Boulder Dash Forum

1. Can anyone honestly (remember, god is always watching) say that they have completed all 5 levels from start to finish of BD1 and/or BD2 without using freeze saving or any other form of cheating?

2. In BD1, is the bonus life screen where Rockford starts at the very top and is immediately swamped by a swarm of fireflies from the left actually do-able or were the game creators just trying to screw with our minds?

3. Am I correct in believing that a maximum of 9 lives can be accumulated at any one time, and any extra lives earned beyond this are not added to the total (am currently working my way through C-64 BD1 using freeze saving and it seems to be staying on 9 lives)?

dd22qq wrote:1. Can anyone honestly (remember, god is always watching) say that they have completed all 5 levels from start to finish of BD1 and/or BD2 without using freeze saving or any other form of cheating?

Well, I did not.

dd22qq wrote:2. In BD1, is the bonus life screen where Rockford starts at the very top and is immediately swamped by a swarm of fireflies from the left actually do-able or were the game creators just trying to screw with our minds?

That is a bug. It can only played if you have an NTSC machine (or maybe try setting your emulator to NTSC, but VICE needs a restart of the game, then)

dd22qq wrote:3. Am I correct in believing that a maximum of 9 lives can be accumulated at any one time, and any extra lives earned beyond this are not added to the total (am currently working my way through C-64 BD1 using freeze saving and it seems to be staying on 9 lives)?

Yes.

bye

dd22qq wrote:1. Can anyone honestly (remember, god is always watching) say that they have completed all 5 levels from start to finish of BD1 and/or BD2 without using freeze saving or any other form of cheating?

I have completed all the caves and all levels from BD1, but not sequentially without cheating. I think this is tough to do, because O/4 requires perfect timing... I needed several tries before I managed to get enough diamonds out of the magic wall, and finally completed this cave for the first time.

cirix wrote:That is a bug. It can only played if you have an NTSC machine (or maybe try setting your emulator to NTSC, but VICE needs a restart of the game, then)

Ha, it worked. Changed CCS64 to NTSC, reloaded the game and Rockford had the headstart on those fireflies that he needed. It may have been a little anticlimactically easy but, after all these years, it still made my day just the same.

Arno wrote:I think this is tough to do, because O/4 requires perfect timing

O/4 eh? Will look out for it (nice site BTW).

dd22qq wrote:1. Can anyone honestly (remember, god is always watching) say that they have completed all 5 levels from start to finish of BD1 and/or BD2 without using freeze saving or any other form of cheating?

G'day dd22qq

I've played every Cave on both and saved a Freeze of each one so that I can go back and replay any Cave I want. I like some of the tougher ones.

I don't see using Freeze as cheating, wasn't it a feature in the Original Game??? If so, then it's there to be used (more in another post about that )

OMG!!! Don't mention Cave O/4 to me Arno, I will have nightmares again tonight

Regards
John

I've made Vice recordings of myself playing through all levels of BD 1 and 2

Of course, I used save states so I could finish quicker, and not worry about running out of lives and starting all over again.

It took a few hours for each game!

Sendy wrote:It took a few hours for each game!

makes my days for each seem rather lame

You Guru you

Arno wrote:O/4 requires perfect timing...

After much grief from cave K, have finally worked my way up to O/4. Ouch, looks like I could be here a while.

I presume there's no 'intelligent' way of releasing a stationary firefly surrounded by dirt and the best that can be done is use the fire button and quickly run in the opposite direction, and be prepared to sacrifice a lot of lives trying? Nasty, just nasty.

dd22qq wrote:I presume there's no 'intelligent' way of releasing a stationary firefly surrounded by dirt and the best that can be done is use the fire button and quickly run in the opposite direction, and be prepared to sacrifice a lot of lives trying? Nasty, just nasty.

Man that Cave killed me

In the end I had to look at Arno's Video Solution, then slapped myself repeatedly in the head.

I assume your talking about the Firefly (what I call Flashing Square) in the top left of the screen??? I spent ages trying to release the little bugga.

I can give you a Tip, I will do it in white in the Quote box below in case your not ready to see it yet, just highlight between the brackets.

{The top left Firefly (Flashing Square) is not part of the solution I used}

Hope that helps

dd22qq wrote:I presume there's no 'intelligent' way of releasing a stationary firefly surrounded by dirt and the best that can be done is use the fire button and quickly run in the opposite direction, and be prepared to sacrifice a lot of lives trying? Nasty, just nasty.

You have pretty much a 1 in 4 chance of dying (or rather, the firefly moving right next to you, nominating you for death!) when you do this, but you are safer from the left.

If you release it from the left and it moves over to you instantly, if you manage to move out of the way quick enough, you can survive the one frame of touching it.

Also, if you dig a passage upwards one square to the left of the firefly without stopping, you will release the firefly harmlessly (for now).

These asymmetries are due to the way the engine scans the cave from left to right. I may have made a slight mistake explaining some of this, in which case the programmer types can correct me if they like.

Sendy wrote:Also, if you dig a passage upwards one square to the left of the firefly without stopping, you will release the firefly harmlessly (for now).

Ok, this is the first opportunity to test the GDash replay to avi feature I coded today
Here is how you do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3MZSqnUQbg

I ran a little experiment with that particular firefly and, by opening it on the left, I was able to successfully able to release it 10 out of 10 times. One of those times I got killed in the upperleft corner because a didn't change directions crisply enough. Another time I forgot to hold the snap key (I didn't count that one)

Anyway, open it from the left and don't even think of stopping running for a fraction of section.

cirix wrote: Here is how you do it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3MZSqnUQbg

Can't wait to try that feature out!
But the troublesome firefly in cave O/4 has to be approached from the top left; there is no way to get below it.

( ^ the upper-leftmost one blocking the only entrance to the funnel)

Appreciate the help, finally got around to completing all 5 levels.

While I had endeavoured to only use freeze saving between each cave, and succeeded in all-but-one case, I did eventually make 0/4 the exception, finishing it in 2 stages. And my patience and sanity were both very thankful as a result.

BD2 awaits...