Commodore Free 9/Commodore_Free_Issue_09_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.iv webber

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 13KB | 398 lines

u      Interview with Arno Weber
           Boulder Dash fan

NP: Please introduce yourself to our
reader and give a little background
about yourself.

AW: Hi, I'm Arno, born in 1981 in
Utrecht, The Netherlands. In daily
life I'm a student in Mathematics, but
right now, in order to finish the
study, I am doing my master thesis at
some consultancy company. Next to this
work I have several hobbies. One of
them is retro gaming, especially
Boulder Dash!

NP: What is your website all about?

AW: My site is dedicated to the
classic game Boulder Dash. Although
the focus is on the Commodore 64
version, I will probably pay some
attention to other versions and clones
as well. For those readers who don't
know the game, it's a platformer in
which you control a guy called
Rockford through a series of caves.

In order to complete a cave a certain
amount of diamonds has to be
collected. When this amount is
collected an exit opens which leads
you to the next cave. During the
search for diamonds you meet different
obstacles like falling boulders,
walls, and deadly fireflies and
butterflies. On the other hand, you
often need these items to reach the
diamonds, or to create new diamonds.

NP: So Boulder Dash what is all the
fuss about, what makes this a great
game?

AW: I think it is so popular because
the game is both simple and complex.
The levels of the original BD (also
called "caves") are made up of only 10
different items. Still, by combining
these items, it is possible to create
many different types of caves. Because
each element has its own specific
properties, a Boulder Dash cave is
like a puzzle that must be solved by
logic/strategic reasoning. This makes
the game addictive, which is probably
the basis of the success. For example,
a firefly is a deadly enemy, but at
the same time, these animals must be
used to get behind a wall (by
explosion).

Also the difficulty of BD caves is
extremely varying. Some of them are
easy ("just get a few diamonds and
find the exit"). Other caves are a
challenge for the most experienced BD
players.

Another reason for the success is the
existence of Boulder Dash editors and
many other tools, which enable the
fans to create their own (standalone!)
Boulder Dash games. Thanks to these
tools a lot of fan games have been
created over the years.

NP: Can you tell our reader a little
about the Boulder Dash history?

AW: The first Boulder Dash game was
brought out in 1983 for the Atari 800.
Peter Liepa wrote it together with
Chris Gray, and First Star Software
released the game. The conversions for
Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX
Spectrum, and other platforms, were
released a bit later. 1985 was the
year of Boulder Dash II and 1986 the
year of the Construction Kit. But
even before that time a lot of fan
games were created because the authors
simply copied the Boulder Dash I
engine and edited the caves. Most fan
games were made for the Commodore 64.
Also for this machine a lot of useful
BD tools were  created. By the late
80's and early 90's some tools
appeared that could be used to create
standalone games out of caves designed
by the Construction Kit. Since the
rise of the internet in the late 90's,
Boulder Dash seems more popular than
ever before. Many websites devoted to
Boulder Dash were launched, and via
these sites the tools were more spread
out than before that time. At
http://www.gratissaugen.de/erbsen/ you
can read more about the history of BD
at the section "Highlights and flops"
(unfortunately this is only in German
at the moment, but very nice to read).
Last year 4 new BD fans have released
their first games V all inspired by
the websites! As for now (2007) more
than 1000 fan games are available.
For those who want to download them:
the most complete collection can be
found at Martijn's BD fan site:
http://www.bd-fans.com/

NP: I notice you design your own
Boulder Dash games. Can you let our
reader know more, are they freely
available for download?

AW: At the moment I have created 24
Boulder Dash games, each consisting of
16 caves and 4 intermissions.
(Intermissions are small "caves" in
which you gain a free bonus life, and
mostly get more points per collected
diamond.)  All games can be freely
downloaded at the "games" section. The
biggest series consists of Arno Dash 1
to 20. These games usually have medium
difficulty. Two other games are
Exploding Dash 1 and 2. If you play
these you shouldn't be afraid of
fireflies and butterflies since there
are many of them! Furthermore I have
created 2 games with a special theme.
Santa's Boulder Dash Party is a game
with X-mas graphics. Future Dash
contains levels of which the border is
"open".  So if you leave the screen at
one side you return at the other side.
The aim of this game originally was to
show how many possibilities for new
levels arise when just one new feature
is added to Boulder Dash!

NP: What tools are available for
Boulder Dash?

AW: For C64 there exist some very
important tools. Let's start with the
Construction Kit. This tool can be
used to design your own BD caves and
save them on disk. Some authors have
released alternative construction kits
that feature more items and more
effects. A recent release is the Crazy
Light Construction Kit 3.0 by Marek
Roth. This kit is most complete with
respect to the available items, cave
properties and effects. Although it is
still in development it's currently
possible to use it to create BD games.

There are also tools to make a
standalone game out of a set of caves;
so called packers. A famous packer is
Deluxe Packer, which I mostly use to
pack my games. Also the Crazy Light
Tools package contains a program to
pack the caves designed with the Crazy
Light Construction Kit.

Furthermore there are tools available
to design your own graphics-sets and
font-sets. Using such a tool you can
create a game with Rockford in space,
or dressed like a pirate, or whatever
you can think of! Another useful tool
is the Boulder Remake converter. This
tool belongs to Boulder Remake, a very
good remake from BD for pc (more info
at http://home.deds.nl/{$fe}bremake/)
With this tool you can convert a C64
BD game to the format of Boulder
Remake.

