Jet Set Willy for Atari ST (1989) ========================================= by Paul Taylor and Carl Whitwell Here it is, the official-but-unreleased Atari ST version of Jet-Set Willy, developed with the assistance of Software Projects! We spent a lot of time on it including travelling to Liverpool, but we never really got much return on our effort. The program was originally tested on an ST520, so I don't know if it runs on TTs or anything fancy like that. It requires a colour monitor. As for screenshots, there is really no need for them - it is 99.9% impossible to distinguish from the original Spectrum version! Hope you have fun with it! There is a teleport facility, but I can't remember how you access it. MAKING THE GAME --------------- My friend Carl Whitwell and I actually produced the Atari ST version of JSW for Software Projects. The guy we were working for was Tommy Barton, who was one of the directors of Software Projects, and the year was 1989. We finished writing the game, which was an absolutely perfect reproduction of the original ZX Spectrum sound and graphics. If you saw it, you would think it was the Spectrum. We also had the opportunity to play the Commodore Amiga version of JSW, which was not yet finished at that time. Tommy took us through to a different room with an Amiga in it, and remarked that "Shahid Ahmad is working from home, but there's a recent copy of it on there." We ran it, and it looked like your average Amiga game, full of hardware sprites with smooth movement and lots of colour shades. I particularly remember The Forgotten Abbey, as it revealed the flaw in the programmer's approach: each of the monks looked exactly the same. In our version, being an exact replica of the original, each monk was a different colour. Other screens in the Amiga version just had coloured blocks instead of proper sprites, 'cos he hadn't finished them yet. Our Atari ST version was created in two stages. First of all, we disassembled the original Z80 code and reverse engineered it into C. Then, we re-coded some of Matthew Smith's graphics and sound routines for the Atari ST. We worked using a Sinclair Spectrum with a Zeus Disassembler and the original JSW program, and an Atari ST 512 with the Sozobon C compiler. We had no physical link between the computers - the disassembled code was listed on the Spectrum screen, and entered into the Atari by hand! Each of the screens' data was dumped as hex, and dictated to a typist who entered it into struct { } statements in the C program. By the end of the 1980s, Software Projects felt that Jet Set Willy had had its day, and decided to cancel both the Amiga and the Atari ST projects. (However, the Amiga version of Manic Miner, by Shahid Ahmad who wrote JSW, had been on sale for a few months by this time). Since SP weren't interested, we gave a copy of our ST version away to someone in England who wanted a copy for himself. Apparently, he gave copies to lots of people. This version can be identified in a number of ways. We altered the authorship message to read "Perfect Conversions, Hamburg", for example. We once asked Tommy Barton about Matthew Smith, and whether the mythical game "Willy Meets the Taxman" had ever existed. He replied that Matthew had indeed started work on a sequal to JSW called "Willy Meets the Taxman", and had even shown demos to the staff of Software Projects. Tommy recalled seeing sequences in which Willy waltzed with Maria the housekeeper. He said that the graphics were bigger, and not really the same as JSW or Manic Miner. However, he said that Matthew had lost interest in the project very quickly, and had left. He no longer knew of Matthew's whereabouts. Anyway, there you are I hope you found all that interesting. It was certainly an interesting period for both of us as programmers. A FEW WORDS ABOUT PLAYING THE GAME ---------------------------------- FIRST, the JSW game works with the ST joystick. It should also work with keys, but I don't remember which ones. SECOND, pressing the keys 1-5 (or was it F1-F5?) should change the speed at which the program runs. THIRD, there are two "hidden" rooms. These date from 1984 when Carl and I first got a level editor for the original JSW. We made two new rooms, in position 47 and after the last room. These were called "Buried Treasure" and "Zaphod says: DON'T PANIC!". When we converted the game, we sneakily included this rooms! Sorry to have such vague memories of the controls, the teleporter, etc... but I haven't played the ST game for six years. Paul Taylor