The Dink Network

Hi all,

I was wondering what is the latest version of Dink Smallwood HD for Windows and is there a change log available?

Also, is the file size of version 1.9.5 around twice that of version 1.9.3, and would anyone have the MD5 hash sums for those two installers?

if you're looking to use dinkhd to play dmods, don't.

if you're looking to find and destroy dink hd, do.

Use FreeDink 1.08x or better yet FreeDink 1.09x.

DinkHD has stability and compatibility problems.

Good Luck! Ask us for more help if you need it.

Scroll down and look at the "RTDink for Windows 7" thread. It explains what the differences are between versions and why the download size increased for 1.95.

its because of all the extra bad that 1.95 has.

Hi Skurn, SlipDink and yeoldetoast
Thank you for your replies

Use Freedink 109.6

Yes, as the others have said, use FreeDink.

But if you still want to know, I think the SHA256 for DinkHD 1.9.3 should be:
dink_smallwood_hd-v1_9_3.exe
SHA256="fd451463caaf05c6f321850d6a1c3c2f3dfe2579152934fcce4b441c4ead1efb"

And while I'm at it...

The FreeDink build hosted here (1.09.6) should be:
gnu_freedink-109_6.zip
SHA256="9f42039929251027412dbb5247c299de7c74dff5854f0dd03abc3c10bc3293c2"

Dink V1.08 (also hosted here) should be:
dinksmallwood108.exe
SHA256="d6be28b01602813df02439d4d2974bd38820dc9ce0ea71da5110fc825a360d8e"

Disclaimer: these SHA256 checksums are not official, they were calculated by me a few months ago based on the files hosted on the dink network at the time.

uh, hi, to provide another viewpoint, Dink HD rocks and you should use it.

* Only version with full state saving anywhere and auto saves
* Only version with iOS/Android builds
* Only version with built in DMOD downloader/player (it pulls data directly from dink network, makes it really easy for new players to use DMODS (and is the reason ios/android players can use dmods at all) Note: Also compatible with existing DMOD front ends, so you don't have to use it
* Stability and DMOD compatibility is actually quite good now
* Still being updated/bugfixed, open source, hopefully will keep improving

When you startup Dink HD, it will tell you if there is a newer versions and prompt you to download if needed.

The size difference of the updates a few months ago was mostly because it now includes a huge MIDI sound library, the goal is to provide identical high quality MIDI music on every HD version platform.

Changelog:

------ Change log for 1.94 ----------

* Should work on Windows 7 again (in theory.. uhh.. )
* Now using HTTPS for all communications/downloads on all platforms
* Download & DMOD install is now much faster
* Windows now using a 64 bit build and latest FMOD Studio version for audio
* BUGFIX: All cheats now properly show up if DinkC Debug Toggle is used from the debug mode (previously, Ghostwalk didn't appear)
* (Android) Fixed issue with Android 11 not being able to save
* (Windows) Running dink.exe with /? or --help will now show a list of possible command line parms
* (Android) Now using FMOD for the sound engine here, now all supported platforms have audio feature parity and should sound the same
* BUGFIX (Android): Installing certain large DMODs will no longer crash due to JNI not being able to garbage collect strings fast enough,
although this bug might be something that only happened on this build due to DMOD install optimizations, not sure
* (Windows) Added note on about screen: "Click and drag to move this window, yeah, this GUI was originally made for mobile so it's weird",
* (Desktop versions) In-game Options menu now shows active dink and DMOD paths, About page shows dink dir and dmod base dir
* Midi improvements - using a new MIDI soundfont ( GeneralUser GS 1.471.sf2, but I converted it to .dls1 as FMOD only supports that) -
I think it's probably better than the default Windows midi player so I went ahead and enabled it for Desktop versions too, but .. I don't know,
I feel like some instruments are a bit loud in some midis, but I guess it's probably because different midi authors worked with different
soundfonts and engineered them to different audio levels, so fixing volume for one song makes it too loud on another. Hrmph
* DMOD browse menu (showing things you can install) now shows file size
* BUGFIX: Plugged in XInput devices no longer cause dink to stutter while walking if using keyboard to move
* BUGFIX: Fixed some weirdness that happened if DPI scaling is enabled

------ Change log for 1.95 ----------
* Fixed 25 year old strcpy usage issue with overlapping the dest and src locations which you shouldn't do,
strangely the first time it actually caused a problem (AFAIK?) was on a recent Android build that
was crashing on some devices when New Game is clicked.

