Boulder Dash Forum

How did you become a Boulder Dash fan? When did you first play Boulder Dash? Was it on a real machine or on an emulator the first time? Tell something about you: how old you are, what computers did you have/do you have, etc.

[This is just copied from my email for everyone to read]

As for my BD history, I don't really have much of a story. My father played it on a [real] C64 when I was about 7-8 (somewhere around 1997 - time is always foggy to me), and then I started to pick up on it and have enjoyed it a lot ever since! A little while after that, I was confined to playing clones of it when our C64 went into "hibernation". However, two years ago, I discovered the wonderful world of emulation. Then I found the BDCK online and made RTAD1 and RTAD 2 back to back. And then I've made 3 more sequels since that. RTAD 5 is still very new, as it was released just about a month ago! Most of the clones I have were high quality ones downloaded from Martijn's BD fansite. That's pretty much it for my BD history. As for my age, I'm currently 17 (born 1990). The amazing thing, though, is that the C64 still worked when I was young, and it still does today!

I was introduced to BD by my uncle, sometime in the late 80s (I was born in 81 and I must have been 8 or 9), this was on a real C64 with a disk drive and he had a lot of BD games, 1-16 plus some other versions like Brutalo - it was only recently I realized that only I, II and III were official. I rarely played them myself but I enjoyed watching my uncle play, I thought it was too difficult and I was afraid of the fireflies.

Today I'm 25 and I'm revisiting these games for the first time since then. I use WinVICE but I think the keyboard is very unresponsive (snapping fireflies with a keyboard is a nightmare, but maybe you learn with time?). I also love the remake "Boulder Rush", which has a great feature in the "R" button: random cave!

I started this poll so it's my duty to tell my story, too!

