New clone for MacOS X - Coblyn

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CWS
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New clone for MacOS X - Coblyn

Post by CWS »

There is a fresh new Boulder Dash clone for MacOS X available on

http://www.muryan.com/coblyn/index.html

Nice to play!
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Post by Muryan »

Hi everyone,

I'm the author of Coblyn, and I'd really like to hear any feedback you might have about it!

I've tried to keep a retro feel to both the sound and graphics (even though the objects are 3D models drawn with OpenGL). There's BDCFF support (fairly basic at the moment), demos, high scores, fancy menus, and so on.

Let me know what you think :)
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Post by CWS »

What I miss the most is a player-counter with 3 lives (and earning one more each 500 points). It would be more challenging to play the game with a certain amount of lives.

The waiting animation would be nice and the cave buildup effect would complete the almost perfect graphical presentation.

The infinite caves (as you name them in your manual) warp from side to side and from up to down. I think this is a necessary feature for basic BD behaviour.

In/Outbox should have the same color as steel wall. It's nice that the In/Outboxes are red at the moment but it was always the intention of the cave creators to let the player search for the outbox.

It should not be possible to retry the Intermissions. The main goal of the Intermissions should be earning an extra live when winning it - winning at the first attempt. But you need the live-counter first. ;)
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Post by Muryan »

CWS wrote:What I miss the most is a player-counter with 3 lives (and earning one more each 500 points). It would be more challenging to play the game with a certain amount of lives.
I agree that the game doesn't feel challenging enough at the moment -- being able to select any level makes it too easy. But instead of start points and lives (as in BD), I'd prefer to have level unlocking. For example, when you complete a level the next two could be unlocked. You'd have to earn the right to play a level, but once you've unlocked it you could play it whenever you want.

I'd also like to let level packs set what type of unlocking they want: which levels are available to begin with, and how many get unlocked when you complete a level.
The waiting animation would be nice and the cave buildup effect would complete the almost perfect graphical presentation.

The infinite caves (as you name them in your manual) warp from side to side and from up to down. I think this is a necessary feature for basic BD behaviour.
I plan to add waiting animations and infinite caves in the next release :)
In/Outbox should have the same color as steel wall. It's nice that the In/Outboxes are red at the moment but it was always the intention of the cave creators to let the player search for the outbox.
In Coblyn's own levels I made the in/out boxes stand out to help new players. But with the classic level pack (i.e. BD 1 + 2) and BDCFF level packs, the in/out boxes are the same colour as steel wall, just like they should be :wink:
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Post by CWS »

Muryan wrote:
CWS wrote:What I miss the most is a player-counter with 3 lives (and earning one more each 500 points). It would be more challenging to play the game with a certain amount of lives.
I agree that the game doesn't feel challenging enough at the moment -- being able to select any level makes it too easy. But instead of start points and lives (as in BD), I'd prefer to have level unlocking. For example, when you complete a level the next two could be unlocked. You'd have to earn the right to play a level, but once you've unlocked it you could play it whenever you want.

I'd also like to let level packs set what type of unlocking they want: which levels are available to begin with, and how many get unlocked when you complete a level.
Nevertheless lives would be more like a real Boulder Dash game. Otherwise it does have more of a Emerald Mine character (and that's - in my opinion - a totally different game). Besides that I think the game would be more challenging, especially for high scores.

The thing with unlocking levels/caves is a nice idea but how to handle it with the original BDCFF game packs? Every fith cave is selectable - this should stay this way. But if you do so I would also recommend to hide a secret password for unlocking all (cheat) as it could be very depressing if there are 100 caves in one game and only the first one is unlocked (I hated that in Emerald Mine ALWAYS!).

By the way: Do you support levels? At the moment you have only caves (e.g. A, B, C, D, etc.) but what about the levels (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)? Cave A, Level 2 is harder to solve as Cave A, Level 1.

Coblyn should always be a independent, stand-alone game but as it also supports original Boulder Dash games it always should be as most compatible as possible!

