Rocks'n'Diamonds

> So anyway, what's the status of Contributions 2004? :P

Sorry to tell this, but development of R'n'D is currently stalled (for two weeks now) due to my new computer system. It's all great and fast and fine, but the last 5% of creating my usual working environment are driving me crazy at the moment. My new Debian (sarge) still does not give me MIDI support, and compiling SDL_mixer with timidity for MIDI results in choppy MIDI replay. :-(
(Not mentioning my usual WIN32/DOS cross-compiling environment, which I still have to set up...)

As I have nearly no free time at the moment (google for "GNAB" if you're interested in what's eating up all my non-weekend time at the moment), it's going on slowly at the moment. Hope to have everything fully up and running again soon. Especially for the Contributions tape testing, my new Athlon 3000+ will hopefully do a nice job compared to my previous P3 733.

So please don't wonder if it will still take some time...

Argh... Forgot to enable auto-login when logging into the forum with the newly installed browser. =:-|

Anonymous ;-) wrote:Sorry to tell this, but development of R'n'D is currently stalled (for two weeks now) due to my new computer system. It's all great and fast and fine, but the last 5% of creating my usual working environment are driving me crazy at the moment. My new Debian (sarge) still does not give me MIDI support, and compiling SDL_mixer with timidity for MIDI results in choppy MIDI replay. :-(
(Not mentioning my usual WIN32/DOS cross-compiling environment, which I still have to set up...)

Yeah, I know that pain... good luck getting everything in order.

As I have nearly no free time at the moment (google for "GNAB" if you're interested in what's eating up all my non-weekend time at the moment), it's going on slowly at the moment.

Sounds like a huge project. I hope you're not working on this alone, like on RnD ]:-D

my new Athlon 3000+

*envy*

So please don't wonder if it will still take some time...

Sure thing, as I said before, you can always release them along with 2005 contributions, nobody would notice. ;-)

> Yeah, I know that pain... good luck getting everything in order.

Thanks! It's getting better! (Yesterday I managed to get "Konsole" to use that standard "fixed" font instead of anti-aliased fonts which look ugly at that size.)

> Sounds like a huge project. I hope you're not working on this alone, like on RnD ]:-D

No, luckily not. ;-) (Although it's less people than one might expect...)

> > my new Athlon 3000+
> *envy*

It's not a super-duper gaming system, but only has a relatively old Matrox Millennium G550 graphics card, which is not suited for 3D gaming, but good enough for a nice workstation and 2D graphics (-> R'n'D :-) ).

> Sure thing, as I said before, you can always release them along with 2005
> contributions, nobody would notice. ;-)

=;-)

What make is your motherboard btw?

If there is a nice unused AGP slot, you could turn it into a 3D gaming monster!

> What make is your motherboard btw?

It's a MSI K8T Neo2-FIR.

> If there is a nice unused AGP slot, you could turn it into a 3D gaming monster!

Well, the G550 already blocks the AGP slot, and although I could replace it with some neat ATI or nVIDIA 3D card, it would not help much, as I only use my new system as a Unix workstation, and I never turn it off (too lazy to re-create my working environment every day), so even a dual-boot solution would not help here. But then, DOOM³ is also available for Linux. Hmmm... ;-)

I cant wait for the 2004 pack, R&D is the best strategy game around. Whats the status?

> Whats the status?

Although I better do not promise anything at the moment (far too much work at the moment, not even being at home most of the week), I think I will manage to get the intermediate R'n'D version 3.1.1 out within the next two weeks, quickly followed by the 2004 and 2005 contributions package (which partly needs the newer game engine, at least some solution tapes).

So I currently see a chance to get both things released in August (this year ;-) ).

Woohoo! Contributions on the loose! ;-)
Good thing I have some free time, I'll start playing them immediately.
Does the big pack also contains fixed <2004 levels?
[edit] Hmmm, doesn't seem so... :-(

> So I currently see a chance to get both things released in August (this year ;-) ).

Unbelievable! Indeed I releases the package in August as promised! :-)

> Does the big pack also contains fixed <2004 levels?
> [edit] Hmmm, doesn't seem so... :-(

Oops?! At least I added *LOTS* of tapes from you, bojster. I thought I also had fixed some older levels, but maybe not that many...

bojster, if you have any fixed versions for definitely(*) unsolvable/broken levels, please send them to me and I'll replace them (hopefully a bit faster than the last version).

(*) If you say they're unsolvable, I'll trust you blindly. :-)

Hm, I only checked one level, which I knew was unsolvable - Ben Braithwaite's level 50. But if you say you fixed some levels, I'll just run through them all and let you know.

[edit]
I checked a few levelsets and the only fixed level I found was 11th in Arno Luppold's set from Contr. 2000.
Not fixed levelsets I checked include:
1996 - M. Herman (no exit in level 10)
1997 - P. Mahek & V. Hastrup
1998 - Ben Braithwaite (l. 50)
1999 - Stebytes
2000 - Ben 200
2001 - Paul Sutton (trapped penguin)

I haven't checked 2002 and 2003, but I guess that doesn't matter much.

[edit2] I don't have any fixed level files, but if I remember correctly Yoshi fixed lots (all?) of the old levels and put them somewhere on Zomis' archive. There was a whole thread about it...

bojster, thanks for that list -- I will check and fix those levels.

Here are a few older levels that I fixed (which stopped you from going on recording tapes in the corresponding level sets):

- rnd_tobias_authmann 012 [no exit - fixed / not solved]
- rnd_jerome_kunegis 031 - 100 [level 030 fixed & solved]

Now that I look at my list, I see that I have listed all sets you just mentioned with the corresponding unsolvable levels in my list, too -- no idea why I forgot to fix them before releasing the new Contributions set. :-(

So it seems that there will be an update soon (and hopefully faster than the last one ;-) )...

> I don't have any fixed level files, but if I remember correctly Yoshi fixed
> lots (all?) of the old levels and put them somewhere on Zomis' archive.
> There was a whole thread about it...

I'll see that I find both that archive and the thread to fix those levels soon...

The snik snaks in level 2 of Negundo's Multiplex don't bite me! Is that a bug?

> The snik snaks in level 2 of Negundo's Multiplex don't bite me! Is that a bug?

Could this just be the well-known (less aggressive) snik-snak emulation of older levels? What do the editor settings say?

rail763 wrote:

Holger wrote:> Contributions 2005 should be out by January 2006 ;-)

Could someone explain this bit to me...

2005 ends in December, so you can't gather all 2005 contributions before Jan 2006. Simple enough?