Boulder Dash Forum

Just noticed that there are differences between the original BD2 game and the Super BD version:

- Cave B requires 80 diamonds at all five levels, while in the original BD2 the required amounts are 75, 80, 85, 90, 95.
- The dirt color is also modified in the slime-caves E and M:

Wow, nice that you found that. The dirt modification doesn't even look good in the amoeba caves, but it's really strange that it's also used in the slime caves. I wonder why they did that. Are there more differences between BD2 and SBD-2? Maybe SBD-2 has the magic wall bug again?

Simon wrote:Maybe SBD-2 has the magic wall bug again?

Why should it?
Also there is no "the magic wall bug" as there are at least two of them plus an arguable one:
- The magic wall timer still running when in pause mode is certainly a bug
- Spaces drawn on wrong positions rendering things invisible and let appear diamonds laying on the magic wall when there really is none, certainly is another bug.
- The timing which can be used to let the amoeba convert to diamonds, is an arguable one. Probably Peter Liepa considered this a bug, while the BD3 team apparently didn't.

I have to check, if any of the known bugs were fixed in Super Boulder Dash, but I guess not. I think, they rather recompiled the games, just to add the EA-logos. But then again, we already have further differences in BD2.

Also, there was the cavescan restarting when a boulder was dropped onto it- I don't know if its technically a magic wall bug, but it certainly wouldn't happen without it. Or is that the same as the amoeba converting one? I wouldn't know.

RTADash wrote:Also, there was the cavescan restarting when a boulder was dropped onto it- I don't know if its technically a magic wall bug, but it certainly wouldn't happen without it. Or is that the same as the amoeba converting one?

Exactly. Restarting the cavescan tricks the amoeba to not count the remaining possibilities of growing in the remaining part of the cave.

Sure, he removed this "feature" in BD2, which can be considered a bug fix, but for all we know, he could just got annoyed by this "feature" and changed it because of that (much like he removed the need to press F1 in the title screen).
Maybe, we should ask Peter Liepa himself. That's the only way to find out for sure if this was an intended but not used in BD1 feature or if this was in deed a bug which was merely exploited in BD3.

Arno, could you do this and add that information to the interview page, then?

LogicDeLuxe wrote:Arno, could you do this and add that information to the interview page, then?

Peter Liepa wrote his BD games for the Atari. Are these magic wall issues and bugs also present in the Atari version? And was the cavescan "bug" removed in Atari-BD2 as well?

Arno wrote:Peter Liepa wrote his BD games for the Atari. Are these magic wall issues and bugs also present in the Atari version? And was the cavescan "bug" removed in Atari-BD2 as well?

Good questions. I have to check them as well. But I suspect they are the same, because those aren't system specific things.
System specific bugs are at least the "when the screen scrolls left and you're running towards the right, Rockford pauses for one frame when the scroll direction changes"-bug in BD1, and the sounds played with wrong pitch occasionally.

Let's see what C64 bugs are actually present in the Atari version:

In two player games, the scores display is not updated until the player earns some points.
not present.

Also in two player games, the Inbox is flashing slightly longer, rendering some caves unplayable.
present in BD1, not present in BD2.

When the game is paused, the timers for Amoeba and the Magic Wall are still running. The Magic Wall even stops milling during a paused game when the milling time runs out.
not present.

When a game is paused and unpaused, the Amoeba can be heared before the start signal.
not applicable as the amoeba sound is played immediately in the Atari version. Still, it is somewhat inconsequently done as the amoeba is muted while the magic wall is still ringing in pause mode.

When the screen scrolls left and you're running towards the right, Rockford pauses for one frame when the scroll direction changes.
not present.

When dropping a Diamond into the Magic Wall without converting it to a Boulder (which happens if either there is no Space under it or if the milling time is up), the Diamond appears to be lying on the Magic Wall when there really is just Space left. The Space is drawn at the wrong place, hence some other elements become invisible.
not present.

And now, for the magic wall amoeba converting "bug" in question.
not present. Thus BD3 won't work correctly, if you just copied the caves.

Oh dear, what a poor porting job. At least, they got the SID sounds right, which do sound a million times better than those Atari bleeps.
Interesting, that the only bug in the Atari version seems to be the longer 2-player-delay. I wonder, if there actually was a reason for that.

EDIT: just checked Super Boulder Dash's BD1 and BD2, too. All bugs from the initial C64 releases are still there, no fixes. Oddly enough that they found the time to change the caves in BD2 for no apparent reason.

LogicDeLuxe wrote:Let's see what C64 bugs are actually present in the Atari version: [...]

Wow, cool! Do you have the complete source code to the Atari version, or how are you able to check all these questions so fast?

Simon wrote:Wow, cool! Do you have the complete source code to the Atari version, or how are you able to check all these questions so fast?

I loaded them in an Emulator. The executables I have are not compressed, just I took a hexeditor and quickly changed the regular wall in BD 1, Cave A into a magic wall and the outbox into an amoeba. And in BD 2, you can pretty much just start with the caves suitable for testing those things right out of the box.

Can't remember exactely but I think all these bugs are not present in CLCK 3.0, aren't they!?

By the way - any idea when it will become final?

CWS wrote:Can't remember exactely but I think all these bugs are not present in CLCK 3.0, aren't they!?

All of them were fixed over the years, exept for When a game is paused and unpaused, the Amoeba can be heared before the start signal. No one really found this one distracting, so no one cared about fixing this.

By the way - any idea when it will become final?

When it's done.
The next thing to do is the English translation of the manual.
Then finish the titlescreen editor and translate the editors, so all becomes bilingual.
And finaly, I probably do a modified version of the Enemie[sic!]designer. Any nifty ideas for the name of the CL-tools-version?

Crazy Light Creatures Kit (CLCK)...

Crazy Light Elements Designer sounds nice as it describes the program perfectly.

CWS wrote:Crazy Light Creatures Kit (CLCK)...

Crazy Light Elements Designer sounds nice as it describes the program perfectly.

Not really. Those names (including Enemiedesigner) doesn't tell, that it's for the graphics, and not for the behavior. Also neither Enemy nor Creature isn't that precise, as Diamonds for example hardly belong to that category. Elements is better, but still doesn't precisely tell, what it does.

Just some thoughs. If I don't find a better name, I'll just stick with Enemiedesigner. The manual will tell what it does anyways, and it isn't hard to find out either.

To continue the topic...
I found two other differences between Super BD2 and BD2 original:

- The cave selection menu is accessed by pressing either F1 or Fire-button, while in BD2 you must press the Fire-button. (See also the quiz by RTADash, question #3.)
- The release year mentioned on the title screen is 1984, but it's 1985 in BD2... Weird!