Boulder Dash Forum

[Rob Gilbert]

I looked at the games, clones, C64 disks, and all the other Boulder Dash related material available at the fan sites and mentioned at this board, and I need some advice cause I feel a little lost. Can someone please recommend me some of the fan made Boulder Dash games that would be good for someone who played the originals and also several other action puzzle games but haven't yet played almost anything fan made? I'm looking for something that would not be too hardcore or extremely difficult and yet that would be a good demonstration of what the fans have done thus far. Also, if possible, I would prefer if it's "old school", not heavily reworked or modernized, best if with the classic Atari 800 or C-64 style graphics. I know that some fan games run in C-64 emulators, it would be good to know which ones would be good to begin with to familiarize myself a bit more with Boulder Dash fan games without frustrating myself too much with extreme difficulties. Thank you.

[zsom]

Hi Rob Gilbert.
Get started with Arno games. They are all here.
Very nice game Blue Wonder and Groessen dash.
In my opinion, the best emulator is ccs64 3.9.3.

[Rob Gilbert]

[Rob Gilbert]

I played several Arno Dash games today and i think they're very fun. I started with the first ones and played them in a ccs64 emulator. Does anyone have any experience playing these C-64 games on the go on either a Nintendo 3DS or a Nintendo DS with custom firmware? If not, i'll look into it and i'll write if i figure it out.

[Dustin]

Hi Rob Gilbert,
I understand those feelings of being lost in the giant universe of all sorts of Boulder Dash fan games very well! I felt (and feel) the same way when I want to play new fangames (although I spent far more time creating my own games than playing other fangames so far). On the other hand, of course, it's great that the choice is so big!

In addition to Anro's great games, I can also highly recommend RTA Dash 1-8, which I really loved to play! They're very much in classical style and the difficulty can be compared much with the original BD games!

If you want to explore the earliest fangames made in the 1980s, you may want to try Dr. Watson's "Boulder Dash 4" and Don Pedro's "BD5-11" Don Pedro, however, also has some very difficult caves in his games!
By far the most early fangames were made by "No One". The big majority of his caves has quite moderate difficulty!

I would of course be very happy if you tried my own Dustin's BD series for GDash, an easy-to-handle BD clone which also uses retro graphics and sounds! The series has 19 games so far, and the games feature five difficulty levels very much like the original games! Among my games, there are also collections of my personal favourite caves from Arno, Don Pedro and No One

Have fun with whichever fangames you play!
_________________
Boulder Dash X Rock, Paper, Scissors:
ROCKFORD collects DIAMOND, digs DIRT
DIAMOND outvalues DIRT & BOULDER
DIRT carries BOULDER, blocks FIREFLY
BOULDER kills FIREFLY & ROCKFORD
FIREFLY kills ROCKFORD, guards DIAMOND

[Dustin]

Sorry, I accidently double-posted the same message.
_________________
Boulder Dash X Rock, Paper, Scissors:
ROCKFORD collects DIAMOND, digs DIRT
DIAMOND outvalues DIRT & BOULDER
DIRT carries BOULDER, blocks FIREFLY
BOULDER kills FIREFLY & ROCKFORD
FIREFLY kills ROCKFORD, guards DIAMOND

[Rob Gilbert]

Hello Dustin, yes, totally, the world of Boulder Dash fangames is very vast so it's easy to feel lost, haha. So far i'm having a blast playing through Arno Dash series. Thanks for recommending RTA Dash, i'll check them out, and i would also like to try your games as well - the fact that they have difficulty levels certainly sounds appealing. What are they called?
What's great about this board and Arno Weber's site is that everything is easy to find in the game base, love it. I also love watching the top 100 caves channel linked on the front page of the site, those caves look so unusual and also very difficult. They make me go "wow" tbh - pretty much like watching someone speedrun a game or something like that. Probably way out of my league, but i may want to eventually try my hand at those as well when i get better. Do you or does anyone else know what games they are from? Are they a collection of the best caves from different fan games? They don't look like your typical C-64 games somehow. Thanks for the heads-up about GDash, sounds like a fun Boulder Dash clone to try, I'll grab it
Speaking of getting better, does anyone have any advice as to how to get better at Boulder Dash? Looks like i can get quite far by just playing games, and i do feel some improvement as i play fan games like Arno Dash, but there seems to be quite a leap between the easy levels which are easy to figure out and the harder ones that sometimes make little sense to me thus far and i can't even understand what's involved exactly in solving them, and just trying to plow through them with brute force or by doing things randomly gets me nowhere.

