Reply to Re: Crazy old Tim plays all the DMODs
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Maybe you're onto something, iplaydink. I have noticed fewer comments lately. I thought it was just because people didn't have anything more to say, but I guess you could be right that people around here have learned to ignore sticky topics. As someone who hasn't been a regular since 2000, I wouldn't know.
Whoops, when I was putting together my DMOD list I forgot "Moorack" somehow. Let's fix that.
026: Moorack and the Pillbugs Author: Layne Phillips, Phil Triolo Release date: August 2, 1998
Layne reviewed this DMOD himself on TDN in 2002. He said that he knows it was bad, but that at the time there were "about 3" DMODs. There were actually 11 by my count when this was released, but the point is well taken: it was early on. He also says "I do not suggest anyone to download this unless you are learning to DMOD or are trying to play every last DMOD ever created." He knew. He KNEW.
This DMOD is, as Layne helpfully informs us, bad. Tiling looks like crap, there isn't much to do, and the hardness errors are so bad that you can't really count on a wall being a wall. There is also some unusual English. By far the biggest problem with this DMOD is that it's quite frustrating and there's no payoff. Even though I complained about some things in some of Snyder's mods that made them frustrating to me, they had some nice visuals and story elements waiting for you to make it worth your while. But hey, the authors were 13 at the time and didn't crap the metaphorical bed with DMOD authoring like I did at age 12, so they deserve a bit of credit.
As an aside, these DMODs are already starting to blend together for me. Things start to seem the same after a while, and aside from the frustration the only impression I got here was "oh, it's another DMOD." One unusual thing I saw was displaying the surroundings of a house when you're in it. I think this looks awkward (it's supposed to be kind of from Dink's perspective, right?) but your opinion may vary.
The plot concerns an evil wizard named Moorack (although one NPC calls him "Moordack") turning people into pillbugs. The village you start in (all there is to the DMOD is the village and a short dungeon) is surrounded by pillbugs, and I guarantee you'll be beating up a lot of them. The implications of this are kind of harrowing, but hey, Dink has always taken "Don't murder" as more of a guideline, right?
A "vixen" (old hag) in town tells you not to go after Murdock until you have high stats and lots of life, but the game really doesn't give you much opportunity to acquire these things. You can find one standard megapotion in town as well as a golden heart that you have to walk right through an ordinary-looking cave wall to get (to be fair, the farmer in the house above does say that he hid something "somewhere"); these two things in no way prepare you for the dungeon.
In the dungeon, most screens are filled with strong, fast, tough pillbugs that target you by default, so staying alive is tough. At least nothing but the boss area is screenlocked, so I recommend not fighting anything. Two rooms are filled with slayers and contain another megapotion (though you never get magic) and another golden heart; you should get these, but you'll still be pretty underpowered.
Though you don't have to fight the enemies in the dungeon, the last boss is actually pretty dang tough. It's tough to win, and here is how I did it without cheating:
1)First of all, I was desperate enough to grind to level 3 (500 total exp) using the standard original-game pillbugs around town. I don't think you have to do this, but I was hurting for an edge in life points.
2)Go to the slayer room in the dungeon and incite a slayer meleé. When they're done killing each other, pocket the gold. DON'T ATTACK THE LAST SLAYER.
3)If you survived step 2, return to town, beat up pillbugs until you're healed, and save. You should be able to buy the longsword (400 gold) after one or two trips; keep doing steps 2 and 3 until you've got 2000 for the clawsword. Use any extra gold to buy as many elixirs as you can. If you can't afford any, maybe you should do an extra trip just in case.
4)With the clawsword in hand, rush your way to the boss.
This took me over an hour. Arrrgh. Actually, having to "grind" reminded me a tiny bit of playing Dragon Warrior as a kid, and it got me to thinking that a DMOD based around that could be pretty cool. You'd have to have more of a story, a big world that you couldn't venture too far out in without leveling up or it'd be too dangerous, and a payoff that'd make it feel worth it, but it's a concept worth exploring. I have had four ideas for DMODs so far while doing this, you guys.
One thing that's a bit neat is that there are two boss rooms. In the first, there are three giant pillbugs and a harmless, slow-walking wizard (is THIS Muurock?). All you need to do is kill one pillbug to unlock the screen. In the second you'll find a much tougher giant pillbug who talks to you - this is the real Mawdrack. Do your best to strike from a distance, stay sharp on elixirs and he'll go down, pointlessly awarding 1500 experience.
Now that you've beaten Merduck, you might think that you can go back to town and see how the spell has been broken; you can't. Instead, you should pay attention to the way Mowrook mentioned a secret exit every time you hit him. Check the wall for a path to the ending, in which Dink apparently saved some woman's son. She says she'll do anything to repay him, and it is strongly implied that Dink will use the opportunity to get laid, and not in a nice way. Yuck.
I will say that I got a chuckle out of some of that good old-fashioned fourth wall humor that always gets me. Arguing with a standard-young-lady sprite who keeps an inn, Dink demonstrates his knowledge of the graphics library: "You don't even have a base attack, you can't hurt me." Tee hee!
