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This section will contain some practical information on several Boulder Dash topics.
 The great Boulder Dash Tools
Playing Boulder Dash is great, but it becomes even greater when you express your
creativity by designing your own BD levels. The oldest and probably
most famous tool is the original Boulder Dash Construction Kit, released in 1986 by First Star.
Although it has its nasty bugs, the Kit is easy to use and quite self
explanatory. I'm still using it with much pleasure!
Design your own caves using the C-Kit.
Later, in the period 1987-1988,
Lord Diego extended the original C-Kit and made his Effect Construction Kit.
This tool enables you to add some special effects to your caves, like boulders
turning into butterflies when bouncing, or fireflies exploding into 9 boulders.
You can also (unlike in the original C-Kit) use both slime and amoebas in the
same cave. And you can place as many Rockfords and exits as you like!
Two other very nice tools are No
One's Enemie Designer and Charset Editor (1987). Using these tools
it's possible to change the BD graphics completely. You want an alien instead
of a butterfly? Or Rockford riding on a bicycle? Just make
your own game graphics with the Enemie Designer. The Charset Editor can be used
to modify the BD font.
It's easy to design your own graphics set.
One of the most useful BD tools
has been developed in the 90's. Marek Roth, a.k.a. LogicDeluxe, created Deluxe
Packer (latest version: 1.42 from 2001), continuing the work of No One and
Prof. Knibble. With this tool, it's easy for anybody to create selfrunning Boulder
Dash games! The procedure is simple: you design your caves with the C-Kit or
the Effect Kit, put them together, choose your graphics sets (made with Enemie
Designer and Charset Editor), choose the music, make a nice title screen, write
an intro message, and finally crunch the game. No special skills in programming
or other complicated things are required! So far I've created all my games
using Deluxe Packer. It's just a great tool!!
You can use Deluxe Packer to make your own games.
Most recently, in august 2006,
Marek Roth released the latest beta version of his Crazy Light Construction
Kit 3.0. This is an amazing package of tools to create your BD games, with
more possibilities than ever before! Here is a short (and very incomplete) list
of all the extra features:
- You can replace a titanium wall
at the border of a cave with any other element. When Rockford runs out of
the cave, he returns at the other side (the same happens to other moving items).
This additional feature already opens a new world for BD leveldesigners!
Play my Future Dash Caveset to see how many new levels can be created.
- Many special effects are possible.
For instance, diamonds turning into boulders when falling, amoeba turning into
fireflies when blocked, walls growing upwards and downwards, magic walls creating
butterflies instead of diamonds, Rockford walking diagonally, etc..
- A set of new elements is available:
bombs, clocks, sweets, keys, doors, biters, acid, bubbles, Mrs Rockfords, chasing
boulders, and more. This gives way to create many totally new types of
caves! Although I personally wouldn't use these items very often (I'm more a
"traditional" designer), it is really great for the fans that the
new additions are there!
- You can adjust more properties
of your caves than in the usual construction kits. If you've made a very hard
cave, you could set the timer at more than 255 seconds. Also, the maximum amoeba
size can now be other than 200 units. And of course, many properties with respect
to the new elements can be chosen.
- Last but not least... there is
an extended editor to create a perfect title screen, with more graphics, more
moving rasters and more possible colours than in DLP. A special linker program
will put your cavepack, titlescreen, graphics, etc., together to make your
final game.
Logo for the CLCK 3.0 created by CWS (Claus Skrepek).
Notice that the CLCK 3.0 is still in development. But it is yet possible to create full games out of
caves designed with the construction kit. Only the cavepacker, the title editor and the manual are not 100% finished.
The latest beta version
can be downloaded at Marek's
site. An overview of all the plans (both realized and unrealized) is also provided at the site.
Design better caves using CLCK 3.0 beta by LogicDeluxe.
More Boulder Dash info to appear soon at this page.
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