Continuation of BD1- Levels 6-10

[Dustin]

Hi altogether!
I hope you like my first game! Before I work more at RockFort 2, I'm actually making a continuation of Boulder Dash 1, Levels 6-10, since to my mind, most of the caves aren't fully utilised and could even be much harder.
I want to stay very close to the original and therefore only want to change random seeds (and add some "random" elements here and there), SLIGHTLY change the densities of the random elements (few exceptions must be permitted; e.g. in cave D, I changed the boulder density drastically) and change DR and time (also amoeba time, magic time and so on.) I make it with boulder remake again, and therefore orientate at this BD1 version.

But I need your help with some caves!

-cave I: do you find lv.4 or 5 harder? Do you find it good that you have to know that it's much better to start at the right side at I/4 (whereas at lv.5, the problem is rather the 90 DR)?

-cave K: Personally, I find the lv 3 version hardest. Level 5 is quite easy to me, above all due to the plenty time( whereas at lv.3, I only hurry into the goal with less than ten seconds left...) Which level do you find hardest and why?

-cave O: Personally, I HATE O/4 (I mostly lose all my 9 men here!) and find it much harder than level 5, because you must enter the "funnel" by the left side, release this silly firefly in order to do that and cannot really clear the space above the magic wall before starting to convert.
What do you think?

-cave P: Here P/5 is, to my mind, nearly easier than P/1! Only twelve diamonds needed ans many many boulder above the walls! I think it's best to ignore lv 5 and let P/6 tie in with P/4 instead, wouldn't it?




I'd be very thankful for some statements to these caves in order to gat a preferably good objective impression about what you find easy and difficult.

[RTADash]

to my mind, most of the caves aren't fully utilised and could even be much harder.

I think the caves, you've done are very good, but I don't really agree with this; I think the 5 levels were "catered" to a much wider audience, and because of this, it wasn't a good idea to make them very difficult. Plus, Peter Liepa, at the time, didn't have the option of changing the layout (besides the randseed), randomfill density, or amoeba/magic times when he designed the game. Nevertheless, I see where you're coming from.

Here's a summary of how I'd order the 5 levels of each cave difficulty-wise. (I'll offer explanations, if requested)
A - 1,2,3,4,5
B - 1,3,2,4,5
C - 1,4,3,2,5
D - 1,2,3,4,5
E - 1,2,3,4,5
F - 1,2,5,3,4
G - 2,1,4,5,3
H - 2,3,1,4,5
I - 1,2,3,4,5
J - 1,2,3,4,5
K - 1,2,3,4,5
L - 1,2,4,3,5
M - 1,2,3,4,5
N - 1,2,3,4,5
O - 1,2,3,5,4
P - 3,1,2,5,4

[Dustin]

That was nothing against PL!!!! Of course, his games are very great and making the levels too hard would have discouraged the bigger audience! I only wanted to say that for BD- crackpot like us, the caves might be even harder!
Thanks for your estimatiuon!

[RTADash]

That was nothing against PL!!!!

I know , I'm just saying that, due to the memory constraints at the time, such inter-level changes would've been impossible even if he had wanted to, that's all - no biggie.

[LogicDeLuxe]

I'm just saying that, due to the memory constraints at the time, such inter-level changes would've been impossible even if he had wanted to, that's all - no biggie.

Let's take a deeper analysis on this. A very hypotical one (I don't know the Atari very well):

As BD wouldn't run on an 8 kB Atari, we can assume, that it was originally made for the 48 kB Atari. The game itself is about 16 kB in size and needs several kB for the screen. Probably about 8 kB, assuming it is double buffered. Another kB for self modifying code. The Arcade machine uses the exact same game, so it can be assumed, that this self modifying code is copied somewhere in RAM because of this machines (which uses a ROM instead of a tape or a diskette) in mind. And it was even ported on the C64 this way, although there is no C64 ROM version. Approx. another kB would go for the zero page, the stack and system variables.

Based on this assumptions, we have about 22 kB left for more complex caves/levels. That would be plenty for a 10 level version with per level drawing instructions along with the existing drawing instructions used for all levels in common.
The C64 version uses a few kB more for the virtual screen emulation, but since we have 64 kB instead of 48, the game could still be ported very well.

My guess is, that the game is in fact designed to fit on a 16 kB ROM and thus has this very restricting cave design.
It is probably not because the Atari couldn't handle a slightly bigger program.
And even if all RAM runs out, there still would be the possibility of just loading the caves or levels separately from disk during runtime. Sure, this method has its drawbacks, but it is very common practice nevertheless.

[Dustin]

...

[cirix]

My guess is, that the game is in fact designed to fit on a 16 kB ROM and thus has this very restricting cave design.

Yes, probably this was the main idea behind the object oriented (random fill + lines, rectangles etc.) level design, instead of a map based (like in the editor).
But I think we should really think about how brilliant this idea is. Everybody likes the object-based editor, as using the random fill + overlaid objects, it makes it possible to create different levels for the same cave in minutes! Today the fact that levels can be compressed this way is not important anymore, nobody cares. But a non-object-based cave editor without the random fill would just be a pain to use.
About the difficulty of the levels - I don't think PL had that much time to test and compare all levels thoroughly. I'm not a good player of BD, either - I like and do the programming part better

[Dustin]

Hi all,
the hardcore levels of BD1 are finished! I changed only seeds, required diamonds, cave times. I've sent it to Arno for a release. Hope you'll like it!
Cheers Dustin

[cirix]

send them to me, to i will include it in the next gdash release

[Arno]

And here is the release:

>>>>>Download link<<<<<

[cirix]

wow and almost all caves with replays! very nice work!!!

[Dustin]

Thanks for the release, Arno, thanks fpr the comment, cirix! The caves should all have replays, and also the ints on at least one level (they are, of course, identic on any level).

[Arno]

Dustin has now released his sequel to this game, the continuation of BD2!
I've added this new GDash caveset to the "BD Expert" package. The download link is:

>>>>>Download link<<<<<

[Dustin]

Thanks a lot, Arno!
Hope you like it! I've made replays of all levels, since some of them are really difficult (to me, at least).