovered' in Steve Worek's _Jet Set Emily: Baby On The Go_ by viewing the room-data as 16x16 graphics (Sprite-Page 247: Sprite 3). The item represents the model spaceship that Michelle Scully made for Lance out of an egg-carton, a couple of plates and a green transparent cup (Lance put the finished video inside it to give to Allana). Tips: * To get out of the plinth, stand facing left with your legs apart, jump straight up twice, fall one character, jump straight up again, walk left and as soon as you've passed the overhead static nasty, jump left twice to land in the niche in the far-right column. * Then jump right when the cyan wife is just approaching her right-boundary, go right to the end of the conveyor and jump straight up over the cyan wife. * Then jump left off the conveyor so as to fall two characters and land as far right as possible on the plinth. Keep walking right, stopping off to collect the two items (having rid them of crumbling floor). * Jump over the green wife between the two overhead wall-blocks. * Walk to the right end of the main conveyor, release the right-key for one time-frame so that you stop, and jump straight up for the item (I love this manouevre). ROOM 4: "Spread The Word". Lance invited Allana to a candlelit dinner outside Number 30 to give her the video of Erinsborough Wives, but he fell asleep waiting, and when he woke up the video was gone, and a mysterious symbol had been burned into the grass using a blowtorch! The fourth labour was to discover the meaning of the symbol. It turned out to be a combination of symbols found only on the tomb of the Great Pharoah Neferirkare, and in the catacombs of a Greek temple on the island of Crete - it meant that the Egyptians had "spread the word" - the answer to the riddle. So I decided to set this room in an Egyptian pyramid. I've drawn the symbol as the portal-graphic (the upper symbol within the circle is meant to be an eye, but I couldn't draw it any clearer in 16x16 pixels). The vertical sprite (an iron maiden) comes from my 1999 JSW game We Pretty; the spider comes from my 2000 game _Manic Miner: The Hobbit_. I leave the item-graphic open to personal interpretation. Tips: * Do not jump over the white spider (which collects an item for you), but rather jump left in front of it so as to land just before the static nasty, and turn to face right on one leg. * When the magenta spider is at its left-boundary, jump left over it, get the item, and jump right over the static nasty so as to land on the left edge of the conveyor. * On the conveyor, jump up against the bottom of the overhead wall-block so as to fall safely in front of the yellow VG, and collect the bottom-right item. * Wait to the left of the yellow VG until the yellow-on-blue VG is at the bottom, then jump onto the conveyor, and jump off the left edge of the conveyor so as to fall slap through the floor-platform to the left of the static nasty! ROOM 5: "V Prepare". As the clue to his fifth labour, Lance received a silver tube (hence the item-graphic) containing a glossy blue and black piece of paper with "V Prepare" in large cyan letters. I designed this room to resemble that paper in terms of the colour-scheme. V was a 1980s sci-fi series about an alien-invasion, so the task was to convince the world that UFOs exist. Lance `persuaded' the not-at-all-unattractive journalist Libby Kennedy to write an article about UFOs for the Erinsborough News, using as `evidence' a video of a flying saucer which he'd rigged up using a fishing-rod! I'm rather proud of my flying-saucer sprite. The bottom half of this room is the Kennedy house: Libby answered the door wearing nothing but a bath-towel - and in this room, not even that! ;-> The red static nasty is a burglar-alarm, which the Kennedys installed after Darcy Tyler burgled their house to repay a gambling-debt in 2003, but which kept going off unprovoked! Tips: * When crossing the clouds from right to left, use both jumping and waiting on crumbling-floor to get the timing right. You have to turn back before jumping out from under the green saucer. * You have to rid the leftmost item of its crumbling-floor block so that you will be able to jump up for it from below. You can either jump onto it and count out eight jumps, or jump onto it from standing halfway onto the leftmost cloud facing left on two legs, then jump off the very right edge of the item. * Jump through the ILB to reach ground-level - it's safer than it looks. * Floor, wall and conveyor all look alike. Jump out from under the leftmost burglar-alarm to land on a left-conveyor, then jump left into the wall over 'P' with your legs apart. * Then walk right on the conveyor, and jump right with your legs apart from the space between 'V' and 'P', so as to land inside the wall beyond the middle burglar-alarm. Then jump right over 'e' with your legs apart to land inside another wall-block. Libby is best jumped over in the middle room of the house. ROOM 6: "Deliver Article to Home Planet". Such was the message on Allana's next scroll, printed in yellow ink on glossy black, blue and magenta paper. "Full ceremonial dress essential," it added. So Lance made himself a costume based on Spacecops (the VG-sprite), with the intention of taking Libby's article to Allana's house as soon as the newspaper was delivered. However, Lance's plans were thwarted when the article turned out to be "Heavens above! It's love!" Thanks to Libby reneging on their agreement, Allana thought Lance was making fun of UFOs rather than trying to convince the world they exist, and was most unsympathetic. Then Lance left a message on Allana's answering-machine telling her to be reasonable or it was over between them. Allana sent an apologetic letter, and this meant that Lance had passed the fifth and sixth labours. In this room, you have to collect the newpapers (the item-graphic is based on a 16x16 newspaper-sprite from Booty, and it turned out much better than I thought would be possible in 8x8 pixels!), and take them across the stars from Earth to the magenta planet in the top-right of the screen. It's a lot of fun dodging the HGs (badly-drawn Toadfish), as they keep you scurrying left and right like a tennis-player whose opponent is spreading her! :-) Tips: * The bright yellow stars are floors. The dim yellow stars are fast crumbling floors. The screen is symmetrical such that each bright star on one side corresponds to a dim star on the other. * Collect the two items on the