And now, with that out of the way...
---Everything after August: DMODs get serious--
Up until this point, aside from some neat mods by Mike Snyder and RTSoft's own Mystery Island showing the potential of the Dink engine, the DMOD was a pretty simple thing. At the end of August, DMODs as a whole were an extra, a bit of additional fun to have after playing the real game. At the tail end of 1998, that started changing quickly as DMODs became more ambitious and some of the big names began to arrive.
027: Revenge of the Cast Authors: Layne Phillips, Phil Triolo Release date: October 4, 1998
Maybe it's serendipity that I forgot "Moorack" until now, because this way we get to go directly from that to the same authors' next work over two months later.
I've got to give the authors a big hand. This isn't a great DMOD that you've gotta play or anything, but it's such a huge improvement over their initial effort that it's in an entirely different category. These guys were only a year older than me, and it took them just one dud release to learn lessons that I couldn't seem to learn no matter how many times I ought to have.
The tiles look fine. The maps aren't good, exactly, but they definitely get the job done. There's a bit more of a story (Dink is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Cast and must foil their plans, but there are smaller elements along the way), the hardness errors that absolutely riddled Moorack are all but eliminated, and everything generally works and feels right. Cutscenes happen with plenty of moving parts. This DMOD has some real polish; for example, when you have to go get a certain item because you've been told to, you don't have to walk back - the game just skips ahead to Dink returning the item. Great stuff!
Like Moorack, this DMOD takes a long time to play because of all the grinding required, but the grinding here is much more satisfying - as I said above, I tend to enjoy a good grind (*chortle*). I have just one major bone to pick: You're going to have to fight some boncas with screenlock before your attack is as high as their defense - there's no practical way around this. Now, because of how the Dink engine works, you always have the chance to do one damage with a blow to anything regardless of how weak you are compared to it, so this isn't impossible, but it's still ridiculous and you should never require the player to do this. Once you've upped your stats with a couple of levels and potions, however, the way you grind to become strong and win in this mod becomes rather satisfying.
The later section where you're going from one cast member to the next to exchange progressively higher-level passes is well-implemented, but a tad tedious. The cutscene at the end of it is quite impressive for the time, though, with two sides with several fighters each lining up for a battle. I almost expected it to break out, but of course that would have been WAY too complicated.
The final boss is a Cast member who presents a pretty good challenge and hides a secret. Because it is so dang silly, I will spoil it: He's Dink's father. They do the Star Wars music and everything. It couldn't get any more obvious.
Overall, I am impressed with the improvement here despite the problems this mod still has. I'm killing myself over this - if they could improve so much, why couldn't I?
028: Lost in Dink Author: Dan "redink1" Walma Release date: October 4, 1998
Whoa, this one talks to you. "Welcome to Lost in Dink." This must have been how players of Gauntlet and Sinistar felt back in the day. "Beware, I live."
And now King Daniel (redink1) arrives on the scene. In addition to being responsible for the creation of The Dink Network, he holds the distinction of being responsible for more DMODs (16) than anybody else. Honestly, I didn't bother counting everybody's DMODs, but if anyone else has released more than 16 you can color me shocked. That's not even to mention his work on Dink 1.08 and other very useful projects. I think he edges out Mike Snyder for "most important person to Dink outside of RTSoft." From my own dealings with him, he's also an extremely chill and witty guy. He was nicer to my DMODs than most people. But enough of bathing Dan in the golden rays of my shining praise, let's talk about this DMOD.
The release date above is for version 2.0 of Lost in Dink, which obviously wasn't the first, but I can't find any date for an earlier release (if by some bizarre long shot you read this, Dan, let me know). The version I actually played was 3.0, released on January 28, 1999. This DMOD actually consists of four games: Lost in Dink, Kill the Ducks, Dinkcraft II and Coconut Monkey Island. You can select any one you want from the title screen. This is actually a neat bit of scripting - each one loads like a totally separate DMOD. In pre-2.0 versions, the latter two segments could only be accessed as secrets. It only makes sense to talk about the segments individually.
Lost in Dink: This one should probably be played first. It's a short (say, 15 minutes, maybe 20 if you like punching every baddie you see) and silly romp. Oddly enough, the intro cutscene picks up the plot from the end of Kevin Bugin's Dinkopolis! This is an artifact of the time when Mike Snyder sought to keep all of the DMODs in one grand continuity in a consistent timeline, which was an interesting idea that provided a bit of cohesion early on. I recall a version of the "Dink Timeline" being maintained on the Dink Network for quite some time. Ultimately, however, it became impossible and at any rate too restrictive to consider all of the DMODs to be in continuity with one another.