By the way: As I like to keep all files from one game together (I do not like the thing with ~/Library/Application Support/Coblyn) and many games in the Coblyn folder would be very distracting, could you use a subfolder within the Coblyn folder for the games? E.g. "Games", "Caves", "Game Packs" or similar.
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Post by Muryan »

The thing with unlocking levels/caves is a nice idea but how to handle it with the original BDCFF game packs? Every fith cave is selectable - this should stay this way. But if you do so I would also recommend to hide a secret password for unlocking all (cheat) as it could be very depressing if there are 100 caves in one game and only the first one is unlocked (I hated that in Emerald Mine ALWAYS!).
I could make BDCFF level packs start with every 5th level available. I haven't fully decided on how level unlocking should work yet, so anything is possible :). I'd never make just a single level available, because if the player gets stuck or bored on that level they'll stop playing the game. Also I'll probably have to add a cheat code to unlock all levels, otherwise testing BDCFF levels would be too annoying.
By the way: Do you support levels? At the moment you have only caves (e.g. A, B, C, D, etc.) but what about the levels (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)? Cave A, Level 2 is harder to solve as Cave A, Level 1.
Coblyn handles BDCFF caves and difficulty levels by unpacking them: A-1 is level 1, A-2 is level 21, A-5 is 81, and so on.
By the way: As I like to keep all files from one game together (I do not like the thing with ~/Library/Application Support/Coblyn) and many games in the Coblyn folder would be very distracting, could you use a subfolder within the Coblyn folder for the games? E.g. "Games", "Caves", "Game Packs" or similar.
I can do that -- it'll be easy to add.
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Post by CWS »

I never asked this before: Did you use the original Boulder Dash engine for Coblyn or own routines?

What timing do you use? Boulder Dash uses NTSC and PAL timing, although 99 % of all games use PAL timing. One minute lasts 50 seconds with PAL timing. This was a big problem in GDash for a long time as it did not consider this behaviour. So a lot of original Boulder Dash caves were not solvable when they use very short of time.

When developing GDash it was also a little bit difficult with the delay. The original C64 delay was hard to catch as it is not only a delay but it also interacts with the amount of objects in the cave (many objects slow down the delay additionally) and/or the kind of objects (some objects slow down the delay more, some less).

I would also recommend to use the correct Boulder Dash cave/level counter: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B1, B2, .... Your actual method (A-1 is level 1, A-2 is level 21, A-5 is 81) is too complex for finding a specific level in time. Maybe this would be cool: Selecting cave with cursor left or right and selecting level by pressing cursor keys up or down. Would be much easier!

If there are any troubles with the things mentioned above I would suggest looking at the GDash source. It's well structured and a pleasure to look at.
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Post by Muryan »

CWS wrote:I never asked this before: Did you use the original Boulder Dash engine for Coblyn or own routines?
The engine inside Coblyn is my own, but it runs most BD-style games. It does all the BD1 and BD2 levels. It doesn't do things like the magic wall/amoeba conversion bug.
CWS wrote:What timing do you use? Boulder Dash uses NTSC and PAL timing, although 99 % of all games use PAL timing. One minute lasts 50 seconds with PAL timing. This was a big problem in GDash for a long time as it did not consider this behaviour. So a lot of original Boulder Dash caves were not solvable when they use very short of time.
For the timing Coblyn doesn't try to do PAL or NTSC. Each level has a tick rate assigned to it (the number of cave scans per second), and the engine sticks to that rate exactly. With Coblyn's own levels this rate is set in each cave by the level designer. With BDCFF caves it defaults to 6 ticks/sec for a regular level and 8 ticks/sec for an intermission (which mostly works fine). In future I'd like to make this smarter so it looks at what's in the cave to choose a tick rate, but even so once a cave starts running the rate won't change.
CWS wrote:I would also recommend to use the correct Boulder Dash cave/level counter: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B1, B2, .... Your actual method (A-1 is level 1, A-2 is level 21, A-5 is 81) is too complex for finding a specific level in time. Maybe this would be cool: Selecting cave with cursor left or right and selecting level by pressing cursor keys up or down. Would be much easier!
Coblyn doesn't assume any particular arrangement of caves, so I can't really separate out the cave and difficulty.

