MANIC MINER

About

Originally written in 1983 by Matthew Smith. This port is based on the original ZX Spectrum version, written in C and using the SDL2 library.

• Can be played using keyboard or joystick

Game play

Game play is 100% identical except for the following differences:

• In level 19 "Solar Power Generator", air depletes by 8 points if Willy is hit by the light beam unless his Y position is offset and the light beam strikes him vertically, then he loses 12 points of air. That's how the original game works. It should not matter if Willy's Y position is offset as he takes up no more room visually, therefore air depletes by 8 points regardless.

• The original game had bugs. These have been fixed, such as landing at the end of a jump into a solid wall.

Video & Audio

Some subtle improvements have been made to make the game more enjoyable:

• Per pixel colouring. This eliminates colour clashing.
• 16 colour palette.
• 2 replacement character set fonts; one small, one large.
• The piano keyboard on the title screen has been corrected.
• The title screen has been redrawn in places for a more balanced look.
• The title and in-game music scores have been reproduced and are polyphonic.
• The sound effects are approximately the same as in the original game and include stereo panning effects.
• To give the music and sound effects a retro feel, a square wave generator is used to give it a "beepy" sound.

Cheat mode

Cheat mode is activated just like in the original game by typing the code. Once activated, switching levels is as simple.

The keyboard numbers 1 to 0 are levels 1 to 10, and the Shift key changes that to levels 11 to 20. Then press Enter to change level. These key combinations need to be pressed simultaneously.

Download

• Linux users require installing the SDL2 library for your distro.
• For Windows 7 and newer.

Compiling

Linux/Debian

• Install the packages libsdl2-dev build-essential
• Then type make install at a command prompt.

Windows

Project files are include for Visual Studio 2015.