right side first. To do so, jump off the right edge of the conveyor, jump right again immediately, and fall back down to Earth. * Then collect the item at the bottom-left. Jump up left into the right side of the screen. * Jump off the left edge of the conveyor, jump up onto the right item so as to land on its left edge, and immediately jump left. Fall onto the left item, and back down to Earth. * Jump off the left edge of the conveyor again, stand on the right edge of the star above 'v', facing left in one character-column. When the leftmost VG is at its top boundary, jump left four times without stopping. Stand on the right edge of the star you're now on, and jump right twice into the flashing portal. ROOM 7: "Miron 41-30". The seventh and final labour was to get a piece of the Miron 41-30, a decommissioned satellite that was about to crash in the vicinity of Burley Gap. Allana left Lance a video containing a superb parody of Princess Leia's holographic message in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, saying that the Miron 41-30 contained a life-force needed to keep her spirit alive. So Lance, Toadfish and Joel went out into the bush, looking for a piece of the Miron 41-30. But they were thwarted by police who had closed the area, and by an electric fence that gave Lance the shock of his life when he peed on it! So they went home, faked a piece of Miron using some car-parts and a blowtorch, and Allana was none the wiser (until Lance confessed much later in their relationship). This room is set in the bush, and you have to look closely to tell the wall-blocks from the static-nasty blocks! The second static nasty and spare are the electric fence, and the flashing blue floor and red crumbling-floor blocks symbolise the lights on the police-car. The portal represents Allana's video, the items are (faked) pieces of Miron 41-30, and the Skylabs are the satellite itself. This is the first Skylab room in MM-history to have horizontal guardians - usually avoided as they must share the last four frames of the exploding-Skylab sprite. Tips: * Immediately hold right and keep jumping over the static nasties as though you were on a right-conveyor. In true Matthew Smith style, I have tweaked the guardians' paths to allow this. * Jump onto the conveyor when the magenta horizontal guardian (HG) has gone about one character left from its right-boundary. This allows you to jump over it in the fence to the right of the lone wall-block. * Stand on the item in the middle of the fence so that you will be able to jump up for it (by stopping on the conveyor) when you go back down (via the ILB at the far right). This can be done before or after you get the items at the top. * It is possible, though not necessary, to jump off the left edge of the screen and over the static nasty at the right edge. * To complete the room you must traverse the conveyor again, and jump through the ILB into the flashing portal. ROOM 8: "Allana's Tinfoil-covered Lair". A few days after Lance completed his seven labours, Allana invited him to her house (14 Rose Ave, Eden Hills). The interior was festooned with magenta tinfoil, flashing lights, and sci-fi accessories such as a lava-lamp, a white skull, a green vase and a flying saucer - on all of which this room's graphics are based (the yellow-on-red graphic represents the Flash-Gordonesque costume that Lance chose to wear to meet his "intergalactic goddess"). Allana greeted Lance by shining a large bright light at him (hence the solar power in this room), saying "Your reward will be plenty for us befitting the hardships you have endured." She then `rewarded' him for each of the seven qualities that the labours were supposed to test, until the sun came up and he went home really chipper! Tips: * Take the bottom-right item first, to stop the beam shining along the bottom. * Then take the top-right item, and wait at the right end of the conveyor until the blue Allana is under the crumbling-floor block before you set off to jump over her. * Stand halfway onto the green floor-block above the white skull, facing left, and jump left twice as the red Allana emerges from the doorway. Fall through the two crumbling-floor blocks onto the green floor-block - you should be on the very right edge of these blocks, facing left - and jump left so as to land *inside* the wall-block under the doorway and be able to walk under the conveyor to collect the leftmost item. * Stand above "e" in "cover" facing left with your legs apart, and jump left to land *inside* the conveyor and collect the rightmore item in the bottom row. Jump out and collect the leftmore item in symmetrical fashion (standing above "T"). Then stand above "i" in "foil" in one character-column facing right, jump straight up three times, and jump right from between the top pair of white skulls. ROOM 9: "Lou's Place". Lou Carpenter's pub, chosen for a room because Allana went there with Lance a few times. Featuring yellow tables with candles in red glasses, red stools (no, they're not suffering from haemorrhoids! ;-) ), a green snooker-table, and not a drop of alcohol in sight (because it would violate my anti-drugs principles). The vertical sprite is Lou himself, and the item is Allana's driving-licence (from which we discovered that her legal name is Dorothy Truman, and that her date of birth is 16th November 1978). This room breaks new ground with vertical guardians. The green VG is a speed 14, and to make it actually stop at the bottom of the playing area, its bottom-boundary is specified as six pixels under row 15! (a VG never actually pixel-reaches its specified bottom boundary in MM, due to the use of a `lower-than-or-equals' comparison instead of a `lower-than' comparison). This specified bottom boundary is why it knocks two blocks out of the top row, by the same logic by which the white VG causes two wall-blocks to appear white for the two time-frames it's at its bottom boundary). Tips: * You start in the portal, so immediately walk right. * When you're halfway between the portal and the middle table, jump right to land on the left edge of the bottom table - this jump has to be pixel-perfect. * Drop onto the bottom item - and walk off immediately because you'll need that crumbling-floor block later. * Stand halfway above "'s", facing left, and jump straight up four times. * Jump left - twice - from under the white Allana when she's behind you. * Collect the two items and fall down to the bottom, where