With Coblyn I'm not trying to create a perfect clone: my aim is to make an engine with cleaner physics and totally reliable timing, which still gives 99% of the original BD experience.
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Post by CWS »

Muryan wrote:
CWS wrote:I never asked this before: Did you use the original Boulder Dash engine for Coblyn or own routines?
The engine inside Coblyn is my own, but it runs most BD-style games. It does all the BD1 and BD2 levels. It doesn't do things like the magic wall/amoeba conversion bug.
Ok, sounds good. Although I think the magic wall/amoeba conversion bug (as you call it) is maybe a bug but it evolved into a nice feature which CLCK 3.0 and GDash uses.
Muryan wrote:
CWS wrote:What timing do you use? Boulder Dash uses NTSC and PAL timing, although 99 % of all games use PAL timing. One minute lasts 50 seconds with PAL timing. This was a big problem in GDash for a long time as it did not consider this behaviour. So a lot of original Boulder Dash caves were not solvable when they use very short of time.
For the timing Coblyn doesn't try to do PAL or NTSC. Each level has a tick rate assigned to it (the number of cave scans per second), and the engine sticks to that rate exactly. With Coblyn's own levels this rate is set in each cave by the level designer. With BDCFF caves it defaults to 6 ticks/sec for a regular level and 8 ticks/sec for an intermission (which mostly works fine). In future I'd like to make this smarter so it looks at what's in the cave to choose a tick rate, but even so once a cave starts running the rate won't change.
Interesting feature. And this is really that much compatible with BD games?
Muryan wrote:
CWS wrote:I would also recommend to use the correct Boulder Dash cave/level counter: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B1, B2, .... Your actual method (A-1 is level 1, A-2 is level 21, A-5 is 81) is too complex for finding a specific level in time. Maybe this would be cool: Selecting cave with cursor left or right and selecting level by pressing cursor keys up or down. Would be much easier!
Coblyn doesn't assume any particular arrangement of caves, so I can't really separate out the cave and difficulty.

With Coblyn I'm not trying to create a perfect clone: my aim is to make an engine with cleaner physics and totally reliable timing, which still gives 99% of the original BD experience.
If it is really 99% compatible than it's no big problem. Maybe you could find a way of arranging the caves similar to that in Boulder Dash. Caves and levels should be selectable separately as e.g. Cave A Level 2 is not really a new cave but only a harder version of Cave A Level 1.

Would be interesting if LogicDeLuxe could test your clone as he knows the original Boulder Dash on C64 the best of all of us here.

By the way: We really need an editor for this great piece of software! As it is a better Boulder Dash it would be nice to make some games of my own... :)

All in all I'm very exited about the next release of Coblyn! :)
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Post by Muryan »

CWS wrote:
Muryan wrote:For the timing Coblyn doesn't try to do PAL or NTSC. Each level has a tick rate assigned to it (the number of cave scans per second), and the engine sticks to that rate exactly. With Coblyn's own levels this rate is set in each cave by the level designer. With BDCFF caves it defaults to 6 ticks/sec for a regular level and 8 ticks/sec for an intermission (which mostly works fine). In future I'd like to make this smarter so it looks at what's in the cave to choose a tick rate, but even so once a cave starts running the rate won't change.
Interesting feature. And this is really that much compatible with BD games?
With BDCFF I mostly play fan-made levels, and they're usually okay. Some don't give enough time (i.e. Coblyn should have chosen a faster tick rate), and I've also seen one where the magic wall stopped too soon (once again it needed a faster tick rate). And higher difficulty caves (eg. in BD 1 & 2) would benefit from a faster tick rate. As I said, I'd like to make the tick rate smarter (it's on the list of things to do...).
CWS wrote:By the way: We really need an editor for this great piece of software! As it is a better Boulder Dash it would be nice to make some games of my own... :)

All in all I'm very exited about the next release of Coblyn! :)
Yes -- it definitely needs an editor. It won't be in the next release, but hopefully the one after that :). I'm making good progress with the next version of Coblyn: I'll post in the forum when it's ready to go.
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Post by CWS »

I thought about the Level Pack menu option: If there are many games in there it takes a lot of time to scroll through the list. Maybe a using pageup/down keys and/or a faster selection method.
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Post by Muryan »

CWS wrote:I thought about the Level Pack menu option: If there are many games in there it takes a lot of time to scroll through the list. Maybe a using pageup/down keys and/or a faster selection method.
Page up/down should be working already :) You can also do Home/End, or start typing the name of the level pack and it will scroll to the first match (type "ex" to scroll to Exploding Dash, for example).
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Post by CWS »

Wow! :)
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