Reply to Re: Crazy old Tim plays all the DMODs
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--Meanwhile...--
During the month of August 1998, while I spammed the Smallweb with the Dink Forever series and its follow-up, several other DMODs were made. None of them were nearly as bad as mine.
021: Dinkzilla Author: Jeff Speed Relase Date: August 6, 1998
This is a bit of an aside, but back in the first couple of years of Dink, it seemed like just about everybody had a Dink webpage. Even I had a lame attempt at one ("Tim's Dink Avenue"). All of them are down now except the Smallweb and Jeffzilla's site. I didn't expect any of them to be up, so I just thought I'd point this out. Marvel at the 1998 Tripod page web design!
Out of all of the DMODs, I think that this one probably has the widest gulf between how it was received at the time and how it's regarded now. It's totally reviled on The Dink Network judging from its review scores, but I distinctly remember that when it came out, although nobody went nuts praising it, reactions were actually fairly positive.
Objectively, this definitely isn't a good DMOD. You walk around a pretty clumsy map surrounded by fences (at least it only has one "invisible wall"), punching tiny enemies with your mighty stats of 200 attack and 500 defense (not that you have to - there's no real reason not to just walk right by). Pretty soon, you run into a giant farmer who turns in less than half a second into a giant Milder; he doesn't pose any challenge either, although unlike everything else, you do have to hit him several times. At any rate, you're not required to fight him, as although the screen locks, a crack that functions as a warp is present on screen. There are hardly any scripts (even the ducks just have the "Giant duck of Koka Island" script attached), so this is a DMOD all about fighting where you don't ever have to fight a single thing! The low scores are justified.
However, I also understand the initial reaction. Dinkzilla was released the same day as Dink Forever, and although it contains even fewer scripts, it's definitely better than that mod. People found the "Dink is a giant and destroys all who dare get in his way" concept novel even if this mod didn't really do anything with it, and found it to be a stress reliever. One thing that slightly amused me is that you can get more experience and gold than in practically any other mod despite how incredibly short the game is. I guarantee you'll never make them this quickly anywhere else, and it's at least a unique experience.
Here's a shot of the ending; I got all that exp and gold from killing each enemy just once. I also pressed space to reveal where Dink was hiding. Heh.
Considering that DMOD authoring had only really been around for a little over a month and that it was Jeff's first DMOD, this isn't that bad. I think the concept could be reused in a bigger DMOD to very satisfying effect.
022: Legend of Smallwood: A Dink to the Past Authors: Kevin Bugin, David Goode Release Date: August 6, 1998
Would you look at that, it's the first alternative hero DMOD! Who would have guessed it came so soon? Not me, because this is the first DMOD I've covered that I don't remember playing. It seems like I would have played it back when it came out, and I may have, but I don't remember it.
In this DMOD, you play as the wizard Martridge from the original game. You're told that you're Dink's uncle (!) and that you have to save the kidnapped Dink from an evil Goblin ten years before the original game. The game acts like Dink is an infant or something, but there is just no way Dink is younger in the original than 16 or so - he'd remember this.
On the plus side, the conversion of the hero to Martridge is done pretty well. He comes with his own weapon, a staff that swings at enemies like a sword (although the graphic for the item doesn't display on the HUD when armed for some reason). He never turns into Dink at any point, and has his own death... well, not animation, but frame. The biggest problem with the hero graphics is that if you try to push something (which is not required in this mod), Martridge warps back a few steps and turns a different color while you're "pushing." This isn't bad at all for the first attempt at making the hero somebody other than Dink.
It does bear noting, though, that it's a dang weird choice to make the player a wizard and never give them any magic.
Unfortunately, this mod is pretty seriously broken and the design isn't great either. The maps look weird due to bad tiling and there are random spots of hardness where there shouldn't be (and this can get really bad - sometimes you're warped into hardness spots and can't escape. I had to use Ultimate Cheat to get out). This game also suffers quite a bit from Big Empty Map syndrome.
The author seems to assume you'll visit the town in front of you first, which is something I've seen a few times already and is something you shouldn't do. If you want the player to go somewhere first, you should force them to, tell them to, or at least give them some strong incentive to. As it is, I ended up solving some quests before they were given. There's a building you can't enter; somebody somewhere else will tell you that it's locked, but you don't know this when you see and try to enter it. More than once you'll get "I shouldn't be here yet" messages even when it's the right time to be somewhere. I could go on, but let me be blunt: You can't finish this mod. The furthest you can get is this screen; the only way to proceed is by cheating your way to the other side of the wall. Doing so will soon bring you to a screen where you're told you've reached the end, having resolved nothing, and that you should bug the author to finish the story.
