Rocks'n'Diamonds

I've just downloaded RnD for my laptop, and I'm trying to find as many levels as possible!

There are a lot of links, so I'm wondering which one I should use to download. The top one of ambience.artsoft.org gave me a page not found error.

> The top one of ambience.artsoft.org gave me a page not found error.

Alan's level sets are really worth being presented on their own site (or at least own section on www.artsoft.org). If I would have the time (and some better web design skills), I would create a sub-site with Alan's "best of" level sets, together with screen shots and descriptions -- they would really deserve it!

As an intermediate solution, I should at least put them for download on the "Levels" page...

the download link doesn't work! I would like to download this...

Wow, this project must be really amazing, a faithful BD remake with old school graphics in RnD engine sounds really cool! Unfortunately, I can't download it from anywhere, all the links appear to be dead... does anyone still have BD84? If so, can anyone please send it to me?
Thank you very much in advance!

- Agetian

Hello Agetian, welcome to the forum!

Sorry for the broken link (being broken for too long, which was some sort of "collateral damage" of the server change years ago).

I've made that download link from Alan's first post in this thread work again. And here's also the modified version made by RTAdash that uses the "correct" C64 BD colors: http://ambience.artsoft.org/

I've found out that the 2008 version of "BD84_ColorChange.zip" apparently does not work with SDL_image/SDL2_image anymore (being unable to load the PCX files, which are reported as being broken by SDL_image), so I've re-converted them with ImageMagick and made a new package "BD84_ColorChange-fixed.zip", which works fine again with recent R'n'D. (BTW: Alan's unmodified 2008 original package "BD84.ZIP" still works like a charm with latest R'n'D!)

And while talking about it: I just played a little bit with that great set, and still have to say WOW!!! Can anybody please explain to me why I do lots of improvements and additions to R'n'D's customization possibilities, when I'm still totally amazed about what Alan created nearly ten years ago? It's really impressive. There can be lots of coding and additions to R'n'D, but the really impressive works of art were always done by people like Alan (and mostly him), who put all their technical and artistic creativity into what really matters: great level sets!

Hello Holger, thank you very much both for the kind welcome and for restoring the link to this amazing project!
BD84 downloads definitely work now (thank for the color-corrected version that works with recent RnD builds, too!) I started playing it and I can only say WOW too! This is stunning!
And I have to hand it to all of you guys, you did an amazing job creating and maintaining Rocks and Diamonds over the years! This is *the* way to relive my childhood puzzle games! Many thanks!!!

- Agetian

By the way, would it be possible to link the versions of BD84 (the original one and the fixed color one compatible with modern RnD builds) on the main web page of Rocks'n'Diamonds? I believe it'll be very much appreciated by people looking for additional levels to try, and this thread may become lost in the course of time again...

- Agetian

Yes, definitely!

I still plan to add a dedicated "Alan Bond section" on the R'n'D web site, which will contain a selection of the best level sets by famous level creator Alan Bond (both full-playable games like "BD84", but also some experimental level sets that use creative tricks to do some cool and stunning things with the R'n'D engine).

About ten years ago, Alan created such a page under the "ambience.artsoft.org" sub-domain by himself, including screenshots, descriptions and download links, but unfortunately, he deleted it again on the same day he released it (and before I was able to do a backup).

But at least I still have all those level sets well archived, so a similar "best of" page could still be created...

This sounds like a great plan! Can't wait to see other work submitted by Alan Bond!

By the way, I have a question related to the implementation of BD84: one of the noticeable differences between the original Boulder Dash and the BD84 implementation in R&D is that falling diamonds make the same sound every time, while in the original BD they made different "ding" tones when they fell. Is there an option in R&D to add several different sounds to the same object such that a random one is chosen every time, or is it unsupported? If it's unsupported, is such a feature planned / difficult to impement?

- Agetian

Agetian wrote:Is there an option in R&D to add several different sounds to the same object such that a random one is chosen every time, or is it unsupported? If it's unsupported, is such a feature planned / difficult to impement?

I agree, I support. I had absolutely same idea and, I think, I know how could it look like: or also Also comma isn't allowed in file names so it could be used as a separator between names of different files

Heh, and also (sorry for this) I began and didn't finish building the levelset with random sounds for one action of one element

Is there an option in R&D to add several different sounds to the same object such that a random one is chosen every time, or is it unsupported? If it's unsupported, is such a feature planned / difficult to impement?

Unfortunately, such a feature does not exist in R'n'D yet, although it would probably be highly desirable.

Currently such a feature is not planned (at least not in the near future), and I cannot say at the moment how easy or tricky it would be to implement it...