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2022-07-20 20:18 Arno  
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various solutions might be possible; hopefully enjoyable and puzzling...! ;-D

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2022-07-20 21:54 nesdori  
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 Arno , nice! it indeed was fun and at some point even a little bit puzzling.. :)

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2022-07-20 22:34 Arno  
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thx  nesdori ! :-D

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2022-07-20 22:46 dustin  
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great! :d  
the right | which is supposed to kill the ffly could be light imo; this would save some time without generating any shortcuts :)

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2022-07-20 23:17 Arno  
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Thx  dustin ! :-)  
  
yes indeed; the reason for the normal boulder is that i wanted this cave to be classic-style, so only classic elements. the other ||| are also not heavy ones for the same reason.   
(although i permitted myself the use of vertical g-wall, which you might consider non-classical as well... ;-)   
  
by the way, with classical bd in mind, i also let ^ start at the bottom section, so if you would play the cave on a screen with scrolling, without viewing the map first, you still have opportunity to inspect the bottom part first, so you could know the required compositions of boulder/diamond-stacks from the upper part before you start puzzling. :-)

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2022-07-20 23:36 dustin  
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i see, very thoughtful! :)  
  
well i think that vertical gwalls can be considered classical because they're so closely related to horizontal gwalls. in the  dustin 's bd series, i also consider 4-gwalls as classical, though admittedly this is not so clear because their possibilities are more far-reaching than gwalls which grow only into two directions.  
  
a related question is how classical voodoos and hidden exits are. i haven't used them in dbd so far (but spoiler: dbd21 will have the first voodoo!). unlike the gwall variants, those two elements are not so self-explanatory because they have completely new properties.  
  
 Arno  dash seems to have the exact opposite philosophy than  dustin 's bd: voodoos and hidden exits count as classical while vertical and 4-gwalls don't :d

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2022-07-21 09:53 Arno  
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yes, now i think it's very funny to do such a "classicalness" analysis. :-D   
mine would be as follows:  
  
\\\\\ all items introduced in bd1 are definitely classical!  
  
\\\\ slime and h-gwall are slightly less classical, because we see both in bd2 for the first time.  
  
\\\ voodoo and hidden exit are less classical, they are introduced in the plck engine and construction kit.  
  
\\ v-gwall and 4-gwall are even less classical; i'm not sure in which c64 bd engine they occur first, but if i remember correctly, they are available (at least) in the crazy light construction kit (CLCK).  
  
\ heavy and light boulder are another step less classical; of course both are very closely related to the classic boulder, yet a.f.a.i.k. both are created especially for this site. well, i know that the clck features the 'toffee' which makes rockford very strong so all boulders become fast-pushable (like light boulders). and i vagely remember that g-dash features these types of boulders (but i'm not 100% sure...)  
bottom line: caves created on  krissz ' site using with heavy/light boulders could not be duplicated on the c64 in the clck, while caves like this one (with v-gwalls) could. :-D that was actually a goal of mine for this cave (and some of my recent previous caves): to be able to re-use them some time in the future for a c64 bd game (like  Arno  dash 22...), such that basically only the colors need to be changed... (but that's just a vague plan at the moment... ;-) )

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20 Arno : hmmm, according to the GDash source, heavy boulders (MEGA_STONE) existed since 2015-03-13, but not sure if there were any earlier code commits.  
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2022-07-21 10:50 DarkStoorM  
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2022-07-21 16:28 dustin  
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 Arno : very interesting and funny analysis! :d while your 5 classicalness-categories are purely based on when the elements occured first, i would intuitively also explicitely take into account how closely a new element is related to an earlier one, as well as how often they occur in fangames and -engines.   
  
first of all, i agree with your complete list of elements which deserve the terminology (semi-)classical. basically these are exactly the elements available here at this site!  
  
some remarks about specific elements:  
  
| v-gwall: this is such an obvious and logical variant of the h-gwall that i'd have a hard time not to call it classical. a cave which uses h-gwalls and/or v-gwalls to lock doors feel fully classical to me because i can easily compare them with bd2-o and say "ah yes, that's the same effect".    
  
| voodoos definitel feel only "semi-classical" to me. they weren't in the original games, also nothing similar, and they aren't a logical variant of any classical element. both have to be learned by the player "from zero" and esp. voodoos can change gameplay completely. on the other hand, both these elements defeinitely deserve the status "semi-classical" because they were introduced very early on and both occured in every fanmade engine.  
  
| heavy boulders do exist in g-dash (you will probably soon see some... :D). light boulders don't exist but there's the sweet (toffee) allowing ^ to push boulders without delay. both these elements are of course closely related to normal boulders, so players can learn about them quickly and they should be called semi-classical as well.  
  
