BD3-strategies

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Dustin
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BD3-strategies

Post by Dustin »

Hi!
I've got problems with some BD3- caves. Help me, please!

Cave F: Can anyone tell me how to grab 150 diamonds when there are only about 100 ones in the cave????????
- Cave K: OK, it's clear that you've got to release the amoeba by a firefly-explosion and then imprison it again. But I never manage to carry along enough boulder around it in time! Do you have a good special strategy?
Cave N: I always hated these caves with 12345 butterflies, and here there are lots of fireflies as well... Shall I release'em or leave them destroy the amoeba and try to kill enough butterflies by boulder?
Cave O: Sometimes when I activate the magic wall, the amoeba does NOT turn into diamonds! Is there a special condition under which I've got to activate the wall so that the amoeba converts?
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RTADash
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Post by RTADash »

Welcome to the forum, Dustin! :D

As far as I know, cave F only requires 50 diamonds, are you playing the original version of the game?
As for K, I've never completed that one (and I hate it :wink: ), so I can't be very useful there.
In cave N, I prefer to just let the butterflies out and crush them wit the various rocks; I totally ignore the fireflies/amoeba.
About cave O, the whole "magic wall converting thing the amoeba" thing is kind of weird and hard to explain. :? (It's actually a bug in the game engine) I think you have to activate the magic wall before the amoeba fast time starts which, in this case, is when the timer hits 92. Also make sure there are no amoebas above the magic wall. LogicDeLuxe will probably have to help out on this one. :wink:

I hope I've been at least somewhat helpful :) , sorry about cave K. :oops:
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Post by Arno »

Hi Dustin!

About cave K, when I tried BD3, I found this cave the hardest of all. My strategy is:
1. Blast a hole at the lower left side of the wall-square, such that the amoeba will grow out of the square through 1 piece of space.
2. Within this process try to create as little empty space as possible, because this makes is hard to gather enough boulders.
3. Enclose the left side of the wall.
4. Enclose the right side, but drop some extra boulders, because of the fireflies inside the area that explode when touching the amoeba (at least in level 1) which might otherwise break the line of boulders.

I alse have a solution video of BD3, but it requires WinVICE 1.15....
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Post by Dustin »

Hi!
Thanks for these tips! I never managed cave K yet, either... yes, I'll have a look at the video, too, if I find the right VICE version, thanks, Arno.
Concerning caveF: It's not the original version, but a version in "boulderrush"... First I thought 50 diamons were needed only, but when I had them, nothing happened... I had a look at Arno's map and there stands, too, that you need 150... but There ARE only about 100!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Post by Arno »

Dustin wrote:I never managed cave K yet, either... yes, I'll have a look at the video, too, if I find the right VICE version, thanks, Arno.
I can mail it to you, in case you don't find it somewhere.
Dustin wrote:Concerning caveF: It's not the original version, but a version in "boulderrush"... First I thought 50 diamons were needed only, but when I had them, nothing happened... I had a look at Arno's map and there stands, too, that you need 150... but There ARE only about 100!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Interesting! :shock: Apparently the original BD engine interprets the 150 as 50 (diamond amounts are always <100). But of course this leads to problems in Boulder Rush, and other clones as well, whenever amounts above 100 are supported.

Edit: The problem does not occur in Boulder Remake.
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Re: BD3-strategies

Post by LogicDeLuxe »

Cave F: As the BCDFF file says 150 it probably is what the original cave specifies (I didn't checked, though). However, the BD1 engine (which BD3 uses) only supports two digits and therefore truncates that number to 50. For the same reason, you can achieve the exit-open-flash twice or even thrice on some caves with many diamonds.

Cave K: In deed, it really is strait forward without any special strategy. All you need to do, you need to do it really fast. It's just a matter of practice. I remember playing it for hours before I finally succeeded when the game was new to me. Cave L is similar. Speed is everything.

Cave N: I just ignore the fireflies and amoeba. There are enough boulders to just smash the butterflies, thus you don't have to rely on random elements. Playing with the amoeba is possible, though.

