[saulc12]

While working on Toddler's Dream, I was asked by one of my students whether they would be able to produce a boulderdash style game as part of their work next year. I wanted to be able to produce an example for the student to work from so I put together this small test (just two levels) of a kind of stripped down version - just the essential game mechanics of falling rocks, gems to collect, no scrolling and no other fancy bits. I thought I might make this into a completed game for casual gaming. No sound on this version yet and there will be a few glitches to iron out, opinions appreciated especially on graphics style as this is another attempt at c64 styling for me.



download from http://www.simple-media.co.uk/retro-remakes/RockyRedux.rar

Keys are left and right cursor with a and z for up and down.

Should I make the full game?

[Maupin]

Graphics look great.  I especially like the boulder-pushing animation.

You've probably already seen this, but it was a great help for me when making sure Natto-Cat was handling things correctly.

Keys are left and right cursor with a and z for up and down.

Why God???  Why???????!!!!

[saulc12]

Graphics look great.  I especially like the boulder-pushing animation.

You've probably already seen this, but it was a great help for me when making sure Natto-Cat was handling things correctly.

Why God???  Why???????!!!!

Because I have two hands and find it easier this way but I may change this later (not the fact that I have two hands - that would just be painful)...

[Maupin]

  And F1 for jump!

[saulc12]

  And F1 for jump!

Well I'm not telling you what organ I would use for that, but I can explain that in the good old days of playing BBC and occasionally c64 games on keyboard I always found that two hands were better from a reaction time point of view than one especially if key combinations would otherwise be close together (such as cursor keys or wasd for direction). So I use those keys, I got painted into a corner a bit with 'Spare a thought for the Little Guy' and didn't have time to change the keys around after testing or to put in a user option to define keys, hopefully I will be able to give a defijne keys options in the next few games though, just need to work out how best to do it.

[Ian]

I LOVE BoulderDash and created a clone (RockRush) about 8 years ago, so I would say GO FOR IT!! Full game deffo wanted here, and in that graphical style

I don't know if you are wanting to go the authentic route or less accurate. If you want to go full on accurate, then there is a problem with the above linked mini BoulderDash (as it's by the author of CrazyLights) in that the rock physics are wrong in certain circumstances (not in that demo, but in the full game). The ONLY BoulderDash clone that I have found that has the right physics for the rocks and diamonds is BoulderRush.

I've been doing a lot of research recently on BoulderDash games as I am in the process of updating and porting RockRush to the Wiz, and none of the clones are accurate, with the exception of BoulderRush, although it would seem that everyone seems to enjoy GDash (except me). It looks awful and plays very oddly, with very little dashing actually required...

Anyway, here's an image of my Wiz update -

[saulc12]

Graphics look great.  I especially like the boulder-pushing animation.

You've probably already seen this, but it was a great help for me when making sure Natto-Cat was handling things correctly.

Why God???  Why???????!!!!

Not quite perfect with the test cave but then again - this is not a boulderdash clone as such so a few minor differences don't hurt (would be interesting to work out why though).

[hitm4n]

The rocks look like they are shaded from top left whereas the diamonds look shaded from straight up. I would suggest rotating the shading on the diamonds by 1 cell to the left. i.e. the filled in white segemt would be at 10.30. This keeps the shading style nice and even through the game and is something you can keep in mind for further game elements.

Looks real nice though

[Maupin]

Not quite perfect with the test cave but then again - this is not a boulderdash clone as such so a few minor differences don't hurt (would be interesting to work out why though).

It all has to do with the order in which the entire cave is scanned.  You can't use OO/Event programming, you just have to step through the cave top to bottom updating everything.

Ian, love that Rockford.  Natto-Cat plays physically identical to the original Boulder Dash (to my knowledge) EXCEPT that you can collect falling diamonds with a button grab.  I liked being able to do that so much that I left it in.

[saulc12]

All are supposed to be shaded from directly above, the rocks just having an uneven surface, as for future game elements, as I said earlier this is a sort of stripped down boulderdash so ther will be no magic walls, or butterflies or amoeba, just the elements already present, a time limit and hopefully a bit of fast paced puzzling if I can plan out the levels well enough, definitely going for the quick fix...

[saulc12]

The rocks look like they are shaded from top left whereas the diamonds look shaded from straight up. I would suggest rotating the shading on the diamonds by 1 cell to the left. i.e. the filled in white segemt would be at 10.30. This keeps the shading style nice and even through the game and is something you can keep in mind for further game elements.

Looks real nice though

Changed the shading on the rocks so that it isclearer that they are shaded from above, should look a little more consistent now.

[Sokurah]

It all has to do with the order in which the entire cave is scanned.  You can't use OO/Event programming, you just have to step through the cave top to bottom updating everything.

Is that the best way of doing it? - I mean; from top to bottom?
...wouldn't it be easier to do it from the bottom and up, or wouldn't it make any difference in the end?