|4-gwalls are interesting. intuitively, i had no problem using them in  dustin 's bd and still call the games "classic-style", although they're more different from h-gwalls than v-gwalls. i think my main unspoken argument was/is that they're still such a logical extension of h-gwalls. players who see 4-gwalls for the first time would probably think "ah look, i've already seen something like this in bd2-o, but now the walls can grow into all directions. funny!" and that's enough to understand everything about 4-gwalls! :d  
  
perhaps i'll also try to make atable of classicness to categorize the elements, but i don't find it so easy because some elements have their pros and cons so i don't find it easy to decide which of them should be placed higher or lower... :d

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2022-07-21 17:19 DarkStoorM  
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OH! I could have sworn GDash had light boulders, but I believe you have to manually change the pushing probability :D

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2022-07-21 17:45 dustin  
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 darkstoorm , yes indeed that's possible. but if you change the pushing prob to 100% then youcan't set any normal | anymore.  
  
so as far as i can see, it's not possible to recreate a cave on gdash which has both normal and light boulders...

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2022-07-21 17:57 dustin  
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ahh, we forgot one element: destructible titanium wall. i would only consider it semi-classical too. although it was on the bd1 engine, it wasn't used for bd1-3 and also rarely in fangames (exception: bd4).

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2022-07-21 19:45 Arno  
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Oh yes, of course you can categorize the items into into classicness-grades based on various criteria:  
- time of introduction (when did it appear first)  
- popularity (how often is the item used in fanmade caves)  
- relation with earlier items  
  
... or based on a combination of those. then it becomes subjective and personal. so a table of items per classicness-grade probably won't be unique.  
  
for my recent caves, i just took the criterion whether the cave could be duplicated on a c64 engine (like clck) with minimal modifications. this determined the set of items which i allowed myself to use. (and of course, also the cave sizes and parameters, which should follow the restrictions of the c64 engine as well...)  
  
and btw, perhaps we should also mention the Undestructable exit, a unique item at  krissz ' site, i would consider it semi-classical! ;-D  
  
thinking about it, also note that in bd1 the titanium wall is only used at the borders, while in bd2 it is used for the first time at other places in the cave... (at least i remember that i found it remarkable when i saw this for the first time, which btw was not in bd2, but probably bd4 or one of don pedro's games...) so perhaps this makes the t-wall slighly less classical than other bd1 items... on the other hand, t-wall is the first item you see because when a cave starts it is build up on moving t-walls... ;-)

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2022-07-21 22:37 dustin  
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yes, these would also be my criteria. i'd like to add one more, and that's how much the element influences gameplay. here's my (subjective) categorization:  
  
| all bd1/2(/3) elements: classic  
  
| v-gwall: classic  
i consider these classic because they're such an obvious variant of the h-gwalls, they're easy to understand and they don't really add new gameplay elements.  
  
| 4-gwall: 3/4 classical :d  
i'm not sure whether to put these into the classical or semi-classical category. 4-walls are also a very logical variant of h-gwalls, but on the other hand, they can dominate a cave much more than h-gwalls and v-gwalls, so they do add new gameplay elements.   
  
| voodoo: semi-classical  
completely new element without any relations to classical elements. a lot of new gameplay, in fact a voodoo can dominate a cave even more than a 4-gwall because it can cause ^ to explode anywhere. also very counter-intuitive because all classical bd elements only interact by direct contact. on the other hand, voodoos deserve no less than the status "semi-classical" because they were introduced so early on and they're part of every fanmade bd engine a.f.a.i.k.  
  
| hidden exit: semi-classical  
related to normal exits of course, but not what i'd call a "logical, obvious variant". very confusing at first because ^ has collected enough \\\ but walks through the cave and nothing blinks. a player who does not know about hidden exits may think the cave is buggy and the creator forgot the outbox.   
  
| heavy boulder: semi-classical  
easy to understand because it's just a boulder but it cannot be pushed, which the player will soon note and understand. but the relationship boulder-heavy boulder is not as close as between hgwall and vgwall. also, heavy boulders are not as common as voodoos and hidden exits.  
  
| light boulders: semi-classical  
same reasoning as above, while light boulders are even slightly less common a.f.a.i.k. (example: g-dash)  
  
| destructible titanium wall: semi-classical  
being on the bd1 engine alone doesn't make them classical to me if it wasn't actually used in original games. by no means a "logical variant" of indestructible twalls because there is already a destructible variant (brick walls). it influences gameplay by confusing players  because it's no longer visible if a wall can be blasted or not.  
  
| indestructible exit: semi-classical  
perhaps even more logical than v-gwalls because the exit is something ^ desperately needs. yet the fact that it's only used here at this site means that it cannot be considered "fully" classical.

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2022-07-22 09:27 Arno  
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nice categorization! :-D  
  
i've revealed the intended solution! :-)

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2022-07-22 14:24 nesdori  
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mine free too. some differences to  Arno 's :)