the bottom item should break your fall - collect it now. * Follow the green Allana as close behind as possible, and when you emerge from under the wall, jump straight up over her. * From halfway under the overhead floor-block, jump right so as to land *inside* a wall-block. Stand in one character-column and jump straight up twice. * Wait in that position, and when the magenta VG is aligned with you (going up), with the blue VG just below its top boundary (going up), walk left two steps and wait one time-frame. The blue VG should now be at its top boundary, pursing its lips, the magenta VG with its eyes up. This is precisely the time-frame you need to jump left through the ILB. * Visit the Photos section of either the Allana Truman Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/allanatruman/] or the Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manicminerandjetsetwilly/] to see a screenshot of the precise time-frame referred to in the previous tip. * Stand on the bottom-right item to remove the crumbling-floor block, so that you can go down and jump up for it. * Climb back up the floor-column - this time to the top - and wait in one character-column. When the magenta VG is aligned with you (going down) and the blue VG is just below its top boundary (going down), jump left to clear them both. * To get the top-right item, jump right over both VGs when the magenta one is above you, the blue one below. Jump up onto the item, for it too is protected by a crumbling-floor block. ROOM 10: "Allana's Secrets". Allana had warned Lance not to turn up at her house on spec, as her flatmates didn't like surprises. He got quite a shock when he turned up there two hours earlier than invited, to find out that she actually lived with her mother, Jeannie Truman! Allana had kept Lance and Jeannie secret from each other, because she was embarrassed at how co-dependent she and her mother were on each other since their father/husband had died. Allana would later reveal that she had suffered from an anxiety-based social-adjustment disorder when she was younger, while her mother had become practically and emotionally dependent on her. At the time, however, Allana told Lance that he had "wrecked everything" and she didn't want to see him any more. This comparatively easy room is a variation of "Allana's Tinfoil-covered Lair" [8], without all the "silver stuff and flashing lights", but rather a normal living room with sofas, vases, and African violets that Jeannie (the Eugene - based on the Maria sprite from Jet Set Willy) would rotate on a daily basis as they couldn't survive indoors for long (as symbolised by the conveyor - I wanted to stretch the conveyor-animation to cover the right half of the screen, but Jeannie killed you when she collided with it). The items are pieces of cake, and the portal is the front door. The room-title "Allana's Secrets" comes from Neighbours site erinsborough.com. I couldn't think how to get it across as a MM room, and on the other hand I couldn't think of a room-title for this room - so I killed two birds with one stone, after considering alternative room-titles such as "The Secret Life of Allana", "Split Personality", "Dorothy's Double Life", "Jeannie Truman" and even "EuJeannie's Lair"! ;-) Tips: * To get the items in the lower sofas, remove the crumbling-floor blocks so you can jump up for them from below. The crumbling floors can be removed from either side of the cyan/blue Allanas, depending on whether you prefer a tight turn or a mildly awkward jump. * There's a hidden item in the portal which you can either leave till last or not, depending on whether you want to see Jeannie in colour-cycling mode! * Go up on the right and cross the conveyor from right to left. Waiting under the wall (hold jump and right) is the easiest way to get the timing right. * Jump through the ILB at the far left of the conveyor to get back down to ground level. ROOM 11: "The Coffee Shop". Allana paid a few visits to the Coffee Shop (then run by Harold Bishop and his wife Madge) in her time, most notably just after she told Lance "don't come back" - he greeted her with flowers and told her he loved her. I took an unorthodox approach to writing this room. Lacking initial inspiration for a screen-layout, I started by simply drawing a picture from coloured blocks, and only massaging it into a playable room when I put the tables in. The result is a Vidar-Eriksenesque pattern of colour-attributes, and a puzzle based on fast-crumbling floors and a column of conveyor-blocks. The static nasties are silver coffee-pots, and the items are cups and saucers. This is a thinking person's room, where the series of moves has to be worked out using not just chronological backtracking but dependency-directed backtracking, as early mistakes may only catch up with you at the end, when you realise you've cut yourself off from some items or the portal. But once you know what you're doing, this room's bark is worse than its bite. And count yourself lucky I changed the background paper-colour from white to yellow because Room 18 has white-paper background! :-> Tips: * To cross the bottom from right to left, stand still while the Allanas advance by one square, then take a no-hesitation approach to jumping over them, starting with the red and cyan together as the red Allana emerges from under the bottom-left table. * Jump onto the conveyor (the blue counter) from the left, and jump off the far-right edge. As you land on the bottom-left table, jump left (i.e. straight up), and left again back onto the conveyor. Jump straight up twice and stop under the wall-block at the top of the conveyor. * Cross the top from left to right: jump onto the top-left table and immediately jump straight up. Then keep holding right - jumping immediately after each of three falls - until you fall off the right edge of the top-right table and all the way down to the bottom-right corner. * When crossing the bottom from right to left the second time, jump straight up over the red Allana to the right of the overhead static nasty, then take a no-hesitation approach to jumping over the other three. * Jump onto the conveyor from the left, and jump off the far-right edge - but this time it has to be from one step back from the edge or you'll miss the items. Jump right immediately on hitting the bottom-left table; after collecting the item walk right until you fall, then simply keep jumping right until you reach the portal. ROOM 