MANIC MINER: THE HOBBIT (C) 2000 BROADSOFT ======================= For the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Written by Andrew Broad Email: broada@cs.man.ac.uk Website: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold. The Game -------- To celebrate the first year of the third millennium (or the last year of the second millennium, for those who prefer to count from one rather than zero), I release my long-awaited games Manic Miner: The Hobbit and Jet Set Willy: Lord of the Rings! Manic Miner: The Hobbit is a redefinition of the screens in Matthew Smith's classic Manic Miner, which I acknowledge as being the copyright of Bug-Byte (1983). It is based on J.R.R. Tolkien's equally classic novel The Hobbit; I acknowledge the plot as being the copyright of George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 1951, 1975, 1979 and 1981. My idea was that The Hobbit would map quite nicely to Manic Miner as the former has 19 chapters and the latter has 20 rooms, so there is a room for each chapter in the book (in the same order), plus a bonus room to bring it up to 20. In MM:Hobbit, Miner Willy plays Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit who is persuaded by Gandalf the wizard to go on an adventure with a group of dwarves to win back the treasure stolen from them by Smaug the dragon. MM:Hobbit is intended to appeal both to Spectrum fans and Tolkien fans. I therefore set out to make it only moderately difficult, but once again my notorious talent for writing difficult Manic Miner rooms has surfaced, and this game contains some of the best I have ever written! :-> So I decided to release an easy version of the game (HOB-LITE.TAP) alongside the definitive 'hard' version (HOBBIT.TAP). Good MM players should play the hard version first, and Hobbit fans should play the easy version first! ;-) To complete the game, you have to collect the flashing items in each room, which makes the portal start flashing so that you can go through it to the next room. If you complete the final room, you've won (and thus earned the moral right to play JSW:LOTR), but it takes you back to the start room in case you want to continue and increase your score. I have thoroughly play-tested both the hard version and the easy version, and I declare that it is possible to complete every room. I developed MM:Hobbit on a Spectrum +2, using my own Manic Miner Screen Editor (which is available for downloading from my website [http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/]). I wrote MM:Hobbit between January and May 1998, reading a chapter a week and writing the corresponding room. I finished the rooms in May 1998. I returned to MM:Hobbit in October/November 1999 to edit the title screen, plug in the in-game music and make a few minor changes to the rooms. It was always my goal to release MM:Hobbit and JSW:LOTR together in January 2000. Many thanks to Richard Hallas for rescuing this game from tape and converting it to emulator format for me! ROOMS.TXT contains a blow-by-blow description of each room in MM:Hobbit. Loading Instructions -------------------- To play MM:Hobbit, 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.kendalls.demon.co.uk/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 loading 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). I speak only from experience with MacSpectacle, but I expect the procedure is similar for other emulators. HOBBIT.TAP is the hard version of MM:Hobbit, and HOB-LITE.TAP is the easy version. The Music --------- I would like to thank Richard Hallas for his music document, A Miner Triad (hosted on my website at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/music.html), which was a useful aid to redefining the in-game music of Manic Miner. The in-game tune is different, depending if it is the hard version (HOBBIT.TAP) or the easy version (HOB-LITE.TAP). Both tunes come from a triptych of Norwegian folk songs which I played in an orchestra when I was a teenager, but unfortunately I can't for the life of me remember what it was or who composed it, despite a sincere search for it on the Internet. All I remember is that the piece I didn't use was called Saeterjentens Sonntag (Sheepgirl's Sunday), and the piece I use for the hard version is called Den Bakvende Visa (The Awkward Song). My Norwegian spelling is probably slightly erroneous there. I had to adapt Den Bakvende Visa from 3:4 to 4:4 time (the in-game tune has to be exactly 64 notes of equal duration) by converting the two quavers at the end of each bar to crotchets. Internet -------- I currently have a website at http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ (though it may disappear in the future if I lose access to the Internet). Some relevant pages within this website are: * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/ Top-level index of my Spectrum pages. * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/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), my Manic Miner Room Format (an excellent source of the technical information behind MM:Hobbit, though I do say so myself! ;-) ), Richard Hallas's music document, a list of some of the quirky features in MM/JSW which I use in my games, and links to other MM/JSW websites. * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/ My download page. Currently contains my other games (Manic Miner 4, Manic Miner: The Buddha of Suburbia and Jet Set Willy: We Pretty), and my Manic Miner Screen Editor. Also has previews of forthcoming software (mostly MM/JSW games), including projected release dates (which may change over time according to my progress). * http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/download/tolkien.zip The original source of MM:Hobbit and JSW:LOTR! 