2006-08-29
The release of the outstanding one-level set
“Zelda” by Alan Bond – with a playing
time that can easily reach over one hour – again showed the limitations of
tape reloading, which takes far too long for very long tapes. This required
the invention of a new technique, which uses internal game engine snapshots
and allows for instant reloading of the last played or saved tape
without any delay. Besides that, this new version contains two major
bugfixes and is therefore considered a recommended upgrade.
Most important changes since last release version 3.2.1:
- instant tape reloading for the last saved tape using “quick save/load”
- fixed bug that prevented solving levels without exit (like in Sokoban)
- fixed bug with quick loading tapes in fullscreen with EMC game engine
Now available from the Download section!
And don’t miss “Zelda” from the
“Levels & Artwork” section!
2006-08-21
After many years of work, which involved collecting of old floppy disk images,
writing level and artwork converters and the integration of a completely new,
highly compatible game engine, the result is finally available now:
A total rework of the already existing, huge Emerald Mine Club level
collection! The main intention was to try as hard as possible to keep the
spirit of the original game play, original graphics (ECS or AGA)
and original sounds and music of this series of games for the classic
Amiga computer.
The resulting level collection released today contains 50337 single levels
in 564 level sets – probably more than anybody could play in a life. ;-)
But if you played these games on your Amiga in the past, it is most likely
that you will find nearly all EMC disks you played in this collection for a
nostalgic experience. In any case, you will find many very good level sets
with their original graphics! If you never played these games, you will find
that the graphics have a lower resolution than the normal R’n’D graphics.
For those who prefer to play these level sets with higher quality graphics,
it is planned to release an artwork specifically created for the EMC level
collection in the future.
This collection also contains some sets which re-use levels from other sets
of the same collection, in a different combination or with different artwork
(examples are the “Recycled Mines” or the “PacMine Deluxe” level sets) as an
early form of “level set mash-ups”, so don’t be surprised to find some levels
more than once in this collection. (In fact, the overall number of 50337
single levels contains “only” 41657 unique levels.) To make life easier
for those who don’t want to dig through all those hundreds of level sets, it is
planned to release a “best of” selection of those level sets which you
think should belong to such a set – therefore, please let me know which sets
you would like to see in such a compilation!
Even though this level collection is quite complete, there are still a few EMC
disks that are missing in this package. As far as I know, only the following
disks are missing now:
- Aladdin Mine 1 - 4
- Demo Mine V6
- Den Mine 13
- Down Under Mine 20
- (Into The) Dusty Mine 1 + 2
- Einstein Mine 23
- Emerald Dash 6
- RuppelMine 7
- Super Freak Professional
- Tough & Deadly
If you should have them around or find them on the web, I would be happy to
add them to this collection and close the last gaps. :-)
Important note: Due to a level time bug in version 3.2.0 that affects
the EMC levels, you should update Rocks’n’Diamonds to the new version 3.2.1
(released yesterday) to play the EMC levels!
This new level collection package is available now at the
“Levels & Artwork” section!
2006-08-20
The new game version mainly contains bugfixes for the upcoming EMC level
collection and for playing the level set “Snake Bite”, but also adds some
useful new features, like better fullscreen support and wheel mouse support.
Most important changes since last release version 3.2.0:
- fixed level time for EMC levels (needed for the upcoming EMC collection)
- fixed bug when playing “Snake Bite” (introduced with version 3.2.0)
- added selection of fullscreen mode to better match screen aspect ratio
- added key shortcut “Alt + Enter” to toggle fullscreen mode at any time
- added support for mouse scroll wheel for all scrollbar gadgets
- added support for horizontal mouse wheel scrolling by holding “Shift”
- added support for single step mouse wheel scrolling by holding “Alt”
- improved down-scaling of images for better editor and preview graphics
- moved user data folder on Mac OS X from Unix style to “Documents” folder
- moved output file “stderr.txt” on Windows to user data folder
- added Windows message box to direct to “stderr.txt” after error aborts
Now available from the Download section!
2006-07-16
This new version finally finishes the new, native game engine to play
original Emerald Mine and Emerald Mine Club levels exactly like
in the original Amiga games. This additional new engine is highly
compatible with the original game and can be optionally selected in the
level editor. But it’s main purpose is to play those thousands of original
Emerald Mine Club levels with original game play, original
graphics (ECS or AGA) and original sounds. A new, huge level
collection with hundreds of original Emerald Mine Club level sets will soon be
available for this new engine!
Besides this new game engine, the new version 3.2.0 contains a whole lot of
great new custom element features, like custom element actions to
trigger various actions on custom element change events – just play around
with all the new features in the level editor to explore all the new
possibilities, or soon have a look at stunning new level sets that
make use of these new features (so far only released in the
forum.
Finally, the new version contains a great number of bugfixes (and probably
also a lot of new bugs ;-) ).
Most important changes since last release version 3.1.2:
- finished new native game engine for Emerald Mine (Club) levels
- added all new elements from EMC engine also to R’n’D engine
- added selection between ECS and AGA graphics for EMC levels to setup
- added multi-player support for EMC game engine (with up to four players)
- added player switching (visual and quick) to R’n’D and EM game engine
- added key shortcut settings for switching player focus to setup menu
- added custom element actions for CE change page in level editor
- added “CE value” and “CE score” counters for custom elements
- added cascaded element lists to element list in level editor
- added dynamic element list with all elements used in current level
- added special Supaplex animations for Murphy being bored and sleeping
- added setup option to display element token name in level editor
- added up to five title screens for each level set to show after loading
- added credits pages to the “credits” section that were really missing
- lots of bugfixes and internal engine changes (see ChangeLog file)
Get it from the Download section now!
2006-06-05
Important update: Version 1.0.0 of ConfEdit contained a problem
in a configuration file [sic!] that caused the program to crash on Windows
installations that does not use a “.” as the decimal number separator (so
that most non-English Windows versions are affected, especially those which
use a comma as the decimal number separator, like German Windows systems).
Please download ConfEdit 1.0.1
directly
or from the Tools & Utilities
section which has this bug fixed!