Unless playing our latest dmod, Charlie's Legacy.

Which will only work in FreeDink 109.6.

(Will crash on anything else on load).

convenience comes with a price. kinda a fact of existence.

Not to forget dink hd is ported to psvita as well
https://github.com/NabsiYa/RTDink-Vita

Robj: Are you sure?

I just tested it with Dink HD and I was able to go through the intro and get to the boat where I can control Dink without any problems.

I had to hack vcheck.c to get around the dmod's version checker though...

"Robj: Are you sure?"

"I just tested it with Dink HD and I was able to go through the intro and get to the boat where I can control Dink without any problems."

You are correct.. It crashed on an older version when I tested it some time ago while the dmod was still in development, and I havent re-tested it since.

You are right, it does run, although it still has issues. All the castle tiles were black in the intro for me, and the push/pull system is very laggy still, with dinks sequence sometimes refusing to animate.
When you reach the sliding tile puzzle on screen 260(can warp directly to it to have a look, it's not dependant on a variable to use/access that puzzle), it is so laggy and unresponsive, it locks up for ages on each move and is nearly unplay-able, unfortunately. This is all very smooth and no lag at all on FreeDink, so for this dmod in particular, it is still more play-able on FreeDink I think.

Edit: I'll remove the "DinkHD" check on next update (since it is at least functionable on the latest version)

One more thing I noticed. In DinkHD, the inventory automatically closes when selecting a weapon. Just a slight difference from the normal behaviour of it not closing. In Charlie's Legacy we scripted a "consume from inventory" thing, so the player could open inventory and consume multiple things, then close it. It's not too bad of a thing to have to re-open it, but I wasn't sure if that inconsistency with the auto-close was ever picked up/reported.

EDIT2: The game crashes when you enter screen 486, in natural dmod progression (&story needs to equal 12 for the crash to happen).

yehhhh don't remove the dinkhd check. if it works but is extremely buggy, it'll be good to keep it locked to freedink. no sense giving people the choice to play on dinkhd if it'll only lead to issues.

Thanks for the info Robj.

I figure if I can tweak Dink HD so Charlie's Legacy runs great (and fix that crash on 486 you mentioned) this will likely help compatibility on other DMODs too.

I think the inventory screen change was done because on touch control versions there currently is no way to leave the item screen without it.

Guess I'll disable that "feature" when Keyboard/gamepad are being used.

For the other issues I'll see if I can get in there with the debugger and see what's going on.

One thing I'm confused about though (Hrm, maybe a question for Dan) - why doesn't Charlie's Legacy show up in Dink HD's internal DMOD browser? Are some DMODs tagged as "not working" with HD and they get filtered out? I can't remember if that was a thing

Thanks for the reply. I will fully test Charlie's Legacy to see if there are any other issues and report (I haven't test played thru the entire game yet).

Seth, any chance to make it so "sp_custom" values work for active_sprite number 1. They currently crash if retrieved(they work on any other active sprite number I believe). This was fixed for FreeDink, and was taken advantage of in Charlie in certain situations. Basically in DinkHD, setting a key with sp_custom on active_sprite 1, doesnt cause an issue, but as soon as you retrieve it with "-1", the game crashes. (I've found storing custom keys on Dink to be super useful, even though the value isn't stored in save.dat, it's even good for variable conservation too). In Charlie's Legacy, there is an item you can get in a side quest, which has some extra ability and takes advantage of sp_custom values stored with Dink temporarily. This weapon will cause a crash in DinkHD, when an enemy is hit, as soon as the key is retrieved.

Cheers!

sp_custom on sprite 1 - Yep, noticed that crash and already fixed that earlier today in fact!

Here's what I've fixed so far (I've been working my way through the dmod just playing it normally - it's excellent btw, nice job. Coaxing the engine to push in four directions is pretty amazing.

* Fixed issue with black tiles at the start of Charlie's Legacy (Now properly rebuilds surfaces when dynamically switching from
8 bit to 32 bit color back buffer mode, it does this the first time it detects high color sprites in a dmod) (robj)
* Fixed issue with pushing animation code that caused Charlie's Legacy to freeze dink on frame 1 when pushing (robj)
* sp_speed with an invalid sprite can no longer cause a crash, will report it in the log instead. Really all sp commands need this...
* Unless you're using touch controls, choosing an inventory item will no longer auto-close the menu, not really need for keyboard/gamepad players (robj)
* load_script gives a warning to log if you try to load a script to a sprite that doesn't exist instead of crashing
* Added support for bmps using "bitfields" (to Proton), have never seen one in the wild, but Charlie's Legacy's map-03.bmp uses it

If I play for a while I've had a few instances of crashes due to a script trying to sp_<something> to illegal sprite values (like 8262 etc) sometimes, is this something that happens in freedink too sometimes or just here?

