Boulder Dash Forum

Dustin wrote:By the way. has anyone yet tried to imprison the cave H amoeba by the diamonds of the butterflies? This should make it possible to catch more than 100 diamonds...

Yeah, if I remember correctly there is a Longplay of BD2 completing cave H this way.
However, I forgot the name of the author..... not sure if it's still downloadable anywhere....

If you don't blast that conveniently placed wall in Cave H, this is quite easy to achieve.

hi

i was watching arno's solution of boulder dash ii without sound, and suddenly realized that maybe the purpose of dirt mod (at least one of its purposes) to inform the user about an amoeba being in the cave, if he plays without sound. you see, dirt mod is only needed because the color of amoeba is changed since bd1 (where it had the color of brick walls, now it has the color of normal dirt graphics).

bye

I think, Peter Liepa wanted the Amoeba always green, and he coded it its own color in the Atari version. This feature is missing in the C64 version due to speed issues. The person responsible for the C64 port probably wasn't happy with those dark colors in amoeba caves in BD1 (blue slime would have been even darker) and wanted to have always a bright color for the brickwall etc., thus changed the amoeba graphic to use another main color. The dirt mod was probably a way to compensate for the lost contrast between amoeba and dirt. In the original caves, the compromise isn't that bad, though with more stuffed caves using almost all elements, you actually loose contrast.

BTW, does anyone know why PL didn't name the BD2 caves anymore? I thought about it and here are my suggestions:

Cave A- Episode 2
Cave B- Trap And Snap
Cave C- Dizziness
Cave D- Apocalypse 2 (alt.: Vivid Dynamite)
Cave E- Stony Swamp Rain
Cave F- Sheltered Treasure
Cave G- Find Out
Cave H- Won't
Cave I- Sheltered Treasure 2
Cave J- Couples
Cave K- Pursuit
Cave L- Entombed Doors
Cave M- Glittering Alley
Cave N- Intruders
Cave O- Four Times Nine
Cave P- Treasure Ruin

Dustin wrote:BTW, does anyone know why PL didn't name the BD2 caves anymore?

What makes you think so? He did. At least they are in the manual at http://www.c64spiele.de/phpseiten/spiel ... nummer=517 (click on the manual link)
For your convenience, they are:
A: Intro
B: Silos
C: Spiral
D: Breakthrough
E: Shower
F: Gauntlet
G: Jail
H: Ring Around The Rosy
I: Fast Tricks
J: Mixed Doubles
K: Snake
L: Gridlock
M: Combination
N: Tree
O: Cocoons
P: Spelunking
Q: Intermission 1
R: Intermission 2
S: Intermission 3
T: Intermission 4

Interestingly enough, the intermissions are listed by its letters, although they are never shown in the game.

In my Super Boulder Dash manual (US release, if there's a difference), cave I is called Fast Tracks instead of tricks. I'm pretty sure it's a typo; but maybe the original one was wrong and then they fixed it. I wouldn't know...

Also note that in both versions of the manual, cave H keeps referring to fireflies, when it should be butterflies.

Oh, many thanks for this! I thought that there were no names because they don't appear in the BDCFF files... Why don't they?

Here, I just made a BD2 BDCFF with the names added.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZM0URBPZ

An interesting discovery: In cave H, the possible amount of diamonds you can grab seems to be extremely luck- dependant. My personal record are 108 diamonds (in H/5; without enclosing the amoeba), but when I tried the exactly same strategy next time, I got only around 80 diamonds... Is it really such an extreme luck or is there a strategy to lways get a three- digit number of jewels?

With the amoeba, everything seems to be extreme luck, especially when there's more of it But that may just be my opinion factoring in...

There seems to be another factor in this special case: the "ring around the rosy" the flies circle around. Sometimes there are two butterflies coming to the amoeba DIRECTLY beside each other, so that when one of them explodes, the other one gets destroyed, too, thus wasting 9 diamonds! I always move inside the ring in exactly the same way, but sometimes this happens, and sometimes not. But this may finally also depend on the amoeba,. I ask that because I'm still working on my BD 1+2 conts, and wonder how many diamonds I can demand in cave H without making it unfair... (in such a little time that one cannot enclose the amoeba).

BTW, is the amoeba deterministic? I mean, of course it seems to be pure chance, but perhaps it works after a mathematic algorithm, similar to the cave generator, which is "only" too complicated to work with? Who knows that?

Dustin wrote:BTW, is the amoeba deterministic? I mean, of course it seems to be pure chance, but perhaps it works after a mathematic algorithm, similar to the cave generator, which is "only" too complicated to work with? Who knows that?

It is virtually impossible to reproduce the spread pattern. The random number generator takes the timer registers of the CIA chips into account. In order to reproduce, you would not only start the cave at the exact same microsecond after starting BD, but the videochip has to be at the exact same raster position as well, so the same badlines, IRQ's etc. will occur the same. And you have to reproduce your moves in the exact same way at the exact same time, so the random numbers are generated at the exact same CPU cycle. The chance for a lottery jackpot is probably a lot better.

At Krissz's site, we actually have a project running that made me think it could be worth taking out this old thread again

We try to get as many diamonds as possible on all BD2-P levels. The results so far:
P/1: 41/41 possible (nothing new, Arno has already made a video a decade ago).
P/2: 44/45 (we tried hard but couldn't get all, although we can't be 100% sure it's impossible)
P/3: 38/38 (tricky but not insane)
P/4: 34/34 (that's the level I'd recommend you if you want to try a cave P all-diamond run yourself. It's easiest of the three levels where it's possible, and you can learn the basic techniques required to do it here!)
P/5: yet to be tried, but all diamonds are almost certainly impossible here. EDIT: 38/42 is our record!

EDIT: We're done with P/5, which was a bit unsatisfactory. There are 3 diamonds in the bottom part which seem almost certainly inaacessible, which excludes an all-diamond run from the beginning. This made us lack motivation to try very hard for the max amount. In the end we got only 34/42 diamonds and we think it's not at all easy to get any more! If you can get more, first of all: congrat! and second of all: we would be very interested to read about this!
EDIT2: I was one day too quick with my P/5 conclusion - a way was found to get 4 more diamonds (with one and the same trick; the 4 diamonds are connected closely), so our max is now 38/42!