12: "Lassiter's Lake". Another room which I designed by drawing a picture before worrying about how to make it playable, this is a scenic screen named for Jack Lassiter, who founded Lassiter's worldwide chain of hotels in the olden days. Lassiter's Complex (which includes Lou's Place [Room 9], the Coffee Shop [11] and Erinsborough Medical Centre [13] as well as Lassiter's Hotel, Restaurant and Shopping Arcade) is situated by Lassiter's Lake, which is surrounded by plenty of greenery and a gazebo. I included it in MM:N-AT because Allana went there once with Lance, and I was trying to base the remaining twelve rooms after the labours primarily on locations. The Allana sprite for this room was generated by applying SPECSAISIE PunchHoles with the background pixel-pattern as the "x AND NOT y" mask to knock the on-pixels of the background out of the Allana-sprite so that the guardians don't collide with these pixels and kill you. Tips: * Start by crossing the top of the lake from left to right to collect the top item. * Enter the lake by walking off the right edge of the screen (you can do this only once), and keep walking right until you are between the second and third static nasties in the top row of static nasties. * Drop onto the item, relieve it of crumbling floor, and jump straight up onto the non-crumbling water-block. * Jump left and drop down between the first and second static nasties. Stand halfway under the second static nasty (i.e. two steps away from the item) and jump right to collect the item. * Stand on the second item to relieve it of crumbling floor (remembering that the pier is a right-conveyor). * Standing in one character-column above "k", drop down one row and immediately jump right, and walk right over the static nasties; drop down between the two rightmost static nasties and collect the items. * Jump (once) back up the remaining crumbling-floor column, and jump left to land between the second and third static nasties from the right. Drop down one row, and jump left to land between the third-rightmost static nasty and the jetty. * Go and collect the last item; the portal is at the bottom of the lake, just to the right of "ke". ROOM 13: "Dr. Karl Kennedy's Surgery". A brilliant conveyor-challenge, interacting with crumbling floors and guardians, this room had me yelling in frustration whilst enjoying every moment. :-) Allana visited Dr. Kennedy to discuss her mother's health-problems, hence you play as Allana rather than Lance in this room (see TECHNICA.TXT for how I hacked the game-engine to do this). The items are medical reports, the conveyor is the examining couch, the first static nasties are lamps, and EMC stands for Erinsborough Medical Centre. The skeleton sprite comes from _Willy's Afterlife_ by Adban De Corcy, and is used with his permission. Tips: * Immediately walk left and jump up onto the far right edge of the crumbling-floor block before the yellow skeleton collides with it. Walk left onto the animated conveyor, completely removing said crumbling-floor block. * Stop on the left end of the animated conveyor by releasing the left key for just one time-frame, and jump straight up to collect the item. * Drop back onto the left end of the conveyor, and wait there until the green VG is at its bottom boundary. Jump off the very right edge of the animated conveyor onto the crumbling-floor block, and immediately jump left onto the blue floor. * Jump right off the conveyor-block so as to miss the top conveyor and land on the blue platform beneath it. Jump left onto the conveyor-block, and left over the static nasties. Stop on the conveyor, and when it's safe to do so, jump right onto the conveyor-block (collecting the item), and once again jump onto the blue platform under the top conveyor. Stand on the item to relieve it of crumbling floor. * Drop down onto the crumbling-floor block, walk left one step, and jump right for the item, making sure to leave enough crumbling floor to jump back onto it and to jump straight up so as to fall with the yellow skeleton to the right of you, so you can jump over it and access the right half of the screen. * Wait on the bottom-right conveyor-block, and when the magenta and black VGs are both at their top boundaries, jump up and cross the crumbling platform without stopping, jump left onto the double conveyor-block and stop on it. * To take the middle-right item, first relieve it of crumbling floor then, facing right with your legs apart above "g", jump right over the static nasty. ROOM 14: "Aubrey Sci-Fi Convention". This room was inspired by a sci-fi convention at Aubrey that Allana and Lance attended (though the convention itself wasn't televised). The screen is divided into several stalls, as I saw when there was a sci-fi convention in The Simpsons (Season 10, Episode AABF05: "Mayored to the Mob"). The graphics are based on sci-fi collectibles which I divided between this and Room 16. The floor and crumbling-floor graphics are based on a bookshelf from Number 30. The conveyor is based on a painted Star Trek plate, the static nasties on a sci-fi outfit (shirt and trousers), the items are unrolled sci-fi posters, and the portal is a framed picture. I haven't changed the colour-scheme much from Manic Miner's original Room 14 ("The Bank"), as there was a gap of four months between designing the screen-layout and going back to edit the graphics, and I'd got used to the dark blue atmosphere. The HG sprite is the letter from "The Bank", slightly modified so that the stamp and the address are positioned the way I think they should be. I found that the letter sprite works very well in this room, so I didn't want to replace it. The Kong-Beast/VG sprite originates from Goodnite Luddite (Broadsoft, 2002). The conveyor-animation is a striking illustration that the rotating pixel-row is based on the conveyor block-graphic rather than varying according to the block-graphic it's over (as, I must admit, I expected when I placed it), and a rare example of lower pixel-rows than usual being animated. It's also interesting that the white letter blocks the solar beam because it has the same colour-attribute as wall. It used to be bright white - the same colour-attribute as the player - which meant that you were docked air when the beam collided with it! Tips: *1. You start inside a wall. Jump right out of it to collect the first item. *2. Time is very tight in this room. If you want to `kill the Kong Beast', there's no time for