Compliment!

[Taz]

Wow! This site is bloody brilliant! Just found it this afternoon.

Got a call from my mate the other day saying he had an actual 'urge' to play Boulder Dash again. Told him i had the CCS emulator on disk with thousands of games and he could have a copy. Hadn't used it for yonks. Anyway, he came over with his laptop (he could have downloaded it all himself but he's a truly lazy sod) and i set it up for him - and there was Boulder Dash, but something was wrong. it was jerky. Maybe it was because he used Vista and my version of CCS is getting on because after he'd gone i stuck it on my machine (XP) and it worked sweet. Well I played Boulder Dash for a while and raked through the caves - I used to be obsessed with the thing when i was fifteen and I found I'm still no slouch. Then I turned it off. That was that.

Well, it was about eleven o clock last night when i stuck on CCS again and found a Mini-boulder dash game - showed the whole screen in one shot, no scrolling. Next thing i know it was scraping three in the morning. Just like the old days.

I get so impressed with this little mini-dash I start looking for other Boulder Dash clones on the PC. In no time I'm here, at this site! Wow! It's a veritable temple to Rockford.

The ability to look at the maps of the old caves from the original games is bloody superb. I've hardly looked around yet but there's a few things I noticed/read that I'll say:

* Me too! Cave O level 4 was the killer cave in the original.
* It was interesting to read the reason why you couldn't do the third intermission screen in the original game, due to it being PAL. Does the entrance of Rockford onto a screen take a random time because i saw my brother do this screen once, but he said it involved having to hold the space bar on and off (pausing and repausing the game numerous times) - (I haven't thought about that for a very long time).
* I see the that Arno says that he considered Cave J on the original game the hardest and that he made a long tunnel for the butterflies. It becomes very easy if instead you just stick three sets of butterflies in loops. Maybe that's well known knowledge here but that's my one instance of cleverness in making the games a little easier.

Anyway, I'm off to have a wander around this place and probably download a couple of those user games to try my hand. Nice to be here!

[Arno]

Hi Taz, thanks for registering and welcome to our community!

It was interesting to read the reason why you couldn't do the third intermission screen in the original game, due to it being PAL. Does the entrance of Rockford onto a screen take a random time because i saw my brother do this screen once, but he said it involved having to hold the space bar on and off (pausing and repausing the game numerous times) - (I haven't thought about that for a very long time).

Yes, holding the spacebar worked for me as well. Also I remember that I managed to complete this intermission when I played in 2 player mode. Aparently that this mode impacts the timing on PAL.

I see the that Arno says that he considered Cave J on the original game the hardest and that he made a long tunnel for the butterflies. It becomes very easy if instead you just stick three sets of butterflies in loops. Maybe that's well known knowledge here but that's my one instance of cleverness in making the games a little easier.

Indeed. When I played BD for the first time, cave J took me the most effort to complete because I choose to dig a long tunnel. This strategy was very sensitive for mistakes and often I had too little time. Later on I discoverd that the fireflies could also be trapped in loops. In my Longplay video I'm also applying this solution.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Also I remember that I managed to complete this intermission when I played in 2 player mode. Aparently that this mode impacts the timing on PAL.

Not only PAL. The start in two player mode adds 2 seconds (120 tv fields) to the delay.
I have really no idea why they put it in. Maybe to give the players time to pass the joystick over. This is no issue on the original caves, but PLCK has the same extra delay, which can be considered a bug, since there is no way to test a cave that way in the editor. Not sure, which level packers have fixed this.

The entire timing wasn't well thought in BD. That's one reason, I started the XDC engine in which game tics have priority over real time.