Rocks'n'Diamonds

RnD is in a funny state where it comes with 3 tutorials covering a whole bunch of elements, including many RnD exclusive elements (moles, pigs, black bombs, lightbulbs, GoL)... but no levelsets to actually take advantage of those elements!

obviously this changes when you download more levels from https://www.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds/levels/ and will be remedied a bit when the Diamond Caves/Diamond Caves 2 levelsets are included in Classic Original Games (so those elements are at least used), but for, say, the unofficial iphone port where you can't download levels, really the only place to apply the skills you learned from the tutorials is in the tutorials themselves.

this gives me the idea to bundle a selection of 100 reasonable-quality levels from the various Contributions levelsets into a levelset distributed with RnD as a "campaign" mode; a canonical set of non-tutorial levels packaged with RnD, much like how Diamond Caves has its "tutorial" levelset and then its "game" levelset. (this would probably also be a better idea than just bundling the Contributions directly with RnD; there's a lot of schlock to filter through to get the cream of the crop.)

i will probably try compiling this myself with these two threads to start:
Possibly the best levelset ever
Finding good levelsets
and i will maybe pad it with the handful of levels i designed.

if anyone has any suggestions for levels to include please chime in. (ideally these would be from self-made levelsets or levelsets already in the Contributions levelests or on the Levels & Artwork page in some way, i.e. levels for which (i presume) permission to include them in an official RnD resource has been given. or can be given, if you are the author.)

Great idea. I will send you a level. What are your thoughts about the game engine? eg only allow one, allow any, different levelsets for different engines - but that would spoil the concept, of having one 'killer' levelset???

John

BrownSky wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2026 9:53 pm Great idea. I will send you a level. What are your thoughts about the game engine? eg only allow one, allow any, different levelsets for different engines - but that would spoil the concept, of having one 'killer' levelset???

John

i was thinking only the RnD engine. the idea is sort of to simulate what RnD as a game with a set level sequence would be, key word RnD, so no MM levels, and no levels native to the BD/SP/EM engines. levels in the RnD engine but only using BD/SP/EM elements are fine (as long as they were originally made for RnD, so no recreations of BD/SP/EM levels); in my curation process i'll somewhat favor levels with RnD-exclusive elements, DC elements, or BD/SP/EM elements mixed in a way that's not possible in their original games.

Here is my favorite level of mine. It's the one my sons and I still play from time to time to try to complete it (some of my boys claim to have completed it but there is no recording or score to prove it). It is a [recreation of/homage to] Boulderdash III level N (I think) which might rule it out based on your criteria but it plays quite different on account of a) much fewer rocks, and more importantly b) the presence of certain RnD elements: dark yam yam, satellites and robots. And lenses (EMC?) and invisible sand (is that DC2?)

John

I think this is a very good idea!

Indeed, I hesitated to re-add the "Contributions" level collection to the base R'n'D package for exactly the reasons stated (that is, it is a large mixture of level sets and levels with very different style and quality).

However, trying to compile one single level set with "the best" levels might not be that easy, as there are really many good levels out there (and different people prefer different kind of levels). So, maybe it might be a more practical approach to compile not a level set with selected levels, but a level collection with selected level sets? The advantage could be that the included level sets could range from "easy" to "hard", from "slow / puzzle oriented" to "fast / action oriented", from "single player" to "multi-player", from "standard game elements only" to "custom elements heavily used" and so on.

I think there are already threads that have pointed out high-quality level sets worth including in such a "classic collection".

brownsky's level did make me realize that my own tastes were more for straightforward puzzle levels than classic emerald mine/boulder-dash style "explode all these bugs"/"get all these diamonds" levels. i might do what the web version of Sapphire Yours does and arrange the levels into levelsets by level genre (puzzle, collect-em-up, time-sensitive, casual, etc.) in order from easy to hard. with maybe 25 levels per levelset