Sometimes in 1985 it was my greatest whish to have a games console. I think the VCS2600 was very popular at that time. I've seen many nice games before in a shopping mall and I just want to have some of these games very bad! Fortunately my brother had the idea to buy a computer instead. So he bought a Commodore 64. We did not have any external device, only some cartridges like "Save New York" and some others. It was fun for a while but then I noticed without any external device it's only half the fun. So I searched for a way to get some money from my family and I bought a 1531 Datasette. The first game ever I got from a friend for the datasette was "H.E.R.O." - a great game (still is!). Some days after that I bought "Zaxxon" and "Ghostbusters". Man, this was a great time! As some friends in school also had a Commodore 64 it lasted not very long I got more games. I think one year later (I do not remember exactely) I got a 1541 Disk Drive. Now gaming finally started. I remember one magic day - I visited a "gaming" friend from school and he got some new games on disc from his cousin. And there it was - Boulder Dash! Man, this was real magic! I played it all the day, even my brother was playing it all the time. Shortly after that I got "Boulder Dash 2". And after some time it was the same with "Boulder Dash 3". I didn't like the new space graphics - but at least there where new caves. After that I got the "Boulder Dash Construction Kit". I made many caves back then - I remember that I even made some while I had the flue. Unfortunately I sold the C64 in 1987 and bought an Amiga. The badest decision I ever made (to sell the C64, not to buy the Amiga, of course!). After that time there was nearly a 10 years (!!) break playing Boulder Dash as there was never a good port of this game for the Amiga. I played Emerald Mine for some time but it was not the same. Some years later I got a C64-Emulator for the Amiga but it was soooooo slow that it was not possible to play Boulder Dash. 1992 I sold all the Amiga things and bought an Apple Macintosh LC. It was a great time but gameing was not that good on the Mac back then, maybe exept the great game "OIDS" (you should try it! GREAT! There was a port for the Atari ST too, so you can try it on an emulator these days). The magic date was 1996 - I think it was in october or november. I got a PowerMacintosh 7500 a year before. I was at a friend who also had a Mac. He told me that a friend of him is working on a C64 emulator for the Macintosh. So asked him that he should establish a contact to him in exchange for something else (I do not remember at the moment what it was). So I got the contact and I became beta-tester (I still am!) for this great program. It was version 0.8 back then (now it's 4.9.2!). I was able to play Boulder Dash again! Believe it or not - many improvements of Power64 where made because of Boulder Dash! So I started to collect everything I found concerning Boulder Dash. In 2000 or 2001 I found the homepage of Marek Roth. It was a magic date. My collection nearly exploded! I merged his collection with mine. His collection was much bigger and he had the knowledge to fix many games. I made my first game "CWS Boulder Dash 1" with his Deluxe Packer 1.4.2. I wrote many mails to Marek within the next one or two years concerning his Packer and his Deluxe Kit. One day he started work on CLCK 3.0. Beginning this project was the greatest day in Boulder Dash history ever! I used his "work in progress" CLCK 3.0 to make some new caves for my "CWS Boulder Dash 2". I even started Volume 3 but as CLCK 3.0 is still not finished I wait until final release to release my new game. I hope he could finish it soon! In the mean time I found many new friends in Boulder Dash community. Firefox is one of them (maybe the first). I even met him about two years ago. Nice guy! Unfortunately he does not have much time since then as he got married and his child was born. I was also very happy to find the creator of "Quolder Dash" - Klaus Quindt. He is 61 now and he is really a nice guy! I found him by chance in a forum (I was searching for nearly two years!). I found him at "http://www.zock.com/8-Bit/forum.cgi". I posted a message and some time later he was searching for his name with google just to see if there is something posted about him. So he found me. It's a great contact! I got all his Quolder Dashes (many where lost but now we have all of them!). Unfortunately I did not have the time to mail him for the last 6 months at least - I really should mail him! I also was in contact with Holger Schemel since 2002 - the programmer of Rocks'n'Diamonds. He promised to implement a Boulder Dash engine several times. I hope he finds the time to do that! I also want to greet Guido Mersmann - the programmer of Amiga BoulderDäsh. A great clone! In November 2003 Arno Weber mailed the first time. And so I found his great games and we mailed a lot. Also a nice contact (hello, Arno!:). In 2005 I found Marcin Liwek the programmer of Boulder Remake for the PC. It was a very very great contact as I found Boulder Remake 1.6 and there was a lot of space for improvements. Believe it or not - it it because of me that Boulder Remake is was it is today. I didn't like the 24 x 24 size of version 1.6 so he implemented 32 x 32 and 40 x 40. He also implemented custom sounds, custom menues and last but not least many objects from First Boulder Engine and, of course, CLCK 3.0! Unfortunately he is very mad at me now because he didn't stand citicism. I was never unfriendly or similar but it was always my intention to make Boulder Remake the best clone ever. I think he didn't like that. That's a pitty. But maybe we get the source for 2.0 some day. Marek agreed to bring Boulder Remake to perfection when we get source 2.0. Would be great! In 2006 I found odo! Nice guy, nice games! Hi, odo! We mailed a lot concerning Boulder Remake. In 2006 I also found Martijn Mooij. He is the owner of http://www.bd-fans.com/. He continues the legacy. All C64 Boulder Dash games on one site! Great! Hi, Martijn! Man, you are the best! And now - the Boulder Dash forum! Wow! So many new contacts here! So many fans! So many nice people! Wooooow!

I'm sure I forgot to mention so many things, but that's my story! Maybe, if I remember new details, I'll continue posting about my Boulder Dash story.

I forgot to tell you that I really like to play C64 games on my PSP with PSPVice - the C64 emulator for the Sony PSP games console. It's absolutely great!

There we go....

First note: Great to see that BD lives among the generations that came after the C64 as well. I consider myself as one of those too (and always thought I'm the only one until John and RTADash replied on this topic!) - I was born in 1981 (now 25 y.o.).

When I had my first glance at Boulder Dash, I was very young and not able to play it. My parents bought a C64 sometime in the 80's and played games, together with my two older brothers. I remember when they played BD, I was fascinated by it, although I had no clue of whatever the goal of the game was. I imagined the game was like a large building and each cave was a "floor" in this building. Some floors were silent and friendly, others were dangerous. It were the things like colours, sounds and presence of an amoeba that made up the character of the floors. Also I thought that the inbox and outbox were elevators. (It turned out later on that I was actually mixing up with another game, Paradroid, in which are real elevators!)

I got older and played with the C64, and also Boulder Dash. This was very addictive! Most children of my age used game consoles like Sega and Nintendo, but I was never interested in it. I liked the simple gameplay, and moreover, C64 games could be copied from friends while modern games were very expensive! I kept playing BD. After BD1, I got No One's 16 BD, BD2 and 3. Also I tried to draw maps of the BD caves. At young age I was fascinated by maps in general. (I was drawing maps of all places I visited, and also designed my own cities and other things by making maps). So having a map of the BD games, in the right colors, would be really fantastic! However, it was hard to make maps by hand while playing the game, because many times the objects move before Rockford gets in.