waiting around until the guardians are aligned for a comfortable jump, nor for safety-jumps. *3. The central item is protected by a crumbling-floor block which you must get rid of so that you will be able to jump up for it from below. This is best done by walking close behind the green letter as it sets off to the right. You'll need to save the adjacent crumbling-floor block for access to the right half of the screen (after collecting all the items in the left half and bottom section). *4. To flick the left switch, jump straight up to the left of the red letter, and jump over it into the switch. *5. Bottom section: jump through the ILB to land at the bottom-left. Jump through the crumbling-floor block as though it too were an ILB, and jump left on the conveyor so as to land *inside* the wall-block and be able to walk right along the conveyor and collect the two items in the obvious way (assuming that you relieved the central item of crumbling floor in Step *3). *6. Right half: The top-right item is protected by crumbling-floor, so you have to jump on top of it in order to collect it. *7. (Optional) To `kill the Kong Beast': Stand in one character-column between the solar beam and the VG, facing right so that it doesn't sap your air-supply. Jump left over the yellow letter from inside the crumbling-floor layer, and flick the right switch. Drop down onto the wall-layer and jump right over the yellow letter from that level again. Walk left to minimise contact with the solar beam as you drop back down to the wall-layer and leave. *8. Portal: Jump through the ILB to land at the bottom-right. Jump into the portal when you are aligned in one character-column with the pair of static nasties to the right of the portal. ROOM 15: "Where's Woody?". This room was inspired by a Neighbours plotline unrelated to Allana. Not long before she and Lance left Neighbours, Steph Scully got a letter from her boyfriend Larry Woodhouse (Woody), who was in prison for receiving stolen goods. He was given a day-release with the Scully family, but one of his fellow inmates, a dangerous gangster named Kev Kelly, intimidated him into picking up stolen goods from a robbery. Steph caught Woody red-handed, and persuaded him to go to the police. Kelly was charged, and Woody (who had now completed his prison-sentence) had to testify against him in court. Kelly swore revenge on Woody, and Woody had to go into witness-protection because the word on the street was that Kelly's friends on the outside were trying to kill Woody - notably a scraggly-haired, white-estate-car-driving henchman named Barry Burke. Steph went to see Woody in secret - breaking his witness-protection - and was almost caught by Burke on the way. Steph and Woody couldn't bear being apart, so Woody left witness-protection, and he and Steph planned to move to a remote corner of Australia where they would be safe from Kelly's gang. They had to accelerate their plans upon learning that Kelly himself had escaped from prison, so they set off at once in Woody's car. Unfortunately, their departure did not go unnoticed by Burke. They stopped at a petrol-station, where Woody proposed to Steph and she accepted. She went into the shop to get some food, and Woody was car-jacked by Burke, who put a gun to his head and ordered him to drive! As Steph emerged from the shop, she saw Woody's car speeding off down the road and over a hill. She heard a loud screeching of tyres, an explosion, and saw a terrific plume of flame beyond the hilltop! This has to be my pick for greatest soap-moment of all time. They found the remains of one body in the car-wreck, and assumed it was Woody. But a few months later, Woody turned up on Steph's doorstep, explaining that he had rolled out of the car before it exploded, and that he had let everyone believe he was dead because Kelly was still at large, but had just been killed in a hold-up. He tried to get back together with Steph, but his deception had mortally wounded their relationship, and he left Neighbours with his tail between his legs. This room represents the road that Woody's car took, featuring the crashing car as both Skylabs and jerky HGs, with foliage from _Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings_ (Broadsoft, 2000). The petrol-station is at the bottom-right of the screen; at the bottom-left is the hill, and the portal represents the hospital where Steph was taken (physically unhurt, but in deep shock) after partially witnessing the accident. The line "Where's Woody?" was used at least three times in Neighbours; it is also, of course, a titular nod to Sendy's JSW128 game _where's woody_. Tips: *1. Mind the green static nasties which are well-camouflaged by the floor-blocks. *2. After jumping over the yellow HG, jump off the very left edge of that platform to collect the item and land to the left of the magenta HG. *3. Note that the platforms under the magenta and cyan HGs consist of conveyor-blocks with a wall-block (which looks the same) at the left end. *4. Jump onto the crumbling-floor block so as to straddle the left edge of the screen; jump straight up, hold right+jump as you land so as to jump straight up again. Walk right into columns 0 & 1 - it should look like you are standing in rows 0 & 1, but you're not. Press jump so that you really are, then you can walk right to collect the other item in row 0, and walk left off the screen so that you reappear at the top-right of the screen. *5. Press jump to drop down onto the top-right road-platform when the Skylab is in its rightmost column. Again jump over the magenta HG from above, and let the conveyor carry you to the wall-block at the left end of the platform. *6. Stand on the very left edge of the magenta HG's platform, facing right, and jump right twice to land on the wall-block at the left end of the cyan HG's platform, where you can wait in total safety. *7. Jump onto the green lower platform under the magenta HG, and stand on the item to relieve it of crumbling floor (I wanted to protect the top-right item in this way too, but would have had to remove the yellow HG to make the room completable). Return to the left end of the cyan HG's platform. *8. Wait until the yellow HG is at its left boundary exactly as the cyan HG is at its right boundary, and jump over the cyan HG in the next cycle after that. You should just miss the Skylab as you land at the right end of the platform. IF YOU GET THE TIMING WRONG HERE, IT WON'T BE POSSIBLE TO JUMP