First pre-release of Rocks'n'Diamonds 4.4.0.0 available!

[ncrecc]

photoepileptic or photosensitive users might appreciate an option to turn off the white flash that occurs when you get the last required gem

(see preivous page for more notes/bugs)

[ncrecc]

with smooth element movement, boxes don't animate properly when moving up or left

boxez.gif (57.14 KiB) Viewed 816 times

player exiting teleporter also doesn't animate properly (should use transparent player for this):

teleporters.gif (44.36 KiB) Viewed 813 times

[ncrecc]

extending walls only animate smoothly if they extend over dirt that was just snapped; otherwise they animate discretely

extenders2.gif (186.2 KiB) Viewed 803 times

[ncrecc]

the three Wall With Key elements have the same editor description as Normal Wall and display a normal wall in the editor settings.

Diamond Key's editor description says it converts all doors into diamonds. it does not. it only converts Trapped Diamonds into diamonds. conversely, Trapped Diamonds do not specifically mention they are opened by Diamond Keys.

[ncrecc]

slime.gif (11.26 KiB) Viewed 798 times

currently, when rocks (or other objects) pass through slime with Smooth Element Movement on, they "warp" into it and then move down at normal speed. what if instead, they moved from on top of the slime to below the slime at double speed, similar to when Rockford passes through an EM door?

similarly, objects falling into lava from above could "sink", like objects in EM lava would (but without the splash droplets)

[ncrecc]

bugs with the new Boulder Dash levelpack:

• in "Tutorial" by Marek Roth, level 001 has the diamonds set to turn into an unknown element when falling. likewise level 002 has the boulders set to turn into an unknown element when landing.
• in "Crazy Dream 1" by Marek Roth, the player is not set to be able to move diagonally, which makes level 001 immediately impossible. (see this video for what playing level 001 should be like)

hopefully these and any other bugs exist in the .gds and .bd reader and not in the level data itself

[Holger]

Thanks a lot for all these bug reports and similar observations, ncrecc! And for the very good descriptions with animated GIFs, if needed, which made everything very clear.

I will work through these posts and try to fix everything!

[Holger]

OK, the first few reported bugs and issues are fixed and/or changed now.

Again, I have to say how much I appreciate all those bug reports and observations regarding the new BD game engine! I cannot emphasize enough how helpful all this constructive feedback is!

OK, here we go -- what's fixed so far:

Regarding the new speed keys "f" and "s" colliding with common "wasd" keys for moving: I found out that it also collides with debug key "d" (to enable/disable some debug settings), but this is not enabled in release builds. But this inspired me to solve this issue a bit differently. It works now as follows: All keys are the same as before (that is, "f" and "s" for "fast" and "slow" while keys are pressed), but movement/snap/drop keys now have precedence over special speed and debug keys. That is, "wasd" works regardless of what was configured for fast/slow keys (or internal debug key settings). So that result is that "wasd" works as before for moving the player, but "s" for "slow" is simply ignored if you have configured "s" for "move down". So nothing collides with game input settings now, and you are free to change "s" to whatever key you like for special "slow" key.

I think this is much better than any other key that may or may not collide with existing game input settings that somebody may have configured and used since a long time.

"use player pushing graphics", "use player up/down graphics", and "mute double falling sounds" options are long enough that they cut into the "yes" nearby (watch when they are highlighted):

Fixed! Using shorter text now. (And inverted the logic for "falling sounds", using default value "AUTO" now to only use it with native BD sounds.)

in the BD engine, quick-loading tapes with F2 doesn't seem to work; it always just takes you to the intro of the level and pauses.

Quick loading/saving games (game "snapshots") is not implemented yet -- sorry, this is still missing.

More fixes will follow soon!

[Holger]

(in this gif, you'll also notice another bug where sometimes the intro animation cuts off very early. i don't know what makes that happen)

That's in fact by intention, and should only happen when you start the game from the level editor. In this case, I assume that your main focus is on testing the level (again and again, in many cases), so the relatively long playfield uncovering sequence may be quite annoying after some time (at least that's the case for me). So when starting from the level editor, the uncovering sequence only takes the same time as the covering sequence at the end of a successfully played level takes, just to speed things up a bit. At the same time, the viewport is immediately focussed to the player, no scrolling towards the player as in "normal" games.

As I understand that this may be unexpected or even unwanted behavior, I have now added a setup option for this ("fast game start" in the editor section of the setup menu), with the default value being "false". Hope that helps!

[ncrecc]

out of curiosity: do you plan to port some of the new BD objects to the RnD engine eventually?

[Timo3681]

If i change Colors for the level, save it and play the level, does nor work, level have old colors.

[Holger]

out of curiosity: do you plan to port some of the new BD objects to the RnD engine eventually?

Perfectly valid and to-be-expected question, as I did exactly that with all previous native game engines (other than the MirrorMagic/Deflektor engine, which is not a BD/EM etyle engine). All game elements from the EM and SP engines are indeed also "back-ported" to the R'n'D engine.

However, there are currently no plans to do the same for the various new game elements from the BD engine in the near future, because most "new" game elements are very similar to other, already existing game elements of the R'n'D engine (mainly those back-ported from the EMC engine).

But if there are any game elements from the new BD engine that you think would be worth adding also to the R'n'D engine (and cannot easily be emulated using CEs), just let me know and I may well change my mind.

[Holger]

If i change Colors for the level, save it and play the level, does nor work, level have old colors.

This is something which I have to make more clear in the level editor: The custom colors are only used in the BD engine when used together with a custom color enabled graphics set. You can easily test this by selecting any level set and level from the new BD level collection (please find the download link in the more detailed announcement in the BD forum) and select "game graphics style: old" from the "game engines" sub-menu. Then go to the editor page of your screenshot, press "set random colors" and press "space" to start a test game from the editor, and voila: The game will use those random colors.

As this only works for specially crafted game graphics and prepared graphics sets, I really should only display this editor page if the currently selected/used graphics set supports custom colors, and show an appropriate warning/info message if it doesn't.

Thanks for pointing this out!

[Timo3681]

I am tested it with:

Default Game Engine: Boulder Dash
Game Graphics Style: Old
Random Colors: On

Does not work

[Holger]

something interesting: if i make a new level in the BD engine with the default settings (200ms game cycle delay, PAL timing off), then the game runs a little bit slower than it would in the EM or RND engines. but if i set the game cycle delay to 166ms (1/6th of a second instead of 1/5th of a second), then it runs at the correct speed. i think this might have to do with me using a 60hz monitor.

this hunch might be wrong, though. the game also feels fine at 180ms game cycle delay, which is what GDash uses for its levels by default. i'd recommend setting the default to 180ms, down from 200ms.

I agree. 200 ms just feels too slow! (And it does not have to do with your monitor using 60 Hz.) This was the default value of the GDash code base I used for porting to R'n'D (with PAL timing set to "off"). I have just checked what the latest code base uses, and you are right: Although defaults are first set to 200 for all "levels" (that is, difficulty levels in BD), they are set to 180, 160, 140, 120 and 120 right afterwards for compatibility reasons.

So this should be set to 180 or, even better, 160, which would be the same default speed as used to from R'n'D and EM. (All engines internally use 20 ms frame delay when running with default speed, with a delay of 8 frames to move from one tile to the next, giving a delay of 160 ms for one "game/movement cycle". Therefore, when setting the BD engine to 160 ms, it will run with the exact same speed.)