Rocks'n'Diamonds

Contributions 1999 -> Stebytes Worlds -> 004 "Small Fantasy". what a fantastic and small level.






paste this level into the editor and you will find it is indeed as easy as it looks, rockford has only to move right to escape the falling rocks and head into the exit.

but try and play it as originally appears in Contributions 1999:
or better yet, this version with the rock closest above to rockford hex-edited out, which is still impossible but better demonstrates what's going on:
rockford is delayed from moving for a single turn at the start of the level, so no matter what you do, he gets crushed by a boulder and dies. this persists until you go into the level creator and make any change, at which point rockford will no longer be delayed from moving and the level will be beatable.

my best guess is in some older version of rocks'n'diamonds the player could not move for 1 turn after the level began, and so this is applied to any levels that were last saved/edited in an old enough version of RnD. but surely it can't have been whatever version Stebyte used to make this level.

even more strangely, as you can see on https://api.artsoft.org/levels/view/25806 , one player (bojster) managed to solve this level in 2006; his tape shows rockford simply moving right at the very start of the level as if none of this were an issue at all. (i'm not sure how to download this tape or i would attach it here.)

That you very much for bringing this issue to my attention!

Indeed old versions had an initial delay for player moves, but apparently not those which were used to create this level (which would not work with it). And no idea how bojster was able to record that solution tape anyway!

Apparently it's all a big, buggy mess!

I have fixed this now as follows: For all newly played games (regardless of engine version of the original level), this initial delay is simply not used (that is, enforced) anymore -- any level that might require it for whatever reason would be easily emulated by just waiting a number of frames before moving.

And for all existing (solution) tapes, this initial delay is still used, to not break the tape due to different timings.

That should solve it! Will be available with the next release.

Oh yeah, speaking of, that's also a thing in one of my old levelsets "The Dark Maze of Yam-Yams". And in fact, that's not the first time that issue appears, since back in 2021 I brought up an issue that was already kind of irrelevant at the time, but back then there was yet another change that prevented the player from moving on the first frame making such levels unbeatable.

Eizzoux wrote:Speaking of softlocking, there's yet another levelset at least I have which is 'currently' uncompletable at all. Specifically, there was a little tiny bit when you could do a step before a step preventing action would occur (envelope showing, in this case), which was then later fixed.
I made a while ago a levelset "The Dark Maze of Yam-Yams", and one of it's levels has that instant start where you have to do quick first step before the envelope even appears (which is a little bit bullsh***y of me to do such thing really, so that's more of my error) to avoid both softlock and death from a falling rock, but nowadays the game prevents you from doing the first step, displays the envelope and then lets you move but you don't have a chance to escape it anymore.

filbo wrote:Eizzoux, you should post the level that has that behavior change -- you may be right that it 'shouldn't' work in the new scheme, but Holger might disagree... let him observe the difference and decide?

Eizzoux wrote:The levelset itself is over here (link), level 003

Eizzoux wrote:Funny enough, you gave me an opportunity to check it again, and... weirdly enough, that issue isn't relevant anymore, since it does not prevent you from moving before the envelope appears after 0 frames of element change. I guess that was case only in few of previous versions, probably around 4.1.0.X-4.2.2.X, but I clearly remember I couldn't do a step around a year ago in that level, but what I don't remember is the exact version I was trying that levelset out at that time.

Here's where I first brought that up, plus the image of the said level: