Boulder Dash Forum

1. A minor thing, but it looks like sometimes (not always, but most of the time), during the final countdown and at the very end of it (when the final score is shown), the score will quickly "flash" between the last value and something else, almost as if dropping down to some other value for a fraction of a second and then going back to the final value. Noticed it on the original BD1, as well as Firefox 01.

2. I'm playing the new multiple life mode, and this is something I'm not fully sure of yet, but it looks like the extra lives are not awarded at all at the moment? :/ Like, I played a few caves of the original Peter Liepa's BD1 from the GDash cave set, and I'm pretty sure that extra lives are every 500 points there (or maybe 1000, but I think 500), I played for a few caves in a row, earning over 2000 points in one go, and I haven't seen the "extra life flashing cave" animation even once, and I don't think I got any extra lives either. The only time I definitely got an extra life was when I reached the first intermission.

CWS wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:12 pm The multiple lives option for the Boulder Dash engine is just great!

It would be cool if playing could be continued by pressing the snap key or joystick button after losing a live.

Agetian wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:25 pm Just got in on the BD1 Atari (GDash) cave set: I played cave D and did not see it during the final countdown, then in happened on the next cave (cave E). I may be wrong, but it felt like it counted the final score to 319, then at the last possible moment, changed to something (maybe went down to 318 or something? It's impossible to actually catch), then jumped back to 319.

artsoft wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2025 7:18 pm Hm, interesting. Could be some kind of miscalculation of the final score, counting down to the calculated (wrong) value, then updating the screen with the correct value one frame later. This is only a suspicion, but I will check that...

By the way, can you please tell me what the one line fix for the extra lives is? I'd like to recompile the game with the patch applied, if it's not too much trouble

commit b13ec8015f856a227512427b5d2307ff9cc18658
Author: Holger Schemel <info@artsoft.org>
Date:   Sun Jan 19 16:49:43 2025 +0100

    fixed adding extra life when playing BD games with multiple lives

diff --git a/src/game_bd/bd_gameplay.c b/src/game_bd/bd_gameplay.c
index 791711e4..67a25f64 100644
--- a/src/game_bd/bd_gameplay.c
+++ b/src/game_bd/bd_gameplay.c
@@ -229,8 +229,8 @@ GdGame *gd_game_new(const int cave, const int level)
   game->cave_num = cave;
   game->level_num = level;

-  game->player_lives = gd_caveset_data->initial_lives;
-  game->player_score = 0;
+  game->player_lives = game_bd.global_lives;
+  game->player_score = game_bd.global_score;

   game->player_move = GD_MV_STILL;
   game->player_move_stick = FALSE;

• fixed adding extra life when playing BD games with multiple lives
• fixed clearing touch buttons in off-screen areas on Android
• fixed getting file size of BD caveset file inside Android APK file
• fixed bad use of function pointers that was breaking Emscripten port

Agetian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 21, 2025 7:15 am Nice, thanks a lot for releasing the hotfix version! Tested it a bit and, as usual, I have some new findings, hope you don't mind

First of all, I haven't noticed the "final score flickering" problem in this version (yet), I'll let you know if it happens again or if it has somehow magically fixed itself In fact, I played quite a lot of caves by now, so I can say pretty confidently that the issue does not manifest itself in this version.

Now, in this version, I noticed that the high scores are treated and saved differently compared to the previous version (I actually noticed it because I accidentally enabled saving to the high score server in this build). In 4.4.0.0 and 4.4.0.1, it seems like every level was still treated individually for the purpose of high scores (which, I believe, was actually the correct approach, it made it fair for everyone, especially on the high score server, so that high scores could still be seen for the level itself, even in a multi-life game). In 4.4.0.2, however, the high score is treated based on your current run, if you complete several caves in a row, you get incrementally higher high score for each cave (say, you beat 6 caves in a row, your high score for the 6th cave will be the total sum of scores you obtained in caves 1 through 6). I think I liked the previous approach more, where you accumulated the score correctly, but the high score was still separate for each cave. If this is the intended behavior, please remove my high scores for Peter Liepa's original BD1 from the high score server, since I accidentally saved a few scores that are way higher than would be possible for each of those caves on a separate basis

I guess this might be related to the change that was necessary to make the extra lives work. If you decide to switch back to the original approach for treating high scores, it's important that the extra lives don't end up being broken again - if I understand the code right, it might require the introduction of an extra variable separate from the current one(s) that will track the score obtained in the current level only for the purpose of the per-cave high score, but not be used for the purpose of tracking extra lives (so that the cumulative score can still be tracked for it). I might be completely wrong, but that's my impression of it

Hope this helps, and thank you very much for the BD engine in RnD again!