Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim plays all the DMODs of 2000
If you don't have an account, just leave the password field blank.
080: Mrs. Scarlet's Murder Mystery (Demo) Author: Zail Release Date: December 5, 2000
A DMOD where Dink is a detective and investigates a crime is such a great idea! It's too bad this "demo" goes absolutely nowhere. Generally when you call something a "Demo," I expect to have SOME kind of objective to complete, but Dink accomplishes Jack and Squat in this one, and Jack left town.
As you may expect, this is a non-combat DMOD, and the HUD has been altered a bit - your experience bar is now "progress" and measures how much of the story you've progressed through, which is a sharp idea. It helps give the feeling that you're collecting important information in your investigation. You can still punch things, which is great because there are responses for punching every relevant object, a feature I love that is too uncommon in mods. Some of the responses were fun. If you look at a bookshelf, Dink says, "There are more books here than I could read." If you punch the bookshelf, he says, "There are more books here than I could punch." You also have herb boots in your inventory, which is nice - as Dink says, "My trusty Gumshoes should help me move faster!" Cute.
Although the spelling is kind of lousy, the writing is otherwise pretty good. I actually started to get into it - not as a drama, really, but at least in the, "Oooh, a puzzle to solve!" sense. The problem is that there isn't. There's a few characters to interview about the death of Mrs. Scarlet, but the information you gather doesn't really get you any closer to learning whodunit, and as soon as you try to leave the smallish mansion, the game ends.
It's a shame that Zail never finished this. Although it's very simple and the maps are kind of odd-looking (but in a boring way, hence no screenshots), I would have been all over this one if it were finished or even a substantial demo release. As it is, this is just a stub, a clever idea never implemented.
081: Milderr!! Author: Sharp Release Date: December 12, 2000
Although it was a silly bit of nothing, I got a chuckle out of Sharp's Forest of Dangers. This, on the other hand, was something I didn't enjoy at all. In fact, I briefly gave this the Dink Forever Memorial Award of Badness, but I'm retracting that with this edit for reasons I'll discuss in my next post.
"Milderr!!" is a big incoherent mess full of bugs and empty of a point. Out of all of those qualities, it may surprise you to know that "big" is the one that made it annoy me more than anything else. My patience for buggy, pointless incoherence vanishes like promised third installments in DMOD trilogies when combined with Big Empty Map Syndrome, and this mod has the worst case of it since "Mike Dingwell's First DMOD."
So in this DMOD, you play as Milder FlatStomp. This is a good idea that nobody's tried before. He stuck out more than most characters in the original - what's his story? If nothing else, it could be fun to play as such an unrepentant jerk. I assure you that this DMOD takes this concept and goes nowhere at all with it. Actually, Milder seems in character at times and out of character (lacking the confidence of a true moronic git) at others.
The setting seems to be a bizarre alternate version of the original game's. You start out in what is obviously supposed to be Stonebrook. Apparently Ethel is Milder's aunt - it seems like this would have been mentioned, but then again, it never was clear where Milder lived, so I'm fine with it. Stonebrook is shaped all wrong, but at least it's sort of recognizable, whereas once you leave, the whole map becomes associated with the original in only a vague, fuzzy sort of way. I can't imagine why you wouldn't start any DMOD set in the original area by simply importing the screens. Of course, a lot of DMODs that have done that have failed to remove attached scripts, but really, that's not so hard.
The actual maps here are astoundingly empty. Here, take a look at the overall map to see what I mean. Those screens that look entirely empty ARE entirely empty, and it's a big drag. (If you'd like to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude, while my fiancee saw me playing, she said, "Oh, those maps look like yours!" I wept bitter tears.) Wandering the huge empty map without much to do or, since Milder has no base attack, even a single enemy to fight is seriously unfun. The interior screens all have a weird quirk: the exit warp is a big floating door whose hardness doesn't properly cover the exit. As such, you can walk right past it, in some cases into other interior screens! I'm also demonstrating something else in that shot: many NPCs in this DMOD have no script attached to them at all. In one case, there's a whole screen with just one NPC who has no script.
On top of being empty, the maps are poorly matched, at one spot allowing you to cross the screen border right onto some water. Another location has a house that should be on four screens, but inexplicably disappears on two of them.
There's not a lot of story going on here. I'm not even clear when this is supposed to be set: You can see Dink's mom in Stonebrook, but later you can find a woman who claims that she was married to Mog and Dink killed him. This is completely impossible, of course. There are a couple of amusing bits of dialogue, though I'm concerned by Milder's... rapeyness. He claims that it was Libby's idea to sleep with him, but her tears suggest otherwise. Yeeesh.
All you have to do is proceed northeast to get some "runes" (crossbones) and talk to a wizard, then go north past the bridge to eventually find a warp to the Darklands. The rest of the map (a big chunk of it) can be ignored; there isn't much there anyway, although there is a place in the castle where you can do a fun little dance. Anyway, in the Darklands you'll meet the capricious, most likely evil Sharp, who has some choice words for Milder. The interaction that follows is... pretty difficult to understand. Basically she says "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT, I'VE GOT MAGIC POWERS," and attacks you, but doesn't kill you because of reasons. Dink shows up, but he gets yelled at and runs away. At the end, Milder is told he must go to Finland, where she lives. Okay.
What I'd take away from this one is that giving your DMOD an alternative hero, making a non-combat DMOD, and setting your DMOD in the original setting are all pretty ambitious things to do, and they give your project a much greater capacity to disappoint than usual, so one should approach these ideas with some caution.
