The Dink Network

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of my last D-Mod, I've updated Cast Awakening Part 1: Initiation to v1.1.0. This includes a few dozen tweaks: primarily more hints, but also bug fixes, balancing changes, and some new alternative routes.

First, I'd like to express my thanks to Skull for pointing out that it was Cloud Castle 2's 10-year anniversary a few days ago, and to Tim for his continuing COTPATD series, both of which led me to create this release.

I find it really difficult to believe that I released Initiation 10 years ago.

Two weeks ago, not realizing that the 10 year anniversary was coming up, I played through it again, fully, which is something I haven't done since it was released. Every couple years I'd start up the introduction, then I'd quit, but I wanted to play through it to see how my experience aligned with Tim's forthcoming play-through.

I was surprised to see how much I'd forgotten, and how frustrated I was with some of the puzzles and hidden paths. Sure, every couple years someone would complain about not being able to find the purple key, or Gertrude, but I chalked that up to player inexperience or incompetence. And yet, I had those same problems. I even had to look up the answer to some of the riddles.

I was very disappointed in myself: I've long thought that Initiation was 'my best D-Mod ever', and thanks to the passage of time, I was able to see the flaws clearly and without (much) prejudice.

Then, late last week, my wife tried playing Initiation, as her very first Dink Smallwood experience. That was eye-opening: I have Dink 'instincts' that she completely lacked. I knew to hold a direction key during a conversation to see when the conversation ended, and to tap space at just the right time to skip through it, and she had difficulty just moving Dink around without getting stuck on rocks and walls. It made me realize that the Hard.dat Rewrite I created really wasn't good; it was mostly the small fiddly bits of hardness that she got stuck on. I apologized a lot.

She decided that she just wanted to kill everything (thanks ultimate cheat!). That identified a few other bugs (yellow key not appearing, green key appearing twice). She gave up after playing for a couple hours (which is actually rather impressive, as she grows bored with games quite quickly).

Then Skull posted about Cloud Castle 2's anniversary, and I started thinking about this release. I decided to fix the yellow key issue, and I thought I might as well add more hints for the parts that I got stuck on, and I found more bugs along the way, and fixed those too.

Initiation still isn't perfect. Skull's primary criticism is still valid (there isn't a plot that drives the player into action). The key system should really be something that's gameplay related (like different skills/spells that clear certain blocking areas). The riddle gates shouldn't have been included from the start, but they were trendy at the time. And I'm the worst at coming up with character names (even worse than ABCD..., I think). But, I hope that this release is much more friendly to players, new and old alike.

Also, one really weird coincidence: my wife and I were married two years ago today, on September 29th, 2012. Weird!

Blow me down! And while I'm in the middle of playing it!

Are the zombies any easier? I was about to give up on ever getting anything but the bad ending because the zombies are impossible.

Cool. I'll try and replay this sometime soon.

The zombies are not any easier, I'm sorry to say.

You're best off killing them with Rancid Meat (found in the Prisons; you should have access to it by now) or Rainball (if you've found it). The Kung-Fu/Moonwalk Glove works, too, but it's very difficult to acquire.

Edit: you can hit zombies with normal weapons, but you can't aim at them; if they're just behind you, or off to the side, some hits will connect.

Wow, that's pretty awesome! Everyone's getting back into dmodding these days.

HEAR THAT, SIMON KLAEBE?

Congrats on 10 years of a very successful D-Mod! While it might not be on my personal favourite list, and I think it's a somewhat flawed D-Mod, I can still appreciate how much work was obviously put into it. Some of the gameplay elements of the D-Mod are on a level that is very rarely, if ever, reached. So yeah, congrats!

I better play this again someday!

I actually really liked the key system for the consistency it provided - you knew from the very start of the module what you needed to do to bypass those obstacles, rather than it being a case of finding out once you got a specific item. I've gushed about this before, and I can't remember if it's really communicated in the module, but I also loved that you can just bomb your way past them, and that by doing so it's technically possible to get the best ending without fighting anything but one screen of pillbugs. (You'd probably need to be incredibly familiar with the module to do so, but still cool).

That looks like a really comprehensive list of changes. I'll admit that last time I played I gave up at the sewer; maybe I'll give it another shot.

wow 10 years already? time sure flew and well tbh i didn't find the zombies that hard my trick is wall/edge hugging so they couldn't teleport behind me so had to to teleport elsewhere and chucking fireballs at 'm

I dig those narrated dialogues so much. Maybe I'll try that out in GoD2.

Hooray for 10 year on updates!

I finally figured out a way to beat the zombies, but I die immediately upon getting to the fish at the training grounds.

Is the water magic supposed to... do anything? For me it's been the same as the fireball - a simple projectile that only does 2 damage. It doesn't make the usual rain at all, no matter what I throw it against.

Hmm, yeah, water magic is supposed to work like acid rain, except it has more powerful effects at 5 and 10 magic (even for less than 5 it should do the normal fountain-like animation).

Edit: Actually, it only does starts doing acid-rain style fountains when you have a magic level of 5 or more (if I'm reading the code correctly).

Urgh. I don't think I have any chance of beating the fish without it. I'm level 10 and only have 3 magic. I really want to finish this without cheating, but at this point my other choices might be down to grinding a LOT or just starting over.

Edit: never mind, I'm done.

I just played through this again, all four endings.

I found 2 game-crashing bugs.

Bug #1 - Shoot the fireplace in the bar (inside the recreation level) with Rain Ball without breaking the bench first (so shoot the bench I guess), crashed the game for me.

Bug #2 - Shooting certain force fields with Rain Ball also crashed the game. Not sure why. I think the electricity gate in the sewer was one of them if I remember correctly, and also one of the riddle gates.. then again, maybe all the riddle gates do it, not sure, I only shot one of them lol.

Did you also change talporn.com so that it no longer uses iframes?