Another weird problem is that every time you equip martridge's staff, you lose a few points of attack. I know this is intentional because at one point you're told to beware using a healing amulet you're given, as each time it will weaken you. However, you aren't told this until you've already had the amulet for some time, and anyway, pressing equip on the staff reduces your attack whether you have the amulet or not, and does so progressively. After it goes down to 1, if you keep equipping it your strength will start to go up, but this crashed the game for me.
If you don't run into the staff problem, you'll find the game very easy, as your stats are pretty good from the start and most monsters fail to target you, meaning that slayers will never swipe at you or even chase you, for example.
It was neat being Martridge and the mod had some great classic rock MIDIs, but overall the experience is frustrating and you've got to cheat to win.
023: Dink Smallwood in the Valley of the Talking Trees Author: Dukie Release Date: August 12, 1998
This is the only DMOD by Dukie, a community fixture who started the "Dink Smallwood Solutions" site for DMOD walkthroughs. Sadly, he died on June 25, 2011 at the age of just 29. Man, that sucks.
What doesn't suck, happily, is this DMOD. While there isn't much to it, it's one of the funniest mods I've seen. Dukie did not hold back at all on the surreal humor, much of it fourth wall-breaking. Dink complains about having to be in another DMOD, and he has an argument with the author about obeying the commands of the player. It's hard for me to convey the humor by writing about it, but I laughed out loud quite a bit during this one.
Another cool thing about this DMOD is that it uses several new .wav sounds to great effect. You don't see this too often.
With "Valley of the Talking Trees," it's important to remember the title. The game itself doesn't make a particular point of informing you that the trees talk, but they do and you'll have to talk to several of them to proceed.
The story in this mod has to be the silliest that I've encountered so far. Not far from where you start is the estate of the duck from NBC's popular sitcom Friends. Dink shall conspire with a tree to take care of that annoying duck (sure, why not), but he's well-guarded by progressively stronger pillbugs and other monsters. Once you get to the bonca, you'll find that you really can't get past it. Its defense is higher than your attack, so you'll only occasionally do 1 damage if you hit it. Instead, you have to find an autograph of the ducks (oddly hidden in a treasure chest) and deliver it to a certain fanatic tree.
After you've given a tree an autograph, you gain access to A most impressive cache of powerups. Now you're ready.
It's kind of strange that when you get to the duck you can just kill him and this has no effect on anything - he'll just come back. To win, what you have to do is go back and spread rumors that the duck is a murderer of other ducks, inciting an angry mob to march to his house in a lovely cutscene that takes place with the status bar blacked out (this is a good idea, makes it look more cinematic). The duck gets away, but you win regardless.
Like I said, there may not be much to it, but if you like to laugh at your DMODs, you should give this one a try. Incidentally, while I didn't know Dukie well, I do remember him from my days around the Dink community. He was a swell guy and he's sorely missed.
024: Dink Arena - GUI Authors: Mike Kanter, Kevin "Bunniemaster" Zettler, Dan Walma Release Date: August 19, 1998
Dink Arena is a DMOD that lets you choose Dink's stats, weapons and magic, one of several arenas to fight in, and what monsters he fights, and lets you have at 'em. This is all you do - there's no story or way to win anything other than an individual fight you've set up.
This mod was originally released in 1998 by Mike Kanter, later improved with some new features by my old pal Bunniemaster, and finally had a GUI added for setting up the fights on June 8, 1999 by redink1. Before the GUI, you had to set everything with choice statements, which got hard to keep track of, so this is a really great addition.
You can add any monster from the original game except Seth, and in addition to standard weapons and magic, there's also the boomerang (functionally, this is nearly identical to the throwing axe) and some weird radiation cloud spell that I could never seem to get to work. Some of the arenas had interesting concepts, like one where you're supposed to shoot the enemies from afar and another with hazardous constantly-striking knights.
