Rocks'n'Diamonds

A total remake of Zelda 1. Works in RNDs 3.2.4rc1 and the new 3.2.4

http://ambience.artsoft.org/levels/zelda2.zip


1 World in 1 level

185 High detailed rooms in 9 zones.

90 Large (160x160 pixel) building blocks, all in one single CE.

10 Medium 96x96 blocks that you can walk around.

2 Rough edge effect blocks, 3 scatter effect blocks and a fence system.

10 Weapons which you can cycle between, each weapon also has ammo (up to 9999 per weapon), hit power (1-10) and a custom fire rate.

32 Enemies with 3 frames animation in 4 directions, each enemy also has hit points (1-32) as well as 3 movement types.

14 Adventure objects and 9 adventure "blockers" (like rivers)

8 Keys and doors

8 Quest objects

10 Long(ish) tunes which change when you enter different zones.

30 People to talk to or signboards to read.

16 Other objects that talk

80 Text messages (nearly 2000 words)

23 Actions for Link in 4 directions.

Custom shooting system, see the projectile AFTER you shoot (makes sense when you see it)

Working health ceiling. You start with 30 health and can never go over it by collecting more hearts. However there are 7 hidden "Heart containers" hidden around the world that raise your strength by 10 (in true RPG fashion)

Zoned items, for example enemies,chests,rocks etc are all green in the woods.

"Bouncy" combat! Knock enemies back by shooting them, be knocked back yourself when you get hurt. You can NEVER be surrounded and can always escape a sticky situation.....although you can be knocked out of a room or down a hole!

A zone which is one large puzzle.

Health, all 14 items, current weapon, ammo, quest items, keys, Rupees,game time and Link's speed are all displayed in the side panel (very handy after loading a save game)

An "epic" ending

Game time is debatable, I've finished it in about one and a half hours, but this doesn't take into account exploring, reading and trying things out. So possibly a 3 hour game time.

No need to save\load your game all the time. Health and ammo bonuses are everywhere, plus you get your health totally restored after collecting a heart container or every 200 Rupees. (I've finished it three times without saving now!).


Have fun!


A note about 3.2.4, there's tape saving bug which can break your game. It seems to happen if you save whilst scrolling, then reload that save. To be extra safe, only save in the text screen.

Woah! This is soo great! 8-O

Just made a little break after about one hour of tape time and maybe two hours of real time... :-)

It's unbelievable how playable Zelda 2 is! You really only have to save the tape to continue after a break where you quit the program -- so far I've only reloaded the tape very few times (when Link was trapped in a corner by enemies, but this really only happens rarely when you're not clever enough when running through a bunch of enemies :-) ). So I believe it's not too hard to play without saving!

The "fairness level" of the game is just incredibly well balanced! There were only one or two points in the game so far where I thought I couldn't go on anymore, but then I found the solution (or part of it) to continue! I'm not sure how much I have played now, but I think its somewhere between 30% and 50% maybe. :-)

The ambience within the game is just great, with different music in different game areas, resulting in a mood that fits well to the surroundings! Which itself look simply great, with lots of large objects that make you forget that it's all just a R'n'D level! Wow again! :-o

The weapon system is more advanced than anything I saw in R'n'D so far! Using it reminded me somehow of Francesco's multi-function weapon levels, which were also controlled by a combination of the snap key and the cursor keys, if I remember right, but I think it did not allow dynamic switching of weapons. In addition, Zelda 2 makes full use of the new game panel customisation features to show and control the weapon inventory, which all did not exist before and which makes it far more usable than any previous approach. Very cool! This is what many people asked for as a special game feature to select and use different inventory items -- with nothing more than standard CEs and some graphics, but the effect is as if you're playing a different game! :-o :-)

I think I'm stuck at the moment in the "zone which is one large puzzle"... I think I now what to do, but some inspiration is still missing (and the enemies are really hard there, but I won't tell too much -- maybe this isn't the puzzle zone at all, and I'm just unable so fight through a little combat and a little thinking... ;-) ).

But better try for yourself -- Zelda 2 is really a new milestone and a real masterpiece of level and artwork design! Well done, Alan! :-) :-)

Some quick technical comments:

So far I had no tape problems, but I didn't try to reload the tape after quitting the program (because I played without stopping and only used a little in-game F1/F2 style tape saving/reloading, which seems to work well so far).

Attention: There seems to be a problem with 3.2.4 and the Zelda 2 main menu (with some toon tricks) which apparently only happens on Unix/X11, but not on Windows -- if you encounter crashes in the main menu, edit ~/.rocksndiamonds/setup.conf and change the line "toons: on" to "toons: off". I'll check and fix this as soon as possible!

OK, I have to continue playing now... :-)

Here's a 16 bit version of the_world.pcx, since all the wall graphics share the same PCX they lose a bit of colour when droped down to 8bit.

http://ambience.artsoft.org/levels/Z2_16Bit.zip

If you have lots of memory then its worth it. The PCX is 7MB!

