"Download new levels" in game menu?

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Fri Sep 02, 2005 10:44 pm

Recently I heard an opinion that Rocks'n'Diamonds is PC equivalent of Emerald Mines and as such - it sucks. This impression is obviously wrong and I did my best to change it, but it made me wonder... and I came to two conclusions:

1. Maybe we should revise set of levels included in RnD by default? I think that sets such as BD2K3, Walpurgis Flashbacks, Walpurgis Gardens and Snake Bite should be RnD's trademarks, rather than outdated and monotone classical Emerald Mines or Boulder Dash. They aren't suitable for slow machines, but is RnD really meant for those? Even in Supaplex levels scrolling is 'hacky' on old Pentium...

2. There should be a possibility to download levels directly from within the game. 'Get new levels' and then a list of downloadable sets would be just perfect. It would also prevent dilemmas like 'where do I put these files anwyay?'. Of course the files would then have to be on some central server, but I think it can be arranged somehow.

While the latter probably needs some work to be implemented (and therefore belongs to TODO list at least for now), the former can be done any time, it's only a matter of deciding which sets to include (it shouldn't be more than 5-10, otherwise the player can miss them and decide that the game is not worth is, because he had all this 15 years ago on Amiga).
You know my candidates, don't hesitate to mention yours.

Flumminator · Post by **Flumminator** » Sat Sep 03, 2005 9:03 pm

And point 2 remembers me of one thing i wanted to implement about a year ago... just never had the time to do it.

Well, since i've finished university now, I may again have a little more time for this. (But on the other hand, i'm starting work on monday...)

Post by **Holger** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 7:41 am

bojster:
> 1. Maybe we should revise set of levels included in RnD by default? I think
> that sets such as BD2K3, Walpurgis Flashbacks, Walpurgis Gardens and
> Snake Bite should be RnD's trademarks, rather than outdated and
> monotone classical Emerald Mines or Boulder Dash. They aren't suitable
> for slow machines, but is RnD really meant for those? Even in Supaplex
> levels scrolling is 'hacky' on old Pentium...

You are right that R'n'D needs some CPU power for the now relatively complex game engine, and some (2D) graphics power for smooth scrolling. (I have noticed that some newer graphics cards have great 3D performance, but not so good 2D performance, which is strange.)

And you are also right that the level sets you mentioned are those where R'n'D looks best and maybe is most fun for most people -- the classics may be most interesting for those people who played them on the original machines and like the nostalgic feeling.

At least for BD2K3 and Snake Bite, I planned to make "special releases" which contain these sets instead of the classics, so people can directly play the new sets.

> 2. There should be a possibility to download levels directly from within
> the game. 'Get new levels' and then a list of downloadable sets would be
> just perfect. It would also prevent dilemmas like 'where do I put these
> files anwyay?'. Of course the files would then have to be on some central
> server, but I think it can be arranged somehow.

The server wouldn't be the problem, as the downloadable level sets could all be stored on my server and then accessed/downloaded over HTTP. This is really just a thing that must be implemented, and shouldn't be too hard using an appropriate HTTP library.

Putting all those sets you mentioned into the base package would make it quite large, btw...

Flumminator:
> And point 2 remembers me of one thing i wanted to implement about a
> year ago... just never had the time to do it.

Feel free to do it! :-)

> Well, since i've finished university now, I may again have a little more
> time for this. (But on the other hand, i'm starting work on monday...)

Oh, well... :-o

You will soon notice that you never had so much free time than when being at university. At least that's my personal experience... :-o

(Just again saw this when uploading some old stuff people requested, like R'n'D 0.9: In 1995, I released Mirror Magic 1.0 in July, wrote Aquarius in August and released R'n'D in October -- so I must have had a *lot* of time for programming which I do not have anymore now... :-( )

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:59 am

Holger wrote:And you are also right that the level sets you mentioned are those where R'n'D looks best and maybe is most fun for most people -- the classics may be most interesting for those people who played them on the original machines and like the nostalgic feeling.
(...)
Putting all those sets you mentioned into the base package would make it quite large, btw...

There's no need to remove classic sets while adding new ones. I don't think archive size is a problem nowadays, people download and install 100M+ games without a blink. You could make 'normal' RnD containing the best levelsets and RnD Lite containing just tutorials and classics (which, with internal download option, would be something like minimum Linux installation, allowing users to build upon it to their liking; also it would be handy if someone just wants to update the program). You could then make some counter and see which one is downloaded more often.