You could use this to test and improve your fighting skills at Dink, and you could create some tough challenges for yourself, but I got bored with it almost immediately with nothing to work toward. Playing this makes me wish there were a Dink Arena game with progressively tougher levels. You could let the player pick what kind of stat bonus they want between rounds, maybe hide some secrets in the arenas themselves, maybe even have a little story. I'd enjoy a mod like that a lot.
While this wasn't really my bag as it was, it did achieve some very interesting things with scripting, and I've got major respect for the authors for that.
025: Labyrinth (Demo) Author: Jeff Speed Relase Date: August 21, 1998
This is the first DMOD that had a demo, beta or preview release that was not followed by a full release at any point. This would become common later, but didn't happen again for well over a year.
In the dmod.diz file that comes with this mod, Jeff says that it's "different than any other mods out there," and I think that was certainly true, at least at the time. There's nothing at all here except a huge, complicated, confusing maze of fences on grass with some monsters in it.
I was able to find two powerup caches (one of which was huge and made fighting the monsters very easy) and a save point, but not the exit. I got frustrated - there's big open areas in the maze for no good reason, and you can easily loop around on yourself - and gave up, cheating my way to the end. There just wasn't enough to keep me interested - no decoration, no text, just fences. There were some well-done popular music MIDIs, though, so if you love mazes you may have some fun.
There's no story except for a wizard telling you that you have to go through the maze to be recognized as a hero. Dink is a very angry young man in this DMOD, and he curses and threatens the wizard in a very crude way. Instead of the wizard poofing away or something, though, he simply can't be interacted with further, and if you walk off the screen to the left instead of warping into the maze (which takes you to a starfield, oddly), you can walk back and hear the same spiel again.
After you get out of the fence maze, you arrive at the "underground, where there's a warp right in front of you. This is where a second maze would have gone if Jeff had ever finished his DMOD, but I get the feeling it just would have been pretty much more of the same - some might have enjoyed it, but I don't find it especially fun.
There's an ending where the very angry and foul-mouthed Dink wreaks his vengeance on the smug wizard. I have to admit I laughed a bit when it faded down and the wizard made his many protestations ("My wand doesn't go there!"), but that's mainly because it's late and I'm not terribly mature in the first place. This was followed up by some odd .wav files, the first of which was totally incomprehensible. I can't say that I recommend this one much.
During the month of August 1998, while I spammed the Smallweb with the Dink Forever series and its follow-up, several other DMODs were made. None of them were nearly as bad as mine.
021: Dinkzilla Author: Jeff Speed Relase Date: August 6, 1998
This is a bit of an aside, but back in the first couple of years of Dink, it seemed like just about everybody had a Dink webpage. Even I had a lame attempt at one ("Tim's Dink Avenue"). All of them are down now except the Smallweb and Jeffzilla's site. I didn't expect any of them to be up, so I just thought I'd point this out. Marvel at the 1998 Tripod page web design!
Out of all of the DMODs, I think that this one probably has the widest gulf between how it was received at the time and how it's regarded now. It's totally reviled on The Dink Network judging from its review scores, but I distinctly remember that when it came out, although nobody went nuts praising it, reactions were actually fairly positive.
Objectively, this definitely isn't a good DMOD. You walk around a pretty clumsy map surrounded by fences (at least it only has one "invisible wall"), punching tiny enemies with your mighty stats of 200 attack and 500 defense (not that you have to - there's no real reason not to just walk right by). Pretty soon, you run into a giant farmer who turns in less than half a second into a giant Milder; he doesn't pose any challenge either, although unlike everything else, you do have to hit him several times. At any rate, you're not required to fight him, as although the screen locks, a crack that functions as a warp is present on screen. There are hardly any scripts (even the ducks just have the "Giant duck of Koka Island" script attached), so this is a DMOD all about fighting where you don't ever have to fight a single thing! The low scores are justified.
However, I also understand the initial reaction. Dinkzilla was released the same day as Dink Forever, and although it contains even fewer scripts, it's definitely better than that mod. People found the "Dink is a giant and destroys all who dare get in his way" concept novel even if this mod didn't really do anything with it, and found it to be a stress reliever. One thing that slightly amused me is that you can get more experience and gold than in practically any other mod despite how incredibly short the game is. I guarantee you'll never make them this quickly anywhere else, and it's at least a unique experience.
Here's a shot of the ending; I got all that exp and gold from killing each enemy just once. I also pressed space to reveal where Dink was hiding. Heh.
