Boulder Dash Forum

Hi!

About twelve years ago when I was in high school I've written BD remake in Turbo Pascal for DOS. It used original graphics, sounds and music from Atari 800XL. The game worked quite well, but it didn't run under Windows XP and any newer system.

So... at the end of January 2012 I've finally decided to bring my BD project back to life and rewrite it from scratch in C++ under Windows. I've chosen Mingw compiler and OpenGL/SDL environment.

Hereby I'm pleased to present you preview of my work at this time. It's demo version including currently only one cave. Game is freeware - feel free to download it, test it and comment. Any feedback and constructive critic are welcome.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2721411/BD_Rein ... _Demo1.zip

See the readme.txt file inside of archive for more details.

I hope you'll like it. I'll keep you posted with further updates of this project.

If someone would be interested - I could also share with you my old Pascal project, but as I mentioned - it does work only under DOS or Win95/98. It can be run under WinXP (without sound), but won't work under Vista/7 in anyway. Under dosbox it works too slow.

Edit 03.11.2013: New release https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/272 ... 112013.zip

Best,

Peter

Hi peter,
thanks for sharing!
It's a shame that you moved on from Pascal...this is what I use to make programs/games

I will try it out tonight

I wouldn't mind looking at the old Turbo Pascal version anyway...

cheers,
Paul

Hi Paul!

I've chosen C++, becuase want to improve my skills in this language. BD Project seemed to be good and nice idea Anyway I'll post my TP version here someday.


Important information for everyone who downloaded my BD before:

There was a bug inside one file, which prevented program from starting on some computers. I've managed to fix it. Link in my first post points to the fixed version now.

So if anyone had problems with starting my BD, please redownload now. It should work just fine.

Best,

Peter

piter wrote:Hi Paul!

I've chosen C++, becuase want to improve my skills in this language. BD Project seemed to be good and nice idea Anyway I'll post my TP version here someday.

No worries Peter...it is always good to know more than one language
I have been doing some Java using Eclipse myself for that same reason

piter wrote:Important information for everyone who downloaded my BD before:

There was a bug inside one file, which prevented program from starting on some computers. I've managed to fix it. Link in my first post points to the fixed version now.

So if anyone had problems with starting my BD, please redownload now. It should work just fine.

Best,

Peter

Ok, I will try it tonight...I ended up not trying the previous version as I had hoped

PS: if you hadn't seem my Boulder Dash 'remake' - The Probe, you can go over here and download it:
http://theprobegame.com

Keep up the great work mate!

cheers,
Paul

paul_nicholls wrote:PS: if you hadn't seem my Boulder Dash 'remake' - The Probe,

No, I hadn't yet. I'll test it right away Thanks!

I just tried your game on my Vista laptop (integrated graphics card), and it worked just fine

I did see one thing though, the top left level square (inside the walls) was a rainbow colour...is this deliberate?

cheers,
Paul

paul_nicholls wrote:I did see one thing though, the top left level square (inside the walls) was a rainbow colour...is this deliberate?

I thought that someone will ask about it
In this project I have implemented cave format which I've made for old Pascal version. Not all of old game objects are currently supported, though. To distinguish them for debugging reasons, I've decided to give them temporarily this look. So whenever game finds item to render which is not supported, it puts on screen this rainbow piece.

On this particular demo cave, this mysterious item is Rocfkord's exit.

paul_nicholls wrote:I just tried your game on my Vista laptop (integrated graphics card), and it worked just fine

I'm glad and I hope you like it Meanwhile I've downloaded The Probe and I'm going to test it soon.

By the end of this weekend I hope I'll be able to provide you with newer version of my BD.

Best,

Peter

piter wrote:By the end of this weekend I hope I'll be able to provide you with newer version of my BD.

It'll take a little more time, but I'm on the good way.

Anyway I've got a question - maybe someone does know/remember/both. Few years ago I've found examplary cave somewhere in the Internet. It looked exactly like this (I've implemented it to my old Pascal project)



As the author of this cave explained - this cave can be used to check accuracy of BD clone engine against the original version by Peter Liepa.

Does anyone know if this article can be still found? I remember that the author explained step-by-step what will happen and what will be precedence of events.... I'd love to find this article again.

Best, Peter

I think it should be

http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/testcave.zip

And I also like

http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/BD-Inside-FAQ.html

That's my cave. The explanations for it are right here: http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/exact.html

LogicDeLuxe wrote:That's my cave. The explanations for it are right here: http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/exact.html

Thank you!!! That's it and nice to know you are that _author_ I mentioned

I've made a test of it on my new BD clone. It's partially good - regarding your explanations:

a, b, c, g - works exactly as desired

e & f - don't, I have no idea how to make Rockorrd not to explode while passing flies from the left side. Yet.

d - boulders fall in a row - exactly as in "c'" (top and middle move one field to the left at the same time and then fall one step down and top falls again to the left).

I'll have to work this out, somehow.

Anyway - it seems that my new engine is far better than the old one - in my old Pascal version only the '"d" & "g" were ok.

Best,

Peter

LogicDeLuxe wrote:This is due to the order the engine interpretes the elements.

The scan order is the clue to almost everything (including Rockford). Finally, the game physics are very simple but not very well documented. The movement of the player should take place during the cave scan, not before and not after (unlike in the bd1 engine)

Here is also a very good and important document:
http://www.elmerproductions.com/sp/peterb/

The best way to check the compatiblity is to test the caves in a C64 emulator and to compare the behaviour of the elements with your own engine.

I've just managed to work out issues with "d", "e" & "f". Everything now works fine.

General cave iteration was OK, but all of above problems (even "d" surprisingly) were caused by improper handling of Rockford's movement.

Here is what I did in logic part:

-cave was iterated through all fields. Player object was ignored.
-after the scan I checked for key handling and moved Player (if necessary)

And it was the mistake.
I've read, that in the original BD Rockford was moved during the iteration scan. So the event of player interaction rouines must have been checked before.

So now it looks like:

-check for player interaction (key pressed or so)
-iterate through cave and when you "find" Rockford - move him (if necessary)

And it works brilliant. Even the boulders in "d" fall exactly as they should (while boulders in "c" still behave ok - fall in row)

I'll put more playable demo today in the evening.

Best,

Peter
I've read, that in original BD Peter Liepa

Congrats on getting the physics working correctly mate!

Allright, here is as I promised - new demo. 21 caves in total. See the readme.txt file inside archive for details.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2721411/BD_Rein ... _Demo2.zip

I hope you'll like it.

Best,

Peter