Later on I got the BD Construction Kit and started to create many caves and intermissions. I still have some disks full with BD caves. Really happy I was when I discovered the C64 emulators and the cave packing tools on internet (I never had these tools on the real C64...). I was amazed that still new BD tools for C64 (DeluxePacker, CLCK, etc..) were in development. In 2002 I started creating selfrunning games. Arno Dash 1 to 5 roughly consist of caves that I created years before with the real C64. Note that I first created a lot of intermissions with the CK, before moving on to (bigger) caves. AD1 level 5 is in fact a reconstruction of my first BD level ever created.

Somewhere in 2003 I launched my own Boulder Dash fansite, inspired by the work of Marek, Firefox, and some others. One of the highlights for me, in the development of the site, is the interview with Peter Liepa, creator of the original Boulder Dash for the Atari. It was hard to find him, but whooow, a very special feeling when his first email appeared in my mailbox! Also a highlight for me is the creation of the Longplays of BD1 and 2. While making these Longplays I tried to record optimal solutions of the original caves (optimal either in time, or in #diamonds, or a combination of both ). Both are now available at http://www.c64-longplays.de/. Another project which I consider a highlight is the BDCFF2MAPS converter. Finally the existence of the BDCFF format (and a great tool by Tim Stridmann to generate these files) enabled me to create the BD maps I dreamed of for years!

Of course the most recent highlight is this BD forum. In the beginning I didn't expect many users and posts, but look at it now! It's becoming a great source of BD information (not only technical details, but also nice BD thoughts and viewpoints from the fans). I'm very grateful to all the Members who are active, and hopefully there will be even more in the future.

I still have lots of plans in mind for new BD releases, but unfortunately real life takes up much of my time.... Anyway, more highlights are awaiting for sure.

I bought a C=64 in the 80s and played many games. A friend of mine introduced me to Boulderdash and we spent too many hours playing it
I think he had his C=64 first so he'd bring it over to plug into my parent's TV.
The game idea is so simple yet so addictive. I prefer the original stuff (of course except that space age bd3 or whatever it is. shees. my eyes!).
We got the CK and used to play around with that a fair bit, swapping levels with each other and trying to make some cool and fun levels.

I discovered BD1 when it came out. I was about 6 or 7 and back then every game on the C64 seemed amazing (I especially remember Kotokoni Wilf).

I was very bad at BD gameplay and any level where fireflies could be let loose would be extremely scary. I was also slightly scared of killing them with boulders because I guess I was intimidated

I made a poster for BD, using a cutout of an advert for the game, screenshots, and my own writing, stuck to cardboard, and I gave a talk about it at primary school.

First I'll describe my thoughts on BDI:



This cave was easy enough, though I remember not being able to beat it on levels 4 or 5, which just seemed insane. The colour scheme here became burned into my brain and it's my favourite colour scheme to use with caves - it has a special nostalgic feeling which I try not to overuse.



This was also easy, and another favourite colour scheme (in particular I found the pink dirt appealing, lol), but I couldn't complete it on the higher levels because the roaming fireflies terrified me.



I had MUCH difficulty with this even on level one. Obviously I didn't have the logical thinking and planning that I have now! Colours give this a dark and foreboding feel which suits it.



When I was a few years older I could get here easily, but I didn't like killing the butterflies, it made me nervous. These days I gleefully waste those butterflies without a second thought, showing a marked increase in ruthlessness



Lots of trouble here. When I came back to rediscover BD via emulation, I developed a solution to this cave (going through the squares right to left) which made it infinitely easier. In the 80's I could get past this level but it caused a lot of sweating!



Not so difficult as previous cave, thanks to the boulders, so I managed to beat this cave on easy levels in the 80's fairly consistently.



I never got past this cave in the 80's, because I had no idea how to make more diamonds By the 90's I was going to computer clubs and learned how to solve this level, but it was still quite difficult to do. The fact that the walls are green with the amoeba means that this colour scheme made a big impression on my imagination.



Never got here until early 90's.. Since I'd never seen these caves before it was quite exciting. Of course I'd used the C-Kit and played BDII before I saw this cave, so I was under the impression that all caves were in fact made in the PL-CK.