Considering that DMOD authoring had only really been around for a little over a month and that it was Jeff's first DMOD, this isn't that bad. I think the concept could be reused in a bigger DMOD to very satisfying effect.
022: Legend of Smallwood: A Dink to the Past Authors: Kevin Bugin, David Goode Release Date: August 6, 1998
Would you look at that, it's the first alternative hero DMOD! Who would have guessed it came so soon? Not me, because this is the first DMOD I've covered that I don't remember playing. It seems like I would have played it back when it came out, and I may have, but I don't remember it.
In this DMOD, you play as the wizard Martridge from the original game. You're told that you're Dink's uncle (!) and that you have to save the kidnapped Dink from an evil Goblin ten years before the original game. The game acts like Dink is an infant or something, but there is just no way Dink is younger in the original than 16 or so - he'd remember this.
On the plus side, the conversion of the hero to Martridge is done pretty well. He comes with his own weapon, a staff that swings at enemies like a sword (although the graphic for the item doesn't display on the HUD when armed for some reason). He never turns into Dink at any point, and has his own death... well, not animation, but frame. The biggest problem with the hero graphics is that if you try to push something (which is not required in this mod), Martridge warps back a few steps and turns a different color while you're "pushing." This isn't bad at all for the first attempt at making the hero somebody other than Dink.
It does bear noting, though, that it's a dang weird choice to make the player a wizard and never give them any magic.
Unfortunately, this mod is pretty seriously broken and the design isn't great either. The maps look weird due to bad tiling and there are random spots of hardness where there shouldn't be (and this can get really bad - sometimes you're warped into hardness spots and can't escape. I had to use Ultimate Cheat to get out). This game also suffers quite a bit from Big Empty Map syndrome.
The author seems to assume you'll visit the town in front of you first, which is something I've seen a few times already and is something you shouldn't do. If you want the player to go somewhere first, you should force them to, tell them to, or at least give them some strong incentive to. As it is, I ended up solving some quests before they were given. There's a building you can't enter; somebody somewhere else will tell you that it's locked, but you don't know this when you see and try to enter it. More than once you'll get "I shouldn't be here yet" messages even when it's the right time to be somewhere. I could go on, but let me be blunt: You can't finish this mod. The furthest you can get is this screen; the only way to proceed is by cheating your way to the other side of the wall. Doing so will soon bring you to a screen where you're told you've reached the end, having resolved nothing, and that you should bug the author to finish the story.
Another weird problem is that every time you equip martridge's staff, you lose a few points of attack. I know this is intentional because at one point you're told to beware using a healing amulet you're given, as each time it will weaken you. However, you aren't told this until you've already had the amulet for some time, and anyway, pressing equip on the staff reduces your attack whether you have the amulet or not, and does so progressively. After it goes down to 1, if you keep equipping it your strength will start to go up, but this crashed the game for me.
If you don't run into the staff problem, you'll find the game very easy, as your stats are pretty good from the start and most monsters fail to target you, meaning that slayers will never swipe at you or even chase you, for example.
It was neat being Martridge and the mod had some great classic rock MIDIs, but overall the experience is frustrating and you've got to cheat to win.
023: Dink Smallwood in the Valley of the Talking Trees Author: Dukie Release Date: August 12, 1998
This is the only DMOD by Dukie, a community fixture who started the "Dink Smallwood Solutions" site for DMOD walkthroughs. Sadly, he died on June 25, 2011 at the age of just 29. Man, that sucks.
What doesn't suck, happily, is this DMOD. While there isn't much to it, it's one of the funniest mods I've seen. Dukie did not hold back at all on the surreal humor, much of it fourth wall-breaking. Dink complains about having to be in another DMOD, and he has an argument with the author about obeying the commands of the player. It's hard for me to convey the humor by writing about it, but I laughed out loud quite a bit during this one.
Another cool thing about this DMOD is that it uses several new .wav sounds to great effect. You don't see this too often.
With "Valley of the Talking Trees," it's important to remember the title. The game itself doesn't make a particular point of informing you that the trees talk, but they do and you'll have to talk to several of them to proceed.