OVER THE WHITE HG WHEN YOU REACH THE BOTTOM. *9. Jump off the right edge of the short road-platform so as to land on the roof of the petrol-station, and let the conveyor do the rest. If you did Step *8 correctly, the white HG will be going left as you approach it, allowing you to jump over it without hitting the static nasty, and if you relieved the bottom-left item of crumbling floor (Step *7), you should enjoy a straightforward trip to the portal. ROOM 16: "Sci-Fi Collectibles". Allana and Lance decided to sell their sci-fi collections in order to raise funds for their trip to America. However, they were disappointed when the value of their combined collection turned out to be only $300. My idea for this room was to have a random scattering of blocks which wouldn't really look like a room at all (in particular, it lacks the usual two walls and floor of most MM caverns), but would disorient the player. What I've ended up with is a rather more structured screen-layout than I'd imagined, chock full of quirky features, and puzzles involving crumbling floors and invisible blocks, under mildly awkward pressure from some pseudo-3D guardians. It's a prime example of a "which way do I go now?" room. The atmosphere is somewhat reminiscent of Booty (a classic platform-game), and it's a lot of fun to play if (as usual in Broadsoft games) you don't mind using the pause-button. The floor, conveyor, crumbling-floor and item graphics are all variants of crystal-ball-type objects that Allana and Lance had in their collection. The wall and portal graphics are based on square and hexagonal cardboard boxes. The cyan static nasty is a ray-gun (don't be fooled by the conveyor-animation!). The blue static nasty is three poster-tubes. The Eugene graphic is an action-figure moulded to a flat base. The HG is a spaceship consisting of three pieces which are attached to the base by thin rods. Tips: *1. Go right initially, jumping off the very right end of the starting platform so as to clear the ray-gun. Jump off the very right end of that platform too, stop on the magenta conveyor-block and jump straight up for the top item. *2. Jump onto the green floor-block beneath the cyan HG so as to walk behind it as closely as possible, and jump off the right edge of the screen. Stand on the top-left item to relieve it of crumbling floor, then stand halfway off the top-left floor-block facing left, and jump through the ILB on the other side of the screen. *3. Cross the top of the screen from right to left. This entails an accurate jump to avoid both the overhead wall-block and the blue static nasty. Stand halfway onto the green floor-block by the blue nasty, facing left, and jump left to land on the crumbling-floor blocks (this jump will collect the top-left item iff you relieved it of crumbling floor in Step *2). *4. Drop down onto the lowest crumbling-floor block and jump right onto the central isolated floor-block (resisting the temptation to jump prematurely and hit the blue static nasty). Jump off the very right edge of this floor-block, use the pause-button to stand on the item for exactly seven time-frames to relieve it of crumbling floor, then jump straight up. *5. To get from the starting platform to the bottom-right: Jump onto the top-right conveyor-block and let it dump you onto the wall-block. Stand on the middle of the wall-block facing right with your legs apart, and jump right so as to land on the lower floor-block (this will collect the item if you relieved it of crumbling floor in the natural course of Steps *2 and *3). *6. Jump through the ILB (this will save you from falling too far) to land on the floor-block above the last 'l' in the room-title. Jump right twice to land on the rightmost floor-block. Jump off the left edge of this block to land on the floor-block above 's'. Jump off the very left edge of this block and DO NOT COLLECT THE ITEM. *7. Stand on the middle floor-block above the first 'e', facing left with your legs apart, and jump over the conveyor-animated ray-guns so as to land inside the wall-block (this will collect the item iff you relieved it of crumbling floor in Step *4). Jump straight up onto the wall-block, stand halfway onto it facing right, and jump right to land back on the platform with what should be the last remaining item (DON'T COLLECT IT!). *8. There's an invisible block above the item. Jump onto the item and stand on it for exactly seven time-frames to relieve it of crumbling floor, then jump straight up, for I have cleverly designed it so that you have to go back up to the top before you can get back down to the bottom. :-) *9. Make your way back to the floor-block above the last 'l' (as per Steps *5 and *6). Wait until the Eugene (action-man) is near the top of the screen and jump left, collecting the last item (which you relieved of crumbling floor in Step *8). Stand on the right edge of the "ec" platform to avoid the conveyor-animated ray-guns as you jump left over the magenta HG. *10. Instead of trying to jump directly onto the floor-block above the 'c' in "Sci" and getting killed by the blue static nasty, fall off the bottom of the screen to the left of 'C' to land on an invisible block near the top of the screen. Jump left onto another invisible block, and straight up onto an invisible block on the bottom above the first 'i'. Then you can safely jump left into the flashing portal (thanks to an invisible block above the 'R' in "AIR"). ROOM 17: "Harold's Allotment". Harold Bishop owns a small plot of land somewhere in the vicinity of Ramsay Street, which Lance and Allana offered to do some work on (Lance was a garden landscaper). It was here that Allana gave Lance a pendant (the item) she'd made out of the piece of `Miron' Lance had given her for the seventh labour, and Lance confessed that he'd faked it. This is quite a sunny, attractive room, enhanced by a wall-graphic which is `corrupted' by the Block-Graphics Bug - if you look at it in an editor, you'll see that I actually just drew plain vertical lines - but I like the pattern so I didn't fix it. The HG is the cobra from We Pretty (Broadsoft, 1999), modified by applying SPECSAISIE PunchHoles with the floor pixel-pattern as the "x AND NOT y" mask to knock the on-pixels of the floor out of the cobra-sprite so that the HGs don't collide with these pixels and kill you. The vertical guardian is of course Harold Bishop (even though he wasn't there himself), complete with glasses and wobbly chins. I also