It's irrelevant anyway, because there really isn't much of a plot here. Dink gets transported to a land that contains a tiny town called Boot that contains a bar. You'll have to beat up some pillbugs to get a key, and although you'll travel to a town called Jight that's menaced by some slimes, those pillbugs are the only enemies you have to fight before the final area. You might think that this would leave you underpowered, but as there's a "supermegapotion" there that adds 10 to all stats, you really don't need to worry about it. Don't forget to talk to the not-quite-a-corpse on that screen to get Hellfire, which oddly has the Fireball graphic. The last area actually has some neat ideas for enemies, including aggressive little girls with a crush on Dink and increasingly powerful evil ducks. Ultimately, you have to beat a really evil bonca, and this segment ends.
There are a few amusing conversations to be had here (I like that hardly anybody takes Dink's claim that he saved the world seriously), but nothing that stuck out to me in a huge way. One thing I really like is a secret in the bar: walk through a wall upstairs to find goblin statues that house a longsword and the HERB BOOTS! Oh my god, I missed you guys! Do you realize that we are 28 DMODs in and this is the first time I have encountered them? They were the best item in the original and are sorely underused. I found this secret because one of the NPCs walked over the non-hard wall; if you REALLY want to keep something secret, you should keep in mind that this can happen. The herb boots are perfect for fighting everything in Lost in Dink except for the really evil bonca, against whom you're probably better off using the sword because of its defense and range.
The map is kind of small in most parts and plain, but it definitely doesn't look bad as a lot of early DMODs do, and while big worlds full of stuff to do are the best, I like this sort of map a lot more than the dreaded Big Empty Map Syndrome (BEMS). It's pretty well put-together overall, but there are a few little problems. One is that there's a bridge you're supposed to fix like the one to Windermere in the original; when you fix it, it becomes possible to cross, but it still looks as broken as ever. (Here's a fun change of pace: rather than being grateful, the residents on the other side hate you for fixing the bridge they intentionally broke to keep out the drunks. You can kill them for their ingratitude if that's your bag.) Another niggle is that the doors don't quite work the way they should (you have to find the right angle to walk into them, and one castle door can be missed allowing you to walk into the middle of the wall). Some doors are placed where doors don't really belong, but that's a very minor gripe. Overall, it's short and pretty fun, I'd say go for it.
Kill the Ducks: Hello, it's a direct sequel to Lost in Dink. Sequel on demand, how neat is that? Dink returns to Jight to find that it's been taken over by evil ducks, who take Dink hostage as well. I'll give you three guesses what you do after that, and the first two don't count.
Yes, I would like to nominate Kill the Ducks for most accurately-named DMOD (let's pretend it's a DMOD) of all time. You are absolutely required to kill many, MANY ducks. Evil ducks that fight back. I am not going to go back and count them, but you tend to get 100 experience points for beating one and I was level 5 and over halfway to level 6 before getting to the boss series. You do the math. I have got to say, this gets kind of tedious, but if you like killing ducks, this is the place to be. Due to all the duck-killing, this game is a little bigger and a lot longer than Lost in Dink.
I got a good laugh out of the scene where the evil ducks, Red, Ged, Fred and Charlie, argue about their nefarious plans. The ducks' tone toward one another is really more like how one would address an incompetent coworker than a villainous comrade, and seeing ducks talk like this is very funny to me for some reason.
Another good thing about this segment is that it is about as close to bug-free as you can get. The only bug worth mentioning is one that affects the whole DMOD, where Dink sometimes cycles a bunch of unrelated sprites when he dies instead of playing his death animation. Let's take a moment to appreciate this; it's hard to make anything in Dink truly bugless.
In addition to ducks, you fight a few boncas and one pillbug that assures you it is "very EVIL." Judging from the bonca in LID and this, I have determined that having a lot of hit points is just about the most evil thing you can do. I guess being evil gives you a big CON bonus; I don't remember seeing that in the D&D player's guide.
The only "magic" you get is the ability to turn into a duck and back. You have to be a duck when entering certain screens or "&life = 0;" happens, killing the stuffing out of you. This is annoying because you'll automatically turn back into Dink on these screens, only to have the exact same requirement repeated afterward.
Far more annoying are the final ducks. Keep in mind that you have no magic, and just a longsword with at most 21 attack. Red has 500 HP (more than Seth in 1.08), Ged has 750, and Fred has the what-in-the-name-of-the-Dead-Dragon-Carcass-was-Dan-thinking sum of one thousand five hundred hit points. THIS IS COMPLETE BULLshoot. I know that the censor made that last sentence say something stupid, but you know what I said and I meant it. What the goddang ducking Hell? shoot on a dink biscuit with meany gravy! Okay, I admit that I only said that last sentence to see what the censor would turn it into.
Fighting more and more powerful ducks loses its shine after a while. They don't have a base attack, they don't... Let's cut to the chase here, they are PILLBUGS. And these don't move fast, either. The strategy for fighting a duck, no matter how high its stats get, remains the same: stand in its path, hit it from a safe distance, retreat, repeat. That doesn't mean it's easy, though, because eventually you will lose focus and you will pay.
