emerald mine 3 pro - level 5

[zaq]

Hi Everybody.

I started playing emerald mine 3 pro, and i'm stuck at level 5.
It's a level with a lot of dynamite. However, if a firefly explodes, and one dynamity is eploded with it, then the dynamite itself explodes also!

What i rememeber from the amiga was that in this case the dynamity would disappear, but would not cause an explosion itself.

In level 5 now, all dynamite explodes because they all are aligned togethter, resulting in an unsolvable level?

I checked the topic 'unsolvable levels' but this level isn't mentioned.
Can i change the dynamite behaviour if necessary?



Wel, i'm curious about what you have to say about it!

[Flumminator]

Hi zaq

First: welcome to the Rocks'n'Diamonds webforum. You arrived just in time

You're right this level isn't solveable wit RnD up to 3.1.0. We're currently beta-testing 3.2.0 (see also this thread) which has a new highly compatible Emerald Mine engine. The described problem does not occur with this new engine.

Currently we're collecting bugs in the new engine so that Holger can fix them. There are some bugs already known. If you find new ones, you can post them in this thread.

[zaq]

Thanks for the fast tip!

I downloaded version 3.2.0-0 and 'installed' it.
The bug is resolved indeed. I'm just
trying to make level 5 and then switch
back to 3.1.0 becasue the key responsiveness
of the game decreased!

Resulting in improper (non)movement, and
very bad timings.

But Thank again, and i'll stick watch the pre-release thread!

[zaq]

I just read the bugreport thread, and saw that the
key responisveness decrease is a knwon issue.

Ahh, what a relief.

[bojster]

Welcome to the forums. The new EM engine should be polished soon, but many things are under discussion, also the change in key behaviour. Personally I think that it's worse now, with the 'original' delay, and I would prefer it to be similar to the main RnD engine... even if it would make the game easier. But then again, 99% of EM levels is indecently easy anyway, so what's the point? ;-) You can also have your voice in this discussion and I encourage you to use it. Also, if I were you, I wouldn't play EM levels with the old engine now, because the tapes won't be compatible with the new engine, so you will have to replay all the levels anyway. Waiting for pre-3.2.0 I passed many old EM levels and I regret it now... (it wouldn't be so if we already got the Contributions 2005 pack :P)

[zaq]

Thanks for the welcome!

My first boulderdash experience was on the msx: Boulderdash 2. Later i had my amiga and started playing emerald mine games.

I can ensure one thing: The delay that is now in the new engine was not in the original emerald mine games. And even if there was a delay, it wasn't noticable, and therefore not affecting gameplay in a negative way!
It felt playing like the 3-1-0 engine, accept for the fact that i played with an acrcade joystick on my amiga, instead of the keyboard.

I now play emerald mine 3 pro with the 3-1-0 engine, and if i encounter a level that can't be solved, i make a note and skip it. This way i can test the levels with the newest engine, when available.

There soooooo many levels, that i don't mind skipping some. (ok, ok i feel a bit bad about it..)

[Holger]

Hello zaq! Welcome to this forum! :-)

You wrote:
> I can ensure one thing: The delay that is now in the new engine was not in the original emerald
> mine games. And even if there was a delay, it wasn't noticable, and therefore not affecting
> gameplay in a negative way!

I'm very interested in your (and of course also others) experience with the new game engine for native EM levels, so I may ask for some details here:

There are at least three kinds of delay or decrease in responsiveness in the new EM engine:
a) the player does not react as fast as known from the R'n'D engine
b) placing dynamite takes quite some time
c) moving with keys pressed for diagonal movement causes a delay after each step

In my opinion, at least (a) and (b) are the same as in the original game on the Amiga -- (b) should be exactly the same, and also (a) should be the same, because the game engine only allows the player to move when all other movable elements also (can) move. As one move of an element (or the player) takes exactly eight frames (which each last 1/50 second), this gives a delay from 0 to 7/50 seconds (aroung 1/7 second) when trying to move. So, these two should be the same as in the original Amiga game. At least (a) cannot be changed in this engine, as the player cannot start moving while other elements have not yet finished their movement phase.

About (c), this is solved a bit different in the EM engine. While in the Amiga game, you simply cannot move up or down when pressing the "left" or"right" cursor key, the new EM engine makes a little pause after each step when trying to move diagonally. This is something which can be discussed to be changed, as it won't affect the engine much.

Please let me know if I am wrong with the original Amiga game engine somewhere, as this engine is one of the two "references" for the new EM engine. The other reference is the EMC engine (from the Emerald Mine Club in Holland), which is used with the thousands of EMC levels. Both the original EM game and all these EMC game disks can be played with Amiga emulators like UAE, WinUAE or Fellow, so everybody can have a look how a certain EM or EMC level worked in the original game.

So please don't hesitate to tell me about things that are done wrong in the new EM engine!

BTW: Something that differs from the Amiga EM that nobody reported yet is the random delay when pushing things around, which is missing in the native EM engine. This was done because the 1000's of EMC levels also did not have that delay -- it was always the same in the EMC engine. Maybe this should at least be added for the original EM games...

As Flumminator already mentioned, it's best to continue this in the 3.2.0 bug report thread.

[zaq]

Well thanks for the welcome!
And thank you for this wonderful game!

I'll reply in >bug reports>pre-3.2.0!