A DMOD where Dink is a detective and investigates a crime is such a great idea! It's too bad this "demo" goes absolutely nowhere. Generally when you call something a "Demo," I expect to have SOME kind of objective to complete, but Dink accomplishes Jack and Squat in this one, and Jack left town.
As you may expect, this is a non-combat DMOD, and the HUD has been altered a bit - your experience bar is now "progress" and measures how much of the story you've progressed through, which is a sharp idea. It helps give the feeling that you're collecting important information in your investigation. You can still punch things, which is great because there are responses for punching every relevant object, a feature I love that is too uncommon in mods. Some of the responses were fun. If you look at a bookshelf, Dink says, "There are more books here than I could read." If you punch the bookshelf, he says, "There are more books here than I could punch." You also have herb boots in your inventory, which is nice - as Dink says, "My trusty Gumshoes should help me move faster!" Cute.
Although the spelling is kind of lousy, the writing is otherwise pretty good. I actually started to get into it - not as a drama, really, but at least in the, "Oooh, a puzzle to solve!" sense. The problem is that there isn't. There's a few characters to interview about the death of Mrs. Scarlet, but the information you gather doesn't really get you any closer to learning whodunit, and as soon as you try to leave the smallish mansion, the game ends.
It's a shame that Zail never finished this. Although it's very simple and the maps are kind of odd-looking (but in a boring way, hence no screenshots), I would have been all over this one if it were finished or even a substantial demo release. As it is, this is just a stub, a clever idea never implemented.
081: Milderr!! Author: Sharp Release Date: December 12, 2000
Although it was a silly bit of nothing, I got a chuckle out of Sharp's Forest of Dangers. This, on the other hand, was something I didn't enjoy at all. In fact, I briefly gave this the Dink Forever Memorial Award of Badness, but I'm retracting that with this edit for reasons I'll discuss in my next post.
"Milderr!!" is a big incoherent mess full of bugs and empty of a point. Out of all of those qualities, it may surprise you to know that "big" is the one that made it annoy me more than anything else. My patience for buggy, pointless incoherence vanishes like promised third installments in DMOD trilogies when combined with Big Empty Map Syndrome, and this mod has the worst case of it since "Mike Dingwell's First DMOD."
So in this DMOD, you play as Milder FlatStomp. This is a good idea that nobody's tried before. He stuck out more than most characters in the original - what's his story? If nothing else, it could be fun to play as such an unrepentant jerk. I assure you that this DMOD takes this concept and goes nowhere at all with it. Actually, Milder seems in character at times and out of character (lacking the confidence of a true moronic git) at others.
The setting seems to be a bizarre alternate version of the original game's. You start out in what is obviously supposed to be Stonebrook. Apparently Ethel is Milder's aunt - it seems like this would have been mentioned, but then again, it never was clear where Milder lived, so I'm fine with it. Stonebrook is shaped all wrong, but at least it's sort of recognizable, whereas once you leave, the whole map becomes associated with the original in only a vague, fuzzy sort of way. I can't imagine why you wouldn't start any DMOD set in the original area by simply importing the screens. Of course, a lot of DMODs that have done that have failed to remove attached scripts, but really, that's not so hard.
The actual maps here are astoundingly empty. Here, take a look at the overall map to see what I mean. Those screens that look entirely empty ARE entirely empty, and it's a big drag. (If you'd like to enjoy a bit of schadenfreude, while my fiancee saw me playing, she said, "Oh, those maps look like yours!" I wept bitter tears.) Wandering the huge empty map without much to do or, since Milder has no base attack, even a single enemy to fight is seriously unfun. The interior screens all have a weird quirk: the exit warp is a big floating door whose hardness doesn't properly cover the exit. As such, you can walk right past it, in some cases into other interior screens! I'm also demonstrating something else in that shot: many NPCs in this DMOD have no script attached to them at all. In one case, there's a whole screen with just one NPC who has no script.
On top of being empty, the maps are poorly matched, at one spot allowing you to cross the screen border right onto some water. Another location has a house that should be on four screens, but inexplicably disappears on two of them.
There's not a lot of story going on here. I'm not even clear when this is supposed to be set: You can see Dink's mom in Stonebrook, but later you can find a woman who claims that she was married to Mog and Dink killed him. This is completely impossible, of course. There are a couple of amusing bits of dialogue, though I'm concerned by Milder's... rapeyness. He claims that it was Libby's idea to sleep with him, but her tears suggest otherwise. Yeeesh.
All you have to do is proceed northeast to get some "runes" (crossbones) and talk to a wizard, then go north past the bridge to eventually find a warp to the Darklands. The rest of the map (a big chunk of it) can be ignored; there isn't much there anyway, although there is a place in the castle where you can do a fun little dance. Anyway, in the Darklands you'll meet the capricious, most likely evil Sharp, who has some choice words for Milder. The interaction that follows is... pretty difficult to understand. Basically she says "I CAN DO WHAT I WANT, I'VE GOT MAGIC POWERS," and attacks you, but doesn't kill you because of reasons. Dink shows up, but he gets yelled at and runs away. At the end, Milder is told he must go to Finland, where she lives. Okay.
What I'd take away from this one is that giving your DMOD an alternative hero, making a non-combat DMOD, and setting your DMOD in the original setting are all pretty ambitious things to do, and they give your project a much greater capacity to disappoint than usual, so one should approach these ideas with some caution.