You know, about 15 minutes into hitting the same she dog-ass duck with a sword, its blood spattered everywhere, you get way too reflective. I mean, there's nothing else to do. This isn't what I meant to do with my life, you know. I wanted to be a proper writer once upon a time. Even after that dream faded, I thought I'd be a librarian. Nothing wrong with that. Perfectly dignified job, librarian. I was real close to getting my Master's in Library Science, too. And here I am cutting up a duck because my life has no point. Wa-hey!
Anyway, because I am a sad, sad nerd, I killed the ducks without cheating. The ending leads right into Mystery Island, so you know exactly where to place these important events when writing your biography of Dink Smallwood, even though they're totally unconnected to one another.
Kill the Ducks isn't bad, but really, I recommend a bit of cheating. Don't be like me, kids. Winners don't do Ducks.
DinkCraft II: Practically all of the graphics in this segment, including the hero, are taken from Warcraft II, which was a fun real-time strategy game that I played back in the day with friends. I was rotten at it, though. I much preferred turn-based strategy games, like the unbelievably superb Heroes of Might and Magic series. Hey, if ever make another DMOD maybe I'll put some HOMM3 graphics in there, class things up a bit.
Anyway, aside from Dinkanoid this is the first time anyone had bothered to replace so many graphics, and they look good and have hardboxes that make sense. It's a lot harder to do those things with new graphics in Dink than one might think, so this is a worthwhile curiosity for that alone. That's about it, though, as there's only one quest to do here: get a key to a dungeon, find the end, and kill a "boss" pig. Combat is very easy due to having a throwing axe, which always has 15 strength unless Dink's strength stat is over 25 (I found this out by browsing the original source just now). There are some truly impressive script bugs here: one guy says he'll give you a stronger axe for 400 gold, but he actually GIVES you 400 gold when you ask regardless of how much you have, and the axe is not stronger. You can repeat this, but doing so more than a couple of times crashed the game for me. Similarly, the guy who gives you a key will keep giving you keys and fill up your inventory with them. Most bizarre of all are the piles of gold that SUBTRACT gold from your total somehow - I have no idea how this happened.
In a section that's supposed to be required but isn't, you fight Dink Smallwood, who admonishes you to "get out of [his] game." There's a certain satisfaction to laying into that overblown pig farmer. Other than that, there is a "secret" to find, but it just tells you that you found a secret.
While DinkCraft is almost totally non-functional as a game, you should really just think of it as a neat little extra, and it is neat. At that point, Dinkers were still exploring the ways in which the envelope could be pushed.
Coconut Monkey Island: Owwww. OWWWWW. This is bad. It's so bad that I almost typed something stupid - that it's as bad as Dink Forever. It's not THAT bad - it has maps that make sense, a coherent NPC or two, etc. - but it's the worst non-me thing I've played so far, and it's much worse than anything I made after 1998.
Let's, um, have a look.
Uh?
Guh?
...Buh?
Again we encounter the PC Gamer mascot, who bounced around in the surprisingly nice and immersive virtual offices that came for a time on that magazine's demo discs, telling you that he'd gladly assist you, but he has no hands. I loved Coconut Monkey as a kid (obviously, right?) but this experience is so unpleasant that my opinion of LID would be improved by simply removing it and doing nothing else. You could even leave a blank corner of the title screen if you wanted.
There's an island. There isn't much on it but some buildings that don't have much in them with a couple of exceptions. There is one building you simply can't enter, and you can walk right through where the entrance warp ought to be. In one building, objects cycle through sets of furniture sprites, appearing to do mad pirouettes as they transmogrify as fast as they can. I imagine these as joyful, mindless shapeshifters, frantically doing the only thing they know how to do and never stopping. I envy them.
You may gather, if you care to, that a bunch of Coconut Monkeys have slain the population of an island. The CMs are like pillbugs but move around in a slightly less predictable way. You can find a way to enter their hideout, if you like having a terrible time. You'll find yourself in a thin maze with dozens of the buggers on every screen. You've got no room to dodge them and they'll quickly wear down your HP. At this point, I cheated. Now, there may be an anti-cheat script or something here, because when you mess with Dink's three main stats, every object on the map disappears and you can't do anything anymore. I'll bet this applies to all four sections of Lost in Dink. Giving Dink extra life didn't seem to be a problem, so I did that and walked through everything (lots of hardness errors here, which are probably your only hope for winning if you won't cheat) until I got to the boss, seen in the third screenshot above. When you beat him, Dink says "I won the game!" Nothing else happens.
Overall, Lost in Dink is worth a play. It won't take you too long, you'll have some fun, and there are some interesting things in it that you don't see a lot. Even DinkCraft is something worth seeing - just stay away from those fruity monkeys. They are bad for you, man.
***
My goodness, I do go on, don't I? Let me know if I yammer too much and you think I ought to be more brief in my treatment of these DMODs. I just get going and I'm hard to stop. I was going to include Quest for Cheese, the first Halloween mod, and Prophecy of the Ancients in this post, but I think we can tell how that would go, so I'm going to stop here for now.