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 day. I announce my releases on comp.sys.sinclair (though it's better to check my web pages periodically for MM/JSW news). The newsgroup is archived at http://www.deja.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! I recently set up a Yahoo! club for Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. Its URL is:- http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/manicminerandjetsetwilly It includes a message board for discussing MM/JSW, picture galleries which members can upload to, a Java chat room, a links page and a calendar. Anyone can visit the club and look around its public areas, but for full privileges you have to join the club as a member. This prerequires signing up for a Yahoo! account, which you can do, free of charge, over the web. The club will become what we, the MM/JSW community, collectively make it. The club needs members, so please join! Copyright Notice ---------------- Manic Miner: The Hobbit 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 (2000). This document should 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 etc. in your own games, or converting the game to another computer (e.g. for MM 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: The Hobbit", or whatever. Please let me know if you do rerelease Manic Miner: The Hobbit 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 --------------- 5th January 2000: Initial release of Manic Miner: The Hobbit on the Internet, together with Jet Set Willy: The Lord of the Rings. The Rooms in Manic Miner: The Hobbit ==================================== Each Manic Miner room corresponds to a chapter in The Hobbit, plus there is a bonus room at the end. This section contains a detailed description of each room in MM:Hobbit. The description is based on the /hard/ version (HOBBIT.TAP), not the easy version (HOB-LITE.TAP, which has been made considerably easier and has had the quirky features taken out). CHAPTER 1: "An Unexpected Party". You begin in Bilbo Baggins's hobbit hole, on the night when the dwarves descend on him (thirteen of them in the book, but Manic Miner only allows four). You have to jump over the dwarves, collect their hoods and then go through the round green door to proceed on the adventure. CHAPTER 2: "Roast Mutton". Bilbo and the dwarves are waylaid by three trolls; this room is set in their clearing, with their fire burning and smoke wafting upwards. You need to get the key to open the trolls' cave. First jump up the fire on the left side, onto a platform in the trees. This is quite tricky as the fire is actually implemented as right-to-left conveyor blocks. Then jump over the red troll and off the left of the screen. You can then jump up and get the key, but don't jump too high or you won't be able to get back down! Getting down is best accomplished by walking off the right edge of the screen, dropping down onto the platform where the red troll is, and jumping so that you land on the fire but miss the killer star. But, as they say in the Perl community, There's More Than One Way To Do It! :-) CHAPTER 3: "A Short Rest". Visit the Last Homely House in the valley of Rivendell and collect the runes. Not a difficult screen, but emphasis on "Short" as I've only given you a small air supply! You may be surprised at how rapidly the crumbling floor vanishes! (technically, it's because I left the graphic blank, and a blank row of pixels at the bottom of the graphic is Manic Miner's criterion for judging whether such floor has crumbled completely). I added Elrond to this room (hard version only) in October 1999. CHAPTER 4: "Over Hill and Under Hill". You have now arrived at the Misty Mountains. You shelter from a thunderstorm in a small cave, but are waylaid by goblins. You must jump over them and try to escape through a lower passage, which is quite tough because ordinary floor, crumbling floor, wall and conveyors all look the same, and there are several wrong turns you could take! Again, the air supply is short and the crumbling floor crumbles rapidly, forcing you to rush! Tip: If you keep moving to the right when the floor falls away, you'll find ridges to wait in before you drop down onto the goblins' swords! CHAPTER 5: "Riddles in the Dark". The lower passage leads to a lake where a creature called Gollum lives - that's him sailing up and down the middle of the screen in his boat. In the book, Bilbo had to answer Gollum's riddles to avoid being eaten before he could get out. Here, the riddle is how you solve this very puzzling screen. Basically, you must grab the ring, whereupon Gollum will start