Rocks'n'Diamonds

This is only partly off-topic, as it is not directly related to R'n'D, but fits well into the same genre and has "something" to do with the game that has started it all:

I'm proud to present VBS BD, created by Alan Bond:

http://www.artsoft.org/vbs_bd/

This is a great implementation of the classic BD, written in Visual Basic Script, therefore running in a web browser -- but: Sorry, Internet Explorer and Windows only! :-(

The most important thing is that you may have to adjust the speed and screen size in the "setup" pulldown menu, depending on your system. Furthermore, you can select the BD game and level in the game menu. There is also a cave editor, and you can import/export caves via the Windows clipboard. After playing, you can return to your C64 to do other things. ;-)

Thanks, Alan, for this gem, which is in fact another masterpiece! :-)

Looks very nice!

Too bad it only works in IE... that's strange... why does it only work in IE? Doesn't Firefox support VBScript?

But well, I guess I'm lucky to have Windows and IE

Zomis wrote:But well, I guess I'm lucky to have Windows and IE :)

...unlike some others (who are lucky not to have them). But at least now I know what Alan has been up to lately. ;-)

Wow! Cool extra elements, Holger; are the extra elements are in the
Boulder Dash engine are gonna be in the a future RnD release?

Seems to have been a lot of hard work.
Unfortunately I have a little problem:
If I move sidewards (left or right), my character won't stop when I lift the key. He runs until he reaches an obstacle.

WinXP SP2 IE 7, Delay 100 Frames 8

Javascript is supported by all main browsers, but VBScript is not the same, it works only in IE.

Some time ago I thought about a Flash version of RnD ... unfortunately I don't have the time and the knowledge of the game engine ...

Alan always creates great impossible things... Great work, Alan! I see why it didn't work at first: I loaded it in Firefox, my standard browser and it only seems to work in Internet Explorer!

I'm sorry for not uploading it so soon to my website, but when you asked it I didn't know how to start it (it didn't work in Firefox) and this week I'm moving my site to a new host, which went wrong. Now I only need to have the old e-mail address back (otherwise those links won't work) and then my site will appear again. I've uploaded all files (except the pages) already and man! it took the whole morning and part of the afternoon! My website directory is currently 795 MB already and especially all those C64 Boulder Dash games and games like High Carats and the EMC level collection for RnD took a long time to upload!

Great work, Alan, this game. If you could make it run in Mozilla Firefox as well, it would be even more fantastic! At least, for the Boulder Dash fans, who can feel that kind of atmosphere from the C64 days again, others will find such things ridiculous (so do I sometimes, but at other times I enjoy it!)

Hint: As VBS BD uses VB Script, it is (unfortunately!) impossible to make it run in any other browser than IE (and its clones which use the same render engine).

The only way I see to "run it in Firefox" is the "IE Tab" extension. (Which runs an instance of the IE render engine in a Firefox window -- this only works with Firefox on Windows, of course.)

That's a pity. But it's fun anyway.

I had a question about VBS BD: where could I list it best on my website? It's an online game, so does it fit on the Java, Shockwave or whatever page? I assume not, but then: what new category should I make for this? At other sites you never see categories like 'Visual Basic' or so, but you do see 'Java Games'. Any suggestions here?

Martijn wrote:Any suggestions here?

How about just "Online Games"? I think people more think about the game style when choosing a game, than the technical details behind the game itself. But if you want to seperate into categories, I think it should be "Visual Basic". Definetly not Java, since it isn't Java.