Classic cave, quite tough to beat but I could do it in the 80's. The masses of boulders and diamonds that you can't reach down the sides give it a mysterious air. The way the boulders and diamonds fell down and made piles seemed very realistic.



This level would always finish me off in the 80's. It wasn't until I was a lot older that I grasped an understanding of how to predict and manipulate the firefly's movement and trap them in loops. Once or twice I beat this screen in the 80's, by fluke, lol



A very devious cave on any level which I still find tricky to this day!



I remember feeling slightly disappointed by this cave when I met it in the early 90's (after a lot of struggle beating the prior few caves). I still didn't have a reliable concept of breaking walls with explosions, but I could do it - it was a bit hit and miss.



Classic cave with classic colours and of course the amoeba. I found it hard but I could beat it in the 80's, if I concentrated hard, lol



Never got past this screen, until I came back to the game in 2005. It was just too hard back then. I was however fascinated with the way this cave consists of a large amount of almost white dirt.



When I got here in 2005 I found it to be another disappointing screen. The space to the right isn't utilized at all and the magic wall gameplay is made awkward by the engine bug.



Also slightly disappointing and anticlimatic, but it is a good cave. Maybe a unique colour scheme would've made it more appealing. It can also be quite hard to get the right amount of diamonds but then it IS the last level. (The last level of BDII was much more satisfying).

Thoughts on BDII and the PL-CK:

We recieved BDII also when it came out, and upon playing BDII I found it not only a great sequel, but it gave me an almost spiritual yearning to have a construction kit. When my prayers were answered a little while later, I was in 8 bit heaven! I made many caves with this which are lost to the winds, most of which were utterly terrible as I still didn't have an overall sweeping vision spanning the entire gamut of BD gameplay, which I feel I do have today.

Modern times:

It was actually discovering the Crazy Light CK on the Internet which got me back into BD designing. Though ironically, while I initially wanted to build with this advanced kit, I've so far done most of my work using the original PL-CK, and want to continue in this vein, experimenting with all the possible effects and styles you can create with this early technology, before moving on to the much easier and luxurious CLCK.

Thank you Sendy, that was very interesting to read! I can totally recognize the feeling of being terrified of the fireflies, as I wrote in a previous post. And the first cave's colour scheme is definitely burned into my brain as well.

Thanks for taking the time and explaining your story!

Hello everyone This is my first post here and I'd like to tell you my story

When I was almost 5 years old in October 1986 my father bougth Atari 800XL. Few months later we all have discovered Boulder Dash. There is a funny story connected with us playing BD - my parents always started from Cave A but whenever I tryed to play random cave has appeared. No one knew what I was doing but they quickly found out how to change starting cave on a title screen. Answer was simple - I was moving joystick in random directions and then pressing fire

On Atari there was several versions of BD (official were of course BD1, BD2 and BD Construction Kit) and some clones. One of them was game "Rockford" which I have found in late 1988. The other one was great polish game named "Robbo" which was released in 1989.

In 90's the PC era has finally begun and I have found out one of the greatest BD clones - Supaplex. Firstly I have played it on my friends Amiga 500 then PC version.

In mid 90's (or maybe even later) I've found C-64 & Atari emulators for PC. Good old days has returned - and so BD did. When I was playing again BD I started to think that in pure original version it is timeless game. I was enjoying it as much as few years before.

In 2000 I've started to write my own BD clone in Borland Turbo Pascal. I wanted my game looked like original from Atari which I've remembered so good from time when I was a little kid. The original graphics, sound, similar engine with some new elements. From 2000 up to 2001 I was constantly improving my game, then was a "little" break and in 2003 I have finished final version. It is (I think) highly playable and I'd like to share it with you as soon as I figure out where I could put it in Internet so everyone could download it. I know that my engine is not exact original engine and game still needs improvements. Unfortunately, I don't have as much time as I'd like to continue this project.

Some time ago I've found Arno's website but just few days ago I have found out this forum and made decision to sign up and write this post. Even if I don't continue to write my own BD-clone, the Boulder Dash is the most finest and timeless games which I remember from childhood.

best regards, peter

Hi Piter, welcome to the forum!
Thanx for telling your story, and I'm looking forward to try your game soon when it's launched!

