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

[ncrecc]

some other things that appear to move from the player when they're spawned: bombs, dirt from a clock, rockets, and the other half of the pneumatic hammer animation

smoothspawn.gif (89.41 KiB) Viewed 10697 times

for bombs and rockets this actually looks pretty acceptable, though it would be better if the solid black behind them wasn't rendered

[ncrecc]

chasing rocks in gdash have separate graphics for when they're awoken (with an angry face), whereas in rnd they do not

gdash_chaser.gif (17.12 KiB) Viewed 10695 times

[ncrecc]

after completing a one-screen level (e.g. an intermission) with Small Game Graphics turned on, the play area is briefly moved to the top-left of the screen as everything else becomes white. (this is level 3 of Alex Zop's self-titled caveset)

bd_ssg.gif (1.01 MiB) Viewed 10666 times

[ncrecc]

my tape for bd_alex_zop level 001 desyncs. when i was playing, i successfully lured the fireflies into the amoeba in order to escape the central chamber and won, but that point of the tape just shows me fumbling around and standing in the way of a firefly.

001.tape

(318 Bytes) Downloaded 1086 times

possibly because i quicksaved after i got most of the diamonds and the rng for the amoeba desynced, so my movement ended up blocked by amoeba that wasn't there when i played it

[ncrecc]

would a setting to disable scrolling when screen wrapping be feasible? (just instantly snap the camera to the other side of the level)

[ncrecc]

rockford doesn't say "ouch" when he dies in the bd engine with the default sfx set. feels uncanny now that i notice it

[ncrecc]

conveyors with smooth movement move tiles discretely. also, if you snap-push a boulder and are still snapping in the same direction when the boulder comes back, then it partially animates as though it came from you. (probably the smooth movement code going "player is snapping in this direction, and a tile just appeared here, ergo the tile appeared here because of player snapping")

conveyor.gif (296.1 KiB) Viewed 10483 times

similarly, flying rocks animate weirdly when you snap whatever is keeping them from rising

risingboulder.gif (13.63 KiB) Viewed 10483 times

[ncrecc]

(a graphics set that styles the cow the same way the penguin, mole, pig, and dragon are styled, in iceblox-style, would maybe be interesting... paging eizzoux... though it depends on if the cow supports separate graphics depending on which way it's facing)

[ncrecc]

if we are going with changing ingrained terms for the sake of clarity or sounding less odd to new players (e.g. "handicap" -> "force solving levels"), then i suggest changing the odd names of "bladder" and "bladder spender" (which sound rather risqué) to "bubble" and "bubble spawner" in the editor.

speaking of names for elements, the imported boulder dash levelsets should probably have their own helptext.conf & helpanim.conf that shows all the boulder dash elements.

[Holger]

if we are going with changing ingrained terms for the sake of clarity or sounding less odd to new players

Oh well ... that's indeed something I thought about quite a bit when integrating the BD engine into R'n'D (especially as it already contained the most basic game elements from the classic BD game, playable with the R'n'D engine). So using different names for "rocks" (vs. "boulders" vs. "stones"), "walls" (vs. "brick walls"), "steel walls" (vs. "titan walls") or "sand" (vs. "dirt", which is also the word used in Emerald Mine Club games, but was also named "sand" in the English version of the (one-page) "manual" of the original game (which, btw. spoke about "smaragds", not "emeralds")) would have made things really confusing (for new or old players).

So I had no real choice other than staying with the same terms for the same game elements, be it the R'n'D or BD or whatever game engine (even if this is confusing again for long-time BD (and only BD) players)...

(e.g. "handicap" -> "force solving levels")

BTW: As somebody asked where the heck did this strange term came from some time ago: The term "handicap" was in fact used in the original "manual" mentioned above. Here is the description of the English version (which was 100% surely written by a German native speaker):

Code: Select all

HANDICAP - display, showing which level you did not yet master.  As a start
level you can choose this number (or a smaller one).  Should the handicap
of a player increase i.e. if he succeeds the highest level allowed, the
disk will automatically store it. You have to choose the option SAVE
PLAYERS in the NAME menu before a reset if you want SCORE, GAMES PLAYED,
and GAMES WON continuously correct.

[https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/docs.php?id=557]

then i suggest changing the odd names of "bladder" and "bladder spender" (which sound rather risqué) to "bubble" and "bubble spawner" in the editor.

Thank you very much! I wholeheartly agree here (and always thought "what the heck" when reading these two game element names), but hesitated to change it. Now I did, as I fully agree here. With a little change: Instead of "bubble spawner", I used "trapped bubble" now, as I think (a) it just describes it best (as you have to "free" the bubble to let it move upwards), and (b) it fits nicely to the "trapped diamond" game element naming (even though you have to collect a special key here to "free" the trapped diamonds).

speaking of names for elements, the imported boulder dash levelsets should probably have their own helptext.conf & helpanim.conf that shows all the boulder dash elements.

It was indeed missing in version 0.9.1 (announced together with 4.4.0.0-test-1), but is already there in version 0.9.2 (announced together with 4.4.0.0-test-2).

The new naming scheme for those "bladder" elements will be released with 4.4.0.0-test-3 and version 0.9.3 of the GDash level collection.

[ncrecc]

Marek Roth -> Tutorial -> level 17 "Suicide" requires a particular feature from GDash in order to solve: a "suicide" key, which, when pressed (or held), makes the first player in cave-scanning order turn into a 1-tile explosion (which is useful because the level has multiple players). whether this feature is useful or was used for interesting game mechanics outside of this 1 specific level remains uncertain.

[Holger]

After releasing the new 4.4.0.0-test-3 pre-release version, here's a summary of which bugs and issues reported in this thread have been fixed and which are still open to be worked on.

As far as I can tell, the following issued reported here have been fixed:

- bugs with "Tutorial" and "Crazy Dream 1" by Marek Roth as reported here fixed
- animation of things falling into lava fixed
- animation when snapping things next to other things that can grow fixed
- endless loop which could happen when wrapping around the player fixed
- animation when collecting clocks fixed
- animation for cracking a nut fixed and new "cracking nut" animation added
- animation for various game elements that move away from the player fixed
- separate graphics for chasing rock added
- smooth movement with conveyor belts and flying things snapped free fixed
- "bladder" and "bladder spender" changed to "bubble" and "trapped bubble"

All things not mentioned here have not been worked on so far. (I will comment on them later.)