[saulc12]

This one is object oriented and the link has been updated so a newer demo is available, still just the 2 levels but now has the timer, score and lives implemented (although you don't lose a life when time runs out yet, which will be the case in the final version and no game over yet), still just a test but at least it now has a simple title page and the font has been added. Again any opinions welcome, the link is the same as before so just download with the link from the top of this thread.

[Maupin]

Is that the best way of doing it? - I mean; from top to bottom?
...wouldn't it be easier to do it from the bottom and up, or wouldn't it make any difference in the end?

It actually does make a difference, at least in that the order in which the cave is scanned gives Boulder Dash some neat quirks.  I'm not sure if it would have been easier to implement bottom-to-top scanning in assembly or not - I agree it seems to me it would have been a bit easier since almost everything tends to move down.

The way Boulder Dash works is that every frame:

1.  All objects are flagged as not moved.
2.  From top left to bottom right, movable objects are scanned.  If they're not flagged and can move, they're moved to their new position and flagged.  This way, boulders only fall one space, etc.

For example, it's because of this scan order that Rockford can always safely run upwards along the left side of an embedded firefly or butterfly without it exploding.  The firefly/butterfly never gets a turn in before Rockford has moved past.  (You can test this in BDCK or my own Natto-Cat - press 'T' to test a cave.)  However any other combination of running past a stationary firefly/butterfly gives it a turn, and checking whether it should explode or not is it's first order of business.

[saulc12]

Another updated version posted - this time there are still just the two levels but the game engine is just about complete in addition to which music and sound effects have been added as well as a simple PAL emulation effect that outs scanlines and noise on the image. I should warn in advance that the in game tune is very short and very repetitive (I may go with having four or five really short rhythmic tunes like this or write something longer). Anyway download with the same link at the top of the message thread and opinions as always are valued.

[hovermonkey]

Bottom to top scanning would mean that a column of boulders could fall without spaces between them. Top to bottom this would be difficult to do.

[Sokurah]

I actually took a stab at Boulder Dash last week - just to see if I could get everything to fall correctly...and I could. Here's how it looks after everything has fallen on level I1 - exactly like on the Speccy version.

It doesn't scroll yet and I haven't programmed movement for anything that's not present on this level, however I can't seem to sync the gravity of everything with the movement of the player...and for some reason my mans movement doesn't seem as fluid as yours - even though he moves 8 pixels at the time. Oh, well...I'm not really supposed to be working on this anyway.

[spacefractal]

Personly I more like only use cursor keys, so why not use up and down cursor keys, and still keep the A-Z keys for up/down as well? Then you can use one hand as well two hands for this game.

[saulc12]

I actually took a stab at Boulder Dash last week - just to see if I could get everything to fall correctly...and I could. Here's how it looks after everything has fallen on level I1 -exactly like on the Speccy version.

It doesn't scroll yet and I haven't programmed movement for anything that's not present on this level, however I can't seem to sync the gravity of everything with the movement of the player...and for some reason my mans movement doesn't seem as fluid as yours - even though he moves 8 pixels at the time. Oh, well...I'm not really supposed to be working on this anyway.

It took me a while to get it all working correctly especially getting it so that the guy could just nip out of the way of the falling boulders, on my first attempts to get the player movement down he would get clipped if he tried to move out of the path of the falling rocks. To add to the problems I also found that he would die when he tried to push rocks and that he could run back into their path too easily, but that's all fixed now. Still mine will not fall like the original boulder dash because it is object oriented and doesn't require the map to be scanned in any particular order - I wasn't going for that kind of accuracy of play.

[saulc12]

Personly I more like only use cursor keys, so why not use up and down cursor keys, and still keep the A-Z keys for up/down as well? Then you can use one hand as well two hands for this game.

What is this strange obsession with the keys...

I use this key configuration because I find it easier and more controllable this way and may yet change it when the game is complete, but while it is in development it will stay this way - just as a side note to this, a lot of old games on the beeb and c64 that used keys used combinations that required both hands like this so at least it might feel a bit more traditional, certainly does to me.

[KungPhoo]

I once had an email to the original author of BoulderDash. He said, that all boulders are marked as "falling" or "supported", so you can run down on a boulder and it won't hit you.

[saulc12]

I once had an email to the original author of BoulderDash. He said, that all boulders are marked as "falling" or "supported", so you can run down on a boulder and it won't hit you.

Funnily enough this is partly how I worked it, originally I used a single object for boulders and a single object for gems but now I have seperate objects for the static and the falling boulders and gems, which makes things a lot easier.

[Marioman]

Not a bad looking demo there it plays nice and smooth and I just can't get enough of retro graphics in games they bring back so many hours of a miss spent youth.

When is the next update going to be? Soon I hope.

[saulc12]

Not a bad looking demo there it plays nice and smooth and I just can't get enough of retro graphics in games they bring back so many hours of a miss spent youth.

When is the next update going to be? Soon I hope.

Well I have to put in some game over stuff like a high score table and the like then it will be level building (haven't decided how many) and puzzles are always difficult to plan the levels for so this may take some time, but soon I hope).

I also have to get back into working on 'Toddler's Dream' as this is my current big project.