Boulder Dash Forum

Some more comments on "zigzag movement":

ketmar wrote: ↑Fri Oct 24, 2025 1:17 am

artsoft wrote: ↑Thu Oct 23, 2025 11:45 am

proper handling of "left+up" and such keys: Rockford will go in zigzag pattern instead of preferring the single direction.

That's something which I added to the Emerald Mine engine in (my own BD clone) Rocks'n'Diamonds

and this is exactly where i've seen this feature for the first time! do you know that you ruined GDash for me?! i couldn't play GDash anymore without this feature.

some people might argue that this is "cheating", but i don't agree with them.

It could be seen as some kind of cheating, as some BD caves rely on precise, in-time zigzag style movement (some early intermission caves of the classic series, for example, if I remember right), which will be easier to play with "zigzag movement support". But I also do not care much about cheating, R'n'D has a lot of features that are effectively cheating (like pause mode, or single-step mode), and using these features will indeed be stored in the corresponding tape file (replay/demo file).

But I agree that this is a useful feature, and have now added it also to the BD and SP game engines in R'n'D!

And for those who don't like it, this feature can be disabled (for every game engine independently).

and while we are here: thank you for RnD! sadly, i couldn't play it much due to two things: "async" nature and graphics. don't get me wrong, please: this is not your (or RnD) fault, it's my own brain. somwhere deep in my brain there is the hardwired thing: "anything that is not based on tile movement and doesn't look close enough to the original BD is a cheap replica. do not want!" of course, i know that RnD is not that (and it is based on EM, not on BD), but… i never played the original EM; i played DOS Supaplex, and was never hooked by it too, due to "smooth movement".

but i still playing RnD from time to time, because it is such a fun game!

BTW: With the next R'n'D version, you will not only be able to disable "smooth movement" in the setup menu (already mentioned), but also "sticky keys" or (more general) "sticky movement input" (which is also used in the also synchronouos original EM game engine), although it should not make any difference when playing BD "in rhythm" (but may help a lot for beginner or even intermediate players who wonder why Rockford does not move after pressing and quickly releasing a direction key).

artsoft wrote: ↑Tue Nov 04, 2025 4:00 pm It could be seen as some kind of cheating, as some BD caves rely on precise, in-time zigzag style movement (some early intermission caves of the classic series, for example, if I remember right), which will be easier to play with "zigzag movement support". But I also do not care much about cheating, R'n'D has a lot of features that are effectively cheating (like pause mode, or single-step mode), and using these features will indeed be stored in the corresponding tape file (replay/demo file).

Miho Dash stores such info in "cave statistics db" too. and replays are identified by "stat_id", so each replay has the set of associated flags: real clock time taken to solve the cave, in-game cave timer, was single-step mode used or not, number of quickloads. when i implement replay export feature, those flags will be added to the exported replay.

of course, it is easy to change the source code to omit any of those flags, so they are strictly "informative", not "anti-cheating" anyway.

of course, it is easy to change the source code to omit any of those flags, so they are strictly "informative", not "anti-cheating" anyway.

Exactly, and same with R'n'D, where you can easily modify and recompile the source code and submit scores/tapes created with "cheating" to the score server that do not have these flags set for the various ways to cheat anymore. So the high score list does not show these flags, but only stores them for internal reference...

oops. updated download: it worked with Wine, but not with real windows.

all GDash objects i wanted to implement seems to work now. objects i will not implement: rocket launcher, pneumatic hammer, gravity change (not really an object ;-), pot, skeleton, cow, conveyor belts. also, i will not implement "Maze" drawing command.

this makes several games unplayable, and those games are excluded from the game list (but still kept in the database).

i may implement converyor belts later… or not. i haven't decided yet. there are already too much objects, and i don't believe that adding more and more objects makes the game more fun. i think that the simplicity of the original game is what makes it so attractive: less than ten object types, simple rules, and infinite number of possible caves — arcade, puzzle, luck-based, and any combination of those. adding more objects makes the game less fun, at least in my eyes. i implemented most GDash objects before i checked how many games were using new objects. there is no reason to remove already written code, but i will not add more.

implemented searching in listboxes (simply typing), and cave preview in cave selector.

and finally implemented widget tooltips. ;-)

Miho Dash tech demo 3.

fixed some broken game objects; UI improvements; much smaller database; in-game keybinding help; various other small fixes and changes.

btw, vwad is the format i designed several years ago, and i am often using it in my projects. here are libvwad C library and utilities to create and extract vwad files. game source code is in main vwad. you can extract all vwads and run the game like that.