Elements fall through magic walls too slowly in the default engine

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ncrecc
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Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:59 am

Elements fall through magic walls too slowly in the default engine

Post by ncrecc »

Here's how fast a rock falls through a magic wall in Diamond Caves:
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Same above, but with the Emerald Mine engine in RnD:
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And here's how fast it falls in Rocks'n'Diamonds' own engine:
Image
RnD seems to be the clear outlier here. In other engines, elements pass through magic walls as fast as a player passes through a door, but in RnD, they pass through magic walls just slightly faster than a rock passing through quicksand.
Is this the speed at which elements fell through magic walls in the original Boulder Dash? If it's expected for BD magic walls but not other magic walls, I'd suggest adding a "slow EM/DC magic walls" compatibility setting after fixing it. If it's inaccurate behavior for all magic walls, I'd suggest adding a compatibility setting for slow magic walls in general after fixing it.
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Holger
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Re: Elements fall through magic walls too slowly in the default engine

Post by Holger »

Thanks for your observations!

Regarding behaviour of the R'n'D game engine, it should be mentioned that it was never intended to be 100 % compatible with existing game engines of "classic" BD/EM style games, but only to be similar enough to play levels that do not depend on special game engine tricks or frame accurate timings. Good examples for this approach are the classic original "Emerald Mine" levels, which can be played and solved with the R'n'D game engine, while many levels of the various EMC level sets can not (as they are sometimes designed to depend on more exact timing or use specific game engine behaviour). Because of this, the concept of "native game engines" was introduced to R'n'D (like the Supaplex game engine, which is 100 % compatible with the original Supaplex game engine), but you are right that this does not solve problems with classic levels from games for which no native game engines exist yet (notably BD and DC2).

For this, your suggestions are indeed a good solution, either by changing or extending the behaviour of existing game elements (adding compatibility settings to not break existing levels), or by adding new elements with similar behaviour, which better works for their intended use in levels from other games (like some of those "BD" style elements).

As there will never be 100 % compatibility without adding a native game engine (with behaviour sufficiently identical to the original game engine), extending existing or adding new elements should be the way to go to improve compatibility, and it should be started with those elements which currently break the most existing levels of a certain kind (like the DC2 levels).

As I unfortunately have no way to check the exact original behaviour of the DC2/DC3 game engine, your observations and descriptions of game engine behaviour will be very helpful to work on this task.

At the same time, I will try to play some of the existing DC2 levels (and elements) to see for myself which of them already work fine (enough) and which of them require improvements to be played correctly.

BTW: Did you also check how stacked magic wall elements work? I bet they will result in different elements after passing through them... oh well.
ncrecc
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Joined: Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:59 am

Re: Elements fall through magic walls too slowly in the default engine

Post by ncrecc »

Holger wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:52 am At the same time, I will try to play some of the existing DC2 levels (and elements) to see for myself which of them already work fine (enough) and which of them require improvements to be played correctly.
I'm glad I can help! Feel free to ask me any specific questions about how the DC3 elements work when you get around to adding them. In the mean time, I'll try compiling a list of the yet unimplemented DC3 elements and their specific properties.
Holger wrote: Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:52 am BTW: Did you also check how stacked magic wall elements work? I bet they will result in different elements after passing through them... oh well.
Funny you ask, I just updated the "Pearl turns into EM rock if it passes through two successive DC2 magic walls" topic with some info on that. From what I can tell DC magic walls act identically to EM magic walls with the exception of what elements they can convert.
filbo
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Re: Elements fall through magic walls too slowly in the default engine

Post by filbo »

I watched a bunch of DC3 level playthroughs on youtube, and made a big file of element notes. Can post it here after a bit of cleanup.
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