[zsom]

Hi.
You can learn the Gdash editor very well at the Dustin Caves. His games are best suited to Gdash, because they are made for this program.
You can't always say that about other games in Gdash, so it's better to run them straight from the c64 emulator.

Back to Dustin_dash.

My funniest game is "Stage_game"
There are caves in it that have elements specific only to Gdash, I like it very much.

Other very good sets for Gdash are the "Rock_Fort" 1,2,3 series.

And if I'm already talking about some other cool elements in Boulderdash, I strongly recommend "Crazy Dream 7", the author of Logicdeluxe.

P.S. Dustin, please think, wouldn't you like to continue playing Stage_game_2? Please.

greetings

[LogicDeLuxe]

[zsom]

Hi
Logicdeluxe,
please write,
is something going on with the XDC engine?

I would love to know if the project is under development.

[Rob Gilbert]

Hello and thank you all for more recommendations regarding good C-64 games, i tried RTA Dash (the first one) today and it was very fun too. Can't beat any of them but i did go through several levels on each game i tried, which sort of makes me proud. Going to check out Dustin's levels soon, too, and got Gdash as well, but haven't tried it yet, mostly going through the C-64 levels on Vice on my 3DS. I am interested in learning more about Gdash though because it has a level editor and i want to try my hand at designing some levels as i understand the game better, but i don't think i want to figure out how to modify levels on actual C-64 games. Amazed by some of the designs in this playlist linked from the front page, so many unusual things possible with so few elements, lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpOnKOgHZfQ&list=PLRLsD2VSWwx6rIBd_-wfHGclkwVzekloP - this done on Gdash? I think many of these levels are much bigger than C-64 ones. Unfortunately, can't find links to what levels or games they are from, i wish the playlist maker linked them....

[Rob Gilbert]

I played the first Dustin's BD for Gdash, i would like to thank the author for very good level design! I know it's an old game but it's fresh for me because i've never played it before. On one hand it feels very similar to the original games, on the other hand it has some nice creative twists here and there that make it stand off and also make it challenging. I could make it to level D/1 for now, the level with lots of butterflies surrounded by fireflies is hard for me but i'm not planning to give up. Loved C/1 too, at first i didn't realize i have to get the boulders through the magic wall to get more jewels. Great game, i'm going to check out the other games in the series too. Thx, Dustin!

[Dustin]

@Rob Gilbert
Sorry for the late answer. I'm going to activate a checkmark in my profile that I get an email whenever there's a reply
Thanks for playing Dustin's BD1! For Cave D/1, one trick can be very helpful: fireflies and butterflies have different moving behaviours. Fireflies make left turns if possible, butterflies make right turns if possible. You can use this to create one path for the fireflies and another path for the butterfly, such that the fireflies will move away from Rockford and the butterfly will follow him so you can crush it without being disturbed by the fireflies. Actually you can just watch one of the demos of the cave "Dustin's BD1 cave D level 5" on Krissz's site! That's actually quite a tricky cave, but the next caves should be easier to beat again

[quote]lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpOnKOgHZfQ&list=PLRLsD2VSWwx6rIBd_-wfHGclkwVzekloP - this done on Gdash? [\quote]
No, these caves were all created on Krissz's site! The same goes for all the caves which are uploaded on Arno's YouTube channel

@zsom
Thanks for your positive feedback and kind words Actually I have good news for you: the "Stage Game" sequel is already finished! However, there's a technical problem (it's quite complicated to explain) so I don't know when I can finally release the game. In the worst case, I'll have to recreate the caves from my head... I hope I can release it in 2022!
_________________
Boulder Dash X Rock, Paper, Scissors:
ROCKFORD collects DIAMOND, digs DIRT
DIAMOND outvalues DIRT & BOULDER
DIRT carries BOULDER, blocks FIREFLY
BOULDER kills FIREFLY & ROCKFORD
FIREFLY kills ROCKFORD, guards DIAMOND

[zsom]

Dustin, this is very good news for the sequel to "Stage_game".
I will be waiting impatiently.

greetings