Boulder Dash Forum

...just to see who's still around.
Post whatever you want to.

OK, let's see. Anything new? Ah - yes! I bought an arcade cab (Europlay) with a PCB board with some games on it lately. Boulder Dash from DataEast is also available. So I play Boulder Dash sometimes on my arcade machine...

I'm still dreaming of writing a "perfect" BoulderDash engine for the C64, and maybe for the Amiga, too.
By the way, are there any BoulderDash clones for the Amiga that look and feel like the real C64 BoulderDash?

Simon wrote:I'm still dreaming of writing a "perfect" BoulderDash engine for the C64

What exactly are your criteria for a "perfect" BoulderDash engine?
I started the XDC engine some time ago. It is very accurate with BD1, BD2 and PLCK caves already. The only minor incompatibility would be the milliseconds based timing, which would be no problem at all for newly designed caves. Also the sound is a bit different, as I didn't wanted another Pokey imitation, but efficiently allocated SID channels dynamically.
The engine is completely written from scratch, with the exception of the Bresenham line algorithm. It uses the same intro and title screens and graphics sets as CrLi does, thus those tools can be reused for this engine.
Planned features are the rest of CrLi and the completion of the compiling tools, which are very alpha right now. No promises when I find the time, though.

By the way, are there any BoulderDash clones for the Amiga that look and feel like the real C64 BoulderDash?

None that I know of. There are C64 emulators though. I didn't try, as I only have an unexpanded Amiga 1200 with a 170 MB harddisk.

LogicDeLuxe wrote:

Simon wrote:I'm still dreaming of writing a "perfect" BoulderDash engine for the C64

What exactly are your criteria for a "perfect" BoulderDash engine?

Hm, I don't have exact criteria. First of all, it's about the fun of writing the engine myself from scratch.
I'd like the look and feel to be 100% identical to BD1 or BD2, but without the magic wall bugs. Internally, I'd like the engine to be as efficient as possible, not wasting any CPU cycles. The spare cycles could then be used for some cool ideas like more colors or bigger caves.

LogicDeLuxe wrote:

Simon wrote:By the way, are there any BoulderDash clones for the Amiga that look and feel like the real C64 BoulderDash?

None that I know of. There are C64 emulators though. I didn't try, as I only have an unexpanded Amiga 1200 with a 170 MB harddisk.

Fine, so writing a perfect BoulderDash clone that works on an unexpanded Amiga 500 and looks, sounds and feels exactly like BD1 and BD2 on C64 does indeed still make perfect sense.

If I had the time to spare...

Simon wrote:I'd like the look and feel to be 100% identical to BD1 or BD2, but without the magic wall bugs.

XDC looks identical, except my cave window is 8 rasterlines taller, and messages are in a player specific color to make it easier to tell which turn it is/was.
The physical magicwall bug is there as an option. The visual part of that bug is not implemented.

Internally, I'd like the engine to be as efficient as possible, not wasting any CPU cycles. The spare cycles could then be used for some cool ideas like more colors or bigger caves.

Good luck in finding any spare cycles. You will notice that an accurate Boulder Dash engine is quite demanding on a C64. Unlike the Atari version does, scrolling can't be accelerated. Even tricks used on some sidescrolling games are virtually worthless. I considered many options when I started coding XDC. You may surprise me with your implementation, of course.

Fine, so writing a perfect BoulderDash clone that works on an unexpanded Amiga 500 and looks, sounds and feels exactly like BD1 and BD2 on C64 does indeed still make perfect sense.

Should be possible. The blitter should be fast enough for smooth animation. Taking a look how well Turrican performs, it merely occasionally stucks when the screen is almost filled with waterfalls, but since Boulder Dash needs much less colors, a stock Amiga 500 should be able to handle this.