new Supaplex page is ready!

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:36 pm

Hello,

I have been working on a Supaplex page for a long time and now I've finally finished it! It's part of http://www.bd-fans.com

This new page could be seen as the succession of http://www.elmerproductions.com/sp/. Since this site it not updated anymore, there is no other site around at which the latest Supaplex stuff is uploaded.

The new page of my site provides you among many other things the following:
- Downloads of a huge collection of levels: they are all put in level collections of 111 levels, to be able to be played and finished in the original Supaplex. All level titles are now centered (example: '001 ------- FUSE IT -------') and are written in capital letters. The only thing I haven't changed here are language errors. Especially some levels from Russia contain awful spelling mistakes... anyway, most levels are just correct in their titles. Additions in levels, such as '(5)' (which means that it has been changed several times because of possible 'backdoors') have been removed. Of course, I have a backup of the unmodified level titles, so I can check which one it was. When a level has changed too much between the first version (or one of the first versions) and the last version, I have included both in the sets.

- Also downloads of MegaPlex levels. The sets in this category are placed there because they have got a strange size which is not supported by Supaplex. All other levels can be found in the MS DOS part (with 'normal' level collections).

- A complete Cast of Characters, with explanations of all characters and some terms in the game.

- A comprehensive explanation of the Frozen Zonk (or 'Freeze Zonk') technique. Georg's explanation (of the three 'Laws') are described there in as clear English as possible, with many example levels.

- Step-by-step instructions how to get the good old Supaplex working on your modern Windows XP computer again, even if you always failed in this yourself!

- A complete download list of tools and utilities for Supaplex.

- A complete download list of level editors.

- A comprehensive Tricks section with a clear explanation of all tricks and with examples and a very handy linking system to make it as easy as possible for you.

- A continuation of the online High Score tables! Send me your new scores and your name will be added there (if you have solved the levels fast enough, but you have got a new chance with all those new sets)!

- And much more...

The link of this new page is:
http://www.bd-fans.com/Supaplex.html

I have also extended the Supaplex history on the Main Page. Thanks to Herman Perk for helping me with this!

Have fun with it!

Post by **Holger** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:01 pm

WOW!!! What a great Supaplex resource!! :-O :-)

I will definitely be happy to know it around when I start integrating the new, native Supaplex engine! :-)

I'm still tweaking my automatic VisualBasic-to-C converter (a dirty, large Perl script -- this is really a pain in the ass, I can tell you), and this will only be the start of the engine conversion/integration -- still some way to go! But I hope it will be part of R'n'D one day! :-)

Until then, there's already a huge lot of Supaplex stuff for R'n'D on your site!

Great work!!! :-)

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 7:24 pm

Thank you, Holger! In the meantime I've already started working on the third classic game page: this time for Emerald Mine (I do it exactly the other way around than you

).

Maybe I forgot to mention it: the Supaplex package has been updated some time ago and you can download it from the RnD page of my site. Holger, maybe an idea to upload it on artsoft.org as well? Together with the updated contributions from a while ago...

BTW, since I am able to play the classic Supaplex (and also the classic Boulder Dash!) both as they originally were (without flaws in emulation!), I don't care which engine will come first, either the BD or the SP engine. Once I voted for the SP engine, but now I'm able to play it in the original way, so I don't mind about this anymore, both will be fine (but of course this does not depend on my vote only...).

And I had a suggestion: while testing some Emerald Mine Club games (for the EM page I'm currently creating) I came across some title screens which are not included in the EMC set of RnD. And would it be possible to add those screens with scrolling letters as well (some games have that)? And more original tunes if they came with a certain game? And will you please separate the title screen music from the game music (as I suggested a few weeks ago)?

I'm looking forward to the new RnD versions with even more functions and support of classic games! Maybe even Repton would be an idea for the future (at least, I plan to include it on my site later (a special page), but I don't know anything about the game yet).

Post by **Holger** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 5:45 pm

> the Supaplex package has been updated some time ago and you can
> download it from the RnD page of my site. Holger, maybe an idea to
> upload it on artsoft.org as well? Together with the updated contributions
> from a while ago...

Yes, these two points are one of the many TODOs for my site... :-o

> I came across some title screens which are not included in the EMC set of
> RnD.

Yes... not all title screens are catched by my automated script that collects them from the extracted ADFs. For some sets, I will probably be forced to make manual screenshots.

> And would it be possible to add those screens with scrolling letters as
> well (some games have that)?

Unfortunately not -- these are proprietary Amiga executables that cannot be easily converted to R'n'D title animations (which do not exist anyway).

> And more original tunes if they came with a certain game?

Even the title music is all coded in proprietary executables, unfortunately! :-(

If anybody knows a converter to automatically convert EMC tunes to either MOD or MP3 format, I will be happy to add some more.

> And will you please separate the title screen music from the game music
> (as I suggested a few weeks ago)?

What do you mean here? As far as I know, I only play the title music on the title screens (which only exist for the original EM sets anyway). Any more problems/misbehaviour here? (Maybe I forgot something?)

Martijn · Post by **Martijn** » Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:50 pm

Holger wrote:>
> And will you please separate the title screen music from the game music
> (as I suggested a few weeks ago)?

What do you mean here? As far as I know, I only play the title music on the title screens (which only exist for the original EM sets anyway). Any more problems/misbehaviour here? (Maybe I forgot something?)

Well, if you want to play the EMC levels with the classic RnD music playing on the background, the 'classic' set is activated and all music of the EMC set is deactivated, which results in no title screen music. If you would separate title screen music from normal background music, you would be able to have those classic tunes on the background together with a splendid intro tune! If you then still want to turn off that intro music (if you hate AMIGA chiptunes), you just have to turn off 'title screen music' in the main menu.

In other words: could you please create an extra option in the options menu, which will enable the player to switch on/off title screen music?

Post by **Holger** » Thu Apr 05, 2007 1:14 am

Ah, now I understand! :-)

Well, this is not a trivial thing. The whole music is defined in the level set's "musicinfo.conf", and the music configuration that is activated has effect on the whole music that is played (either by simply selecting a level set with that music, or by explicitly overriding the music of the current set with it using the "custom artwork" setting).

The solution that you described would therefore require loading two different music configurations and activating different parts from it. While not impossible, this may require some major changes in the artwork loading code.

On the other side, I think that a level set's title music should indeed be separated from the rest of the set's music (and the same is true for title graphics and title sounds), so this is most probably well worth the effort.

I'll see if I can find a solution that would make this possible without redesigning the whole custom artwork loading code (which is already quite complicated/complex/confusing).

(Maybe it's possible to solve this with a dirty workaround that has the corresponding config file entries hardcoded to fetch them from a different config file. I'll check this option, too... :-) )