The Dink Network

Skeleton S

October 18th, 2003
v2.1
Score : 9.0 exceptional
custom_simon.gif
SimonK
Peasant He/Him Australia
 
This skeleton DMOD is a modified version of the most commonly used one, skeleton_b by Mike Snyder. It includes Redink’s hard.dat rewrite and has updated the dink.ini as well as modified comments from the standard .c scripts needed to start a DMOD.

This skeleton is aimed at the intermediate to advanced DMOD author.

The inclusion of redink’s hard.dat rewrite is, generally, a good thing – but there are aspects of this new hardness I don’t like. Although the problem of aligning tiles isn't really there (I finally tested that) there is still the problem of the mountains and the impact on missile sprites, and the sea/ocean being entirely blue hardness if you want Dink on a boat (which I do) or if you want monsters in the ocean. The same thing with Dink travelling on the rocks in the cavern tiles. While the intended purpose of the rock cavern tiles is Dink can't travel thru rock, nor can a monster... I've seen DMODs where monsters are on the rocks, with this re-write they can't be. This will come down to personal preference.

The dink.ini rewrite josh has done is great, almost perfect. I love the fact that he has signed posted with the comment command ( // ) the empty slots available for new graphics, organised and removed redundant INIT lines.
Although the organisation of the SET_SPRITE_INFO lines seems to change... it starts out being relevant to the immediate loading lines for the first series of slots and then stops. No harm in this... just a tad strange.

The set_frame_frame and set_frame_special etc lines have now been group with the relevant sequences which is great.

Comments have been put back in the scripts and at a level which I feel suits the more experienced DMOD author.

All the loading stuff has been moved into the MAIN.c file which is more logical when you think about it... and the global variable &dinklogo has been removed which is a good thing as this means one more global available to the author.

Best is there are readmes explaining what Josh has done and why – excellent.

The file now unzips correctly into whatever folder the author wants to call his new DMOD.

I fired up a game from straight unzipping without changing anything and it all worked fine. I got to one screen with some rocks and that was it. This is actually screen 0 - the non-existant screen as the map.dat included actually doesn't have a starting screen. But the start-1.c file actually tries to put Dink on to map 400. Still an intermediate/advanced DMOD author will easily spot/change this, probably even before they do anything else.

Looking thru the graphics that load... it seems to be the standard set, and includes all the stacks of boxes which skeleton_b is missing - yeah! But what's this... the Dink with bow graphics aren't there?!?

But the bow stuff still works if you give Dink a bow... it's just if you wanted to place Dink with a bow as a frozen statue or something you can't without editing the dink.ini file. A minor failing only.

Dink armed with sword are the only hit graphics loaded in the dink.ini file, which is fine as 1) they are the sequence with the most bmps and thus the really the only ones that need loading in the dink.ini file at the start, and 2) the item scripts load and unload all the necessary walk,idle,hit graphics for each weapon. What I think is missing are the set_frame_delay lines for the hit... once again not a big thing, and I didn't really notice any difference in performace, as Dink's graphics are always that little bit choppy.

Overall 9.0 out of 10. It has improved a lot, but I'm not in favour of the hard.dat rewrite. If this skeleton came as an exe file that installed and then let you choose either hard.dat rewrite or original hard.dat then... it would truely be cooking with gas!