See you around!

Arno's welcome PM encouraged me to introduce myself here. I've started playing Boulder Dash in the early 80s on my C64, loved part 2 and still hate the design of part 3 and alterations with new physics After having played through all 500+ levels on the first (?) Noone disk I turned my attention to other games occasionally playing a game of Boulder Rush on my PC.

In 2007 I became webmaster of C64-Longplays.de and contributed some longplays of my alltime favourites like Wizball, Rainbow Islands, Thing On A Spring and so on. Boulder Dash however was already taken by Arno

After 20 years I've finally finished all Castles of Dr. Creep and I'm currently working my way through the Dungeons. When UnlimitedStar23 popped up over at Forum64.de I got interested in the cave he had trouble with which reminded me again of my selfmade levels I'd made back then with the original construction kit and which I may yet release to the public once I made up my mind about what engine/editor to use.

Hello, everyone!

I was about 12 when the first version of Boulder Dash came out, and my dad had an Atari 800XL. It quickly became a favorite game, and when BD2 came out we got that as well. That's as far as we went with the original game - never got BD3 (just as well) or played any of the hacks.

Later, we had an Atari 520ST, and bought the construction set, which I didn't care for as the "feel" of the original game was gone; it felt as if it had been put together without much care. At that point I lost interest in the game.

Years later, I got my own PC, and found a few clones, however none of them really kept my interest for long. Later again, I found Boulder Rush. It was both exciting and disappointing at the same time. There were some obvious bugs in the BR engine, and BD2 (my favorite) wasn't even in the package. To date, BR has the best emulation of the original sound and feel of the game (Atari at least), but its shortcomings make it unlikely I'll use it much.

Forward to the present: I find Boulder Remake, and almost like it a lot except that the smooth movement doesn't suit me all that well. At almost the same time, I find Gdash, and now I'm interested... Finally a clone that's both accurate and the source is available. So I've started playing again and I'm thinking about what kind of game I might eventually make.

hi

so, here is my story

i was 8, when i got a c64 for christmas. that was a huge surprise, as i only heard about computers before that. also, before 1989-1990, here in hungary, people were usually not allowed to travel to the western countries. when the transition to the democratic political system happened, many travelled to the neighbouring countries - just to buy things which were unavailable here. my c64 was bought in vienna many of my classmates also got c64's for the same christmas

i also got a lot of tapes with games. one of theme was afl boulder dash - that was the first one i ever saw. for weeks i didn't really know what to do - usually i tried to collect all the dirt in the cave, taking care that i didn't let the fireflies out, as they did kill me. but of course i couldn't solve any levels without collecting (and creating) diamonds - check afl boulder dash cave 01 to see what i'm talking about later i decided how to play the game, and moved on to cave 02. i also got other boulder dash games, for example the original boulder dash 1 - that would have been an easier place to start and understand the elements without any advice.

about 7-8 years later we bought a pc. (and sold the c64 - a big mistake.) there was not really a good clone. felix was just ridiculous. i hated supaplex as its rules are a bit different from bd. (i could easily solve bd1 cave c, but i just couldn't to supaplex: collector... only because the falling of the stones is a bit different. it was really annoying.) so i played bd in an emulator. it was something like 1992-1993 back then; the internet was not widely available. one could not just type "boulder dash clone" in google and download some game... it took months till i could copy some c64 emulator from a friend.

as i learned pascal, i started to write a clone. it was called doomdash, as the graphics were stolen from doom1. later i found somebody on irc, who drew some cells - the player looked like an alien, for example. therefore the game was renamed to moulder dash, as a hint to x-files i also started to port the game to linux (svgalib, console), but it was abandoned. boulder rush was the game which inspired me to start developing a clone once again. that was in 2006, when gdash was started. it was much easier that time, as i found the boulder dash page of peter broadribb in the internet, for example.

i'm not a very good player of bd, but i like it very much. i must admit that i never finished all caves of bd2. i like bd3 better. and i hate bd1 cave j! that is why sometimes i ask many of you in a private message, if you know some specific game or effect. and also the reason why your reports about engine inaccuracies are very important for me. to me, programming the clone is even more exciting.

cirix wrote:so, here is my story

Nice story, thanx for telling! Quite funny that you spent such a long time in AFL Boulder Dash, one of the many average, imho, PLCK games