The story in this mod has to be the silliest that I've encountered so far. Not far from where you start is the estate of the duck from NBC's popular sitcom Friends. Dink shall conspire with a tree to take care of that annoying duck (sure, why not), but he's well-guarded by progressively stronger pillbugs and other monsters. Once you get to the bonca, you'll find that you really can't get past it. Its defense is higher than your attack, so you'll only occasionally do 1 damage if you hit it. Instead, you have to find an autograph of the ducks (oddly hidden in a treasure chest) and deliver it to a certain fanatic tree.
After you've given a tree an autograph, you gain access to A most impressive cache of powerups. Now you're ready.
It's kind of strange that when you get to the duck you can just kill him and this has no effect on anything - he'll just come back. To win, what you have to do is go back and spread rumors that the duck is a murderer of other ducks, inciting an angry mob to march to his house in a lovely cutscene that takes place with the status bar blacked out (this is a good idea, makes it look more cinematic). The duck gets away, but you win regardless.
Like I said, there may not be much to it, but if you like to laugh at your DMODs, you should give this one a try. Incidentally, while I didn't know Dukie well, I do remember him from my days around the Dink community. He was a swell guy and he's sorely missed.
024: Dink Arena - GUI Authors: Mike Kanter, Kevin "Bunniemaster" Zettler, Dan Walma Release Date: August 19, 1998
Dink Arena is a DMOD that lets you choose Dink's stats, weapons and magic, one of several arenas to fight in, and what monsters he fights, and lets you have at 'em. This is all you do - there's no story or way to win anything other than an individual fight you've set up.
This mod was originally released in 1998 by Mike Kanter, later improved with some new features by my old pal Bunniemaster, and finally had a GUI added for setting up the fights on June 8, 1999 by redink1. Before the GUI, you had to set everything with choice statements, which got hard to keep track of, so this is a really great addition.
You can add any monster from the original game except Seth, and in addition to standard weapons and magic, there's also the boomerang (functionally, this is nearly identical to the throwing axe) and some weird radiation cloud spell that I could never seem to get to work. Some of the arenas had interesting concepts, like one where you're supposed to shoot the enemies from afar and another with hazardous constantly-striking knights.
You could use this to test and improve your fighting skills at Dink, and you could create some tough challenges for yourself, but I got bored with it almost immediately with nothing to work toward. Playing this makes me wish there were a Dink Arena game with progressively tougher levels. You could let the player pick what kind of stat bonus they want between rounds, maybe hide some secrets in the arenas themselves, maybe even have a little story. I'd enjoy a mod like that a lot.
While this wasn't really my bag as it was, it did achieve some very interesting things with scripting, and I've got major respect for the authors for that.
025: Labyrinth (Demo) Author: Jeff Speed Relase Date: August 21, 1998
This is the first DMOD that had a demo, beta or preview release that was not followed by a full release at any point. This would become common later, but didn't happen again for well over a year.
In the dmod.diz file that comes with this mod, Jeff says that it's "different than any other mods out there," and I think that was certainly true, at least at the time. There's nothing at all here except a huge, complicated, confusing maze of fences on grass with some monsters in it.
I was able to find two powerup caches (one of which was huge and made fighting the monsters very easy) and a save point, but not the exit. I got frustrated - there's big open areas in the maze for no good reason, and you can easily loop around on yourself - and gave up, cheating my way to the end. There just wasn't enough to keep me interested - no decoration, no text, just fences. There were some well-done popular music MIDIs, though, so if you love mazes you may have some fun.
There's no story except for a wizard telling you that you have to go through the maze to be recognized as a hero. Dink is a very angry young man in this DMOD, and he curses and threatens the wizard in a very crude way. Instead of the wizard poofing away or something, though, he simply can't be interacted with further, and if you walk off the screen to the left instead of warping into the maze (which takes you to a starfield, oddly), you can walk back and hear the same spiel again.
After you get out of the fence maze, you arrive at the "underground, where there's a warp right in front of you. This is where a second maze would have gone if Jeff had ever finished his DMOD, but I get the feeling it just would have been pretty much more of the same - some might have enjoyed it, but I don't find it especially fun.
There's an ending where the very angry and foul-mouthed Dink wreaks his vengeance on the smug wizard. I have to admit I laughed a bit when it faded down and the wizard made his many protestations ("My wand doesn't go there!"), but that's mainly because it's late and I'm not terribly mature in the first place. This was followed up by some odd .wav files, the first of which was totally incomprehensible. I can't say that I recommend this one much.
