Gdash

[Dustin]

Hi,
I noted a wrong explanatation concerning the scheduling tyres. GDash says that the only difference between BD1 and BS2 scheduling type is the intermission speed. But I checked an empty cave (except for an inbox). If the cave delay is set to zero, the speed with the BD1 scheduling is 88ms, but with BD2, it is only 60ms. Another example: I set the delay to 12; with BD1, the speed was 131ms, with BD2 it was 240. So the cave delay makes a much bigger difference if you choose BD2 scheduling! Or is this a bug? (I don't actually know much about the original engines...)

[LogicDeLuxe]

Hi,
I noted a wrong explanatation concerning the scheduling tyres.

The description is wrong, as you noted.
Actually, BD2 is much more similar to PLCK than BD1. The only difference is that BD2 can disable unneeded animations and the delays are hardcoded (not in GDash, though) per level.

[Dustin]

Ah, thanks for the info! This explains also why, for example, cave P of BD2 is not slowed down that much by the many boulders as, for example, BD1 cave I.

[cirix]

I noted a wrong explanatation concerning the scheduling tyres.

Yeah I did not change the text from the old version. The schedulings themselves are already corrected, just the explanation is wrong.

[Dustin]

Hi,
one question about engine emulation. If I set the BD1 engine default values, the pushing boulder propability is set to 12,5% and the amoeba slow speed to 3,125%. Are these actually the values of the BD1 engine? I am under the impression that pushing boulders is slower and the amoeba faster than in BD1- or is this just my impression?

[cirix]

I took the 12.5% from the Peter Broadribb BD documentation.
Now I checked the original code, and YOU ARE RIGHT! It is a 25% chance of pushing a boulder! I will release a new version soon with 25% set as default (and for all imported caves).
The amoeba is also documented there, for that I also checked the original code. It works like: 4 out of 128 cases, the amoeba grows, 4/128=3.125%.

[Dustin]

Good! Thank you!
I've also noted a "translation mistake" reading .brc files (this is probably not so important, however, just to mention it.) It concerns the amoeba growing prob. In BRemake, it is given as a number x, which means "one out of x cases". So the translation into percant should simply be 1/x *100%. But Gdash uses a different formula, probably (1-x/256)*100%, which leads to default values 87.5% for slow and >98% for fast growth!
I just noted this casually; I do not know whether other values are also affected.

[cirix]

I will check the BRC import, too. I don't really know brc or the games created with it; most of them I checked were original C64 caves, and were worth rather converting them from there.

[cirix]

maybe the slime permeability works exactly like this. could you check it for me, if you have some time?

[Dustin]

OK, I've checked for the slime. There are two problems:
- Gdash doesn't seem to read the BRemake slime permeability at all; it stays at its default value 0.
- The (predictable) slime permeability can be set to 256 different values both in BRemake and Gdash, but they refer to different propabilities. Of course I cannot tell it exactly after my rather qualitative testing, but what seems to be most likely for me is that BRemake and Gdash translate the nine original permeabilities 0-8 as follows:

Original: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
GDash: 0 128 192 224 240 248 252 254 255
BR: 0 1 3 7 15 31 63 127 255

If this "aducated guess" is true, the translation between BR and Gdash works like this:


G=256*B/(B+1)
B=BR slime perm.
G=Gdash slime perm.

In general, this formula doesn't give integers, so the numbers would have to be rounded.

[LogicDeLuxe]

If this "aducated guess" is true

Why guess? It is easy enough to just check the used numbers.

Unfortunately BR uses a completely different formula than any Boulder Dash engine, thus the exact pattern can not be recreated, unless the BR method can be implemented in Gdash, of course.
The probabilities can, though, using the unpredictable slime.

Unlike in BD where slime is an active element, BR uses this withing the boulder code:

Code: Select all

if (random(slime*4)<4) and (tab[x,y+2]=0) then
      Begin tab[x,y]:=0;col[x,y+2]:=col[x,y];tab[x,y+2]:=27;mat[x,y+2]:=9;Voice4:=2;end;

The same logic is used for falling boulder, diamonds and falling diamonds as well.

Other interesting differences are the amoeba, which can only be converted by the magic wall under restricted circumstances.

Code: Select all

              if (amoeba.Time>0) and (Amoeba.Start=True)
                 then Amoeba.Suffocated:=True;

And yet another difference, Rockford explodes when a dummy is cought by an explosion, which unfortunately makes a lot of PLCK caves unplayable where doing this is required. Also interestingly, while intended to be a CrLi compatible engine, dummies can collect diamonds, but are immune to boulders.

And for more importing bugs:
- Time bonus of -100 really seems odd.
- Pushing probability of 4 mistranslates to 50%. It should be 25%.

And of course, level based map sections would be useful for BR compatibility, ie. like this

Code: Select all

[Level=1]
[map]
WWWWWW
WXd..W
W.d..W
W.d..W
W.d.PW
WWWWWW
[/map]
[/Level]
[Level=2]
[map]
...

[cirix]

And for more importing bugs:
- Time bonus of -100 really seems odd.

Example, please. File name, cave number, level number.

And of course, level based map sections would be useful for BR compatibility, ie. like this

Code: Select all

[Level=1]

I won't. As I explained previously, I'm not working on the bdcff anymore. Anyway, the BR editor was not a too clever one. One had to edit the levels of the same cave one by one... Why should I spend at least one minute of programming because someone made that error?

Can the source code of BR be downloaded from some site?

[cirix]

Hi

I uploaded a new version, gdash-20081214.

The most important new feature of the game is replays. I copy&paste a description from the help here, as it explains everything:
Every time you play a game, GDash records all your movements. These recordings can be viewed later, and can be saved with the caveset. To check them out, click on Show replays in the Play menu.
If you were very lucky in a cave, or something interesting happened, you do not have to be worry, as all played caves are recorded. In the Replays window, you can select some of them to be saved with the caveset. You can also add comments to selected movies. The replays are stored no matter if the cave was solved or not, so you can even send the recording of your unsuccessful missions for others to discuss.
During the replay of the cave, you can gain control of the replay if you use the usual cursor keys (left, up, etc.) to move. From that point, you can continue playing the cave as if it was a snapshot. You can answer your 'what would have happened if...' questions. Or see if you can do better than the original player!

Changes include:
- enhanced timing for both gdash and sdash
- many bugfixes
- removed "easy caves" feature, now only "i hate invisible outboxes" feature, which is a visual effect only.
- fixed 3x nearest scaler
- dtv colors (but show me at least one game which uses it...............)
- atari color picker
- random colors generator for atari, dtv and rgb colors (i really like the rgb random colors)
- changing the size of the cave in the editor, gives a warning message if virtual size has to be checked
- fine scroll in gdash too
- copy&paste object
- some brc import bugs fixed, more to come (would be nice to have the source)
- "slower explosions" tags now affects all kind of explosions. not the same way as the original game, but in a consistent way.
- new status bars, both gdash and sdash show if currently an intermission
- notes are also saved in the html gallery
- info button in gdash to show some cave description in the game
- the saving of "notes" tab is changed in the .bd files, so sorry if some of the strings are truncated from files saved with older versions.

Still more to come

by

[cirix]

while the jutas is down, you can also download the game from this url: http://biztosan.hu/~cirix/
by

[CWS]

Veeeeery nice new version!

I like the fine scroll in gdash very much!

I'll update the german translation soon!

By the way: I have a BR-source. Not the latest one but from version 1.8 or so. I'll mail it to you as soon as I've found it!