Cave O: The amoeba may not have any possibility of growing right of or bellow the particular space from where the boulder was dropped into the magic wall (that is the space where the boulder was last seen). That's the only condition for converting. Neither the current magic wall state, magic wall timer nor the amoeba timer have any influence on this.
To put it simple for that particular cave: Drop a boulder into the magic wall, before the amoeba grows higher than that magic wall line.
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Post by Dustin »

Thanks!
@Arno: Mailing would be great, thank you!
Cave O: The amoeba may not have any possibility of growing right of or bellow the particular space from where the boulder was dropped into the magic wall (that is the space where the boulder was last seen). That's the only condition for converting. Neither the current magic wall state, magic wall timer nor the amoeba timer have any influence on this.
Sorry I didn't get it completely yet. OK, it's clear what to do in this specific cave, but how is it exactly- the amoeba may not be over the wall line yet when the wall is activated?
There are some other caves with a similar solution and I'd be very thankful if I knew exactly what to do there!
Thanks a lot!
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Post by Dustin »

Another similar cave e.g. is Cave G of BD7...
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Post by LogicDeLuxe »

Dustin wrote:Another similar cave e.g. is Cave G of BD7...
It works the same. It is harder mainly because the magic wall line is shorter, which increases the chance of the amoeba growing above it before it even becomes big enough. A somewhat unfair design.

The entire "amoeba converting on magic wall usage"-thing is frequently considered exploiting a bug, since Peter Liepa removed this somewhat strange behavior in BD2. 1stB, CrDr and CrLi have a similar feature, but it is implemented without messing with the timing there, and it doesn't matter where the amoeba is when converting.
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Post by Dustin »

Something else about BD3:

What do you think about cave G? For me, it seems as if First Star had 19 caves done and lacked an idea for the 20th, so they checked the first two games and deciced to remake 2D. After hours of thinking, they still didn't find an interesting way to put sth new into it and decided to make the easiest cave you could imagine... This seems to be the most uncreative cave of all official BD games.
Your opinions?
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Post by Dustin »

For example, they could once more have exploited the magic-wall-amoeba-bug. Put a magic wall at about middle height of the cave and remove the diamonds at the right. Then you'd have to destroy the upper part of the amoeba by the flies and then activate the wall.
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Post by Dustin »

Today I've noted sth else about the very original game when reconstructing levels with the BDCFF. In the original version, not only A/5, I/4 and I/5 are unsolvable, but also K/4! There's a firefly in the center of the amoeba box, and as soon as the amoeba starts to grow, it's destroyed by that fly! The only chance is to release the amoeba as fast as possible, and then hope that it grows into another direction first, but that seeems to be very unlikely...
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Post by RTADash »

I'm pretty sure that P/3 and P/5 are also unsolvable (boulders blocking the exit).
Boulders are round.
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Post by LogicDeLuxe »

RTADash wrote:I'm pretty sure that P/3 and P/5 are also unsolvable (boulders blocking the exit).
Protip: You got fireflies. In P/5, one explosion should do.
Though, P/3 and K/4 seem pretty insane indeed. Though, I wouldn't call them unsolvable, since there are ways in theory.
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Post by Dustin »

Yeah, Logic, I, too, think that P/5 is OK. If one could believe that it was the intention of Am. Action, I would even say that it's a good extra difficulty for the very last cave in the game...
But, of course, it seems to be just chance that this random seed was used just for level 5.
Let's sum up: A/5, I/4 and I/5 are unsolvable, K/4 and P/3 close to it. One might think that they simoly didn't care about the higher levels. Another example is cave N. In N/2, unlike in the other levels, there's a boulder blocking the way to the butterflies, so that you have to release the fireflies for an explosion. In the other levels, you don't need the fireflies at all, so they should have used this random seed for level 5.
But didn't they really test the higher levels? They did! If you study the random seeds they chose, you see that.
For example, cave A. The seeds are 10 187 12 173 14 (before you, Logic, fixed it). Obviously they first wanted to take 10 11 12 13 14, but then found out that 11 and 13 are unsolvable (which is indeed true) and changed them. But I wonder why they didn't note that 14 is unsolvable, too, if they did test it??
Another example is H: 170 187 204 13 238. A logical series of numbers would have been with 221 instead of 13, but the seed 221 is unsolvable (Rockford is blocked by boulders at the start), which AA noted and changed it for this reason.
So they did test the higher levels! But I wonder HOW these blunders could happen then????
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