I really appreciate everybody who reads these posts and comments on them. The encouragement really motivates me to keep going. If anybody feels like it, I'd also be grateful if you posted what you thought about specific segments. I sort of fancy myself a writer and I am doing my best to keep these as varied and entertaining as I can manage.
Whoops, when I was putting together my DMOD list I forgot "Moorack" somehow. Let's fix that.
026: Moorack and the Pillbugs Author: Layne Phillips, Phil Triolo Release date: August 2, 1998
Layne reviewed this DMOD himself on TDN in 2002. He said that he knows it was bad, but that at the time there were "about 3" DMODs. There were actually 11 by my count when this was released, but the point is well taken: it was early on. He also says "I do not suggest anyone to download this unless you are learning to DMOD or are trying to play every last DMOD ever created." He knew. He KNEW.
This DMOD is, as Layne helpfully informs us, bad. Tiling looks like crap, there isn't much to do, and the hardness errors are so bad that you can't really count on a wall being a wall. There is also some unusual English. By far the biggest problem with this DMOD is that it's quite frustrating and there's no payoff. Even though I complained about some things in some of Snyder's mods that made them frustrating to me, they had some nice visuals and story elements waiting for you to make it worth your while. But hey, the authors were 13 at the time and didn't crap the metaphorical bed with DMOD authoring like I did at age 12, so they deserve a bit of credit.
As an aside, these DMODs are already starting to blend together for me. Things start to seem the same after a while, and aside from the frustration the only impression I got here was "oh, it's another DMOD." One unusual thing I saw was displaying the surroundings of a house when you're in it. I think this looks awkward (it's supposed to be kind of from Dink's perspective, right?) but your opinion may vary.
The plot concerns an evil wizard named Moorack (although one NPC calls him "Moordack") turning people into pillbugs. The village you start in (all there is to the DMOD is the village and a short dungeon) is surrounded by pillbugs, and I guarantee you'll be beating up a lot of them. The implications of this are kind of harrowing, but hey, Dink has always taken "Don't murder" as more of a guideline, right?
A "vixen" (old hag) in town tells you not to go after Murdock until you have high stats and lots of life, but the game really doesn't give you much opportunity to acquire these things. You can find one standard megapotion in town as well as a golden heart that you have to walk right through an ordinary-looking cave wall to get (to be fair, the farmer in the house above does say that he hid something "somewhere"); these two things in no way prepare you for the dungeon.
In the dungeon, most screens are filled with strong, fast, tough pillbugs that target you by default, so staying alive is tough. At least nothing but the boss area is screenlocked, so I recommend not fighting anything. Two rooms are filled with slayers and contain another megapotion (though you never get magic) and another golden heart; you should get these, but you'll still be pretty underpowered.
Though you don't have to fight the enemies in the dungeon, the last boss is actually pretty dang tough. It's tough to win, and here is how I did it without cheating:
1)First of all, I was desperate enough to grind to level 3 (500 total exp) using the standard original-game pillbugs around town. I don't think you have to do this, but I was hurting for an edge in life points.
2)Go to the slayer room in the dungeon and incite a slayer meleé. When they're done killing each other, pocket the gold. DON'T ATTACK THE LAST SLAYER.
3)If you survived step 2, return to town, beat up pillbugs until you're healed, and save. You should be able to buy the longsword (400 gold) after one or two trips; keep doing steps 2 and 3 until you've got 2000 for the clawsword. Use any extra gold to buy as many elixirs as you can. If you can't afford any, maybe you should do an extra trip just in case.
4)With the clawsword in hand, rush your way to the boss.
This took me over an hour. Arrrgh. Actually, having to "grind" reminded me a tiny bit of playing Dragon Warrior as a kid, and it got me to thinking that a DMOD based around that could be pretty cool. You'd have to have more of a story, a big world that you couldn't venture too far out in without leveling up or it'd be too dangerous, and a payoff that'd make it feel worth it, but it's a concept worth exploring. I have had four ideas for DMODs so far while doing this, you guys.
One thing that's a bit neat is that there are two boss rooms. In the first, there are three giant pillbugs and a harmless, slow-walking wizard (is THIS Muurock?). All you need to do is kill one pillbug to unlock the screen. In the second you'll find a much tougher giant pillbug who talks to you - this is the real Mawdrack. Do your best to strike from a distance, stay sharp on elixirs and he'll go down, pointlessly awarding 1500 experience.
Now that you've beaten Merduck, you might think that you can go back to town and see how the spell has been broken; you can't. Instead, you should pay attention to the way Mowrook mentioned a secret exit every time you hit him. Check the wall for a path to the ending, in which Dink apparently saved some woman's son. She says she'll do anything to repay him, and it is strongly implied that Dink will use the opportunity to get laid, and not in a nice way. Yuck.
I will say that I got a chuckle out of some of that good old-fashioned fourth wall humor that always gets me. Arguing with a standard-young-lady sprite who keeps an inn, Dink demonstrates his knowledge of the graphics library: "You don't even have a base attack, you can't hurt me." Tee hee!
And now, with that out of the way...
