Rockford Amoeba

Info Page: The Boulder Dash Tools

Diamond Rockford

This section will contain some practical information on several Boulder Dash topics.

Firefly The great Boulder Dash Tools

Playing Boulder Dash is great, but it becomes even greater when you express your creativity by designing your own BD levels. The oldest and probably most famous tool is the original Boulder Dash Construction Kit, released in 1986 by First Star. Although it has its nasty bugs, the Kit is easy to use and quite self explanatory. I'm still using it with much pleasure!

Construction Kit
Design your own caves using the C-Kit.

Later, in the period 1987-1988, Lord Diego extended the original C-Kit and made his Effect Construction Kit. This tool enables you to add some special effects to your caves, like boulders turning into butterflies when bouncing, or fireflies exploding into 9 boulders. You can also (unlike in the original C-Kit) use both slime and amoebas in the same cave. And you can place as many Rockfords and exits as you like!

Two other very nice tools are No One's Enemie Designer and Charset Editor (1987). Using these tools it's possible to change the BD graphics completely. You want an alien instead of a butterfly? Or Rockford riding on a bicycle? Just make your own game graphics with the Enemie Designer. The Charset Editor can be used to modify the BD font.

Enemie Designer
It's easy to design your own graphics set.

One of the most useful BD tools has been developed in the 90's. Marek Roth, a.k.a. LogicDeluxe, created Deluxe Packer (latest version: 1.42 from 2001), continuing the work of No One and Prof. Knibble. With this tool, it's easy for anybody to create selfrunning Boulder Dash games! The procedure is simple: you design your caves with the C-Kit or the Effect Kit, put them together, choose your graphics sets (made with Enemie Designer and Charset Editor), choose the music, make a nice title screen, write an intro message, and finally crunch the game. No special skills in programming or other complicated things are required! So far I've created all my games using Deluxe Packer. It's just a great tool!!

Deluxe Packer
You can use Deluxe Packer to make your own games.

Most recently, in august 2006, Marek Roth released the latest beta version of his Crazy Light Construction Kit 3.0. This is an amazing package of tools to create your BD games, with more possibilities than ever before! Here is a short (and very incomplete) list of all the extra features:

  • You can replace a titanium wall at the border of a cave with any other element. When Rockford runs out of the cave, he returns at the other side (the same happens to other moving items). This additional feature already opens a new world for BD leveldesigners! Play my Future Dash Caveset to see how many new levels can be created.
  • Many special effects are possible. For instance, diamonds turning into boulders when falling, amoeba turning into fireflies when blocked, walls growing upwards and downwards, magic walls creating butterflies instead of diamonds, Rockford walking diagonally, etc..
  • A set of new elements is available: bombs, clocks, sweets, keys, doors, biters, acid, bubbles, Mrs Rockfords, chasing boulders, and more. This gives way to create many totally new types of caves! Although I personally wouldn't use these items very often (I'm more a "traditional" designer), it is really great for the fans that the new additions are there!
  • You can adjust more properties of your caves than in the usual construction kits. If you've made a very hard cave, you could set the timer at more than 255 seconds. Also, the maximum amoeba size can now be other than 200 units. And of course, many properties with respect to the new elements can be chosen.
  • Last but not least... there is an extended editor to create a perfect title screen, with more graphics, more moving rasters and more possible colours than in DLP. A special linker program will put your cavepack, titlescreen, graphics, etc., together to make your final game.

CLCK 3.0
Logo for the CLCK 3.0 created by CWS (Claus Skrepek).

Notice that the CLCK 3.0 is still in development. But it is yet possible to create full games out of caves designed with the construction kit. Only the cavepacker, the title editor and the manual are not 100% finished.
The latest beta version can be downloaded at Marek's site. An overview of all the plans (both realized and unrealized) is also provided at the site.

Deluxe Kit

Deluxe Kit items
Design better caves using CLCK 3.0 beta by LogicDeluxe.

More Boulder Dash info to appear soon at this page.

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