Rocks'n'Diamonds

Heya folks,

For the past week or two, I've been working on a Rocks'n'Diamonds-style levelset on level generation, inspired from the One More Gem game dev working on an 'Arcade' mode that is entirely randomized levels from the Discord server I interacted in. It's also because many years ago, roughly around the same time Alan Bond did their own level generation, I think I was inspired by them and made my own levelset of those small levels, but I know I got a lot of praise from the voting results in Zomis's R'n'D archive of file uploads. I decided to try tackling this, as someone who didn't really showcase a lot of custom element prowlness, but willing to delve into the custom element side of things, it really has been an invigoring learning experience.

Unlike the 15 by 15 Emerald Mine/Emerald Mine Club-style levelset I've been working on it on and off, I decided to try and post some updates here and when I feel it's finished, I'll post the levelset (both versions, one hiding the randomization before revealing, and the other showing the inner pieces easier). Reason for making update posts is to not only encourage myself to push into working and finishing the levelset, but to also hear from you folks that are still browsing the forums and hopefully be able to interact more.

Here is a sample preview of some of the levels that are worth replaying over and over again: These are huge levels to roam through, 127 by 127 sized levelsets (not 128 by 128 though), and the challenge for me I put for myself is that all the randomization must be done in 1 second. 1 second consists of 50 frames (or ticks), and I have only 50 ticks to work around to do all the randomization, because my levelset I made about 2 decades ago takes 10 seconds, and I felt it can be done a lot faster. Needless to say, it's quite a challenge!

One of the other reasons is I noticed there hasn't been too much activity of the creation and sharing of levelsets as of late. I'm not sure if Holger still gets levelsets from e-mails to add them to the contribution list. The other major reason is that, along with levelsets not being made as much, there hasn't been too much use of the existing elements in Rocks'n'Diamonds, and moreso the increased use of custom elements. Don't get me wrong, custom elements are a brilliant way to extend the game even more, just

As far as I heard, there's new elements added to Rocks'n'Diamonds of the Boulder Dash variety, but I think Holger decided to not incorporate to the Rocks'n'Diamonds engine because it'll be too much work? That's unfortunate if that's true, I think it would be interesting to have, but then again not too many people seem to be making levelsets nowadays, but I would love to have more elements to play around and make levels from them, level generation or not.

From what I see, even despite using a sort of procedural generation, it looks like absolute mess, which I'm not saying that's bad, more so there's a bunch of absolute randomness with non-deterministic amount of collectible gems.
That reminded me how a while ago I had an idea I just never tried to commit - a randomly generated level but with more or less deterministic amount of gems needed. Although I don't really have much time to fully commit to that, I at least found just few hours to try making a basic randomized level that always has the right amount of gems no matter what. Plus positions of player and exit are random as well. Sorry for a sort of unnecessary self plug, it's just that this specific topic finally inspired me to at least try to recreate my old idea.

Heya TheOnxyGuy, while there's a ton more gems to collect that would surpass the 999 max gem requirement (and would actually want a way to have it more than the 999 max gems, since if there's more than 999 seconds or steps to configure in the level editor, why not the gem count?), it's moreso having a more arcade-oriented experience to make it replayable, as you can collect the needed gems and then bail to the exit, or go for a best score for fun. I would likely for more deterministic amount of gems to collect if it's a smaller level field, but I opted to go for big, and my mind is tickled by the result of the randomizations that I just enjoy being lost and collecting those endless amount of gems and goodies and such. There are a couple of exceptions that make sense, as one of the levels, from one of the images in the opening post, which I'll share some more screenshots:
The goal is to get the four crystals from each of their corners, but there's a mix of spaceships and snik snaks to deal with, along with magic balls that spawn them, but there's also dragons in the mix that can help eliminate those dastardly enemies (which also spawn from the magic balls). I had made delicate tweaks to ensure that both the dragons wouldn't overpower the horde of enemies because it would make finishing the level unnecessarily easy, but also to gradually make it more difficult the longer you're existing in the level. I'm still tweaking around on the possibilities.

To help ensure survival and finish the level, you're provided with 4 dynabombs, and outside of the area, used defensively, and to eliminate the stray magic balls, there's countless 4-way blue tubes that you can safely hide inside from being hurt by the enemies. I thought about randomizing the tubes to utilize the full tube set, but felt it would be too rigid and difficult, when the moment to moment gameplay is trying to get the four crystals and be able to escape while not dying.

In general, the levels I made for level generation, It would be really interesting when playing the levels, to optimize finishing the levels the fastest or reach the highest gem count or something, and maybe have a track of high scores as determined by the seed number, since there can be up to 9999 ways to play the same level with different randomization options. Even though they look completely random at first glance, the level archtypes have a distinct way to play through.

I checked your levelset, I haven't played much of your levelsets at all admittedly, but the main menu being different and animated like this is intriguing. Even trying to check the level editor boots me back to the main menu.

The starting position and the exit being randomly positioned is a nice touch. I considered doing that when making my levelset, but decided to have it at the center always so that the amount of level randomization around the player is maximized, and in a 127 by 127 tile-sized level, I feel that for most of the levels, it's important to start where you spawn, and finish the level back to where you spawn, because I don't want them to search for the exit if the levels so big to search through.

Here's one of the randomization levels I made: Repurposing the existing custom elements made it fun to create these type of archetype levels.

That looks like great randomized levels that seem in fact be playable!

And your considerations (like those regarding start and end positions) seem to make sense, too!

One of the other reasons is I noticed there hasn't been too much activity of the creation and sharing of levelsets as of late. I'm not sure if Holger still gets levelsets from e-mails to add them to the contribution list.

Yeah, it's gotten quiet around here. And no, I don't get any levels by mail anymore (or only every few years). But some day, I should update the "Contributions" level set again, and add some of the levels I got since the last release (decades ago). But most new level stuff (as little as it may be nowadays) will be released here in the forums anyway.

As far as I heard, there's new elements added to Rocks'n'Diamonds of the Boulder Dash variety, but I think Holger decided to not incorporate to the Rocks'n'Diamonds engine because it'll be too much work?

Yes, that's true. Too much work, and not enough interest by potential level builders, I would assume.

(and would actually want a way to have it more than the 999 max gems, since if there's more than 999 seconds or steps to configure in the level editor, why not the gem count?)

Yes, there's no real reason to limit it to 999, while other values are allowed to be set to 9999.

I just would have to make sure that it does not break the classic default artwort, but it could work just like the time, which is displayed with a narrow font for values over 999 to fit into the default graphics.