flashing and come down to block your path if you don't get out of the way in time, so you'd better time it so that you take the ring just as Gollum is at the top of the screen (note that this screen lives up to its name by being very dark, so you can't see what you're doing properly!). Then you have to jump over Gollum left-to-right from far enough back to avoid cracking your head on a snag in the ceiling, and escape through the lower gate, which is guarded by goblins. Of all the Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy screens I have ever played (prior to my next MM game, Ma jolie), this is the one that requires the most intelligence to solve, in addition to great manual dexterity. You will need to put your thinking cap on and approach this one with a cool, calculating mind if you're ever going to get past it! You will need to think laterally, as the solution requires a non-obvious early step to remove a problem you will encounter later on. You will probably have to experiment several times before you hit on the idea for the solution - I certainly had to, and I wrote the damn thing! ;-) CHAPTER 6: "Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire". You have escaped through the lower gate to the other side of the Misty Mountains, but only to be attacked by a pack of wargs! You must collect the cones from the firtrees, avoiding the wargs and the fire on the ground (this requires some intelligent jumping) and then jump on the eagle to the right, which will carry you (literally, because it's implemented as left-to-right conveyor blocks - take care not to fall off!) to the safety of its eyrie. The jump onto the eagle is tricky because it has to be right off the edge of the middle firtree, under the pressure of crumbling floor. Quite a difficult screen, but it's beyond none of you really, especially if you have had the perseverance to crack "Riddles in the Dark"! ;-) CHAPTER 7: "Queer Lodgings". An easier screen after the trials and tribulations of the two before, you now find yourself in Beorn's house. Collect the food from the table and jump up the ledges, avoiding the bears (excuse the terrible graphics with their wiggling bottoms). You can get out through the hole in the roof. CHAPTER 8: "Flies and Spiders". You have entered the forest of Mirkwood, which is infested by giant spiders. The dwarves have been captured, tied in knots and left hanging in bundles (the tiny shining objects at the top of the screen). Rescue them, and then leave Mirkwood through the Elvenking's gate. To complete this room also requires flicking the white switches at the top of the screen - I won't tell you which one does which or in what order you have to flick them, but if you've played "Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast" in Manic Miner, you should be able to work it out by case-based reasoning! :-) CHAPTER 9: "Barrels Out of Bond". In the book, Bilbo has to rescue the dwarves from the Elvenking's dungeons, which he does by sending them down a stream packed in barrels. This is a difficult concept to interpret for a Manic Miner screen, so the plot in this one is just to steal the chief guard's keys, avoiding the merrymaking elves, then go through the trapdoor and escape down the stream on foot, avoiding the barrel and exiting via the water-gate. CHAPTER 10: "A Warm Welcome". A really rather pointless chapter in which the dwarves and Bilbo arrive in Lake Town. So I've used my imagination to create a room in which you have to emerge from a lake and then leave for the Mountain through the clouds, avoiding lots of static obstacles along the way. CHAPTER 11: "On the Doorstep". In which Bilbo and the dwarves arrive at the Mountain where Smaug resides, and have to solve a puzzle to get in (finding the door). In this room, you have to solve a puzzle of a Manic Miner kind, which involves jumping through innocent-looking wall blocks. The vertical guardians are supposed to be smoke-rings. CHAPTER 12: "Inside Information". In the book, Bilbo enters the dragon's lair (lit red with the glow of Smaug), where all the treasure is piled up, and manages to pinch a two-handled cup. Watch out, I've implemented the treasure pile as sticky conveyor blocks (I believe this was the first MM/JSW room ever written that incorporates sticky conveyors!), and you'll have to flick the left switch to open a crack in the middle and the right switch to send Smaug flying out in a rage so you can escape! CHAPTER 13: "Not at Home". Now that the dragon has flown, Bilbo and the dwarves are free to raid the dragon's treasure hoard and take all they can carry! This time, the treasure pile is made up of 'off' conveyor blocks. Note that the dwarves can collect items as well as you, because they are implemented as white horizontal guardians! The 'A' on the items is for Arkenstone, a precious gem that Bilbo stole in this chapter. It's very dark in here without the dragon's glow, so I've made the platforms invisible (how extremely naughty of me! :-> ). The luminous eyes are my own idea. I'm particularly pleased with the red bat graphic - it was difficult to draw, but it turned out much better than I expected! :-) CHAPTER 14: "Fire and Water". This is