Crystal Caverns 1 level 15

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filbo
Posts: 647
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2014 10:06 am

Crystal Caverns 1 level 15

Post by filbo »

"Stuck on a level?" -- says this forum's subtitle...

Currently on level 15 of "Crystal Caverns 1", which is file "/usr/share/games/rocksndiamonds/levels/Emerald Mine Club/emc_crystal_caverns_1/15" on my system.

This level has a single piece of "Normal amoeba", and amoeba growth rate is set to 999. It's situated above an acid pool, but swiftly grows out of there and takes over a large portion of the level.

The splash screens at the start of this level set claim "All levels are possible. Testing done by Dodo."

Is this simply incompatible with RnD for some reason? Lately I haven't been having a lot of trouble with amoeba compatibility.

Being an EMC level, this uses the Emerald Mine engine. I tried with the RnD engine but got the same result. (Also noticed a small bug: changing a level's game engine setting, then quitting the level creator, doesn't prompt that the level has been changed...)

Changing that cell to "Dropping amoeba (EM style)" or "Dripper" behaved about the same. "Amoeba drop" makes the level playable, but might as well not be there at all (it's long gone before the player arrives in that area). "Amoeba with content" and "Amoeba (BD style)" are worse -- they grow much more rapidly to fill all possible space. And "Dead amoeba" is fine, but also might as well not be there. All tested under EM engine except the last few, which are inert blobs under EM, tested under RnD.

The nature of this outgrowth has always made me wonder. If you have dripping amoeba over an acid pool, it seems like it should be steady-state. The drops form, fall, are eaten by acid, repeat forever. Unless something blocks one of the drops -- then it forms into live amoeba.

But no, even with nothing around to block the drops, dripping amoeba eventually forms blocks floating in mid-air. When the growth rate is set to 999, this happens pretty quickly. Not, of course, as fast as the "with content" and "BD" variations which flood-fill all of space at the speed of light.

Is this behavior of occasionally solidifying out of thin air accurate to the source games from which the amoeba concept came?

I came to RnD after having played original Boulder Dash many years ago on Atari (and Dig-Dug in arcades) -- having skipped all the intermediate game programs and level sets. So I don't have good perspective on the precise intended behavior of various objects.

(Confession: way back in 1985 or 86, I was hired by First Star Software to "port" Boulder Dash from Atari 800 to IBM PC. I quote "port" because they did not supply source code, claiming that they'd lost it and besides it was irrelevant. So my task was to reverse-engineer the Atari game, then write an equivalent program for PC. I failed hard at this, not having any Atari experience nor software tools, and gave up before making any noticeable progress. And I never returned their Atari console despite several requests. I might still have it in a shed somewhere...)
filbo
Posts: 647
Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2014 10:06 am

Re: Crystal Caverns 1 level 15

Post by filbo »

Ah, the splash screen lies anyway. Level 23 is not solvable, lacking keys 3 & 4 (or the 14-or-so dynamites necessary to work around their doors).
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