Suggestions for Earth Shaker stuff that can't exactly be done with custom elements

[SLAPPYHAPPY2000]

Earth Shaker was a game made for the ZX Spectrum in 1990 by Michael Batty. I think that there are a few interesting things in Earth Shaker that could be put in Rocks'n'Diamonds to spice up levels.

First off, the jumping beans. These beans are basically the extra time collectibles in Rocks'n'Diamonds, except for a few interesting attributes. One of these attributes is the fact that the beans are affected by gravity, although that's probably not worth mentioning since a time collectible with gravity can be easily made using custom elements. The other attribute, however, is much interesting, and I think that it could be really interesting as a global level feature. This attribute is a TIME CAP, which prevents the time from going over a "maximum amount" when you collect a time collectible. Having this feature be available for levels without infinite time would be really cool, and it would encourage you to not waste time collectibles in a level.

Second, the bubbles and the fire. And YES, before you stop me right here, Jamie Cullen made Rocks'n'Diamonds levelset based on Earth Shaker in the past with bubbles and fire that worked alright. But they did not work perfectly due to the nature of how Rocks'n'Diamonds doesn't allow more thasn one element on a space. In the actual Earth Shaker, you needed to push the bubbles INTO the fire to put it out, just putting the bubble next to the fire wouldn't do! Another property that can be found in Earth Shaker's bubbles is the fact that if you push them into sand, they actually remove the sand in front of it, meaning that you can actually push the element through sand! Having an element with added interactivity with other elements would be really neat, in my opinion.

Huh? What about the fire? Well, uh... it's like, gravity affected and it can hurt the player if you walk into it, kind of like a plant. And, uh... rocks can dissolve if they land on it?
Ok, so, the fire can be created completely with custom elements, no big deal. But the main functionality of the bubble can only work with fire as an actual element, since this kind of functionality but with custom elements isn't really possible. And just including the bubble would remove its only purpose, which is to put out fire.

That's pretty much it for now. I was going to suggest the gravity flipper from Earth Shaker, but that's probably a tad bit too much (although it would be dope as hell! ).

[Holger]

I think the most interesting potential enhancement to the R'n'D game engine from your above suggestions would be the possibility to push an element into another element (causing it to disappear). This could be added as a new custom element (CE) property "can be pushed to element [<element>]" (with "<element>" also supporting group elements to be able to push that CE to different elements). Plus a new CE event "when pushing to [<element>]".

To make everything even more flexible, some sort of "background elements" could be introduced, which would make it possible to have not only "empty" background, but support many background elements (CEs) which would let other non-background elements exist on top of them (like monsters moving over non-empty background elements). But this would be quite a large and complex change to the engine, and I'm not sure if this would be worth the effort that would be required.

[MichaelBatty]

Since writing Earth Shaker for the spectrum I've played around with various versions of a sequel called World Shaker, 22 years of work on and off, the current incarnation being written in C# using monogame, which is an open-source version of XNA game studio. (I don't like games frameworks that are too complex when all I want to do is recapture my youth and write 2D 80s-style games!) I've downloaded both of the Jamie Cullen packs from here and converted them to play in World Shaker. I've never been in contact with Jamie but would like to say both of these packs represent a huge amount of work and some great ideas for screens with the original elements that capture the spirit of the original game wonderfully. I've not completed them all yet but have enjoyed playing many of them. I would like to make World Shaker available at some point but currently it still needs work.

World Shaker has many more elements than Earth Shaker, at least 200 or so. Like you say the bubbles are different in one of these packs. I've not really understood why before until reading this article so thanks for that. I've introduced a new type of alternative "octagonal" bubble that behaves like Jamie's bubbles.

Interestingly there was no facility for "background" elements in Earth Shaker itself, but the bubble and fire behaviour was just done on the fly with my extremely messy 80s spaghetti machine code. World shaker does have the idea of background elements though, and thinking about it, it is quite integral to the engine but can get complex. You can go on top of elements such as direction arrows and when you leave the square it brings the arrow back from the background to the foreground again. It uses a basic rule "if you try to put a space in a square, check if the background first and if that is not empty, put that in the square instead of the space". This also lets you hide blocks behind soil like hidden jewels or mines. Endless fun

[Holger]

Hi Michael, welcome to the R'n'D forum!

Thank you (as the original author of the classic game "Earth Shaker") for commenting on the "remake" level sets by Jamie Cullen for R'n'D! It was interesting to read about some details of the original game engine, regarding pushing elements into other elements, and the special handling of "background elements", and compare it to how it is done in R'n'D's game engine.

I had already forgotten about this thread (even though it is really not very old yet) and its topics and thoughts (including my own), but recently thought about adding a generic way to push one element onto another again (as an option for custom elements). This could not only be useful for "Earth Shaker" style levels, but would also be useful to imitate the behaviour of some other classic, tile-based games as well (for example, I think "Chip's Challenge" used such element pushing behaviour here and there).

It was also interesting to read about "World Shaker" (including which tools or frameworks you prefer, and why)!