the chapter where the dragon gets slain (rather prematurely in my opinion, coming as it does only three-quarters of the way through, but that's Tolkien for you! ;-) ). In this room, Smaug comes down on Lake Town like a ton of bricks - I used even more guardians than "Skylab Landing Bay" in the original Manic Miner, and have them moving faster than the vertical guardians in any Manic Miner room previously written! You have to collect all the arrows (I blagged the graphic from Jet Set Willy II), and then fly up through the clouds and into the sun to escape! A dramatic, fast and furious room, the way to play it is with heavy use of the pause button, and you can plan your moves like a chess player once you've figured out the pattern of movement. It is possible to complete this room, with only a little air left! CHAPTER 15: "The Gathering of the Clouds". A fairly anticlimactic chapter, and hence a rather uninspired screen, in which Bilbo and the dwarves learn of the death of Smaug from a bird, but find themselves besieged on the Mountain when Bard, who slew the dragon in the previous chapter, stakes a claim on the treasure! In this room, you just have to collect some of the gold around Ravenhill to progress to the next stage. Featuring ultra-fast vertical guardians! CHAPTER 16: "A Thief in the Night". A straightforward room in which you as Bilbo have to take the Arkenstone stealthily to Bard to betray Thorin. Fast-crumbling floors, sticky conveyors and Elvish arrows spice up the room, and you may think it's impossible to get down to the bottom level until you realise there's an 'innocent-looking block' which you can jump through! (a bug in the game engine that I exploit in several rooms). CHAPTER 17: "The Clouds Burst". The Battle of Five Armies - goblins, wargs, elves, men and dwarves - who, having heard of Smaug's death, are fighting over the treasure. Since Manic Miner does not allow five different guardian graphics in the same room, I just have goblins as the horizontal guardians (who patrol the bottom platform like in Jet Set Willy's "The Forgotten Abbey", made even harder by static nasties embedded in the floor) and super-fast thunderclouds as the vertical guardians - watch out on entering the room! It's the most spectacular, stunningly difficult room in this - and arguably any - Manic Miner game; it's cunningly designed so that you have to go round twice, making sure you leave enough crumbling floor (of which the eagles are made) on the first pass to make your exit on the second. Jumping onto the top-right eagle is probably the toughest manoeuvre you'll ever have to make: your movement must be pixel-perfect and your timing has to be spot on - you'll need to do many experiments using the pause button to work out how to get it just right, and you'll need nerves of steel to be able to pull it off at the end of a long, difficult screen! :-> CHAPTER 18: "The Return Journey". The book dismisses this as a quick, easy trip home for Bilbo after his heroic exploits (and yours too if you have managed to get this far! ;-) ) up to this point, but this room is anything but! Obviously the whole journey is too much to get across in a single screen, so I decided to concentrate on Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains to create a breathtaking Tolkienesque landscape, featuring a return of the giant spiders (which are tough to jump over on account of the low 'ceiling') and vertical goblins (unfortunately I couldn't have them as fast as I would have liked due to shortage of vertical space!). It's just possible to collect the gold coins and complete the screen with a tiny bit of air left! CHAPTER 19: "The Last Stage". This chapter documents Bilbo's return to Bag End following a little holiday at Rivendell, but since the bonus room features Bag End, I did my own unorthodox interpretation of the road back home: a surreal screen of weird monsters (which also appear in We Pretty but originated here) and strange images, in which you have to collect the treasure chests and then exit via the Hobbiton mill - don't loiter or you'll run out of air! As in "On the Doorstep" and "A Thief in the Night", there's an 'innocent-looking block'. BONUS ROOM: "There and Back Again". To bring the game up to 20 rooms, I've added this extra room which represents Gandalf visiting Bilbo at Bag End at the very start of the book - make sure to jump at the very start of the screen or you'll crash headlong into Gandalf! There and Back Again is the subtitle of The Hobbit, and also the title of Bilbo's memoirs (referred to in the final chapter). This room was originally called "The Hobbit" and was going to be the first room rather than the last, but the rooms with hard-wired special effects (such as the Eugene, the Kong Beasts, switches and Skylabs) map better onto chapters of The Hobbit the way I /have/ done it, and if you complete this room you'll go back to the beginning! :-) I added the smoke-rings in November 1999 (which I could only do after editing the title-screen/Room 19 picture, otherwise these guardians crash into the pixels of the original picture). It goes against my anti-smoking principles, but it does enhance the Tolkienesque atmosphere!