NP: I notice the website has maps for
the various levels. How easy was the
process of creating these maps?

AW: Well, in fact I was already
dreaming of having such maps when I
played BD as a kid... Maps were
fascinating me at a young age (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 Boulder Dash game
would be fantastic!

A bit later, in 2004, I noticed that
Boulder Dash games could be converted
to some special format, called BDCFF
(Boulder Dash Common File Format).
This is a text format, which describes
the levels of a BD game by its
properties and the rules that generate
the map of each level. There were some
tools that could read BDCFF files and
print maps of the levels on screen,
but unfortunately, these tools did not
use the original colors of the caves.
Therefore I started in 2006 to write a
program by myself: the BDCFF2BMP
converter. The program reads a BDCFF
file, creates BMP pictures of the maps
and produces an HTML file in which all
the maps can be viewed together with
the level properties. After creating
some the maps using the converter, I
printed out these files and put them
in a "book". This book was exactly
what I wanted to have when I was an 8
years old boy... :) Now the maps of
190 different Boulder Dash games can
be viewed and downloaded at my site.
The hardest step in the conversion
process was actually the creation of
the BDCFF files. This happens
technically by using a C64 memory
snapshot, which is taken after a game
has been loaded. But since the caves
are generally not stored in a standard
way in the snapshot, it is not always
trivial to make a BDCFF out of it.
Some games need an individual
"treatment" before the BDCFF can be
created.

NP: Do you have a How-to guide that
walks the player thought each level?

AW: Sure, two pages are devoted to
Boulder Dash I and II, respectively.
Each page contains a walkthrough of
all the caves and intermissions,
complete with screenshots. In
addition, I have video recordings of
the solutions to both BDs. You need a
media player to watch the solutions.

NP: I find early levels easy then get
frustrated as the difficulty curve
kicks in, the problem is the puzzels
seem so easy when the level loads, I
suspect this is good game design
keeping the player guessing and going
back for more, would you like to
comment?

AW: As I said, in Boulder Dash there
are both extremely easy and extremely
hard puzzles. And it's true that many
caves contain one or a few "surprising
effects", such that it turns out to be
harder than it looked like at the
beginning. I can't say whether or not
this is the feature that keeps the
players in front of the screen. To
take myself as an example, I mostly
play BD games to try the caves one by
one. My goal is usually to complete
all the caves, rather than going for a
high score. If the caves are well
designed and contain nice puzzles,
then I will keep the game and play it
regularly amongst others.

NP: How would our reader create his
or her own Boulder Dash game?

AW: Everyone can make his/her own
Boulder Dash games! You have to use a
few of the tools mentioned above. Most
of these tools are easy to learn and
quite self explanatory. Tutorials are
currently not available at my site
(there will be later on), but of
course I'm always willing to help in
case of problems. We don't want to
miss any BD creations simply because
the tools seem too complicated to the
public!

NP: Are there any tricks or tips that
are useful for playing the game?

AW: Well, euhh... there are many
tricks that can be useful in general.
An example is that you can get rid of
a firefly by, for instance, killing it
with a boulder, or dig a round tunnel
such that is keeps spinning around. In
caves which are very tight because of
many boulders I always try to work
from the lower area to the upper area,
because it's much simpler to drop
boulders than trying to make a way
through the cave when the spaces are
very tight. But overall I think each
cave is unique and needs its own
approach. Some caves have unavoidable
"bobby traps". Then you first have to
"learn" the cave at the cost of one or
a few lives.  To give some hints: when
I play a new cave I usually try to get
an overview by just walking around.
But first I look at the information
bar above the screen, saying how many
diamonds I need to collect and how
much time I have. Also I try to find
out quickly where the exit has been
placed. Sometimes this is easy because
the exit looks like a titanium wall.
But in other caves the exit is hidden
somewhere on the border, or it could
be placed anywhere because the cave
contains many titanium walls.

NP: Do you play any other games?

AW: I have been playing uncountable
C64 games. My favourites seem to be
the platformers like Ghosts Qn
Goblins, Montezuma's Revenge, Yie ar
Kung Fu, and Who Dares Wins. One of
the best games (i.m.h.o.) to play
against the computer or with 2 players
is Hat Trick Ice Hockey. Another game,
which is less known, but I like very
much (because of the puzzle aspect),
is Sensitive. In each level you have
to move an ufo-like object from one
place to another by flying over tiles.
The tiles explode when you fly over
it. Some of the tiles can be used only
once, others twice. Unfortunately this
game has no sequels, and there is no
editor. Otherwise I would have
designed tons of levels! Next to these
C64 games, I play one pc game quite
often, which is Revolt (1999). This is
a racing game with small RC cars.
There are race tracks in which the
cars are driving through supermarkets,
museums, wild west towns, and cruise
ships. Optionally there are pickups
that you can use against your
opponents. For example, you can shoot
at other cars, or let them slip
through an oil puddle. It is also
possible to create your own race
tracks. There is a community of fans
releasing their self-made tracks at
some websites. I think about a few
hundreds of tracks can be downloaded
there.

NP: Do you own any Commodore machines?

AW: Yep, I have a real Commodore 64,
but I don't use it very often. Most of
the C64 games that I'm playing
regularly are downloaded somewhere
from the internet, so I use the VICE
emulator the play them. Also I design
my Boulder Dash levels within VICE.

NP: The best till last! If you had 1
million pounds what would you do with
it?

AW: Euhhh.... change it for euros! ;



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