Woooowww! This is amazing!

Must...return...to...game...immediately...

> Attention: There seems to be a problem with 3.2.4 and the Zelda 2 main
> menu (with some toon tricks) which apparently only happens on Unix/X11,
> but not on Windows -- if you encounter crashes in the main menu, edit
> ~/.rocksndiamonds/setup.conf and change the line "toons: on" to "toons:
> off". I'll check and fix this as soon as possible!

This is fixed now -- please re-download the 3.2.4 package again, which fixes this bug for Unix/X11 systems. (If you use the Windows or Mac version, you probably don't need to use the new version, although it won't hurt either.)

I am looking forward to play your new release, Alan, it sounds very promising.

Unfortunately, since when my laptop passed to better life, I have big performance problems with RnD - I fear that a 500Mhz CPU and a Savage4 are not the best combo to run it smoothly - each screen-scroll is a pain...

Oh dear! Well, my current PC is a Pentium3 450mhz + Geforce3 so I think your ahead a bit, I get about 25 FPS which is a bit bad. If you're not bothered about how it looks then you can play RND in 256 colour mode and regain about 10 FPS!

For anybody who wants to do this in XP, right click the RND exe, goto compatibility and check "run in 256 colour mode. Oh and use the -debug command line to see FPS

*edit*

Here's some results based on the 1st screen of Z2:-
So 16bit seems a good trade off between speed and looks, but you'll have to change your desktop for this.

Having "Quick Doors" OFF (default) looks bad in Zelda 2. I assume Alan uses "Quick Doors" ON.

I do too, normally (It takes time for the doors to open and close normally, and I get rather tired of the noise they make.)

Well, please don't tell me that you did all _this_ work with _that_ PC!

Kudos to you, Alan.

Well, please don't tell me that you did all _this_ work with _that_ PC!

Yes, since Pacman. It isn't that bad though.

> Having "Quick Doors" OFF (default) looks bad in Zelda 2. I assume Alan
> uses "Quick Doors" ON.

BTW: If doors should open without delay in "Zelda 2" (just like "quick menu doors: on" would always be enabled), this could be achieved by using the following settings in "graphicsinfo.conf":

door_2.step_offset: 100
door_2.step_delay: 0

(Haven't tested this, but it should give a "quick menu doors: on" effect regardless of the actual setting that the user has configured in the setup menu.)

Alan probably could have figured that out if he didn't know that already, but he probably just didn't think of it if he had quick doors on anyway.

The fact that he's using a slower PC is even more reason to believe that he has quick doors on.

*EDIT* I see that Alan didn't include a "cheat" button-- there is a fairly easy way to get into the level editor if you think about it, but I won't say what it is.

Alan probably could have figured that out if he didn't know that already, but he probably just didn't think of it if he had quick doors on anyway.

Humm, I don't think I would of found that out! Oh well.

I'll just add this to the list of things I forget.....Time limit off, Umlauts

I almost finished - and then I ran into a *relatively huge* problem. Fortunately it only occurred at the end of the game, so most of it is unaffected...

Here it is: (I would mark it as a spoiler, but [spoiler]don't want anyone to be caught by this)
Once you enter the final room (in the lower-left of the shadowlands) you MUST open the chest to get the white amulet. If you leave the room without, and make an attempt to return with more health or something, the penultimate room (with the 5 pillar thingys) will have a square of 25 EM diamonds in the corner. Then, the last room will be created out-of-alignment with an exit path at the top and a few BD butterflys visible to the left. You can collect the last amulet as normal, to trigger the epic ending, but whenever you try to leave the room, the screen will go black and the epic ending is a little bit quicker than expected... .[/spoiler]

I sure hope Alan will fix this and do a re-release because I know I only played for just under 4 hours to reach this point and I imagine it might take some people longer...

*relatively huge* is an understatement, this is a really huge bad problem.

Just a guess but I take it you never killed all the zombies in the penultimate room? (and I don't blame you if you didn't! )

The fact that you can see butterflies means the left side scan never finished, so something must of got in its way! (zombie?).
When you exit a room all the enemies turn to space and the left side scan starts. This scan also wipes any enemies that never turned to space. As a last resort the left to right scan also wipes enemies. But I found that even if you make an element "diggable" by another element, if it can move then problems occur.

The problem I found was if an enemy is just starting to move to a new field as you leave it sometimes doesn't wipe itself. I added another self wipe change-page in the enemy:- "change to space on move of the scanline" and this seemed to fix the problem.......so I thought.

Just spent the last hour moving left to right between these two rooms and I couldn't reproduce the bug! (check your PM for this level)

Do you have the tape BTW?

I mentioned I was afraid this might happen to Holger, and I guess I was right..........from now on I'm sticking to Boulderdash clones (seriously!)
A milestone indeed!

*EDIT*

Just thought, did you save your game before the bug? I mean, can you load your game again and re-enter the room so its OK, or does it crash again? I'm guessing you never saved after the bug because that would be a bit silly......