The Dink Network

Dink Smallwood v1.08 has withstood yet another round of testing, and is a bit stronger from the ordeal.

As before, this is a release candidate, which means that if no bugs or errors are found in the next week or so, this will be the final version.

So, if you find something that doesn't seem to work quite right, and it isn't listed under 'Known Problems', please post a reply to this thread, even if you've told me about the same problem before.

This will hopefully be the final version of 1.08. It has been used for a month with only minimal problems, and unless I botched this version, I think this is it.

Full Install - RC6 (15.3 MB)
Patch - RC6 (1.5 MB)

For a full list of changes since Release Candidate 5, please view the comments.

Fixes

* Dink: Fixed bug where interrupting a moving sprite could cause it to walk through hardness.
* 442 - Removed alk tree script from the tree, so nuts did not appear out of thin air when hit with a fireball.
* Included map changes reported in RC5, but not included in the install exe files.
* DinkC Reference - tweaked the descriptions for 'hurt' and 'sp_custom'.

Known Problems

* Fades may be slow in true-color mode even if you have fairly recent hardware. Most people seem to be lucky.
* Dinkedit has, and forever will, crash if you type in really big numbers. You should know better.
* Dinkedit may crash if opening certain D-Mods with a dink.ini from WDE 1.1-1.4. Try using an older version of Dinkedit, such as that included with the v1.07 patch, or use WinDinkedit.
* Fades may rarely turn a 'mauve' color in full-screen mode, and be slower than normal.

Oo wow. Another release candidate.

Gonna test it now on both my Windows XP and 98 computer.

Hmmm.... there is a bug I forgot to report on the previous version...
On Secret of Parizaya, nothing hapends if you press the Enter key.

I tried to look into the problem myself, and found this much...

DFArc doesn't seem to like extracting the parizaya.dmod file hosted here. It spits out the following gobbledygook:

14:26:32: Directory '‚ , void talk(void)€{€say("`7Heyait's meImoen!"&current_sprite);€playsound(58220500,0,0);€}€€€' couldn't be created (error 123: the filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.)
14:26:32: Error: Improperly archived file '‚ , void talk(void)€{€say("`7Heyait's meImoen!"&current_sprite);€playsound(58220500,0,0);€}€€€'. Skipping.
14:26:32: An error occured while extracting the .dmod file.

And then proceeds not to extract any file to the story directory after mycrap.tmp (which I'm sure has some great purpose in that directory). There was not a Tiles directory extracted either, if applicable. Woot.

Ouch! That's quite the bug.

Thanks to the wonders of WinRAR, I managed to dig up the rest of the Story and Tiles directories from the .dmod file.. and curiously, cypry is right about the enter key not working in the D-Mod. Hm.

Edit: Well, that's beautiful... As you may or may not be aware, as of 1.08, you can change the function of the Enter key in your D-Mod with a script named 'button4'. Secret of Parizaya just happens to have a script named button4, interfering with the Enter key's ability to work. Therefore, Secret of Parizaya is currently incompatible with 1.08. Tada.

I didn't realize WinRAR would be able to do that.

You can change the extension .dmod into .tar.bz2 and then extract it using Winrar. (I believe)

Hmm... I haven't finished playing Secret of Parizaya yet, but is the button4 script actually used? If not, you could simply delete the file. And if it is used, you could rename it... (the button4 script seems to be part of a puzzle, it modifies the '&entrance' value to unlock something, but I browsed through the SoP source and I'm not even sure this puzzle got implemented...).

I found another problem with v1.08. In Secret of Amehoela, the game crashes when you hit the sign. This doesn't seem to happen with v1.07 (the sign teleports you to a secret area).

EDIT : And there is still 'Arik Troughton' instead of 'Neil Troughton' in the credits list (Arik's real name is in the credits list in Cloud Castle 2).

Dink 1.08 apparently doesn't like that there are so many hearts on screen 371. I deleted half of them and it worked.

At the end of the game, when you meet Seth, there should be a screenlock. If not, you can exit that screen, then return and talk to Milder again.

Solution: You should know better than to walk away from someone on the verge of death, friend or foe.

It should still be screenlocked.

Dink 1.08 apparently doesn't like that there are so many hearts on screen 371. I deleted half of them and it worked.

Thanks Tal. V1.08 does seem to have problems when there are many sprites on the screen. Is there no way to remove this bug? Secret of Amehoela is not the only D-mod with this problem (if you start Attack of the Army with v1.08 and go one screen north, the game crashes...).

I found another bug. I tried to install True of Life with v1.08, but Dfarc2 displayed an error message and created a 'ÿ' file in the Dink Smallwood folder.

EDIT : Hmm. I thought this problem had been fixed in Release Candidate 5?

I found another problem with v1.08. Whenever you try to hit something in Dinkzilla ; the game crashes.

EDIT : This seems to be the same problem as in the Quest for Arithia series mentioned in the Release Candidate 5 thread.

Tal: I deleted all weird files in the parizaya directory and subdirectories, including 'button4.d' and 'mycrap.tmp'. It still won't extract properly. Do you, or anyone else, have any idea how to fix this?

I think only Dfarc 2 is unable to extract parizaya.dmod properly. I extracted it with Dfarc without any problems.

Yeah, you're right. But considering DFarc2 is the laterst, and is included with 1.08 now, I want it to be compatible with DFarc 2 too.

Well, if some other extractor, such as WinRAR is able to extract it properly, the error lies within DFarc, and not the archive. I would think, anyway.

Sounds about right to me.

mycrap.tmp? I didn't write that, so maybe redink changed some extraction thing.

mycrap.tmp is a file included in Parizaya... the extraction stuff uses a temporary file like before.

The problem seems to be that mycrap.tmp has a size of 0 (i.e. no content)... and DFArc balks at trying to extract that. I could have sworn I fixed this bug a few release candidates ago.

There is a very serious bug in the Dinkedit that came with RC5 and RC6. First of all it hasn't the Dink icon, which is annoying, but the problem is, it crashes with almost all D-Mods made before RC5 and RC6.

In my D-Mod, it doesn't crash, but it can't load sprite library page 2, because appearantly Dinkedit doesn't like the new button graphics (which every D-Mod has nowadays), and crashes. When launching Dinkedit on, for example, The Scourger, it just crashes right away. This isn't the case with the old Dinkedits or WinkDinkedit.
I know for sure it has to with the dink.ini, because, when I remove the lines of the new buttons in the dink.ini in my D-Mod, Dinkedit doesn't crash anymore.

Other than that, I think RC6 is now near perfect, but this bug is really bugging me (excuse the pun).

I can confirm this behaviour. The screen goes all black, no CTD, no BSoD, nothing.

It might be either the dink.ini, or the button graphics themselves. I haven't tinkered with it yet.