considered adding Harold as a VG behind the counter in "The Coffee Shop" [11], but I thought it would be a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth", especially as I would have had to sacrifice the bidirectionality of the HGs in that room. This room turned out much easier than I had intended. My original idea was that you would have to stand on the top items for exactly seven time-frames to relieve them of crumbling floor, then jump up into the portal - but of course this is impossible, as you have to go back down to collect the items thus relieved, and are then cut off from the portal because you used up the crumbling-floor blocks needed to reach it. So I had to come up with another way to reach the portal, which unavoidably releases the constraints on the items. ;-) The challenge for advanced players is to complete this room as efficiently as possible. Tips: * All the items are protected by crumbling floor. * You can get under the white VG by walking left without stopping as soon as you begin. * It's better to start with the left side, as you have to wait a long time for the cobra when starting on the right. Also, the bottom item is best approached from the left because the VGs are slower on that side. * Take the top-left item first, thus landing on the middle platform between the white and red HGs. From this platform, either jump right if you prefer to do it the slow and easy way, or jump left if you prefer to do it the fast and difficult way. * (The Easy, Inefficient Method) Jump right over the red VG and fall to the bottom, collecting the bottom item. This is inefficient because you have to go back for the middle-left item, so I have set the air-supply for this room such that you have to complete within eight time-frames of the earliest possible time (the air-supply is depleted by one pixel every eight time-frames) if you do it this way. * (The Difficult, Efficient Method) Jump left over the white VG and collect the middle-left item, thus landing on the lower-left crumbling-floor platform. Jump past the white and red VGs to collect the bottom-item - it's extremely difficult to time this correctly on crumbling floor, but pull it off and you can rest on your laurels with ample air to finish the room. * (The Easy, Efficient Method) Unfortunately (though not from your perspective, I suppose) I've now found a way to circumvent the difficult method without the tight air-supply associated with the easy method as described above. I'll leave this method for the cleverest players to discover... * The only way to reach the portal after collecting the items is to jump up off the top of the screen, walk along the very bottom of the screen, and drop into the portal. If you look ever so carefully at the top row, you'll notice a one-pixel difference between the wall-blocks and the "spare" blocks up through which you can jump. ROOM 18: "Brain Busters". The second way that Lance and Allana tried to raise funds for their trip to America was to enter Lance in a radio quiz-show called Brain Busters. Each week, Lance had to answer five sci-fi questions. Answer all five correctly and he'd double the amount of money he'd won so far. Get one wrong and he'd lose all the money he'd won so far. Each week when he answered all five correctly, he'd have to choose between sticking with the money he'd won so far, or going back next week to play for double or nothing. Lance kept playing until he'd won $4000 - more than enough to go to America. But then the organisers actually gave him the answers to next week's quiz, because Lance was such a ratings-winner that they wanted to rig it so he kept playing! Lance agreed to come back next week and play for $8000, but Allana said it was over between them if he went ahead with the scam. So it wasn't so much "Brain Busters" as "The Money or the Girl". Lance did play on and win $8000, but - to Allana's surprise as much as anyone else's - he immediately announced, on air, that he didn't want to travel the world on stolen money from a rigged quiz-show. So he saved his relationship with Allana, but lost all his winnings. The zig-zag pixel-patterns and colour-scheme of this room are based on the artwork from the Brain Busters studio. The items are pairs of antennae that Allana made for Lance to wear on his head during the Brain Busters sessions. The HGs are radios. The VG is the host of Brain Busters - Glen Goldman - wearing a pair of headphones. It's a tough room, featuring a variety of challenges with a white-paper background, but hardly a brain-buster next to some of the rooms in my previous MM game _Ma jolie_! ;-) Tips: *1. The bottom-right is a good place to start. Stand halfway between 'e' and 'r', and jump right so as to land past the black static nasty whilst avoiding the cyan static nasty overhead. Jump right onto the item and relieve it of crumbling floor. *2. Curl up into the bottom-left corner of the corridor, standing in one character-column facing right to avoid Glen Goldman. Jump right to land *inside* the wall-block above 't'. Walk right, into the magenta floor, and stand above 'r' with your legs apart. Jump right (over the radio) so as to land in the floor beyond the first black static nasty. Jump likewise over the second black static nasty to collect the bottom-right item. *3. Although the bottom-left item can be collected in symmetrical fashion, we'll come back for it when we take a shortcut later on (in Steps *9 and *10, to be precise). *4. Now do the middle-right. Stop on the conveyor between the two overhead static nasties, and jump straight up for the item. A natural sense of the speed at which you walk is key to a successful escape; it may help to watch the conveyor or the overhead HG. *5. We'll get the item in the middle-left when we take the aforementioned shortcut later on. *6. Beware the tight jump in getting from the middle storey to the top storey! *7. Do the top-right now if the timing is propitious. You'll have to come back up from below if you do the top-left first, but we're going to do that anyway. *8. To collect the top-right item, wait until the red radio is at its left boundary, and follow it so closely that when you jump it (hitting your head on the overhead wall), you will land directly on the item before the conveyor takes you back left. *9. Cross the top-left by repeatedly jumping left, trying to leave as much crumbling floor as possible because you'll have to do this again at the end! Time it so that you