cave editor question

ravenxau · Post by **ravenxau** » Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:32 am

I have a vague memory of a cave editor that used standard petscii characters and may have been written in basic....I think it may have been on a level set disk as an extra file....can anybody help, or know of other fan made cave editing programs (possibly in basic) apart from the commonly known ones like PLCK,CLCK,etc...

YouTube · Post by **Arno** » Tue Jan 23, 2018 7:27 pm

Maybe, it's Boulder Dash+ by Apollo8502?

http://www.boulderdash.nl/bdgb/view_gam ... enshot=all

ravenxau · Post by **ravenxau** » Tue Jan 23, 2018 10:04 pm

Arno wrote:Maybe, it's Boulder Dash+ by Apollo8502?

http://www.boulderdash.nl/bdgb/view_gam ... enshot=all

Thats It!!!!

Thanks Arno - you are a master

V-12/Tropyx · Post by **V-12/Tropyx** » Fri Jan 26, 2018 10:27 pm

Wow, amazing. Never seen before this editor. Looks quite funny

Dr Guru · Post by **Dr Guru** » Tue Jan 30, 2018 11:21 pm

Interesting to see this editor... the BD playfield of 40x22 (with surrounding walls) neatly fits with the PETSCII char screen (40x25) of the C64. BD was originally programmed for the Atari which has a text screen of 40x24 characters.

So I am beginning to wonder: Maybe one of the reasons that Peter Liepa chose the 40x22 playfield size was that he could employ a similar cave editor written by himself?

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 10:14 pm

Dr Guru wrote:So I am beginning to wonder: Maybe one of the reasons that Peter Liepa chose the 40x22 playfield size was that he could employ a similar cave editor written by himself?

There should be some interviews around. He stated, that the game was initially coded to use the regular 40x24 screen of the Atari with 1x1 tiles, and later decided they need 2x2 tiles to put more details into the graphics and wrote the scroll routine. So I guess, of the 40x24 screen, he used two lines for the status bar and 22 for the cave. He probably cramped the status bar into one single line later on.

The original caves were very simple in design. I wouldn't be surprised, if they just wrote the drawing instructions in the assembler source code. The early fan games were all made without a cave editor either, and their caves tend to be similar in complexity.

Dr Guru · Post by **Dr Guru** » Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:19 am

Thanks for the information, Marek! I think BD would have looked very cheap in the 8px times 8px version. Probably there wouldn't be enough details to have Rockford tap his feet when he gets bored...which probably means that Sonic the Hedgehog wouldn't tap his feet either, since I guess they copied this idea from BD.

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:54 pm

Dr Guru wrote:I think BD would have looked very cheap in the 8px times 8px version.

No guesswork needed, since there are some clones doing exactly that:
In multicolor mode, try Mini Boulder. I borrowed some ideas from that game.
Or in highres mode try Run for Diamonds or Mining.

Dr Guru · Post by **Dr Guru** » Thu Feb 08, 2018 10:30 pm

Interesting. Mini Boulder is an early work by Peter Thierolf, who collaborated with Chris Hülsbeck on several occasions (they were friends). E.g. for the Amiga they created the music program TFMX and the side-scrolling shoot-em-up Apidya which had impressive graphics and music in its time.

CWS · Post by **CWS** » Fri Feb 09, 2018 6:07 pm

By the way - there hasn't been any update to CLCK or XDC with the XDConstruction Kit for such a long time...

Dr Guru · Post by **Dr Guru** » Fri Feb 16, 2018 9:42 pm

Not quite sure...is there much to improve with CLCK? I always considered it a finished program in its current state. I didn't have any problems with bugs when working with it and it consists of a complete suite for cave editing, linking, crunching etc. including extended elements and effects and the possibility to edit your own graphics. What else do we want?