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Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2018 2:23 am
by ncrecc
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I don't know how Diamond Caves actually handles this, but it seems unlikely that this is an intended feature.

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2018 8:41 pm
by Holger
This is indeed intended behaviour in R'n'D, but I cannot say how original Diamond Caves handles this. (A long time ago, I had a virtual machine running Windows, where I had Diamond Caves II running, but I cannot test this anymore these days.)

In R'n'D, DC2 style magic wall changes elements as follows:

- pearl -> bomb -> rock -> emerald -> diamond -> rock -> emerald -> ...

I really hope that this was done after looking at how DC2 works, but I cannot say for sure anymore. In fact, I suspect that it behaves differently in the original DC2 game, because in the original Emerald Mine engine, if I remember correctly, elements sitting on a magic wall do not fall into it when it is activated (but must be at least one tile above it, so they must be already falling before entering it), and they just disappear if they fall into stacked magic walls.

In R'n'D, stacked DC2 style magic wall also changes these elements above, so two magic walls do two changes etc., which apparently seemed logical to me when I implemented it (and still does when I think about it now), but most probably differs from the original game engine behavior.

Maybe I should have bought a license for DC2 to check this all out in detail, but I never tried to exactly emulate the DC2 engine back then... :-/

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 2:26 am
by ncrecc
The developer of Diamond Caves has mentioned wanting to update the Steam version with a level editor before Christmas rolls around, so pretty soon I should be able to provide some insight on what the correct behavior here would be (if this isn't it).

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:19 am
by filbo
Is the Steam version really at all related to classic DC / DC2 / DC3? It sounds like the levelset(s) it comes with are new; the objects might be as well. Even if they're based on the general ideas of the DC3 objects, if the author rewrote everything from scratch they probably won't behave the same (thus more or less invalidating all of the old levelsets...)

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 4:10 pm
by ncrecc
filbo wrote: Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:19 am Is the Steam version really at all related to classic DC / DC2 / DC3? It sounds like the levelset(s) it comes with are new; the objects might be as well. Even if they're based on the general ideas of the DC3 objects, if the author rewrote everything from scratch they probably won't behave the same (thus more or less invalidating all of the old levelsets...)
From what I've played of the DC3 demo and the Steam version, the Steam version shares everything with the classic DC games except UI and levelsets, and the developer will make it backwards compatible with DC3 sets once the editor comes out.

There are two new mechanics in Steam DC that I know of, a tile that rotates the level when pressed and a yin-yang bonus collectible that shows what levels it's collected in on the "choose level" screen, but I don't think they should be implemented into RnD seeing how they're some of the very few ways that the Steam version adds to the experience rather than detracting from it.

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:20 pm
by filbo
Oooh, trying to imagine the effects of that 'rotate level' button on all sorts of existing levels...

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:48 am
by ncrecc
Since the editor for the Steam version of Diamond Caves came out, I've been able to test a few things I was curious about. This was one of them.

In Diamond Caves, stacked magic walls act just like EM magic walls. Any convertible objects that fall into them disappear and never come out. Also, just like EM, objects sitting on magic walls do not convert once the magic wall is turned on; they have to be falling before they can through the magic wall.

This leads to another case of RnD being the "outlier" (since the EM and DC engines both handle stacked magic walls in a way RnD does not), so stacked walls leading to converted objects at all should probably be fixed, as with objects passing through magic walls without having fallen any distance.

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 1:19 am
by Holger
In Diamond Caves, stacked magic walls act just like EM magic walls.
I think this is true for most, if not all EM style elements in the DC engine; it tries to emulate them as close as possible, so that valid EM levels are also valid DC levels.

Regarding the handling of stacked magic walls and elements sitting on magic walls, I always found the original behaviour a bit strange or unnatural -- if one piece of magic wall turns element A to B and element B to C, two of them stacked vertically should turn A to C in my opinion, and elements that keep sitting on an active magic wall while falling elements fall through it really does not seem logical or to be expected to me. Nevertheless, these issues need to be addressed to be able to play the levels as they are intended to be played.

Re: Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:21 pm
by filbo
Those sound like good checkmark settings for the magic wall element(s); initialized in different ways for different cave styles / engines, but perhaps changeable in the level editor for any level type / style / engine.