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 5:50 pm

Today I again read a post saying that someone turned on RnD, saw that it sucked and turned it off. I'm almost certain it's because he saw the old EM graphics. It's like with people, the first few seconds are the most important. Personally I'm pretty sad to see people saying RnD sucks without trying at least Snake Bite, BD2K3 and Walpurgis Gardens.

So did you consider releasing a RnD-Max version yet?

Alan · Post by **Alan** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:18 pm

Today I again read a post saying that someone turned on RnD, saw that it sucked and turned it off.

Which forum was that.......the Polish one?

It sounds like he has the attention span of a puppy....maybe he was wise to turn it off

What's RnD-Max? Sounds very interesting....

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:44 pm

Yes, Polish forum about logical games.

About RnD-Max, I've just 'invented' this name, as opposed to RnD-Lite which I mentioned earlier. Just read the thread and you should know. ;-)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:34 am

Holger wrote:You are right that R'n'D needs some CPU power for the now relatively complex game engine, and some (2D) graphics power for smooth scrolling. (I have noticed that some newer graphics cards have great 3D performance, but not so good 2D performance, which is strange.)

On all the modern video cards that I've used, I have never noticed bad 2D performance. The video cards that will decode HDTV fine will likely work with Rocks'n'Diamonds.
However, I have noticed that ATi cards are not quite as good as nVidia cards with respect to 2D performance. I first noticed that in Fear Factor (a video card benchmark that's mainly 3D but with some 2D as well), a GeForce 4 beats a Radeon X800 in the "lightning" scene. But chances are, it's still fast enough for Rocks'n'Diamonds.
I'm not sure about how graphics are implmented in Rocks'n'Diamonds, but if it's like many 2D and windowed 3D applications, it would create an overlay (a virtual graphics buffer) and crop the overlay image. If there's not enough memory to allocate an overlay, either due to an actual shortage of video memory (unlikely with new cards) or a driver bug/limitation, a software overlay will be created, which is much slower.

Zomis · Post by **Zomis** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 2:14 pm

bojster wrote:Today I again read a post saying that someone turned on RnD, saw that it sucked and turned it off. I'm almost certain it's because he saw the old EM graphics. It's like with people, the first few seconds are the most important. Personally I'm pretty sad to see people saying RnD sucks without trying at least Snake Bite, BD2K3 and Walpurgis Gardens.

So did you consider releasing a RnD-Max version yet?

Indeed the first seconds are the most important. I think the earlier things you mentioned in this thread are excellent (about more levelsets and auto-downloading from within within), and I hope Flummi's "patch" for downloading extra levels are very useful (I can think of at least two "sources" for downloading - artsoft.org and zomis.net/rnd, and many more could be established).

I think that some people maybe haven't found out that you can change levelset in RnD, so the GUI for that could be improved somehow...

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 4:03 pm

Maybe also a short information outlining the main features (such as the possibility to download and play new levelsets or create custom elements, possibly with some neat mini-screenshots) could be displayed once, when RnD is ran for the first time...

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:07 pm

I decided to refresh this thread each time I read an opinion that RnD sucks biased by the fact that a person only bothered to play some levels originally shipped with the game. Today I've read two such posts. I fully understand that when nowadays there are bigger expectations about a game than to see 20-year-old BD & EM levels there... the world calls for a change! ;-)

Zomis · Post by **Zomis** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 5:37 pm

How about an option (which defaults to true) to make RND select a random levelset each time it's started? Well, just a thought

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 6:51 pm

Zomis wrote:How about an option (which defaults to true) to make RND select a random levelset each time it's started? Well, just a thought

Uhm.. with all those upcoming EMC levelsets, the chance will be little that a great innovative levelset (like BD2K3) will be selected...

If Holger does not want download links inside the game, then I would suggest something like a nagscreen (only once!) at startup or when exiting the game with some screenshots (and a clear description of course) of the most popular levelsets.

bojster · Post by **bojster** » Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:18 pm

Zomis wrote:How about an option (which defaults to true) to make RND select a random levelset each time it's started? Well, just a thought :)

I don't think it's a good idea. Now RnD opens the last selected levelset, which is the only desirable behaviour when you're currently playing it. You wouldn't want to look for the levelset you've last played each time you run RnD, would you? :-P

Zomis · Post by **Zomis** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 7:48 am

bojster wrote:I don't think it's a good idea. Now RnD opens the last selected levelset, which is the only desirable behaviour when you're currently playing it. You wouldn't want to look for the levelset you've last played each time you run RnD, would you?

No, I don't want to do that... that's why I said it could be an option

But well... Martijn has a good point about it.. so the idea is probably very bad...