It's logging some scripting errors which I'm going to check out later to see if they are really problems or what, but one that looked like a typo (sp_xutom?) is in phisend.d:

&save_x = sp_xutom("PosAltered", &arg4, -1);

""&save_x = sp_xutom("PosAltered", &arg4, -1)"

Thanks for this. I'll fix and update. This didn't cause a crash before in push and pull, but I will still fix it in the next Charlie update since it could cause issues.

Also, not sure why it's trying to do an sp_<something> to illegal sprite values... If you have any screens these specific crashes happened on (or specifics), I'll investigate the scripts associated. Thanks

Edit: I actually have a big update for push and pull coming, rewritten to accomplish a lot of the stuff easier than what it currently is. I couldn't get it finished in time for Charlie, so it's still using the old one. Still functional, not buggy, just new version will be more efficient. Same outcome, different workings I guess

I'm guessing the in-game browser is some sort of weird edge case with character parsing, since it's listed on the API page as one would expect.

"If I play for a while I've had a few instances of crashes due to a script trying to sp_<something> to illegal sprite values (like 8262 etc) sometimes, is this something that happens in freedink too sometimes or just here?"

Actually, there was one instance of a random crash reported from a tester... and an instance of a bunch of random sprites vanishing across many screens as well, which baffled me... they were there... but invisible apparently (the dialogue showed in the correct place).

I could not reproduce it, and just ended up throwing some preload_seq lines in thinking the engine somehow unloaded the graphics from memory? lol. I'm now thinking it has something to do with this sp thing you mentioned of writing to illegal sprite values. If I can pinpoint the offending script/s, I will fix them. I'll continue looking, now that I know that might be a reason. Although it's strange. I did an entire playthrough and didn't experience it, so in FreeDink it only seems to cause chaos rarely.. but this could be the reason I guess.

Ah, good thought on the api but I just checked and verified that dinknetwork is filtering it out on certain queries:

(using the curl utility I can fake the post data that the .exe is sending)

curl -X POST -d "platform=windows" https://www.dinknetwork.com/api -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"|grep Cursed

The output won't show the DMOD.

However, if I remove the "-d "platform=windows" part, it *is* shown. So I guess that can be tweaked later on DN's side.

Now, embarrassingly I'm sort of stuck in the DMOD (I killed Bi*** tho) and off to find a walkthrough..

EDIT: Oh yeah, this is new, I better not post spoilers, edited!

SPOILERS. I'M ONLY AT THE INTRO

Now, embarrassingly I'm sort of stuck in the DMOD (I killed Bishop's nelson brother tho) and off to find a walkthrough..

PM'ed you.

Now, embarrassingly I'm sort of stuck in the DMOD (I killed Bishop's nelson brother tho) and off to find a walkthrough

The joy of it being released only in the last few days, you won't find one yet Awesome to hear you're playing it though. My best suggestion is to continue exploring and pay attention to any dialogue for now.

Thanks for the fixes seth, so i am planning to actually play this dmod on my phone, so these fixes will be pushed to android some time later ?

you know, speaking of phone, can we get some actual controller support? not with a particular phone addon, but with commonly used bluetooth controllers (ps4, ps5, xbox, whatever). it does pick them up, but you cannot remap them and the profiles they are assigned have duplicate inputs or missing inputs.

"Thanks for the fixes seth, so i am planning to actually play this dmod on my phone, so these fixes will be pushed to android some time later?"

Hi Liquid, I am in contact with Seth and can confirm that he is still making improvements. I am sure he will send out an official update once it is all ironed out!

Yep, after Robj & I have the Windows Dink HD version looking good, I do plan to update the mobile/web versions too. Proper Bluetooth controller support on mobile is something I want to add, haven't looked into it yet though.

i think the biggest issue is the lack of a proper method of rebinding the keys. any controller i've connected only has an issue because of that.

Yeah, I gotta think about the rebinding thing, do some solution where it works with all platforms (including ones where you don't have a keyboard and can't edit an .ini or whatever) and also can't leave things in a broken state.

For now, Dink HD 1.97 looks to be almost ready, it's here if anyone wants to help test it