Rocks'n'Diamonds with Krissz game engine

[igormakovsky]

This level seem unsolvable from the beginning, where the hatching phase tooks too long to be able to run away safely:

Chayan's Boulderdash, cave 14

Check if it works fine in the original engine.

[artsoft]

Not a single common human life will be enough to play all of those! Thank you.

You're probably right, so choose wisely what to play.

But then, it's the same as with the GDash cave collection: Nobody will ever be able to play all those caves, but I hope that everybody will be able to find and play their personal, favorite BD caves they played back in the day!

Question: many rooms got comment-like texts in level info since the latest update. That's pretty neat, but how does Trischi leaves them there like in the following screenshot? Is that some sort of a feature for Krissz engine?

Congratulations, you were fast enough with the download of the new package, for which I accidentally activated that feature that is still work in progress, and which I deactivated again soon after, and updated the package accordingly.

Yes, this is a feature of the Krissz BD engine web site: You can comment other players caves there. And these comments seem to be a valuable addition to the caves, sometimes containing hints how to play a certain cave...

[artsoft]

This level seem unsolvable from the beginning, where the hatching phase tooks too long to be able to run away safely:

Chayan's Boulderdash, cave 14

Check if it works fine in the original engine.

As can be seen, this is an "old engine" cave, which unfortunately is not fully compatible with R'n'D's native BD engine (which is fully compatible with the "new engine", but not with the "old engine"). But this is indeed an interesting cave in that regard! Apparently (as you already mentioned) the hatching time in the old and new engine is different. So maybe this could be adjusted in the BD engine, to better support the "old engine" caves! I will have a closer look at it (both when played with R'n'D's BD engine, and with the original Krissz BD engine) and see what I can do about it.

[artsoft]

I will have a closer look at it (both when played with R'n'D's BD engine, and with the original Krissz BD engine) and see what I can do about it.

OK, just fixed it! The old Krissz engine must be played with a hatching time that is two game cycles (game frames in BD notation) less than the new Krissz engine to behave exactly like in the original (old) Krissz BD engine. With the correction, this level can be solved now.

[igormakovsky]

OK, just fixed it!

Great!
Will you release new rnd version later, then?

[artsoft]

Yes, of course! But it will still take a little time before the next release, because I'm just in the middle of a number of other changes and additions.

(If it would be a mission critical bug, I would release a hotfix version instantly, but as "old engine" caves currently are not guaranteed to be fully compatible anyway (even with this hatching delay correction), I think it should be fine to have this change with the next "regular" release.)

[igormakovsky]

That's perfectly fine by me, will just skip those unplayable levels by now — there are way too many others. Take all the time you need.

[artsoft]

OK, just fixed it! The old Krissz engine must be played with a hatching time that is two game cycles (game frames in BD notation) less than the new Krissz engine to behave exactly like in the original (old) Krissz BD engine. With the correction, this level can be solved now.

I forgot to mention that a new version of Rocks'n'Diamonds is already available that contains the correction mentioned above:

* R'n'D download page

That is, R'n'D 4.4.2.x will correctly handle "old engine" Krissz BD caves in that regard now.

[artsoft]

And another update:

Here comes the latest update of the "Krissz Engine cave collection"!

I am happy to tell you that the cave collection is now complete!

That is, all caves available on Krissz BD web site as of today (and even a few hundred more that once were available there, too) are now part of the new package: 22410 caves in 898 cave sets!

The package also contains replay files for 7467 caves, which you can play by clicking on the "play" button to the right of the cave preview in the main menu, if available for that cave.

Then, as a new feature of this release, the package also contains messages from other players for 7638 caves, which you can read by clicking on the "envelope" button to the left of the cave preview in the main menu, if available for that cave.

The package can be downloaded using the updated link in the first post of this thread, or directly here.

Thanks again to all cave authors, and have fun playing all those great BD caves!

[BadDog73]

Outstanding.

What makes the cave set run in 20x12 instead of the Krissz window size? I would like to play First Star games in the larger window but I don't see where that is specified.

[artsoft]

What makes the cave set run in 20x12 instead of the Krissz window size?

All cave sets of the Krissz cave collection should play in the larger screen size (30x18 tiles) used by the Krissz engine by default -- if it doesn't, check the "graphics" settings in the "custom artwork" setup menu if you have configured a different artwork to override the current one.

I would like to play First Star games in the larger window but I don't see where that is specified.

You mean the classic BD caves in the GDash cave collection? These are played with the classic default screen size of 20x12 by default, but can easily be played with Krissz engine style 30x18 screen size by using the Krissz engine graphics set in the "custom artwork" setup menu and using the "override: yes" option (to force using the Krissz style artwork instead of the classic BD artwork).

Hope that helps!

[BadDog73]

Yes, that's it!

Thank you.