---Everything after August: DMODs get serious--
Up until this point, aside from some neat mods by Mike Snyder and RTSoft's own Mystery Island showing the potential of the Dink engine, the DMOD was a pretty simple thing. At the end of August, DMODs as a whole were an extra, a bit of additional fun to have after playing the real game. At the tail end of 1998, that started changing quickly as DMODs became more ambitious and some of the big names began to arrive.
027: Revenge of the Cast Authors: Layne Phillips, Phil Triolo Release date: October 4, 1998
Maybe it's serendipity that I forgot "Moorack" until now, because this way we get to go directly from that to the same authors' next work over two months later.
I've got to give the authors a big hand. This isn't a great DMOD that you've gotta play or anything, but it's such a huge improvement over their initial effort that it's in an entirely different category. These guys were only a year older than me, and it took them just one dud release to learn lessons that I couldn't seem to learn no matter how many times I ought to have.
The tiles look fine. The maps aren't good, exactly, but they definitely get the job done. There's a bit more of a story (Dink is kidnapped and imprisoned by the Cast and must foil their plans, but there are smaller elements along the way), the hardness errors that absolutely riddled Moorack are all but eliminated, and everything generally works and feels right. Cutscenes happen with plenty of moving parts. This DMOD has some real polish; for example, when you have to go get a certain item because you've been told to, you don't have to walk back - the game just skips ahead to Dink returning the item. Great stuff!
Like Moorack, this DMOD takes a long time to play because of all the grinding required, but the grinding here is much more satisfying - as I said above, I tend to enjoy a good grind (*chortle*). I have just one major bone to pick: You're going to have to fight some boncas with screenlock before your attack is as high as their defense - there's no practical way around this. Now, because of how the Dink engine works, you always have the chance to do one damage with a blow to anything regardless of how weak you are compared to it, so this isn't impossible, but it's still ridiculous and you should never require the player to do this. Once you've upped your stats with a couple of levels and potions, however, the way you grind to become strong and win in this mod becomes rather satisfying.
The later section where you're going from one cast member to the next to exchange progressively higher-level passes is well-implemented, but a tad tedious. The cutscene at the end of it is quite impressive for the time, though, with two sides with several fighters each lining up for a battle. I almost expected it to break out, but of course that would have been WAY too complicated.
The final boss is a Cast member who presents a pretty good challenge and hides a secret. Because it is so dang silly, I will spoil it: He's Dink's father. They do the Star Wars music and everything. It couldn't get any more obvious.
Overall, I am impressed with the improvement here despite the problems this mod still has. I'm killing myself over this - if they could improve so much, why couldn't I?
028: Lost in Dink Author: Dan "redink1" Walma Release date: October 4, 1998
Whoa, this one talks to you. "Welcome to Lost in Dink." This must have been how players of Gauntlet and Sinistar felt back in the day. "Beware, I live."
And now King Daniel (redink1) arrives on the scene. In addition to being responsible for the creation of The Dink Network, he holds the distinction of being responsible for more DMODs (16) than anybody else. Honestly, I didn't bother counting everybody's DMODs, but if anyone else has released more than 16 you can color me shocked. That's not even to mention his work on Dink 1.08 and other very useful projects. I think he edges out Mike Snyder for "most important person to Dink outside of RTSoft." From my own dealings with him, he's also an extremely chill and witty guy. He was nicer to my DMODs than most people. But enough of bathing Dan in the golden rays of my shining praise, let's talk about this DMOD.
The release date above is for version 2.0 of Lost in Dink, which obviously wasn't the first, but I can't find any date for an earlier release (if by some bizarre long shot you read this, Dan, let me know). The version I actually played was 3.0, released on January 28, 1999. This DMOD actually consists of four games: Lost in Dink, Kill the Ducks, Dinkcraft II and Coconut Monkey Island. You can select any one you want from the title screen. This is actually a neat bit of scripting - each one loads like a totally separate DMOD. In pre-2.0 versions, the latter two segments could only be accessed as secrets. It only makes sense to talk about the segments individually.
Lost in Dink: This one should probably be played first. It's a short (say, 15 minutes, maybe 20 if you like punching every baddie you see) and silly romp. Oddly enough, the intro cutscene picks up the plot from the end of Kevin Bugin's Dinkopolis! This is an artifact of the time when Mike Snyder sought to keep all of the DMODs in one grand continuity in a consistent timeline, which was an interesting idea that provided a bit of cohesion early on. I recall a version of the "Dink Timeline" being maintained on the Dink Network for quite some time. Ultimately, however, it became impossible and at any rate too restrictive to consider all of the DMODs to be in continuity with one another.
It's irrelevant anyway, because there really isn't much of a plot here. Dink gets transported to a land that contains a tiny town called Boot that contains a bar. You'll have to beat up some pillbugs to get a key, and although you'll travel to a town called Jight that's menaced by some slimes, those pillbugs are the only enemies you have to fight before the final area. You might think that this would leave you underpowered, but as there's a "supermegapotion" there that adds 10 to all stats, you really don't need to worry about it. Don't forget to talk to the not-quite-a-corpse on that screen to get Hellfire, which oddly has the Fireball graphic. The last area actually has some neat ideas for enemies, including aggressive little girls with a crush on Dink and increasingly powerful evil ducks. Ultimately, you have to beat a really evil bonca, and this segment ends.