jump the green radio near the left end so it won't get you from behind. Fall through the two leftmost crumbling-floor blocks to collect the middle-left item. *10. Then drop down into the bottom-left from the two crumbling-floor blocks to the left of the two cyan static nasties. Relieve the bottom-left item of crumbling floor, then go and collect it like you did the bottom-right item in Step *2. *11. Return to the top-left and repeat Step *9, but this time jump over the gap of two character-spaces that you should have left when you fell through the floor at the end of Step *9, and you should land in the invisible portal. ROOM 19: "Ningwaar!". Allana and Lance finally left Neighbours after her mother gave Allana some money that her father had left to her. Their final scene was the usual emotional farewell, leaving Ramsay Street in a taxi (the portal-graphic). The second static nasty is Lance's hand waving goodbye (shouting "Ningwaar!", which is possibly a word from one of Star Trek's conlangs). The horizontal guardian is the Toadfish sprite from "Deliver Article to Home Planet" [6], and how could I finish writing the game without including a VG-sprite of Allana's face? :-) Allana and Lance had one last crisis before they left, as they lost the plane-tickets (they turned up - in a greatly transmuted state - in Allana's washing-machine; luckily the ticket-office was willing to reprint them) - so in this room, you have to hunt for five invisible items. Tips: * I've very kindly adjusted the start-positions of the guardians so that this room can be completed with very little waiting if you take the most efficient route. * Memorising the score at the start of a life in this room (InitialScore) can be helpful for keeping track of how many of the items you have collected; the item-collection sound is also helpful! :-) *1. One item is hidden in the title-screen picture, but it's much easier than it looks. Walk right at the start, and as soon as you land on the top red step, jump right twice (the cyan-on-black blocks are right-conveyors). Then simply keep walking right until you reemerge on top of the wall at the left - this will have relieved the item of crumbling floor so that you can jump up for it later (in Step *3). *2. Wait at the right edge of the bottom red step with your legs apart, jump right over Allana, and jump immediately right off the crumbling-floor block (flower) so as to land on the upper conveyor (with blue Toadie). *3. Jump right over the three plants in the middle of the upper conveyor - this jump will also take you over blue Toadie if you're on time. Wait on the wall to the right of the conveyor, and set off to the left as blue Toadie is going right above 'g'. Stop on the conveyor to the right of the waving-hand nasty, and jump straight up to collect the item you relieved of crumbling floor in Step *1 - preferably with blue Toadie passing under you on this jump. {Score == InitialScore + 100} *4. Go back to the wall to the right of the upper conveyor, then cross it fully from right to left - this time walking as close behind blue Toadie as you dare. When you drop onto the crumbling-floor block, immediately walk right off it - there should be one single pixel-row remaining, which you'll need to get back up on the upper conveyor later (in Step *11). * Don't be fooled by the nasty-looking blocks embedded in the lower conveyor - they are harmless Spare blocks, trying to trick you into jumping in the wrong place. *5. Proceed immediately along the lower conveyor, jumping twice against the bottom of the overhead wall-block (or once against the side) to get the timing right. Jump right over yellow Toadie and collect the invisible item in the crook of the wall. {Score == InitialScore + 200} *6. Jump left over yellow Toadie, and jump left so that you hit your head against the very right edge of the overhead wall-block, collecting an invisible item and landing on the conveyor in one character-column. Wait in this position until it is safe (with respect to blue Toadie above) to jump right over yellow Toadie once more. {Score == InitialScore + 300} *7. If your timing is correct, Allana should be near her top boundary as you reach the right end of the lower conveyor again. Immediately set off left. *8. If your timing is correct, you should be walking close behind magenta Toadie. Jump left when you're exactly aligned in one character-column with the red plant, so as to land on the very right edge of the raised conveyor-block, and immediately jump left over the green plant and under Allana's chin. *9. Remove the crumbling-floor block under the red steps by jumping onto the left side of the block and walking right to avoid being killed by the green plant below. *10. Jump left over that green plant so as to collect the invisible items to the right of it, and under the leftmost wall-column, in the same jump. {Score == InitialScore + 500; Portal flashing} *11. If you've done the room correctly, there will be one pixel-row of crumbling floor remaining to allow access to the upper conveyor (with blue Toadie) again. This time you have to jump /under/ Allana. If you haven't enabled the "6031769" teleport-cheat, the portal will turn into a lovely reward. -------- Internet -------- I currently have a website at http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/. Some relevant pages within this website are: * http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/ Top-level index of my Spectrum pages. * http://www.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://www.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 (read screenshots) sections which members can upload to, Bookmarks 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 also founded a Yahoo! Group for Allana Truman: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/allanatruman/ 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 forums [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: Neighbours - Allana Truman 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 (2004). 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, graphics, &c. 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. "Graphic X in Room Y was taken from Manic Miner: Neighbours - Allana Truman", or whatever. Please let me know if you do rerelease MM:N-AT 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! --------------- Version History --------------- 16th November 2004: Initial release of MM:N-AT on the Internet.