The Dink Network

Day and Night

July 12th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 3.5 tolerable
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Being a long time fan of Ultima series (not Ultima online), I always like to have all the natural phenomena in a game. I still remember that I can light up the road-lamps (or lanterns) in Ultima 7 when the night came. The flicking shadow on the road makes it look so real.

When I first started my dmod work (the Other World), I was thinking to at least create a world as real as Dink engine can have. I had snowing, lightning, raining, fog, winds, and of course, day and night. And later I learned that DN had an old file that is about having day and night in Dink. I said to myself: Let me see how he did it.

Well, in principle, he did it much simpler than what I have done, and he has a kind of cool "getting dark" in the process. However I must say I am kind of disappointed. At that time when I created my own day and night scripts, I was still a newbie trying to get a hand on DinkC language, yet I did the day and night effect much better (at least that's my opinion). I have the lantern effect, the time can be continued while inside a house (always bright), and shooting a fireball can light the night up a little, too...

Here you only need one script to control day and night, although it seems that you need to put the sprite manually on every screen that you want to have day and night. And because the global variable &time (although the author did not mention that you need to set up a global &time in main.c for this to work) has only 3 variations. So it can happen that the game would stay up all day or all night if you stay at one screen less than 80 seconds because the counting would be reset each time you enter a new screen. The graphics is also quite bad. I remembered that I have seen another similar file about day and night in redink1's weather files. The graphics there at least is much better than this one. I also remember that somebody said that you can use fadeup and fadedown to sort of create a situation that would look like a night. I didn't really make it work, but it sounds that that graphics could be much better. Back to this file, the author at least should use some more scattered pattern than equally spaced straight lines.

The readme file doesn't help much. It might not be so essential, but the depth-dot of the graphics should be given so that it would be a little easier to place the day or night sprite on the screen. And no words about the global variable setting would leave newbies lost without knowing why.

So basically this script works, but the duration of each day and night can vary a lot. If you do not stay in a screen more than 80 seconds, the day or night may never change. The graphics is bad, and the readme file does not give enough information to make the life easier for newbies. So overall, I can only give this file a not-so-good 3.5.
June 9th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 6.7 fair
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IceMan
Peasant He/Him
 
I think that this idea is a great idea, only I think that the way the whole thing is put together is not too brilliant. There are MANY strengths and weaknesses here and I think that these following should prove that.

Strengths
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The idea itself, of being able to show day and light, and the timing. It is great that you can set when the screen fades, and when it becomes clear again. I think that this was a great idea, and another version can be made upon it. I think that the time between night and day is well done, and works like seconds do. Not for example, some clocks that time 6/8ths of a normal second, as one second. No it works fine. However the weaknesses bring what was an 8.0, down

Weaknesses
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It is easy to see the pixels of the shading. Meaning the night itself does not look too realistic. If the pixels were perhaps, a few blocks closer together, a more night-time effect can take place. I thought that fading the screen down to a certain light level (so Dink can still be seen) would help, to make it more realistic. Please, improve for another version and if you cannot, I will be happy to fill the slot

Overall
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The idea behind the whole thing was well put together, and time was obviously put into it. I think that once again, the pixels should be closed in, so that it looks more realistic.

Total 6.7
Grade C

End comment "Try and get another version out!"
August 25th, 2003
v1.00
Score : 2.0 horrible
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SimonK
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
Yes, day and night and it works once you've figured out how to install it.

Basically unzip the graphics into your graphics folder, find the dink.ini lines in the readme file, copy them into your DMOD's ini file (as long as you're not using sequence numbers 970-973, then open your main.c script for the DMOD and add a new global &time. Now launch DinkEdit or WDE and go place the new sprite on a screen and attach the script daynight.c to it.

Now it should work.

I didn't like the transition to night, nor the real night effect. Having read mimifish's review I might go look at his trailer again to see what he did, as it occured to me that the lantern effect Dan did might be a better way to go. I've tried using the palette trick which is great until you change screens or do a warp... palette looks cool... until then.

This file is not really useful, and not user friendly.

2 out of 10
January 31st, 2003
v1.00
Score : 3.8 tolerable
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Binirit
Peasant She/Her
 
As the other reviewers point out this is a nice idea, but a bad file.

The readme.txt is a script, so there are no guidelines on how to use this file. At first you think this file only consists of some graphics, but after you have done some searching in Explorer it turns out the file is extracted into several different folders. The readme.txt, which I could not find at first, is in another folder.

There is however an uninstall option, also in another folder, so that is the good thing about this file: if you do not know what to do with this file, you can easily remove it from your hard drive. But I think it is even better to not download it in the first place.

I rate the idea an 7, the file itself a 0.5.
November 30th, 2002
v1.00
Score : 2.2 horrible
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ehasl
Peasant He/Him
 
The idea here is good, but in this case, the graphics are bad, and you also need to attach the script to a sprite on each screen where you want darkness variations. This is extremely difficult, because you can't see the sprite you are trying to move.. No testing D-Mod is included, so you will have to spend some time "putting it together" yourself. Also, the readme file is too short, and it doesn't say anything except the Dink.ini information you'll need. And, as if this wasn't enough, it comes in an installation program, which means trouble with uninstalling, and you don't even know exactly how to install it. Like I said in the beginning of this review: The idea is good, but that isn't enough.