There are a few amusing conversations to be had here (I like that hardly anybody takes Dink's claim that he saved the world seriously), but nothing that stuck out to me in a huge way. One thing I really like is a secret in the bar: walk through a wall upstairs to find goblin statues that house a longsword and the HERB BOOTS! Oh my god, I missed you guys! Do you realize that we are 28 DMODs in and this is the first time I have encountered them? They were the best item in the original and are sorely underused. I found this secret because one of the NPCs walked over the non-hard wall; if you REALLY want to keep something secret, you should keep in mind that this can happen. The herb boots are perfect for fighting everything in Lost in Dink except for the really evil bonca, against whom you're probably better off using the sword because of its defense and range.
The map is kind of small in most parts and plain, but it definitely doesn't look bad as a lot of early DMODs do, and while big worlds full of stuff to do are the best, I like this sort of map a lot more than the dreaded Big Empty Map Syndrome (BEMS). It's pretty well put-together overall, but there are a few little problems. One is that there's a bridge you're supposed to fix like the one to Windermere in the original; when you fix it, it becomes possible to cross, but it still looks as broken as ever. (Here's a fun change of pace: rather than being grateful, the residents on the other side hate you for fixing the bridge they intentionally broke to keep out the drunks. You can kill them for their ingratitude if that's your bag.) Another niggle is that the doors don't quite work the way they should (you have to find the right angle to walk into them, and one castle door can be missed allowing you to walk into the middle of the wall). Some doors are placed where doors don't really belong, but that's a very minor gripe. Overall, it's short and pretty fun, I'd say go for it.
Kill the Ducks: Hello, it's a direct sequel to Lost in Dink. Sequel on demand, how neat is that? Dink returns to Jight to find that it's been taken over by evil ducks, who take Dink hostage as well. I'll give you three guesses what you do after that, and the first two don't count.
Yes, I would like to nominate Kill the Ducks for most accurately-named DMOD (let's pretend it's a DMOD) of all time. You are absolutely required to kill many, MANY ducks. Evil ducks that fight back. I am not going to go back and count them, but you tend to get 100 experience points for beating one and I was level 5 and over halfway to level 6 before getting to the boss series. You do the math. I have got to say, this gets kind of tedious, but if you like killing ducks, this is the place to be. Due to all the duck-killing, this game is a little bigger and a lot longer than Lost in Dink.
I got a good laugh out of the scene where the evil ducks, Red, Ged, Fred and Charlie, argue about their nefarious plans. The ducks' tone toward one another is really more like how one would address an incompetent coworker than a villainous comrade, and seeing ducks talk like this is very funny to me for some reason.
Another good thing about this segment is that it is about as close to bug-free as you can get. The only bug worth mentioning is one that affects the whole DMOD, where Dink sometimes cycles a bunch of unrelated sprites when he dies instead of playing his death animation. Let's take a moment to appreciate this; it's hard to make anything in Dink truly bugless.
In addition to ducks, you fight a few boncas and one pillbug that assures you it is "very EVIL." Judging from the bonca in LID and this, I have determined that having a lot of hit points is just about the most evil thing you can do. I guess being evil gives you a big CON bonus; I don't remember seeing that in the D&D player's guide.
The only "magic" you get is the ability to turn into a duck and back. You have to be a duck when entering certain screens or "&life = 0;" happens, killing the stuffing out of you. This is annoying because you'll automatically turn back into Dink on these screens, only to have the exact same requirement repeated afterward.
Far more annoying are the final ducks. Keep in mind that you have no magic, and just a longsword with at most 21 attack. Red has 500 HP (more than Seth in 1.08), Ged has 750, and Fred has the what-in-the-name-of-the-Dead-Dragon-Carcass-was-Dan-thinking sum of one thousand five hundred hit points. THIS IS COMPLETE BULLshoot. I know that the censor made that last sentence say something stupid, but you know what I said and I meant it. What the goddang ducking Hell? shoot on a dink biscuit with meany gravy! Okay, I admit that I only said that last sentence to see what the censor would turn it into.
Fighting more and more powerful ducks loses its shine after a while. They don't have a base attack, they don't... Let's cut to the chase here, they are PILLBUGS. And these don't move fast, either. The strategy for fighting a duck, no matter how high its stats get, remains the same: stand in its path, hit it from a safe distance, retreat, repeat. That doesn't mean it's easy, though, because eventually you will lose focus and you will pay.
You know, about 15 minutes into hitting the same she dog-ass duck with a sword, its blood spattered everywhere, you get way too reflective. I mean, there's nothing else to do. This isn't what I meant to do with my life, you know. I wanted to be a proper writer once upon a time. Even after that dream faded, I thought I'd be a librarian. Nothing wrong with that. Perfectly dignified job, librarian. I was real close to getting my Master's in Library Science, too. And here I am cutting up a duck because my life has no point. Wa-hey!
