• Cobra1 has made a FAQ/walkthrough for the game. If you're having problems getting through the game, look there for some great advice.

• If you don't defeat the Alienators (and their variety of hench-animals) by removing all of the bombs from Jupiter station, Jupiter is toast!
• Your task is to collect the little brownish-red diamond-squarey things. (This is what bombs looked like in 1983). The default controls are the arrow keys to move around, and 'space' or 'ctrl' to jump. You can fiddle with these on the options screen.
• To jump to the right, hold right and press jump. This isn't Super Mario Brothers - there will be no turning around in the air, jumping 30 feet high, squishing goombas, or bouncing on turtles. Well, there will be bouncing on turtles, but it will be only for one level and my turtles are much more crudely drawn.
• Jumpman can shimmy up any platform he can touch, even if you can only touch the bottom of it (you'll get the feel of this quick). You don't need to be all the way up a ladder to get off, just hold the direction you want to go (and maybe try jumping) and Jumpman will do his best to go that way.
• You can't jump straight down through a platform. You also can't fall very far, so don't go running off edges. Jumpman is much more resilient when moving down if he is jumping or rolling. If you do accidentally walk off an edge, let go of the direction key quick - and maybe Jumpman will be able to catch himself.
• To roll, press down while you are in the air jumping left or right. You will continue rolling after landing as long as you continue holding left or right. If you're feeling fancy, you can go straight into a roll by holding down while jumping left or right. Rolling is faster than walking, makes you a smaller target, and when done during a jump gives you some control as to where you'll land.

• 500 MHz PC
• Windows 98/2k/ME/XP
• DirectX 8.1
• 3d video card (with hardware texturing)

Version History

• If you download the "Full Game and Tools" version, I believe there's a problem on the shark level, and a few other bugs that aren't present in the normal download. You may want to download the normal version and use it to patch the full one (ie, unpack it overtop) if you are using the game editors and such. A new beta should be coming soon (ie. March/April 2004) that should fix all the bugs I've heard reported.
• There are considerable texture problems on some older ATI cards (eg. Xpert 98 RXL). If you have one of these cards and it's not working, I wouldn't mind hearing from you about the nature of the problems you're having. If you know what I'm doing wrong (and can tell me) that would be even better.
• The game will go slow on slower machines. The game doesn't skip frames when things bog down (as this makes the game really bad), so things might move frustratingly slow. You can get the current FPS by holding down the "~" key. Normally, it will remain locked at right around 40 (the game's cap - it has nothing to show past this framerate). I'm sure I'll get around to looking at performance again sometime..
• The game graphics can be painfully aliased. They're also real simple. If you stick with it, I think you'll find it's still a fun game. If your video card will do it, you may want to turn on "force anti-aliasing". If you really want, I'll compile up a version that runs in 1600x1200. You'll find it looks exactly the same.

• If the game can still be thought of as a beta, the game editors are in pre-alpha-don't-get-near-this stage. That said, they worked well enough for me to write all the game levels. I'm letting them out now because I don't want to have to answer e-mail asking for them, and I don't know that I'll have the time to clean them up much more myself.
• To use the game editors, you need to have the .NET framework installed. This should be fairly easy to get from Microsoft. To be clear, the .NET framework is not needed to run the game, which is written in plain old C++ (with not very much ++).
• Some of the directories are hardcoded. You should install Jumpman directly to c:\Jumpman, and the level editor to c:\JumpmanLevels (if you just unpack the whole tools/source to c:\, it should come up in the right place). I know this may be a bother - and you are welcome to change these and recompile (assuming you have a copy of Visual Studio.NET). This is far from the last thing you will notice that isn't ideal about these editors.
• I don't have any documentation to offer about how things work. You should be able to learn the basics by playing around with the level and script editors. I recommend starting off by editing the current levels - you'll get a feel for the basics of what has to go into a level. Many of the files in \Source\ are just text files, so feel free to edit them directly if you create (for example) a level that will not load correctly in the editor.
• The .jmg files in the Jumpman\Data directory are just text files. They control what levels make up a mode (ie. 1-A.jmg lists the levels in Beginner).
• To start a level in Debug mode (which is not to be confused with a safe mode, your infinite script loops will still hang the game), include the name of the level on the command line. For example, to debug Easy Does It, start the game with "Jumpman Level1".

• The name "Jumpman", his likeness, and related ideas are not public domain. They belong now to Randy Glover, the man who brought us the original game, and my use of them is with his permission. While the code is yours to do with as you see fit, the actual "Jumpman" part of the game content is still owned by Randy and any use of it will have to be approved by him. If you have any questions in this regard, feel free to contact me but bear in mind that any decisions about the "Jumpman" name/franchise are 100% not mine to make.
• You'll need to have the DirectX 8.1 SDK installed. Will it work with a later SDK? If you find out, let me know.
• The project files are in Visual Studio .NET format, but the actual game should be fairly easy to compile in VC++ 6.
• To make your own levels, you do not need any other software than the included game tools and your imagination. You do not need to edit the actual C source to create your own fancy objects, or edit the game objects. Indeed, you cannot really do this kind of thing in the C source - this is all in game script (use the script editor, the language is kind of like Basic).
• The source was written in small increments of time and is double plus not pretty. Lots of things are not only not optimized, but humorously not optimized (eg. the list-of-ifs in the script handling functions). If you are looking at the source and noticing this, feel free to fix stuff. One of the reasons people like me release source is so that improvements will be made. I'm also very willing to answer questions, and would love to help anyone considering porting this to another OS. I don't know a thing about OpenGL/SDL/etc, but I'm guessing this wouldn't be a hard port.
• If you know your way around DirectX, you'll likely get a good laugh at how I've done things. Of particular amusement will be the function Reset3d in Basic3d.cpp. That said, I've used this code a few times since I started writing it, and it works fairly well for uncomplicated 3d apps (as Jumpman Zero is).
• I may not keep the source up to date with the game version posted here - at least not while the game is still beta. I'll try to keep the source/tools fairly up to date, though.
• Have fun! -Dave Campbell

• Randy Glover, for writing a true classic of a game.
• Andrew Doss, for producing quite the quality music. Hopefully by the time the game is done it is worthy of its great score.
• Jon Hadidi, for helping with sound effects.
• A whole bunch of other people (GNU folk, Dave Eccleston, lots more) for advice, for great free software, and play testing.