Armed with a Retro Adapter, I finally got the chance to play the game with a Voltmace joystick. Unfortunately, I had to go back to the drawing board and modify the joystick code to make the gameplay experience a bit friendlier for joystick input. The Voltmace isn't exactly the most ergonomic of joysticks but the handling was frustrating to say the least.

I've updated both the tape/disk and ROM cartridge versions and put new links on the project page.

Just a quickie, as I haven't yet had a chance to play your new release - but just a point that if you've got a Retro Adapter, make sure you calibrate it in Windows Devices /before/ you start B-Em. I sometimes find mine can be off quite a bit.

Sam.

Yes, I found that jscal can be used on Linux for the same thing.

ahh, I just use the equivalent control panel thing in KDE ... works just as well.

Sam.

Hello David,

I've just noticed Jungle Journey on the RS website for the first time, and downloaded version 1.1 to do a bit of play testing.

It looks superb - well done. I played it on Beebem as far as getting a cyan key, but wasn't able to find a door to put it in. I didn't notice any bugs or problems at all.

I do have one suggestion to make though. I intended to test it on my real electron, but in the release 1.1 package there is only a DFS image, which I can't use on my elk. If you are targetting the electron then ideally you should have an ADFS image of the game as well, suitable for Plus 3 users. With reference to your previous discussions on typical values of PAGE, it will be at &1D00 on an ADFS electron, which is high and rather inconvenient. However I hope you can work around this.

cheers, john.

Thanks for taking a look at it, John. I thought about making an ADFS image but got distracted by other things. I'll look into producing one using one of the emulators.

Hopefully, the PAGE situation isn't a showstopper. The code is loaded in at &1E00 and things are copied down into the memory below after it runs. We'll see!

OK, it turned out to be easy to make an ADFS image, once I'd figured out how to do things to an ADFS disk. You can find it on the Jungle Journey page (version 1.1.1).

I hope you manage to get it to work in a Plus 3. Please let me know how it goes.

Wow - that was quick!

I'm at home today looking aftre my lad who's poorly. Time to dust off the Elk and get him doing some play testing... that ought to cheer him up!

John

OK, we've got it working now. Machine setup is:

- Electron
- Plus 1
- Plus 3

The game works fine and is running at the same speed as on BeebEm.

We have managed to get to the second level using the map that you posted. Also, the Acorn joysticks work fine.

Some minor points:

- The instructions don't say what the things that look like hats are for. Although they obviously just give you points.
- The jewels look a bit like envelopes to me!

John

Excellent! Thanks for taking the time to test the game, especially with the joysticks.

If I understand you correctly, the hats are actually balls resting on plinths. I was going to change the sprite but took a fancy to it after a while. Collecting one of these will reset the weapon to the one you start the game with.

Yes, I think the gems look like envelopes, too. I think the ambiguity adds to their charm.

Out of interest, how did you get the disk image onto a real floppy disk?

I used Omniflop by Jason Watton. If you've not seen it before, I can strongly recommend that you download a copy. It's a superb piece of software.

Back to Jungle Journey, my son managed to get to the third level and I think he was quite taken by it. I thought that perhaps the levels were a bit too big and daunting, and that he'd get bored, but he didn't seem to.

Well, it's good to hear that you both got some enjoyment out of it.

At some point, I'll publish some maps for the game. I should really publish the tools to make them, too, so that people can experiment/explore for themselves.

I've heard of Omniflop, but never used it. My problem would be finding a machine with a 3.5" disk drive still attached to it. Since the Electron I have access to has a 5.25" disk drive, getting games on there will probably be quite an adventure in itself. That's one of the reasons why I created a ROM cartridge version of the game - it might be easier to put it on a cartridge.

Now, if there was a cartridge that could take an SD card and behave like a regular ROM cartridge, that would be great!

That's a good idea. Perhaps Mark at Retroclinic might be able to turn it into a real product!

Just tried it out on BeebEm, works a treat, very nice, a good polished game, well done!

Thanks for the positive feedback. It didn't play so well for me in BeebEm, so it's good to hear that others have had better experiences.