Anyway, because I am a sad, sad nerd, I killed the ducks without cheating. The ending leads right into Mystery Island, so you know exactly where to place these important events when writing your biography of Dink Smallwood, even though they're totally unconnected to one another.
Kill the Ducks isn't bad, but really, I recommend a bit of cheating. Don't be like me, kids. Winners don't do Ducks.
DinkCraft II: Practically all of the graphics in this segment, including the hero, are taken from Warcraft II, which was a fun real-time strategy game that I played back in the day with friends. I was rotten at it, though. I much preferred turn-based strategy games, like the unbelievably superb Heroes of Might and Magic series. Hey, if ever make another DMOD maybe I'll put some HOMM3 graphics in there, class things up a bit.
Anyway, aside from Dinkanoid this is the first time anyone had bothered to replace so many graphics, and they look good and have hardboxes that make sense. It's a lot harder to do those things with new graphics in Dink than one might think, so this is a worthwhile curiosity for that alone. That's about it, though, as there's only one quest to do here: get a key to a dungeon, find the end, and kill a "boss" pig. Combat is very easy due to having a throwing axe, which always has 15 strength unless Dink's strength stat is over 25 (I found this out by browsing the original source just now). There are some truly impressive script bugs here: one guy says he'll give you a stronger axe for 400 gold, but he actually GIVES you 400 gold when you ask regardless of how much you have, and the axe is not stronger. You can repeat this, but doing so more than a couple of times crashed the game for me. Similarly, the guy who gives you a key will keep giving you keys and fill up your inventory with them. Most bizarre of all are the piles of gold that SUBTRACT gold from your total somehow - I have no idea how this happened.
In a section that's supposed to be required but isn't, you fight Dink Smallwood, who admonishes you to "get out of [his] game." There's a certain satisfaction to laying into that overblown pig farmer. Other than that, there is a "secret" to find, but it just tells you that you found a secret.
While DinkCraft is almost totally non-functional as a game, you should really just think of it as a neat little extra, and it is neat. At that point, Dinkers were still exploring the ways in which the envelope could be pushed.
Coconut Monkey Island: Owwww. OWWWWW. This is bad. It's so bad that I almost typed something stupid - that it's as bad as Dink Forever. It's not THAT bad - it has maps that make sense, a coherent NPC or two, etc. - but it's the worst non-me thing I've played so far, and it's much worse than anything I made after 1998.
Let's, um, have a look.
Uh?
Guh?
...Buh?
Again we encounter the PC Gamer mascot, who bounced around in the surprisingly nice and immersive virtual offices that came for a time on that magazine's demo discs, telling you that he'd gladly assist you, but he has no hands. I loved Coconut Monkey as a kid (obviously, right?) but this experience is so unpleasant that my opinion of LID would be improved by simply removing it and doing nothing else. You could even leave a blank corner of the title screen if you wanted.
There's an island. There isn't much on it but some buildings that don't have much in them with a couple of exceptions. There is one building you simply can't enter, and you can walk right through where the entrance warp ought to be. In one building, objects cycle through sets of furniture sprites, appearing to do mad pirouettes as they transmogrify as fast as they can. I imagine these as joyful, mindless shapeshifters, frantically doing the only thing they know how to do and never stopping. I envy them.
You may gather, if you care to, that a bunch of Coconut Monkeys have slain the population of an island. The CMs are like pillbugs but move around in a slightly less predictable way. You can find a way to enter their hideout, if you like having a terrible time. You'll find yourself in a thin maze with dozens of the buggers on every screen. You've got no room to dodge them and they'll quickly wear down your HP. At this point, I cheated. Now, there may be an anti-cheat script or something here, because when you mess with Dink's three main stats, every object on the map disappears and you can't do anything anymore. I'll bet this applies to all four sections of Lost in Dink. Giving Dink extra life didn't seem to be a problem, so I did that and walked through everything (lots of hardness errors here, which are probably your only hope for winning if you won't cheat) until I got to the boss, seen in the third screenshot above. When you beat him, Dink says "I won the game!" Nothing else happens.
Overall, Lost in Dink is worth a play. It won't take you too long, you'll have some fun, and there are some interesting things in it that you don't see a lot. Even DinkCraft is something worth seeing - just stay away from those fruity monkeys. They are bad for you, man.
***
My goodness, I do go on, don't I? Let me know if I yammer too much and you think I ought to be more brief in my treatment of these DMODs. I just get going and I'm hard to stop. I was going to include Quest for Cheese, the first Halloween mod, and Prophecy of the Ancients in this post, but I think we can tell how that would go, so I'm going to stop here for now.
I really appreciate everybody who reads these posts and comments on them. The encouragement really motivates me to keep going. If anybody feels like it, I'd also be grateful if you posted what you thought about specific segments. I sort of fancy myself a writer and I am doing my best to keep these as varied and entertaining as I can manage.
